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05/10/2011

There’s a main road in Kenya that connects three areas of the Bondo community. It runs from the port city of Kisumu through the town of Bondo, linking it to Usenge. The road is paved and accessible despite the heavy construction lining segments along the way. The traffic can be dense, consisting mostly of bicyclists, pedestrians, and people on motor bikes, all passing along a desert landscape that’s quite different than the imagined grassland savannas associated with countries in Africa. The pedestrians are often travelling along the road to obtain drinking water, a scarce commodity in the rural countryside in which they live. (Read the SESE Source version)

In March 2011, Amy Kaczmarowski, currently a junior double-majoring in Exploration Systems Design and Aerospace Engineering, travelled to Kenya with five other undergraduate students, all participants in Engineers Without Borders (EWB). After completing a project she managed that began in 2008 involving water sustainability in Ecuador, Kaczmarowski became invested in the idea of doing another project – this time in Africa. She came into contact with Benson Odongo, an ASU graduate student and a native of Kenya. Odongo, informing Kaczmarowski of the water conditions in Bondo, helped facilitate the establishment of the project members’ relations with Bondo community members who will be working with to create more stabilized methods of water retrieval.

After the eighteen-hour flight, Kaczmarowski arrived in Kenya and stood amongst the arid scenery wondering if she ever really left the Arizona desert. Describing the cactus and dust painted canvas of the land, she quickly made connections between the climate she left and the one she just arrived in. “[It had] the same flavor,” she said, making comparisons to the Sonora Southwest which only enhanced her understanding of the necessity of water in such an atmosphere.

Bondo is one of the most poverty-stricken districts in Kenya. It’s also a place where water is scarce, often only accessible after a journey of many miles on foot. The journey is generally trekked more than once a day, by mostly women and children, who must wait in lines only to collect a small supply of water. While seeking to improve the stability of the water supply the students also assessed the water quality. They discovered an overabundance of nitrates and bacteria living within it. The most problematic aspect, however, is the extreme distance many community members
have to travel to contact water.

The homes, most of which are constructed of cut trees, lined vertically and horizontally and filled with mud and cow feces for foundation, lack the support of material that’s durable enough to withstand the weather. Mud, grass, and tree branches compose the roof, which will sometimes have a grooved metal sheet laid upon the top to assist in the water catchment system. Buckets are placed beneath to seize the falling rain as it collects in the crevasses of the roof that act as gutters. The main problem with rooftop catchment, according to Kaczmarowski, is the limited storage capability.
A pipe system exists that brings water in from the Yala River. The town residents and guests of the hotels consume the pipe water, but tests show a disturbingly high number of bacteria living in the water that comes from these pipes.

Boreholes, a favored water retrieval method, are hand-dug holes of around 100 feet in depth that act as wells. The water underground, however,
contains high levels of chloride as a result of its proximity to Lake Victoria, which is also polluted with raw sewage and industrial waste.
There are dams constructed in locations with lower elevation, places in which rain will naturally collect during the wetter months. The dams mirror the concept of stock ponds used by Arizona cattle ranchers and are created by mounding natural sediment into walls to guide and contain
the flowing rain water. Floods, though, often overflow the dams, with the natural sediment becoming heavily infiltrated in the water.
 

The team is working with the community members, prioritizing improvement methods based upon the systems the members find favorable.
The team of students also visited the local hospital, where typically it is the children who are most adversely affected by the toxins in the water. The illness afflicting the children are commonly experienced in youth by most of the community members. Opposed to growing immune to it, people have grown accustomed to it.

The project’s next step involves building larger tanks for the rooftop catchment system. Gutters will be installed on the roofs of selected houses and water will be routed to these larger collection tanks. The team is currently investigating the options regarding materials for the tanks. They recently returned from Tucson where they examined the possibilities of metal and concrete tanks.

“We’re reviewing data we collected and looking for ways we can use local materials to design simple systems and provide some immediate relief. Then we can start on the long-term project,” says Kaczmarowski.

Reflecting upon the experience, Kaczmarowski noticed that as she and the other students traveled in the dry heat of the desert by foot, not one of the accompanying community members stopped to have even one sip of water. Feeling a sense of guilt as she opened her water canteen, Kaczmarowski recognized her thirst as a pain that has become a facet of daily life for those in Bondo. With hopes of completing the project in five years, Kaczmarowski and others will make regular visits to the community. They plan on retuning in December, as well as for a period of two months in the summer of 2012.

 

Image: Amy Kaczmarowski, pictured amongst the children in the center, spent her spring break helping to quench thirst in Kenya. Photo courtesy of Amy Kaczmarowski.

(Meghan Fern)

A Thirst For Africa
05/09/2011

Arizona State University has been selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the new host university for the EarthScope National Office. The EarthScope program centers on exploration and discovery of the 4-D structure and evolution of the North American continent, but also encompasses studies of Earth structure and dynamics throughout the planet. The rotating, university-based national office, established through a four-year nearly $2.4 million grant, facilitates scientific planning and coordinates education and outreach efforts for the EarthScope community.

EarthScope is an NSF program that deploys thousands of seismic, GPS, and other geophysical instruments to contribute to our understanding of our dynamic Earth, North America specifically, and the processes that cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. These instruments installed across the United States measure the motion of Earth’s surface, record seismic waves, and recover rock samples from depths at which earthquakes originate. These instruments along with EarthScope’s high resolution topography and geochronology efforts provide an unprecedented amount of geophysical and geological data to address the processes that formed and continue to shape North America. Their analysis is conducted by the EarthScope community in remarkably interdisciplinary ways.

“EarthScope gives us an unprecedented view of the earth’s structure and processes and the scientific community gathered around these data and research questions innovatively answers some of the most outstanding questions in the Earth sciences,” says Ramón Arrowsmith, the new director of the EarthScope National Office (ENSO) and a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) in Arizona State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“ASU is a particularly attractive site for the EarthScope national office because of the breadth and depth of EarthScope-type studies here,” explains Arrowsmith. “The unique combination of the expertise and experience of the project team coupled with ASU’s fertile academic and research environment and expanding facilities makes bringing the ESNO to ASU an exceptional fit for the next phase of EarthScope. Our PI team has been involved with EarthScope since its inception.”

Joining Arrowsmith is geoscience education researcher Steve Semken, also a professor in SESE, who will be the deputy director in charge of leading new education and outreach activity for EarthScope. SESE professors Ed Garnero and Matt Fouch will serve as EarthScope principal investigators. Wendy Taylor is also a principal investigator and will be the education and outreach (E&O) program coordinator. Several other ASU researchers with geoscience backgrounds also will be involved, as will undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

The nucleus of the program is the EarthScope Facility, a multi-purpose array of instruments and observatories consisting of the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), and the USArray. Arrowsmith and his students have examined the geologic framework of SAFOD, which is a 3-kilometer deep hole drilled directly into the San Andreas Fault that is providing the first opportunity to directly observe the conditions under which earthquakes occur. In addition, they have developed important analysis and delivery tools for the high resolution topography gathered along active faults in western North America by EarthScope. Fouch and Garnero are heavily involved with USArray, an array of 400 portable seismometers deployed across the United States over a 12-year period, allowing seismologists to see deep in Earth with much sharper focus than ever before. PBO, consisting of arrays of GPS receivers and strainmeters, studies the strain field resulting from deformation across the boundary zone between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates in the western United States.

EarthScope science is notable for its interdisciplinary research, another reason it fits so well with the School of Earth and Space Exploration, which is itself a transdisciplinary environment that melds astronomy and geological sciences with engineering and education. Science results from EarthScope go beyond narrow analyses of individual datasets, and combine diverse observational datasets with innovative experimental and theoretical exploration. These results produce transformative knowledge for studying earth's structures and processes and in understanding hazards and guiding exploration of resources. In addition, these data and technologies offer superb opportunities to enhance formal and informal science education in the solid Earth sciences.

EarthScope provides a unique opportunity for students, teachers, and the public to participate in a national experiment going on in their own backyard, and regularly brings Earth science educators together with geoscientists to ensure that EarthScope data and findings are quickly and efficiently shared with wide audiences. One of the principal functions of the ESNO is to connect EarthScope researchers with educators and the public, and to share the excitement of cutting-edge research and findings through a multifaceted E&O program.

The ASU team is acutely aware of the importance of E&O, and the opportunities for the ESNO to play a major role in working with the earth science community to advance and innovate E&O. Constituents of SESE have a long history of sustained and meaningful science education research and outreach. The ESNO at ASU will also spearhead EarthScope as a national resource for place-based Earth science teaching at all grade levels.

“Place-based teaching is an approach that engages diverse students by focusing on teaching examples and scientific questions that are drawn directly from local surroundings,” explains Semken. “EarthScope research is being conducted at an unprecedented fine scale across the continent, uncovering Earth features, processes, and history beneath every place, including those regions where the surface expression of geology is more subtle. These new data are superb resources for place-based Earth science teaching, and the ESNO at ASU will enthusiastically advocate and facilitate their use by K-12 and college teachers.”

According to Arrowsmith and Semken, another key selling point for getting the national office at ASU was that ESNO would be housed in the school’s new Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV, which is designed with education and outreach as a central theme. The ground floor lobby is dominated by exhibition and teaching spaces, including some to be dedicated to EarthScope that will feature dynamic displays such as large flat-screen presentations of real-time seismic and other geophysical data, and interactive Earth science exhibits freely accessible to members of the ASU community, K-12 student and teacher visitors, and the general public.

More information on EarthScope is available online at: www.earthscope.org

 

Image: Petrified Forest, one of the USArray stations. Image courtesy of Steve Semken.

 

(Nikki Cassis)

 

Arizona State University to host EarthScope National Office
05/07/2011

SESE graduate student Danny Foley recently won a prestigious Teaching Excellence Award from the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA). This award recognizes outstanding graduate TAs from throughout ASU’s four campuses, and involves three in-class evaluations of the nominees by members of GPSA. (Read the SESE Source version)

Foley was nominated for this award for teaching the GLG 104 Historical Geology Lab, which corresponds with the GLG 102 Historical Geology Lecture.

“In my opinion, to appeal to intro level students, this lab is inappropriately named; instead I think this lab should be called “If the Earth Could Talk What Would It Say”, as it really is the story of the Earth,” says Foley. “While the GLG 103 physical geology focuses on the processes that happen on and within the earth (earthquakes, plate tectonics, etc.), historical geology focuses on how these processes have occurred throughout the history of the Earth, how they have shaped it, and how these processes have impacted life as we know it.”

Foley completed his bachelors of science degree in geological sciences at ASU and is currently working on his masters of science degree with his advisor Ed Stump on the thermochronology and geomorphology of the Byrd Glacier Region of the
Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica.

“The first class of GLG 104 I taught at ASU was without a pre designed set lab manual and it was as challenging as it was exciting of an experience,” recalls Foley. From it he discovered that he absolutely loves to educate as a teaching assistant (TA). Whereas other TAs may be less enthused by unmotivated students, he finds it inspiring to make the subject interesting so they want to understand.

“I was even more inspired to teach after several students have told me they took geology only as a requirement, but learned something useful and really enjoyed it in the end, especially after some have told me they switched majors after taking my class,” says Foley. “I see how scientific education of non-scientists, especially those who may help to make major decisions within society is extremely important.”

 

Image: Foley joined the Arctic Ocean swim club by taking the polar plunge in the Arctic Ocean off Barrow Alaska. Once in Antarctica, he seized the opportunity to complete the pole to pole swim club. Foley’s advisor Ed Stump said he had not seen someone swim in the icy waters during his more than 40 years of career work in Antarctica.

 

(Nikki Cassis)

 

 

Teaching Excellence
05/05/2011

Beginning in 1958, NASA’s Project Mercury was conceived as a bold experiment to give the United States its first human spaceflight experience, develop techniques and hardware for more ambitious space endeavors, and evaluate whether astronauts could safely function in space. The Mercury program was highly successful, yet the whole Mercury image collection has rarely been seen by the public – until now. A team of scientists led by Arizona State University Professor Mark Robinson is bringing these historic flights to life by making high-resolution scans of the original Mercury flight films.

On 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this milestone, the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU have released the Project Mercury Online Digital Archive. In this new digital archive, high-resolution scans of the raw and enhanced versions of the original Mercury flight films are available to both researchers and the general public, to browse or download, at: http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/.

“It was a real privilege to lead up this effort, especially working with the dedicated professionals at JSC who handled and scanned the images with the greatest care,” says Robinson, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Robinson, the principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, a suite of three separate cameras on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, is also partnering with JSC to scan the original Apollo films, which are being posted online since scanning started in 2007.

Robinson’s team received the raw scans from JSC, and ASU was responsible for the processing and archiving of the scanned photographs. Among the steps taken to improve the visual quality of the images was the adjustment of contrast and the enhancement of colors. According to Robinson, once he had worked out a procedure it only took a few seconds of processing per image. Of course, a handful of the images did need individual “hand processing” and thus took longer.

Between 1960 and 1963, NASA launched numerous unmanned and six manned Mercury flights. To record their historic voyages and collect scientific observations from Earth’s orbit, astronauts snapped nearly 2,000 photographs in 70 mm format with handheld and automated cameras. Many of the images (specifically those from the unmanned flights) were taken with cameras mounted on brackets looking out the window on a timer. Robinson’s team assembled these into movies and they are posted on the webpage also.

The collection of scanned images, most taken with the Swedish designed Hasselblad 500c camera that was first introduced in 1957 and renowned for its clarity, are now available in high-resolution for scientists, engineers and the public. After the missions returned to Earth, the films were developed and stored at JSC.

“When the first scans arrived I was surprised to see writing on the images,” says Robinson. “At first I was appalled – these images are part of history, how could somebody have written on them? Then it dawned on me – these were engineering test flights, the imperative was to get an American into space. Analysis of the images far outweighed any historical imperative; the Mercury team was pushing towards the project goals! Now I see the notations as dedication to the cause, a signal of the urgency to succeed.”

A Time to Remember

As we start the 10th year of a permanent human presence aboard the International Space Station and the sixth decade of American spaceflight, it is hard for many people to remember that there was a time when we simply didn't know whether humans could live and work in space.

The first Mercury flight named Freedom 7, piloted by Alan Shepard, lasted a mere 15 minutes. Shepard was launched 100 hundred miles into space and then fell back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean. The flight, though short, was a huge relief. At the time the Soviet Union had orbited a cosmonaut (April 12, 1961), Yuri Gagarin, about the Earth while the United States was having problems getting rockets off the pad without an explosion. The American public was deeply concerned that the United States had indeed fallen behind the Soviet Union in the realm of rocketry, and technology development in general.

Less than three weeks after Shepard’s flight (May 25, 1961) President Kennedy challenged America “to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to Earth” by the end of the decade. With only fifteen minutes of manned spaceflight experience to build upon, sending a man to the Moon in this short time frame was an audacious goal. Project Mercury was followed by the successful Gemini Program and then, of course, the Apollo Program, which fulfilled Kennedy’s challenge. Today, the other unmanned and manned Mercury flights are mostly forgotten; however, each flight played a critical role in NASA’s early efforts to learn to fly in space.

It has now been 50 years since the United States took those first steps into human spaceflight. In that time Mercury (1960-1963), Gemini (1964-1966), Apollo (1966-1975), and Skylab (1973) have come and gone. The Space Shuttle (1981-2011) is months from retirement, and the International Space Station (1998 -present) has matured into a fully functional science and engineering laboratory.

“The fiftieth anniversary of Alan Shepard’s flight presents an opportunity to reflect not only on what NASA and the United States have accomplished in terms of human space exploration, but perhaps more importantly, where do we go from here?” says Robinson.

 

Caption: This image from Mercury mission number four taken on Sept. 13, 1961 is just one of the many images that was written on by engineers. Credit: NASA/JSC/Arizona State University

 

Caption 2: Taken Nov. 29, 1961 during Mercury mission number five, this image shows the colorful parachute opening above the capsule that was transporting Enos, the orbiting chimpanzee, safely back home. Credit: NASA/JSC/Arizona State University

 

Caption 3: Astronaut Alan Shepard is hurled into space atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket. Freedom 7 was the first American human spaceflight, making Shepard the first American in space. Credit: NASA

 

(Nikki Cassis)

ASU, NASA commemorate Project Mercury with new digital image archive
05/04/2011

Emily McBryan lives and breathes robots. Since 2004, the Arizona State University (ASU) junior has been immersed in the world of robotics.  "I was introduced to robotics in junior high and developed an interest in high school as part of a FIRST robotics team led by my dad,” said McBryan.  "I pursued aerospace engineering because of high school robotics and now I have this internship! The dream of going to space has never felt closer." The internship McBryan refers to is the 15 week hands-on experience offered by the Undergraduate Student Research Program (USRP).

This spring, McBryan left her native Phoenix, Ariz., destined for NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston to work with Robonaut 2 (R2), the groundbreaking robot that can perform both routine and dangerous tasks in space.

McBryan with R2 for STS-133It was McBryan's responsibility to continue the work of previous interns in the JSC robotics lab, improving upon R2's hands and forearms under the guidance of her NASA Mentor Jon Rogers.  To her benefit, Kody Ensley, a USRP intern who worked on R2 last summer, was back to work on software for the robot. He was able to give McBryan a bit of insight from the intern’s perspective and gave her tips throughout the course of her project.

In all, McBryan came up with three new mechanical designs for Robonaut's finger actuators, which provide mobility and strength for R2's hands.  Her goal was to create a bolt-free design, making the actuators lighter, less expensive, and easier to repair.  She said, “I have made many different versions of my actuator design – the first one had to defy the laws of physics to work, the second version didn’t fit together, and I am working on a third, and hopefully final version. I learned a lot about design assembly.”  Fortunately, the third design did work; McBryan was able to remove the need for 10 out of the 12 original bolts.  In the future, designs like McBryan’s may have applications for spacesuits and could even be used beyond NASA through spinoff commercial technologies.

Another part of McBryan's project was to help put together a copy of R2B for use in testing on the ground. While recreating R2B, McBryan took the initiative to write a technical manual of sorts with pictures, detailing how to put together the different components of the robot, which will help future interns and scientists to ensure the integrity of the design.

McBryan with Former Astronaut & Assistant Administrator for Education Leland MelvinAs a bonus during her time at JSC, McBryan traveled to Kennedy Space Flight Center with the R2 team to take part in the launch of R2 on STS-133.    It is not every day that someone can say that they worked with the team that designed the first humanoid robot to fly in space.

McBryan's background and experience made her an ideal candidate to work on R2. As a member of the Arizona Space Grant Robotics Team, she competed and placed at both the National Underwater Robotics Competition and the International MATE competition, and as an advocate of the FIRST robotics competitions, she has mentored high school students for the past 3 years. She noted, “It brings me back to reasons I got into engineering in the first place."  It also brings her back to the basics as does her internship experience. ”Whenever I am stuck on a design feature or lost in the concept, I find that the answers lie in the basics of math and physics,” said McBryan.

Rogers commented, "Over the course of her spring internship, Emily has shown that the skills she learned in high school robotics programs are easily applied to real engineering problems.  I followed a similar path from grade school through college by participating in FIRST and the co-op program, so being Emily’s mentor has been a great way to pass along my knowledge and experience."

This fall, McBryan will return to ASU to complete her degree in astronautical engineering, and then plans to attend graduate school to study her "passion," robotics and exploration.

“This internship has taught me that the limitations of robotics exists only within our minds and that we should always question the 'guaranteed.'  So many things in this world are assumed to be absolute, final and the most efficient, but if you start to question these things, you can find answers to the questions you never asked," reflected McBryan.  "I have seen great things come from the phrase, 'Hey, I have a really stupid idea.'" 

 

(By: Heather L. Ogletree)

View original version on NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Program

Emily McBryan Lends Robonaut 2 a Hand
04/27/2011

Undergraduate researcher Colin Ho is helping to design a miniature submarine that will be used to explore sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica.

Ho is pursing dual degrees in mechanical engineering and in earth and space exploration. In summer 2010, Ho interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked with Arizona State University associate professor Albert Behar and other students to develop the initial design for the submarine.

Ho now works in Behar's lab at ASU where he continues to work on the submarine.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO SESE STUDENT COLIN HO

This video was produced and edited by Walter Cronkite student, Laura Palmisano, a videographer/editor in the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

Video: Colin Ho designs mini sub
04/18/2011

After 15 years in upstate New York (much of the time as a professor at Cornell University) astronomer and planetary scientist Jim Bell migrated to the Valley of the Sun. Read on to learn more about one of SESE’s newest professors. View the SESE Source version here. 

So, you’re an astronomer and planetary scientist, is this career a fulfillment of a lifelong dream? I could see you as a precocious kindergartner proudly declaring you would one-day visit the Moon or study Mars.
When I was growing up they were driving cars on the Moon. Apollo was a big inspiration. I was very lucky to grow up in a rural place so there was a clear night sky for viewing with a telescope. My parents helped pay for the telescope, and they would come out once in awhile so I could point things out to them. The night sky was just kind of a weird obsession, and a cool hobby to have. Back in the day, kids would collect coins or baseball cards. And I would say, “Your friend can always have a better Pete Rose card or whatever but nobody has a better Saturn.” You’re looking at the real thing.

The other thing that a lot of my colleagues from my generation were inspired by was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. When his show came along it was the first time that we could get this information directly from an expert who could actually communicate with people. It was on once a week and was mostly about the solar system. It’s hard to remember when you couldn’t just go on the internet and find stuff. You could only find information about science and discoveries if it happened to be on the news or the newspaper. I think that’s why that show made such an impact.

You studied at California Institute of Technology and University of Hawaii, why did you pick those schools?
At the time, Caltech, was one of the few places that you could actually major in astronomy as an undergrad. A lot of people major in physics and concentrate in astronomy, but I wanted to major in astronomy. My whole world was in New England, so going to California was really cool to be able to see some new things. And for graduate school, in the mid 80s, there were very few NASA missions – it was a very lean time. The Vikings had finished their work at Mars in the early 80s, Voyager was out there in the distant solar system but there really wasn’t much else. So to do cutting-edge planetary research you had to use telescopes. Hawaii has spectacular observatories at Mauna Kea, and as a graduate student at the university you are guaranteed a certain amount of time for your thesis work on the telescopes and I took advantage of that.

When you were an undergrad did you have your career route planned out, or did it all just fall into place serendipitously?
Oh, I had it all planned out and then it went all horribly wrong! [laughs] So, I thought I wanted to be an astronomer, but when I went to Caltech I discovered that at the time it was mostly theory work. I’m not crazy about math, I’d do some math if I had to, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to spend my whole life doing. I wanted to do more hands-on observational work, working with instruments, maybe field work – that kind of stuff. So it was an eye opener; it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Sort of accidentally I discovered that there was this other group there in the geology department who were doing planetary science. I went to work as just a research grunt analyzing data sets for a couple of faculty members there. I was looking at some spectra of Jupiter to start, and it was one of these horrible projects where you have a roll of printer output – like the size of a roll of paper towels – and its got spectra on it and you just have to unroll it and find the absorption bands and document their positions. It just goes on and on … but I really enjoyed it.

I worked with Ed Danielson – one of the people who designed and built the Voyager cameras, the Viking cameras, and the original MGS MOC cameras – he helped me get into the Voyager Uranus and Neptune flybys at JPL as a student. I wasn’t doing any science work, I was just running for coffee and getting people pizzas – but just to be there ... just to be there when these first pictures from Uranus and Neptune were coming down. It was so exciting; I would get coffee for the rest of my life if I could just be in that room!

With your mixed background of astronomy and planetary geology you’re a perfect fit for SESE. What about SESE attracted you?
It was partly that mix: Am I really an astronomer? Am I really a geologist? What the heck am I? Having a lot of colleagues who also have their feet in these different doors is great! The bigger thing though that I am excited about is the connection with the engineers because I work with a lot of engineers and have been involved in a number of projects where we had to work really close together. To have those folks just down the hall co-teaching a class, or working with the same students, or a lab next door is great. SESE is an experiment and I’m not sure anyone knows how it’s going to work but I think it’s a great experiment. Some of the decision also involved getting the heck out of upstate New York winters!

What’s on your To-Do list?
I have a giant To-Do List. I’m working on a number of NASA projects. The Mars rovers are still going; I’m still the leader of the science team for the color cameras. When you came in, I was working on something for Mark’s [Robinson] camera team. And I’m also working with a couple of students who are doing a science analysis of the LROC images – they’re interested in explosive volcanism on the Moon. I am trying to find 10 minutes a day to work on an MRO paper that’s about 80% done. A new project is a proposed camera for NASA’s Europa Orbiter mission. If it survives the budget crisis, the current plan is that it would launch in 2020, and it doesn’t get to Jupiter until 2025, and it doesn’t get to Europa orbit until 2028. The mission would be designed to find proof that there is an ocean there.

In addition to that lengthy to-do list are you also teaching?
I’m going to teach next summer or fall, but I don’t know what yet. I’m interested in the online classes – I’ve never done online classes … I’m a little scared of them. But it is a great way to reach a lot of students.

You published a children’s book. Are there others on the horizon?
I actually have three books. They are all these kind of coffee-table books. Two are 3-d books geared toward kids, and one is called Postcards from Mars and it’s the story about the rovers. And I’m doing another “fun” science book about the history of astronomy and space exploration. I’m about halfway through the writing.

And what can you tell me about the Jim Bell who isn’t busy in the office? Any hobbies?
Softball, baseball. I’m hoping that SESE has a softball team.

I guess we better put together a softball team. Thanks Jim!

 

Image: Jim Bell floats weightless in the NASA KC-135 “vomit comet” airplane during some CONTOUR mission experiment testing in 2001.

 

(Nikki Cassis)

Yankee Transplant
04/11/2011

“Dear Aliens. We study you. Do you take that personally?” “If you don’t want to be called aliens then tell us.” “I am from Earth. It’s as vivid as a comet. My huge, beautiful planet has water, land, and an atmosphere.” “This is how we look like. We have hair. Hair is like strings hanging out my head.” “Do you celebrate any special alien events?” “Have you heard of school?” “Everybody on earth comes in peace. Please do not eat all of us. If you do, you won’t have anything to eat.”

Those were a few of the questions and bits of information about Earth from the hundreds of letters written by kindergarteners, middle school and high school students who live in metropolitan Phoenix and entered an intergalactic-focused writing contest launched by the Arizona State University Origins Project as part of its science and culture festival.

Children in Maricopa County, Ariz., home to ASU, were invited to craft a short message to an extraterrestrial intelligent life form. Winners from different grade categories were selected this week and will be recognized at a special event April 9 at 1 p.m., on the ASU Tempe campus, in Design Center North Room 60 (CDN 60). At that time, a message containing 144 characters based the overall winning entry will be sent into space via a moonbounce.

Lucy Hawking, the contest creator and a British author and journalist who is the first Origins writer-in-residence at ASU, asked children: “How might we communicate if we made contact with an alien civilization.”

The young epistolary writers took that challenge to heart, according to Hawking.

“The letters we received were amazing," Hawking said. "Some writers described our planet, others described themselves. They wrote about school, transportation, technology, language, including sign language, and jobs. There were pleas for peace and warnings of being armed if the aliens wanted to invade.”

“And, there was lots of useful advice, like ‘bring money’ and ‘if you land in Arizona, drink lots of water.’ One writer gave directions to find us: ‘You have to look for a planet that has a whole bunch of swirly white clouds,’” said Hawking who has written a popular young-adult book series with her father, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

Winning words

The overall winning entry was written by Benjamin Lee, a seventh-grader from Pardes Jewish Day School in Phoenix. In his letter he wrote:

“Dear Aliens, Please help us save our world. Not, from you, from ourselves. We are destroying our planet and need help from more technologically-advanced beings. Our planet is polluted, many nations are at war, there is civil unrest, and our economy is in turmoil. Perhaps you can save our world. We’re sure that you are friendly beings, as you have traveled so far to see us. Please come live among us and share your wisdom with us; we really need it.

“We have many similarities to you. Like you, we have explored space travel, and we too are living, sentient, intelligent beings. We are the third planet orbiting around a medium-sized yellow star, called the sun, (93,000,000 miles away). Our planet, Earth, began as a ball of rock, and we have carbon-based creatures living on it. We have evolved from single-celled organisms, into other forms of vertebrate and invertebrate creatures. Our planet has water, plants and an atmosphere which contains oxygen. The farthest we have travelled in manned spacecraft was to our own moon, which isn’t’ far,” Lee wrote. He concluded his letter with: “Maybe someday we can come to your planet and live among you.”

Eight other winners, two from each grade category, also were selected. Below are excerpts from their letters:

“Dear Aliens, Welcome to our planet. If you land in Arizona, you’ll be in the desert. And if you do land in Arizona drink lots of water,” wrote Sophia Suda, a kindergartener from Broadmor Elementary School in Tempe.

“What would I do with an alien? I would do sign language with my hands. I would make sure that he has some food after his long trip and ask him to be my friend,” wrote Angela Perez, a second-grader from Kenilworth Elementary School in Phoenix.

“Humans and other creatures live on Earth. Some are endangered. Humans can keep pets. Humans use different methods of technologies like aircraft, cars, trains, computers, TV, phone, etc. Curious Questions: Is your aircraft U.F.O.s? What do you do against pollution? What is your planet’s name?” asked Udayketan Mohanty, a fourth-grader from Kyrene del Cielo Elementary School in Chandler.

“Hello, we are Humans. Humans have been exploring space since a very long time. Since you are here you have probably found one of our voyager golden records with the information on humans and our planet. Our people are longing to meet you. We come in peace, though if you were to attack us we are armed and ready to defend ourselves,” wrote Thomas “Tommy” Grau Walton, a fifth-grader from Phoenix Country Day School in Paradise Valley.

“Dear other worldly being, I am formally writing to your species to inform you of our planet’s many life forms and land masses and to insure peace between us. Our planet is called earth. We have many diverse cultures here. We have no intentions to harm you and your species; in fact, we would be enlightened to learn more about you, and to interact with you someday. We are simply interested in the never-ending vastness of space, as I am sure you are too,” wrote Madelyn Norstrem, a seventh-grader in Foothills Academy College Preparatory in Scottsdale.

“Dear Superior Being. Humans are beings that inhabit this planet. Each human is different in their own special way. We have things called emotions that show what we are feeling. For example when we feel happy-the feeling enrichens us with joy. We also have characteristics like integrity, responsibility and honesty. These things make up our character. Humans have things called countries that we live in. Sometimes we have disputes over them. This causes a thing called war which two or more of these countries fight over to the death,” wrote Mason Bartelt, a seventh-grader in Foothills Academy College Preparatory in Scottsdale.

“Dear Aliens, I am one of the people on Earth. First, I am sorry to call you Aliens. I know you may have a name, but on earth that is what we call strangers to our planet. I would like to tell you that our planet is so beautiful with blue oceans and blue sky. Also, the humans on Earth are strange. They have a lot of ideas; some are crazy, comical, serious and sensitive. If you come to Earth I am sure that you would like it. Another thing I would like to tell you is how people have changed the Earth. Some people think that we have destroyed it and others think that we have made it better. Both ideas might be right. I think we have destroyed it because we made a lot of wars. On the other hand, I think we have made it better because we made some forest preserves to protect it from any danger. Changing things for the better is a good idea. Don’t you think so?” asked Qabas Jalil, a ninth-grader from Washington High School in Phoenix.

“On behalf of all humanity I welcome you to Earth. As you can see our planet is teaming with life. Curiosity and skepticism is quite literally in our logical nature, as I am sure it is the same with your kind as well. The human race is thought, according to many religions, to be created by one divine entity using his own image. With you standing here today, it shows all of us that we are not alone in the universe and that our species is just one of many in the vast uncharted wilderness we call space,” wrote Allison LaMountain, an 11th-grader from Primavera Online High School in Chandler.

Moonbounce

While children were coming up with messages to send to aliens, scientists at ASU and in the community were finalizing the technology that would be used to send a 144-character message from the winning entry into space.

“Early wireless communication capability relied on the reflection of radio frequency (RF) energy from layers of ionized particles in the Earth’s ionosphere to propagate signals over the horizon to create communication paths over long distances,” said Ned Stearns, an amateur radio operator in Scottsdale who will initiate a moonbounce to send the message into space between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., Arizona time, on April 9.

“In the late 50s, the U.S. Army studied the use of the moon as a reflective surface for proving over-the-horizon communication to support their needs for reliable battlefield communications,” he said, noting that the idea was ultimately dropped by the military but picked up by “ambitious radio amateurs.”

These amateurs “managed to conduct successful communications via the Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) path using power levels at the limit of those available to amateur radio operators (1,000 watts),” said Stearns, who became a radio amateur at the age of 12. Since then, he has contacted more than 1,000 other radio amateurs around the world using EME.

“The basic approach to moonbounce is simple. A transmitting site will point a high gain antenna at the moon and launch a signal out toward the moon. A very tiny amount of the radiated energy actually strikes the surface of the moon and the majority of it continues out into the heavens past the moon and on to our friendly alien,” he said.

More information about the moonbounce is online at http://origins.asu.edu/dearaliens/moonbounce.pdf. Additional information about the Dear Aliens writing contest is also online at http://origins.asu.edu/events/dear-aliens-contest.

The contest is an example of community outreach by the ASU Origins Project, said Penelope Moon, coordinator. “Questions about extraterrestrials and about the universe naturally interest kids. Our outreach effort at the ASU Origins Project aim to harness that natural curiosity to get kids thinking critically and comprehensively about who we are as a species and about our relationship to the rest of the cosmos,” Moon said.

“In the end, asking kids what they’d tell an alien is really about getting them to analyze and draw conclusions about what it means to be human and part of life on Earth.”

We come in friendship

Several of the entries sent in by the children were written with a friendship theme, including this one:

“Dear Aliens. Who knows, someday we won’t be aliens but will call each other Friend.”

 

Photo: Nine children from metropolitan Phoenix pose with Stephen Hawking, far left, his daughter, Lucy Hawking, and Arizona State University theoretical physicists and cosmologists Lawrence Krauss, center, and Paul Davies, far right. The nine were selected as winners from hundreds of entries in the Dear Aliens intergalactic-focused writing contest launched by the Arizona State University Origins Project as part of its science and culture festival. (Photo by Tom Story)

 

(Carol Hughes)

Children write welcoming messages to aliens in ASU contest
03/30/2011

State Press reporter Harmony Huskinson published on March 30 a story titled, "Americans prepare despite no radiation threat from Japan". She interviewed Kip Hodges about the threat of radiation to Americans.

After a 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan on March 11, a tsunami wreaked havoc on homes and lives, damaging pumps that circulate water to cool nuclear rods at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant in northeastern Japan.

According to her story, trace amounts of Iodine-131 radiation from the Fukushima plant were detected on March 21 by the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency, but the amounts were miniscule — less than 0.1 millirems. The average American receives 360 millirems annually from natural causes. In other words, Americans face no danger of radiation from Japan.

“Radioactivity is all around us … there’s radioactivity in the banana you eat, there’s radioactivity in just about everything because it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon,” said Kip Hodges, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU.

 

Read the full story here

 

Radiation threat?
03/30/2011

Spring break for Amy Kaczmarowski and four other ASU students featured two overnight plane trips and a 10-hour bus trip into the heart of Kenya.

For eight days they experienced heat and rain, and took long hikes to the Yalla River to collect water samples. They slept under nets, and learned to eat ugali, a cake made of ground maize, and fish eyes. Generous families fed them tilapia, roasted corn, collard greens and chapattis.

For Kaczmarowski, an ASU aerospace engineering junior who is also double-majoring in Earth and Space Exploration (Exploration Systems Design), is working on her second overseas project for Engineers Without Borders (EWB), the experience was “fabulous.”

“It was a very productive trip, in the sense that it gave us a clear idea of what is going on,” she said on her first day back, still pumped by the adventure. “The Kenyans have so much need. The government provides treated water, but the pipes are in such terrible condition that the water is full of bacteria by the time it gets to them.

“There are about 20,000 people living in four communities in the Bondo District, and they have terrible problems with typhoid and malaria. For us, the solutions seemed so simple, to determine the filtration needed, and to design basic systems for storing and delivering water. But we learned that it’s a huge project.”

Once they’ve made an assessment, she and her team will report back to the national EWB organization. They’ll work with professional engineers, including a team mentor, to create a project proposal on creating a sustainable water supply for the district.

They hope to return to Kenya for a month in December to begin building a water system, and again for two months in summer 2012. About 30 ASU students are involved, though only eight or 10 will travel. The project is expected to take about five years, so other ASU students will eventually take over.

The team is raising money for the project with a 5K run around the Tempe campus on April 2, titled “Kenya Dig It.” While most of the construction materials are donated, the students must pay for their trip costs themselves.

Kaczmarowski is unusual in her commitment. She was also leader for the last EWB project in Ecuador, starting when she was a freshman. Civil engineering professor Edward Kavazanjian said he is amazed by her energy and accomplishments.

“Amy served not only as manager but as the inspirational leader of the ASU team,”said Kavazanjian, group adviser. ”She successfully negotiated the cultural challenges in dealing with a small tribe on the edge of the Amazon rain forest and Ecuadorian regional government officials, as well as the logistical challenges involved with managing a group of up to 15 students working in a foreign country.

“She ably coordinated design of the system and worked through several challenging technical issues on the project, including developing appropriate, sustainable filtration and disinfection schemes for the village’s water supply.”

In addition to her EWB activities, Kaczmarowski does research on ionizing radiation modeling in the lab of electrical engineering professor Keith Holbert, director of ASU’s nuclear power generation graduate program. She also is deeply involved with NASA Space Grant Robotics, as chief mechanical engineer for a competitive student team.

Her eventual goal is to work for a private space development corporation, to improve technology that will make a space faring civilization possible. She said she chose to attend ASU not only because of the quality of the Fulton Schools of Engineering, but also because she was “very excited about the School of Earth and Space Exploration.”

“I love the idea of programs that are so incredibly interdisciplinary,” she said. “Space exploration itself seems to rely so heavily on so many different fields, it just makes perfect sense to participate in a program that trains you to think about all of the different aspects.

“With Fulton's astronautics concentration, I actually get a lot of exposure to the SESE classes, so it makes the engineering degree at ASU just that much more interesting.”

A Flinn Scholar from Gilbert, Kaczmarowski also is enrolled in Barrett, the Honors College.

For more information or to support the EWB project, go to http://www.ewb-usa.org/chapters.php?ID=184.

 

Image credit: Tom Story

 

(Sarah Auffret)

Trip to Kenya brings hard work and adventure