Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT_ZIP/jplpaper/930312.ZIP/930312.UNI

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory UNIVERSE
Pasadena, California - Vol. 23, No. 5 - March 12, 1993
_________________________________________________________________

Lab announces plan to consolidate
work force over next five years

By Diane Ainsworth
     Faced with a budget that has leveled off and a need to shift
more work into the strapped aerospace industry, JPL has announced
a consolidation plan that will reduce the work force by about l3
percent over the next five years and bring staff currently housed
at remote centers back to the main facility in La Canada
Flintridge and the nearby Woodbury Drive area. The reduction
effort, announced in a Feb. 24 memorandum to employees by JPL
Director Dr. Edward Stone, will trim a combined total of about
200 JPL employees and on-site contractors per year off JPL's
total work force of about 7,500.
     "There has been a basic restructuring of the way we do
business in this country, and the trend toward consolidation is a
result of that fundamental change," Stone said. "We recognize
that we are in a different environment now than we were in the
l980s, especially the last half of the l980s, when NASA's budget
was increasing by about l5 percent a year.
     "In the future, the government-wide emphasis will be on
reduced staffing while at the same time developing new
technologies in partnership with industry," he said. "The idea is
to do more with a somewhat smaller and more focused work force."
     Stone said the consolidation plan would encourage closer
ties with industry. While the Lab will maintain its technological
prowess and hands-on activity in key areas, it will also be
contracting out more work to industry. In the long run, the net
effect should be better utilization of industry's strengths and
enhanced transfer of JPL-developed technologies to the
marketplace.
     "We will have to focus our work force and strengthen
specific skills that will be needed for the work we will be doing
five years from now," Stone said.  "Advancing technology in many
of the areas that we're involved in now will continue to be
essential features of the NASA program of the future."
     In total, the combined JPL and on-site contractor work force
will shrink by about l,000 over the five-year period, Stone said,
but normal turnover and retirements and fewer on-site contractors
will account for much of the decrease.
     Historically, about 300 JPL employees per year are lost
through retirement or other voluntary terminations, a number that
is larger than the planned annual reduction. However, JPL will
continue to hire in specific areas to maintain the skills mix
needed for its projects, so layoffs above those of recent years
will inevitably occur. Stone said that displaced employees would
be assisted as much as possible in finding new jobs.
     The consolidation effort will also result in closure of two
JPL satellite centers located in the Pasadena area, Stone said.
Termination of the leases will save the Lab a total of about $3.5
million a year in leased office space supporting approximately
8l5 employees.
     The Foothill facility, which encompasses five buildings
located on Foothill Boulevard, Altadena Drive and Colorado
Boulevard, will be closed in the next few years. Staff currently
housed there in such divisions as JPL's accounting offices,
patents office, and civil and defense programs will be brought
back to Lab. All but the Print Shop, in Building 504, will
gradually be phased out, terminating a $1.3 million yearly lease.
     A remote facility on Sierra Madre Villa Avenue housing the
Voyager Project and about 90 percent of JPL's Information Systems
Division 36 will also be closed, terminating a $2.2 million
annual lease for the office space. Some 450 JPL staff will be
relocated to the Oak Grove site.
     The plan will not affect the Lab's lease on a third
facility, the Information Processing Center on Woodbury Avenue in
Altadena. JPL maintains a $1.8 million annual lease for the
office space, which supports about 454 people in the Professional
Development Center, financial systems, flight projects computer
facilities and computer-maintenance systems.
     Stone said that the Clinton Administration's budget for 1994
should suggest the intended shape of the NASA program and will
provide guidance in developing a plan for work force allocation.
By focusing and consolidating its work force, JPL will be in a
stronger position to develop future missions such as MESUR
Pathfinder, the Pluto Fast Flyby, and the Space Infrared
Telescope Facility, and to support low-cost Discovery missions.
###
_________________________________________________________________

King named ALD for Technical Divisions

     JPL Director Dr. Edward Stone has announced the appointment
of Dr. James King Jr. as assistant Laboratory director for
Technical Divisions. King succeeds Kirk M. Dawson, who has been
named associate director.
     King has been deputy assistant Laboratory director in the
Office of Technical Divisions since January 1988.
     Previously, he served as technical manager for Space Science
and Applications, as program manager for Astronomy and
Astrophysics and program manager for Atmospheric Sciences.
     King also served for two years in managerial positions in
the Office of Manned Space Flight and in the Office of Space
Sciences at NASA Headquarters.
     From 1984 to 1986, King was a visiting professor of
chemistry at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
     Born in Columbus, Ga., in 1933, King earned a bachelor of
science degree in chemistry at Morehouse College. In 1955 he was
awarded a master's degree in the same discipline by Caltech, and
he earned his doctorate at Caltech in 1958, with a minor in
physics.
     He was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and a General Education
Board Scholarship in 1953, and among other honors and awards are
a Certificate of Merit from the National Council of Negro Women
in 1968 and the NASA Equal Opportunity Medal in 1986.
     King is actively involved in the Pasadena community, serving
currently as a member of the Pasadena Planning Commission, and
has been a member or director of other community organizations,
including the city's Redevelopment Agency.
     He is a resident of Pasadena and has two children. ###
_________________________________________________________________

TOPEX/Poseidon data reveal
prolonged El Nino conditions

By Toni Lawson
     The effects of El Nino weather disturbances from last year
that caused considerable coastal damage recently in Southern
California are being prolonged by a large wave of warm water
detected in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean, according to
data obtained from U. S. and French scientists working on the
Lab's TOPEX/Poseidon mission.
     Measurements from the mission's radar altimeter show that
the huge mass of warm water -- the Kelvin wave -- is currently
moving along the equator in the Pacific Ocean and is linked to
ongoing El Nino effects that may lead to more abnormal weather
conditions worldwide, said Dr. James Mitchell, a mission
scientist from the Naval Research Laboratory at the Stennis Space
Center in Mississippi.
     "For the first time, scientists are able to use satellite
data to map ocean currents with sufficient accuracy to study
their effects on global weather and climate," added Dr. Lee-Lueng
Fu, TOPEX/Poseidon project scientist for JPL.
     TOPEX/Poseidon was able to detect El Nino because the Kelvin
wave raised the sea level, which is measured by the satellite.
The Kelvin wave pulse began with weakening trade winds in the
western Pacific in December 1992; it is now heading eastward
toward South America and is scheduled to arrive early this month.
     The El Nino data were released at the end of a four-day
workshop the week of Feb. 22, as 150 scientists and engineers
from all over the world gathered at JPL to evaluate the
performance of the mission. The results, said Fu, indicate that
the height of the sea surface is determined by TOPEX/Poseidon
with an uncertainty of less than 10 centimeters (4 inches).
Measured from a distance of 1,336 kilometers (about 828 miles)
above the sea surface, "this represents an unprecedented accuracy
of one in 10 million," he said.
     TOPEX/Poseidon obtains sea level measurements by observing
the difference between radar altimetry -- the precise measurement
of the satellite's altitude above the ocean surface -- and
precision orbit determination -- the measurement of the
satellite's orbital distance from the center of the Earth.
     The numerical data of the surface height are gathered along
the satellite track that is repeated every 10 days within one
kilometer, measurements which allow scientists to chart
fluctuations in the height of the seas and to correlate changes
in ocean circulation patterns with atmospheric and climate
patterns. "Our objective is to view the same spot or track over a
period of years to better study the change of oceans and how they
affect the weather," said Fu.
     In 1986, NASA formally approved the joint effort between
JPL's Ocean Topography Experiment, TOPEX, and France's Poseidon
mission to produce a satellite that would attempt to measure and
map sea level from space. This cooperative measure led to the
development and operation of the earth-orbiting satellite that
was launched Aug. 10, 1992, from Kourou, French Guiana in South
America.
     The satellite will continue making worldwide sea level
measurements -- for about two and a half more years -- that are
precise and accurate enough to increase scientists' understanding
of global ocean circulation and will provide knowledge about
certain environmental problems such as weather forecasting.
TOPEX/Poseidon data are dispersed every 10 days to scientists all
over the world for this type of analysis.
     "Although the primary mission of TOPEX/Poseidon is to
understand the dynamics of global ocean circulation, the
knowledge that is gained from the mission is predicted to lead to
improved long-term weather forecasting, pollution control,
offshore coastal area development, and a better understanding of
the greenhouse effect," Fu said. ###
_________________________________________________________________

News briefs

     Experimentalists and engineers working on small scientific
detectors, data processing units and other instrumentation
electronics suitable for smaller, faster and cheaper heliospheric
missions are invited to present their concepts to a NASA workshop
to be held March 29-31 at the Doubletree Hotel in Pasadena.
     The purpose of the workshop, according to Dr. Bruce
Tsurutani of JPL's Space Physics and Astrophysics Section 328, is
to help NASA miniaturize instruments and electronics as much as
possible for space physics experiments on future very small solar
system exploration missions.
     The workshop, presented by NASA's Space Physics Division,
will also cover heliospheric missions, which must be constrained
in mass, power and cost, including lightweight versions of Solar
Probe and Interstellar Probe, said Tsurutani.
     The advance registration fee of $75 should be submitted to
Georgene Peralta at mail stop 180-404. Also, anyone interested in
making presentations at the workshop should submit a one-page
abstract to Peralta.
     For more information, contact Tsurutani at ext. 4-7559 or
Peralta at ext. 4-9311.

     Eugene Allevato, a member of the technical staff from the
Thermal Power Conversion Group, Electric Power Systems Section
342, recently returned from a month's work at Japan's
Electro-Technical Laboratory (ETL), that country's largest
national research institute.
     Allevato said ETL, located in Tsukuba (Science City), is
part of Japan's Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, and
recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.
     ETL is concerned with the development of long-term
industrial technologies, and Allevato's visit follows that of a
Japanese scientist to JPL in 1990 as part of a collaborative
agreement between the two institutions to exchange ideas and
technologies.
     Allevato's work at ETL involved the study of advanced
thermoelectric materials, specifically those used for
radioisotope thermal generators. He said two other technical
staff members from Section 342 will visit the facility later this
year.
     A slide presentation highlighting Allevato's visit will be
shown on March 19 at noon in Building 303-309. Call him at ext.
4-0991 for more information.

     JPL's Plant Protection Office has implemented an after-hours
employee registration program to locate and identify employees in
the event of an emergency.
     The voluntary program is in effect after normal working
hours, as well as weekends and holidays. Employees can register
at visitor control (at the main gate) or at the guard
headquarters' communications console (Building 281).
     The after-hours register will record employees' name, work
location, extension, time in and estimated time of departure.
Employees may also request an escort to their vehicle.
     Communications console extensions are 4-3530, 4-3531 and
4-4160. For more information, call Melissa Nieto at ext. 4-2373.
###
_________________________________________________________________

JPL-hosted Science Bowl competiton
brings out the best in local students

By Ed McNevin
     Typically, Saturdays are quiet at JPL. Usually a handful of
employees drops by to tend to unfinished business left over from
the previous week, while members of JPL's Transportation Section
take advantage of the lull to move equipment and office furniture
to and from buildings.
     But on Saturday, Feb. 20, that relative quiet was shattered
by the sounds of heated competition as JPL hosted the Southern
California Valley Network Regional Competition of the 3rd
National Science Bowl.
     This is the first year that San Gabriel Valley students have
been able to participate in the competition. The event is
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, and for the first
time this year by Caltech, JPL and several regional utilities
companies.
     The National Science Bowl is modeled after the 1960s
television show "College Bowl." Its questions are intended to
test high school students' knowledge in chemistry, biology,
physics, mathematics, astronomy and general Earth and computer
sciences. The questions are at a level that college freshmen
would be expected to answer.
     Competition throughout the event was intense, as teams
battled to qualify for an opportunity to compete against teams
from all 50 states in Washington, D.C., during National Science
and Technology Week April 16-19.
     "There was a great deal of excitement, plenty of drama, and
some surprises," said Rich Alvidrez, manager of JPL's Public
Education Office.
     Alvidrez noted that the judges and moderators, mostly
comprised of JPL employees, expected teams to be made up of
seniors and juniors, when in fact a significant number of the
participants was both sophomores and freshmen.
     The event featured 16 four-member teams from the San Gabriel
Valley including Pasadena, Muir, Marshall and Blair High Schools.
In addition, teams from Downey and Irvine competed. Students were
selected from advanced-placement courses at each school.
     JPL Chief Scientist Dr. Moustafa Chahine served as a judge
in this year's event, and was impressed by the students' overall
preparation for the contest and their widespread interest in what
it is like to work at JPL.
     "The students were ready for the questions we asked," said
Chahine. "We never drew blank faces."
     Craig Leff, a member of the science support team for the
Magellan project, was a member of the 1980 College Bowl Division
I champions, and participated as a moderator and judge for the
event.
     "Even showing up, I could feel that same old adrenaline," he
said.
     "I thought the kids were pretty sharp," said Leff, whose
Washington University (St. Louis) squad defeated teams from
Harvard, MIT and North Carolina, "even though it took some
schools a couple of matches to really hit their stride.
Experience is everything in competitions like this."
     Preliminary rounds were held in conference rooms throughout
the Laboratory. Teams squared off against one another in
20-minute double-elimination rounds leading up to the finals,
held in the afternoon at von Karman Auditorium. Teams earned four
points by answering a toss-up question correctly, giving them an
opportunity to answer a 10-point bonus question. As teams were
eliminated, students were given an extensive tour of JPL by
members of the Public Services Office.
     The final round featured Woodbridge High School of Irvine
against Warren High School in Downey. Warren, which had lost to
Woodbridge earlier in the day, defeated Blair High School to win
the losers' bracket.
     Warren turned the tables to defeat Woodbridge in the first
match of the Championship Round, forcing a second
winner-takes-all round.
     In the end, however, Woodbridge prevailed, narrowly
defeating Warren in the second match to win the regional,
qualifying for the National Science Bowl Championships in April.
     "Woodbridge and Warren had been in science bowl competitions
before," said Alvidrez, "so considering that the Pasadena schools
were not experienced in competitions like this, they didn't do
that bad."
     Alvidrez noted that JPL can expect to host competitions like
this in the future.
     "I think the Science Bowl is a good model -- it brings the
best of JPL's employees together with students, and there is a
good element of fun," said Alvidrez.
     Chahine said he would be "eager" to see the event held at
JPL again. "I think the competition fit very well into the
culture here," he said. "I enjoyed being part of it and would be
happy to participate again." ###
_________________________________________________________________

Judges sought for Science Fair

     JPL's Public Services Office will host the Eliot Middle
School Science Fair March 23-25, and is seeking at least 50 JPL
engineers, technicians and scientists to serve as judges for the
competition.
     According to Public Services Representative Kimberly Johan-
sen, coordinator of the Science Fair, approximately 250 science
projects will be judged during the first round of the fair on
March 23 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. in von Karman Auditorium.
     A total of 27 projects will then be chosen for final
consideration -- nine from each grade level (6th-8th) at Eliot.
     Final judging on March 25 will take place in von Karman
Auditorium from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., when students with the highest
scores will be interviewed.
     Anyone available to participate and willing to donate an
hour or two to judge projects can contact Johansen at ext.
4-2413.
     She added that an awards program and project viewing will be
held from 7-9 p.m. in von Karman Auditorium on March 25, and is
open to all employees. ###
_________________________________________________________________

Bold measures result in quick turnaround
for design, building of WF/PC-2's mirrors

By Diane Ainsworth
     When push came to shove in December 1991, and JPL's Dr.
James Fanson was asked to investigate the feasibility of building
three moveable fold mirrors for the new Wide Field/Planetary
Camera, he decided to go for broke.
     "There was no tried-and-true way to solve the problem we had
discovered with the Hubble Telescope's primary mirror," he said.
"We discovered that correcting the imaging performance of the
Hubble would require 10 times more precise optical alignment than
it did for the WF/PC-1 camera. So we set out to build a set of
articulating fold mirrors inside the camera that we could adjust
from the ground to realign images.
     "We were up against the tightest deadline we've ever had,"
Fanson said. "We needed to design and build the articulating
mirrors in less than 10 months, and we had to build the control
electronics in less time than it normally takes just to procure
the parts!
     "But JPL took some bold measures to ensure that our work was
high priority, and every procedure was completed as quickly as
possible," he said. "If ever there were a case-in-point of JPL's
ability to build something faster, better and cheaper, this was
it."
     Fanson assembled a team of the best talent at JPL, and they
hit the ground running.
     "We quickly realized that to meet the performance
requirements for these new mirrors, we needed to use new
technology ceramic actuators, which were developed by Litton/Itek
Optical Systems for the Department of Defense," he said. "The JPL
procurement people got Itek on contract with us in less than four
weeks."
     Fanson and his team next identified the solution that would
correct and bring images into focus from the Hubble Telescope's
8-foot-diameter (2.4-meter) primary mirror.
     "Basically what's going on inside the camera is that we're
canceling the error in the Hubble primary mirror with a matching
error intentionally polished onto a mirror in WF/PC-2," he said.
"This cancellation is straightforward in theory, but is made
difficult in practice because of the large magnitude of the
error. It's like trying to subtract a large number from another
large number and coming up with zero.  This only works if the
Hubble is exactly aligned with WF/PC-2, and that's the job of the
new articulating fold mirrors."
     Light entering the camera is split into four quadrants by
the pyramid mirror before reaching the relay secondary mirror.
The newly shaped secondary mirror, which is the size of a dime,
is where the cancellation of the Hubble error actually occurs.
Light then continues on to the camera's charge-coupled devices
(CCDs), where the image is formed.
     Fanson, along with Bob Bamford and Paul MacNeal of the
Applied Technologies Section 354, decided that they would have to
replace the "fixed" -- unmoveable -- fold mirrors in the camera
with articulated, adjustable mirrors that could be tipped and
tilted to make sure the light beam fell precisely in the middle
of the secondary relay mirrors. Not only would that alignment
capability be necessary after the vibrations and jitters of
launch and installation, Fanson said, but it would be a means of
guaranteeing on-orbit alignment in later months.
     "The trick was to come up with a design that would fit in a
very tiny space, less than nine-tenths of an inch thick and 1.6
inches in diameter," he said.  "The parts are so small that they
were assembled under a microscope." Designing the assembly
tooling and procedures was the responsibility of Al Delgadillo of
the Mechanical Systems Development Section 352.
     Changes in mirror position are accomplished by each mirror's
tilt mechanism, which is like a three-legged stool, Fanson
explained. The legs are composed of tiny ceramic actuators that
lengthen when a voltage is applied to them.
     "By controlling the lengths of the three legs, we can
control the tip and tilt of the mirror," Fanson said. "We are
talking about very small motions -- the total stroke of the
actuators is equal to the length your hair grows in 15 minutes."
     The amount of voltage applied to the actuators is programmed
by computers at the ground operations facility at Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
     After assembly at JPL and Itek, the mirrors went through
environmental testing. When specifications were met, they were
delivered to the WF/PC-2 integration and test team in early July
-- with two days to spare in the schedule. Meanwhile, Tom Radey
of the Imaging Systems Section 381 was busy building an extremely
stable set of control electronics to command the 18 actuators in
the three articulating mirrors.
     "We made it in the nick of time, but we made it," said
Fanson, who was awarded a 1992 Lew Allen Award for the
articulating fold mirror effort. "We came in under budget and on
time."
     Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission,
STS-61, is tentatively scheduled for Dec. 2, 1993, aboard the
space shuttle Endeavour. Installation of the new Wide
Field/Planetary Camera will occur on the second day of astronaut
extra-vehicular activities (EVA), said Michael Devirian, WF/PC-2
deputy program manager and head of servicing and operations.
     Adjustments to the camera and other instruments will take
about a month, Devirian said. Ground-controllers will have to
wait three weeks before they can turn on the coolers to bring the
camera sensors down to about minus 80 degrees Celsius (about
minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit). Then they will begin taking
photographs, analyzing the images and fine-tuning the new
articulating fold mirrors. ###
_________________________________________________________________

Crew named for
SIR-C mission

     NASA has named the crew for STS-59, the space shuttle flight
that carries the joint U.S./German/Italian Spaceborne Imaging
Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aper-ture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) instrument
as part of the Space Radar Laboratory.
     U.S. Air Force Col. Sidney M. Gutierrez will command the
mission aboard Atlantis. U.S. Air Force Col. Kevin P. Chilton
will serve as the pilot. The mission specialists include Dr. Jay
Apt and U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael R. "Rich" Clifford.
Previously announced crew members are Dr. Linda M. Godwin, who
was named payload commander in August 1991 and Dr. Thomas D.
Jones, who was named mission specialist in February 1992.
     SIR-C, built by JPL and Ball Communications' Systems
Division for NASA, is a two-frequency radar including L-band
(23-cm wavelength) and C-band (6-cm wavelength). X-SAR is built
by Dornier and Alenia Spazio companies for the German space
agency, Deutsche Agentur Fur Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (DARA), and
the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI).
     SIR-C/X-SAR will allow scientists to make highly detailed
studies of the Earth's surface on a global scale, including new
types of measurements such as biomass and soil moisture. The most
useful feature of imaging radar is its ability to collect data
over virtually any region at any time, regardless of weather or
sunlight conditions. The radar waves can penetrate clouds, and
under certain conditions the radar can also see through
vegetation, ice and dry sand. In many cases, radar is the only
way scientists can explore inaccessible regions of the Earth's
surface. ###