Welcome to the Sciences and Exploration Data Analysis (SESDA II) home page. SESDA II is the premier space and Earth science contract at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, held by ADNET Systems, Inc. ADNET, Wyle and Honeywell form TEAM ADNET. About 300 scientists and engineers provide vital support to NASA under the SESDA II contract. Watch this site for exciting SESDA II news, events and job opportunities.
SESDA II News
-
Saji Abraham receives a Goddard Code 614 Peer Award
November 12, 2008Saji Abraham, who works on our Remote Sensing of Sea Ice Salinity task, is co-author on a paper which has received a Code 614 peer award. The award is for Outstanding Publication. The citation is:
Le Vine, D.M., S.D. Jacob, E.P. Dinnat, P. de Matthaeis, and S. Abraham, 2007: The Influence of Antenna Pattern on Faraday Rotation in Remote Sensing at L-Band, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., 45 (9), 2737-2746.
-
Hurricane Data Analysis Tool: Global Merged IR Dataset Added
November 3, 2008Scientists, students, and applications users seeking on-the-fly visualizations of hurricane-related satellite and model data can now visualize and get access to the NCEP/CPC 4-km Global (60°N - 60°S) Merged IR Brightness Temperature Dataset, through the publicly open GSFC Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) Hurricane Data Analysis tool.
Read merged IR Brightness Temperature Dataset documentation.
With a web browser and few mouse clicks, users can produce visualizations for all 8 years and 4.5 TB of Merged IR Brightness Temperature data and generate black and white IR imagery and animation without downloading any software and data, a priori. This is an important addition to the current collection of multi-sensor datasets already in the system, namely, Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation, TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) sea surface temperature (SST), NASA's daily Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) ocean surface wind, NCEP Reanalysis sea level pressure (SLP) and NCEP Reanalysis winds.
The NASA Goddard Hurricane Data Portal currently a working prototype, is intended to assist researchers to investigate key parameters for tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons around the world prior to selecting and downloading the data of most interest. It also helps them to investigate other meteorological phenomena, such as, precipitation, monsoon events, mesoscale convective systems, etc. Current functions include area (latitude-longitude) and time series (area averaging) plots and their overlays. More capabilities and data will be added in the future.
The following are examples generated using the Hurricane Data Analysis Tool:
1) A large scale imagery on August 31, 2008 at 23Z showing Hurricane Gustav, Tropical Storm Hanna and Tropical Storm Ike.
2) An animation generated by this tool showing the 4km IR images every 30 minutes for 19 hours of Hurricane Ike on September 07, 2008. The animation shows Ike's well developed eye and rotational movement as it moves to the West/Northwest.
QuikSCAT ocean surface winds are provided by the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC). TMI SST data are provided by Remote Sensing Systems. NCEP sea level pressure, zonal and meridional wind at 1000, 850, and 200 hPa level data are obtained from NCEP's Global Forecast System analysis.
All other data are resident at the NASA GES DISC.
Similar interactive access to other data available at the GES DISC, as well as online visualization and statistical analysis, is available via the operational Giovanni system.
-
SESDA II Staffer Receives Property Custodian Special Recognition
September 10, 2008Frank Smith, a Wyle employee working on the SESDA 2 Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate (AETD) Support task, has received numerous awards for his logistics support. Most recently, Frank was cited by the Directorate for "his dedication, attention to detail, and hard work in supporting AETD as Property Custodian in 3 of our Branches--Software Systems Engineering, Flight Software Systems, and the Computing Environments and Collaborative Technologies". Good work Frank!
-
The Goddard Hurricane Portal Tries To Keep Up With A Busy Season
September 8, 2008
The GES DISC has been kept busy this hurricane season. Staff members have been generating images using TRMM 3B42RT precipitation data, MODIS Terra, and TRMM Merged data as updated news items during storm events. Staff is currently adding new imagery to the Hurricane Portal of this season storms so users can view relevant parameters during a storm event. This helps researchers identify if there is an anomaly that needs a closer look. In the coming weeks, the staff will be promoting an addition to their Hurricane Data Analysis tool that will be another first. The new addition will allow users to dynamically visualize and create images or animations of TRMM Merged IR data, which is a 30 minute Globally-merged (60N-60S) pixel-resolution IR brightness temperature data (equivalent blackbody temps), merged from all available geostationary satellites (GOES-8/10, METEOSAT-7/5 & GMS). The images and animations below are of the tropical storm region in the Atlantic and Hurricane Gustav as seen by MODIS and TRMM. Please visit the Hurricane Portal to explore the additional services available including dynamic overlays of data with the Hurricane Data Analysis Tool.
***Link to the following images
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane/2008/Hurr_Gustav_2008-08-31-MODIS.gifhttp://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane/2008/09022008/TropicalStroms_08-31-2008_mergedIRanim2.gif
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane/2008/Tropical_storms_08-31-2008_MODIS.png
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane/2008/Hurr_Gustav_3B42RT_anim.gif
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/hurricane/2008/Tropical_Storms_3B42RT_anim.gif
-
SESDA II Staffer Wins Exceptional Public Service Medal
September 3, 2008
Sandra Alston was nominated for and won an Exceptional Public Service Medal at the NASA Honors Awards. She won the award "For your dedication and hard work in supporting AETD as Property Custodian." The nomination also cited her support as a System Administrator during the transition to the NOMAD system, and ensuring the security of the branch IT systems.
-
SESDA II Education and Public Outreach Team Receive 2008 Robert H. Goddard Award
September 3, 2008
Congratulations to Emilie Drobnes and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Family Science Night (FSN) team on being one of the winners of the 2008 Robert H. Goddard Award. The award is in recognition for the success of the FSN outreach program in providing innovative products, science, technology, and services to the public, educational institutions, and others who are potential beneficiaries of the expansion of knowledge resulting from NASA/GSFC's mission.
The awards ceremony was held on September 8, 2008 in the building 8 auditorium. You can learn more about the outstanding work performed by the FSN team at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/epo/families/fsn.php.
-
SESDA II STEREO Team Help Support the Phoenix Mars Landing
June 4, 2008
SESDA II staff on the STEREO Team supported the recent Phoenix spacecraft landing on Mars by monitoring the space weather environment at Mars orbit. Staff used observations from the two vantage points of STEREO's twin spacecraft to obtain unique views of the solar surface (see accompanying figure). These data were used to detect solar storms that could adversely impact the Phoenix spacecraft and potentially disrupt the landing. To assist with landing operations, staff created a dedicated Web page (http://stereo.nascom.nasa.gov/phoenix_landing/) that provided near real-time STEREO images and solar wind measurements that could be accessed by NASA personnel.
The Sun in the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) as seen by the STEREO Ahead spacecraft
-
SESDA II Staff Among Those Cited For Improving NASA's IT Security Posture
June 3, 2008The NASA Administrator recognized the IT Security Certification and Accreditation (C&A) team with a Group Achievement Award (GAA) for its outstanding success in implementing an IT security certification and accreditation (C&A) Program for NASA's information systems. The group, which includes seven SESDA II staff members, was cited by the NASA Administrator for having "demonstrated outstanding dedication and diligence by not only meeting the minimum requirements under a very aggressive schedule, but also producing quality, detailed, value-added products and making significant improvements in the IT security posture of NASA."
-
ADNET SYSTEMS RECEIVES 2008 GODDARD CONTRACTOR EXCELLENCE AWARD
May 9, 2008
ADNET Systems, Inc. has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Goddard Contractor Excellence Award. The highly competitive honor is not awarded every year, and is determined by a variety of factors: technical, schedule, and cost performance; education and outreach; diversity; health and safety initiatives; and others. The evaluation committee examined performance in all of these factors for all applicants' GSFC contracts over the past three years. In ADNET's case, a primary source of such data was TEAM ADNET's outstanding work on SESDA II. It is our stellar performance in all areas of this major contract that drove our selection. TEAM ADNET's staff has pulled together in a way that has made GSFC sit up and take notice!
-
Recognition for SESDA II NASA Communications Outreach
May 6, 2008SESDA II staffer Debbi Mclean was cited by NASA's Office for Communication Planning for her creative design of a Science Mission Directorate exhibit. Her citation reads: "Your Science Mission Directorate Exhibit Panel has been selected by NASA's Communications Material Review as one of the best designs for 2008. The Gallery Award recognizes your communication's excellent design creativity, compliance with style guide standards, visual effectiveness, and practicality. This decision was made by your peers... Your accomplishment helps us achieve our goals of clear, elegant and consistent design to enhance the Agency's ability to explain NASA's mission and results".
-
SESDA II Staff Gains Funding to Document Historical Ozone Program
April 15, 2008
Dr. Steven Lloyd, SESDA II's lead scientist at the Goddard DISC, has garnered funding to provide complete documentation of the entire Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) program.
The TOMS ozone satellites have been in orbit for almost three decades. Over that time, there have been a number of separate TOMS instruments (Nimbus 7, Meteor-3, ADEOS and EarthProbe), a sequence of retrieval algorithms, and a growing number of data products (total column ozone, Lambertian Equivalent Reflectivity (LER), Aerosol Index (AI), surface UV-B, etc.). While details of various aspects of the TOMS program have been individually published and documented in reports over the years, there has never been a single document that records the details of the instrument, its algorithms and data products. Now, in an effort led by Dr. Lloyd, NASA will have important descriptions of the TOMS instruments, its precursor (e.g., the Nimbus 4 BUV instrument), and its successor (the Aura OMI instrument) in order to track and learn from the development of instrumental and algorithmic changes.
-
SESDA II Staff design were selected "best of" works by NASA HQ Communications Materials Review (CMR)
The Science Mission Directorate Exhibit Panels, designed by Debbi F. McLean, were selected the "best of" works by NASA HQ CMR. The four separate backlit exhibit panels were designed utilizing beautiful NASA imagery representing the four Science Mission Directorate themes of Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Planetary, and Earth Science.
-
STEREO Mission on YouTube and IMAX
SESDA II staff have created a new YouTube site dedicated to videos from the STEREO mission (youtube.com/user/stereovideos). The site provides a fascinating look into the unique and exciting science produced by the STEREO mission. In addition to several stunning movies, you will find some amusing comments from viewers worldwide. If YouTube is not your thing, head on down to the IMAX theatre at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (www.si.edu/imax) where the STEREO mission is playing in a breath-taking new 3-D High Definition motion picture called the "3D SUN."
-
SESDA II Posters Storm First Code 600 New Year's Poster Party
SESDA II staff presented posters displaying their current work at the First Code 600 New Year's Poster Party hosted by Laurie Leshin on January 16 from 2-4, at the Bldg. 28 Atrium.
Although we didn't win any prizes, the event was an excellent opportunity to make professional contacts and learn about science and related activities on center.
