NEWS

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July 16, 2010—SSAI Completes Phase-In for the NOAA ESPDS-O&M Contract

On Friday, July 16, 2010 at 12:01 AM, SSAI assumed operational responsibility for support to the NOAA Environmental Satellite Processing Center. This milestone culminates the Phase-In effort for the Environmental Satellite Processing and Distribution Services-Operations and Maintenance (ESPDS-O&M) contract won by SSAI earlier this year. Mr. Joseph (Joe) Wagenhofer is SSAI’s Program Manager for the effort. He is joined by Mr. Bob Valli, who was SSAI’s Capture Manager for the ESPDS-O&M opportunity, and has assumed the role of ESPDS-O&M Operations Manager. In addition to SSAI as prime contractor, the team selected by NOAA to support this mission-critical, 24x7x365 NOAA program includes our partners ManTech, Vangent, and GNS.

July 12, 2010—SSAI Receives Best Places to Work 2010 Award

SSAI is very pleased to be honored by Inside Business, The Hampton Roads Business Journal with the 2010 Best Places to Work in Hampton Roads Award. SSAI earned second place in the large business category (with first place going to the Norfolk District U.S. Corps of Engineers). Inside Business wrote that “SSAI combines the best of two worlds for employees. While the company provides clients with the hard hitting research and data they require, its employees are driven by the cutting edge and motivating atmosphere on the job.”

To be selected for the honor, companies submitted information about their culture, annual turnover, employee satisfaction, fair and equitable treatment of staff, compensation, benefits, and employee training opportunities. To be considered, companies had to have a sufficient number of employees responding to an online employee survey conducted by Inside Business. Ron Estes, SSAI Chief Operating Officer (COO), and Program Manager for the NASA Langley Research Center, Science, Technology, and Research Support Services (STARSS) contract commented, “We are doing what our employees see as very important work.”  SSAI is doubly fortunate to receive this highly coveted recognition after the Best Places to Work honor in 2009 by the Washington Business Journal.

June 15, 2010—Mr. Eugene (Gene) Shaffer joins SSAI as the SARSAT Program Manager

On June 15, Gene Shaffer rejoined SSAI to become the Program Manager for the NOAA U.S. Mission Control Center (USMCC) Search And Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking program. Gene returns to SSAI, where he worked as a Meteorologist and Senior Software Engineer between 1983 and 1995, after 15 years of work with Global Science and Technology, where he most recently served as Director of the GST Weather Group. Mr. Shaffer has 35 years of experience across numerous challenging and rewarding international projects, a background that will be highly valuable in his new role leading SSAI’s support of the SARSAT program.

May 24, 2010—SSAI Begins Work on the EED Contract at NASA/GSFC

In April 2010, NASA announced the selection of the Raytheon Team to support the Earth Observing System Data and Information System Evolution and Development (EED) contract. SSAI is pleased to be a member of the Raytheon team and to continue its support of data systems serving the Earth science community. The contract involves development and sustaining engineering of software and hardware systems that provide science data management to the Earth Science Data and Information System Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

April 2010—SSAI Hosts Breakfast for Founders’ Day

For the past several years, SSAI has hosted a Company Founders’ Day Breakfast for its staff during the 1 st week of April. This year, SSAI held Founders’ Day Breakfast celebrations both in Lanham, Maryland and in Hampton, Virginia. The Maryland event was hosted at SSAI’s Headquarters while the Virgina celebration took place at the LaRC Cafeteria. Employees enjoyed breakfast treats, including bagels, croissants, sausage, bacon, pancakes, fruits, and various juices. More importantly, the staff was treated to custom-made omelets prepared by our very own SSAI Chef Supreme, Anoop Mehta, assisted by members of the HR and Administrative staff. Om donned a Chef’s hat and wore an apron in an attempt to join the Chef’s club, but he must first master the art of flipping omelets, a task he deemed harder than writing proposals. Both events enjoyed large attendance and great camaraderie as we all celebrated our company’s 33 rd birthday.

February 2010—SSAI Haiti Relief Fund

On January 12, 2010, a massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the nation of Haiti, causing catastrophic damage in and around the capital city of Port-au-Prince. By January 24th, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had occurred. An estimated three million people have been affected by the devastating quakes. Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated on February 3rd that over 200,000 people were estimated to have died, and more than 300,000 injured were in need of medical treatment. More than 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings have collapsed or are severely damaged.

Many SSAI employees are giving donations to help those in need. As part of our ongoing commitment to help others in need, SSAI applauds our staff's generosity and will match donations to bonafide charitable organizations that are supporting the relief efforts in Haiti. The SSAI matching contribution will be given equally to The Red Cross and UNICEF.

We thank all of our employees for their generous donations.

August 2009—SSAI Receives NASA Langley Research Center's 2009 Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year Award

We are delighted to announce that SSAI has been selected as NASA Langley Research Center's 2009 Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year. This award recognizes significant contributions in assisting NASA to achieve its mission. It also nominates SSAI as a candidate for the agency-level Small Business Industry Award, which will be announced in November. We appreciate the hard work and outstanding efforts of all of our SSAI staff, and, in particular, those supporting the STARSS contract, whose dedication to customer service have led to this recognition.

August 1, 2009—SSAI Awards 30 Scholarships at Company Picnic

On August 1 st, 2009 SSAI hosted its annual summer picnic at Kings Dominion, located in Doswell, Virginia. More than 400 SSAI employees and their families (from both Maryland and Virginia) attended the event, sporting T-shirts that featured the company’s recent “Best Place to Work” award. After a morning of stomach-churning loops, scream-worthy drops, and some intense sunshine, attendees gathered under a pavilion for a picnic lunch. As guests rested and refueled, Vice President Anoop Mehta addressed the crowd to announce the 2009 SSAI scholarship winners. The scholarship, which is in its 13th year, is awarded to dependents of SSAI employees in support of higher education and professional aspirations. SSAI has thus far awarded $340,000 in scholarship funds. Thirty students received the scholarships, based on their academic achievements and career goals. One of the most notable was Kurian Thomas, whose outstanding scholastic success earned him the Yoram Kaufman award. The buffet of summer classics, including burgers, potato salad, and baked beans, created a post-meal euphoria perfect for employees to mingle with their coworkers. Outside the fast-paced office setting, the annual picnic is a way to build positive relationships among coworkers and to welcome families into the SSAI community. The SSAI picnic proved to be a day of unity, philanthropy, and family fun that left many guests saying, “Ride On!”

July 24, 2009—SSAI's CMMI Certification

On July 24, 2009, SSAI was successfully reappraised at CMMI Maturity Level 2 with Capability Level 3 in six Practice Areas. This recertification affirms SSAI's commitment to providing its customers with quality products and services.

 

 

April 24, 2009—SSAI Receives Best Place to Work Honor

SSAI is pleased to be selected as one of the Best Places to Work in the greater Washington, DC area by the Washington Business Journal. The journal’s announcement commented that, “This year's competition was steep. Some companies who ranked in the 90% percentile did not even make the cut…” More than 170 DC-area employees participated in the survey, which evaluated criteria such as team effectiveness, trust with co-workers, manager effectiveness, and people practices. An independent firm, Quantum Market Research, Inc. conducted the survey and tabulated results. The feedback we received will be compiled and used to guide further positive changes across the company, along with SSAI’s own upcoming employee survey. “We always know that our employees are outstanding,” SSAI President Om P. Bahethi commented. “We are very happy to find that they consider SSAI to be outstanding as well.”

October 1, 2008—SSAI Selected for MODIS Support Contract

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center awarded a contract on September 30, 2008 to continue SSAI’s support of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) activities. The effort includes maintenance and improvements of the aerosol retrieval code used in processing MODIS data from the Terra and Aqua spacecraft; testing, validation, and evaluation of MODIS aerosol algorithms and products; and using a combination of data sources and techniques to provide accurate estimates of aerosol emissions and radiative forcings and effects. SSAI will also provide Web site development and maintenance, administrative, and education and outreach support. We are very pleased to continue our 16-year association with this important work, supporting research and applications for climate, atmospheric, and oceanic circulations, air quality, human health, and biospheric studies.

September 23, 2008—SSAI's Sasha Kashlinsky Leads Team
that Finds a Cosmic 'Dark Flow'

Using data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), SSAI’s Sasha Kashlinsky, with colleagues from Spain, California, and Hawaii, has measured an unexpected systematic motion in distant galaxy clusters. By measuring the motion of a very large number of clusters, the team, partially supported by a NASA grant, found something Sasha “never expected”—a net flow of matter in the Universe toward a spot on the sky. Since, as Sasha says, "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he calls it a “dark flow,” and suggests that it is caused by the gravitational attraction of matter that lies beyond the observable Universe. For details see http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/dark_flow.html

September 8, 2008—ANGe Aces Tests, Goes Live With Major Upgrade

Imagine the stress that would be put on your MP3 player if it had to manage 500 million songs.

The Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) of the Science Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center has approximately that same amount of data in its archive.

However, the more than 2 petabytes (2000 terabytes) of information in the ASDC isn’t music. It's crucial Earth science data. In order to keep that information safe, as well as make it easily accessible to scientists, there must be an advanced archiving system in place.

This week marks an important milestone in the launching of ANGe, or the Archive Next Generation software, the ASDC's newly tested advanced archiving system.

For the rest of the article, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_ANGe_live.html

August 20, 2008—SSAI Helps Students go Back to School with New Bags and Books

Over the past month, the SSAI office in Hampton has turned into a bustling supply room. Mounds of notebooks, pencil boxes, book bags and glue sticks have filled up the front office.

The supplies are not for the scientists who work for Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI), a NASA contractor that works primarily with the Science Directorate, but for some local students as they head back to school.

This is the second year that SSAI has conducted a school supply drive for Robert E. Lee Elementary in Hampton, a school the company and its employees have adopted.

For the rest of the article, please visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_SSAIschooldrive.html

November 1, 2007—Archive Next Generation Becomes Archive Now Generation

At 11:30 a.m. on November 1, 2007, the Archive Next Generation (ANGe) performed its initial operational function—ingesting, archiving, and distributing data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) sensor.

ANGe is being built to replace the two existing archive systems at NASA Langley Research Center’s Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC). Over the course of the next year, ANGe will incrementally take over data ingest, archive, and distribution for a number of satellite systems currently handled by two legacy archives at the ASDC—the Langley TRMM and Terra Information System (LATIS) and the EOSDIS Core System (ECS).

The first data ingested into ANGe comes from the CALIPSO satellite, which uses the light equivalent of radar, called lidar for light detection and ranging, to measure aerosol and clouds in the atmosphere. CALIPSO flies in formation with several other satellites, which gather many types of data to help scientists better understand the Earth’s climate. The CALIPSO data in the ANGe archive will be used by atmospheric scientists to study the role of aerosols and clouds in the complex interactions that may affect future changes in our climate.

October 22, 2007—Admiral Lautenbacher Announces NOAA Award
of SARSAT Contract to SSAI

On October 19, 2007, retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, marked the 25th anniversary of the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SARSAT) program in a speech at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md. During the course of his remarks, he announced that SSAI has been awarded the contract for support to SARSAT’s United States Mission Control Center (USMCC).

SSAI has operated and maintained the mission-critical NOAA USMCC for the past 17 years. The USMCC is designated as a “national mission-critical system,” designed to collect, process, and distribute data transmitted from emergency beacons carried on ships or aircraft, and by individuals. The USMCC sends the processed data, which normally includes beacon location, to appropriate rescue forces to execute search and rescue activities. The top priority for SSAI support is to maintain the availability of the USMCC to provide emergency beacon alert data to rescue forces 24/7/365. We are also responsible for liaison, interaction, and support for meetings with program participants, including U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and representatives of international Mission Control Centers. USMCC has never failed to meet its performance goal of 99.5% availability.

The most important measure of this program is the number of individuals rescued as a direct result of the information provided by the USMCC. From its inception in 1982 through December 2006, the USMCC and the SARSAT program assisted in saving the lives of more than 20,300 people globally, and more than 5,400 people in the U.S. area of responsibility. In announcing SSAI’s selection for the SARSAT contract, Lautenbacher said, “This type of support means SARSAT will save many more lives for the foreseeable future."

 

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