NEWS

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SSAI Appoints Executive Vice President

SSAI is pleased to announce that Dr. Ashok Kaveeshwar has been appointed as Executive Vice President. Dr. Kaveeshwar will focus on strategic direction for growth and evolution of the company. Dr. Kaveeshwar brings more than thirty-five years of technical, management, and executive experience in government, high-technology, and professional services organizations to this new position. His experience includes executive positions in industry, leading organizations that supported multiple federal agencies, including NASA, NOAA, USGS, FAA, and DoD, as well as national and international customers. In 2005, he was appointed by President Bush as the Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), where he coordinated and managed the DOT's research portfolio. Dr. Kaveeshwar holds a doctorate in Physics from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and also serves on several boards of directors. (5/9/08)

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. (11/1/07)

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." (10/22/08)

NASA Langley Research Center Helps SSAI to Open New Facility in Hampton, VA

Officials from the Langley Research Center and the City of Hampton were on hand as SSAI opened its newly renovated offices in Hampton, Virginia on June 20, 2007. The facility houses the program office and part of the staff working on the Science, Technology, and Research Support Services (STARSS) contract with NASA Langley Research Center, which SSAI won in October 2006.

Highlights of the ribbon-cutting ceremony included comments by Dr. Lelia Vann, Director of the Science Directorate, who praised SSAI for their “absolutely flawless transition” to the contract, and Deputy Center Director Stephen Jurczyk, who noted that Langley relies on contractors to get work done and stated that “SSAI is important to the success of science at NASA.”

Hampton mayor Ross Kearney also took the podium to highlight SSAI’s role in the development of the community. He explained that the arrival of the small, Maryland-based company means big things for the city of Hampton. “They will help support one of the city’s largest assets.” The mayor also recognized the diversity of the company, with employees of all ages and backgrounds.

As the ceremony at the entrance of SSAI’s new office space at One Enterprise Parkway took place, every person in the crowd was smiling. “We have officially planted our roots here, and now we can continue to grow,” SSAI President Om Bahethi said proudly. (6/20/07)

SSAI Employee Rob Simmon Wins Avenza Map Award

Every year Avenza, a company that develops and markets mapping applications, recognizes outstanding applications of their flagship software packages. This year SSAI’s Rob Simmon won first place in the raster projects category. Rob’s project involved mapping Landsat data for the New York City area to allow visual comparison of temperature to amount of vegetation. This work supported research into the benefits of “green” roofs—roofs on which plants are growing. The maps were featured in an article on the Earth Observatory at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/GreenRoof/greenroof2.html. Earth Observatory, which is supported by a team of SSAI outreach specialists and Web developers, is a Goddard Space Flight Center Web site where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet, with a focus on Earth’s climate and environmental change. Awards are nothing new for Rob. The Earth Observatory, with the help of Rob and his colleagues, has won several Webby awards in the past. (8/20/07)

Top-Rated Science Papers Include SSAI Co-Authors

In-Cites, a Web site managed by Thomson Scientific that tracks information on scientific publications, has listed papers that include SSAI researchers as co-authors in the top two spots of their “Super Hot” Papers in Science. The listing identifies papers published since 2003 that received citations at a notably high level in recent indexes. The number 1 and number 2 papers of the top 103 cited are two articles on First-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations. Determination of Cosmological Parameters by David N. Spergel et al. includes SSAI employees Michele Limon and Janet Weiland as co-authors. Additional co-authors who are SSAI customers include Chuck Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Al Kogut, and Lyman Page. The second paper, Preliminary Maps and Basic Results, lists Chuck Bennett as first author, and co-authors include Michele Limon, Mike Greason, Bob S. Hill, Nils Odegard, and Janet Weiland from SSAI, as well as SSAI customers Gary Hinshaw, Al Kogut, and Lyman Page. We are very pleased to see this work receive such attention and interest from the scientific community, and extremely proud of the contributions of SSAI personnel to these investigations. (8/20/07)

SSAI Awards 29 Scholarships to Employees' Dependents

At SSAI’s annual picnic at Paramount’s King Dominion amusement park, Om and Sara Bahethi awarded scholarships to 29 college-bound children of SSAI employees. This year saw the largest group of scholarship recipients since the inception of the program twelve years ago and also marked the $250,000 milestone for the program. The ceremony included naming the recipient of the Dr. Yoram J. Kaufman scholarship, awarded in memory of a Goddard Space Flight Center scientist to a student demonstrating exceptional character, personal accomplishment, and passion for science. This year’s Kaufman scholar is Elizabeth Chen, who will be a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania this fall. Elizabeth is the daughter of Jenny Wu, who works on SSAI’s Laboratory for Atmospheres contract at Goddard Space Flight Center. SSAI also underwrites four scholarships administered by the American Meteorological Society to students studying the atmospheric sciences. (8/23/07)