Goddard

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is holding a family event Wednesday night to teach middle-school-age children about the James Webb Space Telescope. Visitors will learn about the telescope from experts who work on it, and then will be able to build a simple telescope they can take home. The event is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Goddard visitors center in Greenbelt. The Webb telescope is slated to launch around 2018.

Sen. Ben Cardin lamented snowballing damage from federal budget cuts in town hall meetings with federal workers and small-business leaders Friday, pledging to work toward an alternative budget solution by October. But he acknowledged that achieving a compromise between similar budget proposals from the Senate and President Barack Obama and another from the House of Representatives could be a challenge. He spoke to two dozen Howard County business owners and more than 50 employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Florence Tan says she'll have fingers and toes crossed when NASA's latest Mars mission blasts off as early as Saturday morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The 47-year-old electrical engineer from Montgomery County oversaw all the wiring of an instrument package on board that was designed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center here. In the years leading up to the launch, Tan has painstakingly checked and rechecked all 2,000 pieces of wire inside the microwave oven-sized box — enough to stretch more than a third of a mile if strung together.

Description: Two 110-million-year-old footprints that a massive plant-eating dinosaur and, perhaps, its offspring left behind has been uncovered on the campus of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. That age dates it to the Cretaceous Period, the last of the Mesozoic Era. NASA Goddard facilities officials are not revealing the exact location of the footprint but said it isn't going anywhere — moving it would violate laws protecting archaeological and paleontological artifacts found on federal lands.

Employees atNASA'sGoddard Space Flight Center, a group accustomed to looking skyward, have been forced to focus a bit more on the ground after last month's powerful storm ripped a large, low branch from an iconic tree on the Greenbelt campus. The nearly 200-year-old willow oak, known to Goddard workers as the "Tree of Life," had been spared from destruction three years ago when architects decided to make it a prominent landscaping feature of the new Exploration Sciences Building.

Rep. Jerry Lewis' plan to move the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to California has been shelved for the moment, albeit at great potential cost to the state's economy. It was from the beginning a preposterous conceit. Yet Maryland lawmakers had to take the threat seriously. And even though the state now has been spared outright closure of the facility, the plan pushed through by House Republicans last week still could result in the loss of one-quarter of Goddard's 13,000 jobs unless the Senate balks.

On Monday, September 15, 2003, AMY MARIE (nee Ashe), loving mother of Amanda Marie Goddard, Springfield, VA. Preceded in death by her son, Kenneth Joseph Altoff; loving sister of Beckie Young (Rick), Springfield, VA, Chris Young (Doug), Williamsburg, VA, Lee Ashe, Jr., Hampton, VA and Beth O'Connell (Steve), Pasadena, MD. Also survived by four nieces, three nephews, and numerous dear friends. The family will receive friends at FAIRFAX MEMORIAL FUNERAL HOME, 9902 Braddock Road, Fairfax, VA, on Friday, September 19, from 5 to 8 P.M., where Services will be held on Saturday at 1 P.M. Interment Fairfax Memorial Park.

WASHINGTON -- The Goddard Space Flight Center was spared from closing yesterday, but a key House committee voted instead to cut spending for the Greenbelt facility's primary mission by more than one-third.The House Appropriations Committee rejected a subcommittee decision last week to close Goddard -- which employs 13,000 -- and two other space centers by 1998. In its place, the committee accepted a plan by House Republican leaders to scale back the main project at Goddard and cut 3,300 jobs.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is holding a family event Wednesday night to teach middle-school-age children about the James Webb Space Telescope. Visitors will learn about the telescope from experts who work on it, and then will be able to build a simple telescope they can take home. The event is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Goddard visitors center in Greenbelt. The Webb telescope is slated to launch around 2018.

Employees atNASA'sGoddard Space Flight Center, a group accustomed to looking skyward, have been forced to focus a bit more on the ground after last month's powerful storm ripped a large, low branch from an iconic tree on the Greenbelt campus. The nearly 200-year-old willow oak, known to Goddard workers as the "Tree of Life," had been spared from destruction three years ago when architects decided to make it a prominent landscaping feature of the new Exploration Sciences Building.

Show children how big the universe is at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Children and their families can get a glimpse of plans for the James Webb Space Telescope and its research into galaxy formation and star life cycles. Children will get to see how the telescope will explore using infrared light. The “Sunday Experiment” event is Sunday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Goddard Center's Visitor Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road. Find more information on the center's website .

Florence Tan says she'll have fingers and toes crossed when NASA's latest Mars mission blasts off as early as Saturday morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The 47-year-old electrical engineer from Montgomery County oversaw all the wiring of an instrument package on board that was designed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center here. In the years leading up to the launch, Tan has painstakingly checked and rechecked all 2,000 pieces of wire inside the microwave oven-sized box — enough to stretch more than a third of a mile if strung together.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt will get a $128 million slice of a new mission to grab a sample from an asteroid and return it to Earth in 2023. NASA selected the $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission for funding Wednesday, passing over competing proposals to send spacecraft to Venus and the moon. The work will be led by Michael J. Drake at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and managed by Goddard. Engineers at the space center will also build one of its instruments.

Maryland institutions are involved in two of the three teams competing for $425 million in NASA funding to launch a new planetary mission in 2016. NASA said Thursday that the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California were selected from among 28 competitors for the Discovery Program funding. Each will get $3 million for preliminary design work. After a review next year, one will be selected for funding and development.

Baltimorean and Boys' Latin School graduate Dr. Calvin Hooker Goddard, who in his youth developed a fondness for firearms, went on to become known as the "Father of Ballistics" for his pioneering work in developing the system by which bullets can be traced to the weapons that fired them. Goddard, who was born in Baltimore in 1891, graduated in 1907 from the old Boys' Latin School, which was then located on Brevard Street near Mount Royal Station. "He was an excellent student and the number one boy in most of his classes.

With a little luck, scientists and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt will help to send a NASA spacecraft to land on an asteroid or on Venus late in this decade. The two proposed interplanetary missions with Goddard connections were among three selected Monday to receive $3.3 million each for further cost and feasibility study under NASA's New Frontiers program. Only one will be funded after a final cut later this year. The winning mission would have to launch by 2018, and cost less than $650 million.