Goddard Space Flight

Imagine a window with 62,000 shutters - each the width of a human hair. That's what scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are building to capture light from the most distant stars ever seen - in the most complex stargazer they have ever constructed. They say their contribution to the $4.5 billion James Webb Space Telescope will help answer lingering questions about the dawn of the universe, the fate of the earliest stars and the formation of the planets. "Nothing like this has ever been put in space before," said Murzy Jhabvala, chief engineer of Goddard's Instrument Technology Center in Greenbelt.

A University of Maryland graduate student has put a wrench in the works of John Glenn's space ship.It's a ratchetless space wrench, and the $4,000 prototype is scheduled for six days of automated tests in the shuttle Discovery's cargo bay.The wrench mechanism was invented at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. But it was adapted for space by Brian Roberts, an aerospace engineering student at College Park."I'll be holding my breath and following it over the course of the mission, hoping it lands safely and we get our data back," said Roberts, 28. A masters candidate at UM's Space Systems Laboratory, he flew to Florida to see his wrench hurled into orbit.

From new ways of detecting breast cancer to predicting when hurricanes will strike, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt has developed technology in the name of space exploration that can also be put to use here on Earth.An $800,000 grant from Goddard to the Maryland Economic Development Corp. (MEDCO) will help existing and start-up companies in the Baltimore area access that technology and give them assistance in developing, manufacturing and marketing new uses for it.The grant will go to a MEDCO offshoot, the Emerging Technology Center, a business incubator now under construction in the old American Can Co. in Canton.

Mission Control is not just for Houston, the Goddard Space Flight Center, or even NASA anymore.After NASA launches its new FUSE astronomy satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in February, it will switch control of the $108 million mission to a control room in the physics building at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.There, scientists and professional operators seated at two rows of computers beneath a video wall will guide the observatory 24 hours a day on its three-year mission.

Nearly 28 years after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and about 400 years before the voyages of the starship Enterprise, Tammy Vajo slid her adjustable maroon office chair up to the computer.She had just popped Abba Gold into a CD player. "Dancing Queen" bubbled along under the constant subterranean rush of microprocessor cooling fans. Vajo typed in bursts, like gusts of rain hitting a plastic roof. The readout to her left indicated 17: 17 Zulu Time. The satellite would be in range in a matter of moments.

Seeing spotsIf you want to find out what dalmatian has the best spot "constellation," go to Finksburg this weekend. The Central Maryland Dalmatian Club is holding a Dalmatian Celebration on Saturdayat Sandymount Park.Dalmatians and dogs that share homes with dalmatians are invited to bring their human families to a day of play, food, contests and demonstrations. At noon, there will be a ceremony to recognize those people who have given a rescued dalmatian a home and those club members who have run the rescue operations.

F & M Manufacturing Inc. has won approval from the city of Westminster and should begin work on a manufacturing plant at West Branch Trade Center on Route 97."We should break ground this month," said Dana E. Caro, president and one of four partners in the company. Production could begin at the plant by June or July.After completion of the $3 million building, the company, which now employs 125, plans to hire about 75 workers by the end of next year, he said.Its products include robotic security vehicles for the military, metal detectors for the U.S. Postal Service, components for Goddard Space Flight Center and therapeutic devices for people with circulation problems.

More than 180 years ago, Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry and described the "rockets red glare." Yesterday, a different kind of rocket illuminated the skies over Cape Canaveral when the space shuttle Endeavour blasted off to become America's 99th human-piloted space mission.It was another historic moment for Maryland.Four of the shuttle's seven crew members have ties to the Free State. Cmdr. Stephen S. Oswald is a 1973 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former test pilot at the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center.

WASHINGTON -- The IRS will collect taxes, but don't call for information. Museums in Washington will close. But money will be printed. Half the classes at the Naval Academy will be canceled, but the midshipmen will be fed and paid.The shuttle will fly but most NASA workers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt will be sent home.A temporary appropriations bill that has kept the government running since Oct. 1 runs out at midnight Monday. If Congress and President Clinton fail to reach agreement on a new measure, a federal government "shutdown" is expected.

Now it's "Whitewater: The Rerun."Goddard Space Flight Center was not closed, but they are going to have to use smaller satellites.That judge who condemned a woman-batterer to marry his victim is himself condemned to be tried by a jury of talk show hosts in perpetuity.Carroll County is running out of gun range space and its rural way of life is threatened. They didn't know what development meant?

If there's a would-be astronaut or astronomer in your house (or even a "coulda-been"), they will find a lot to do today in downtown Baltimore as the Goddard Space Flight Center celebrates its 50th anniversary and five decades of space science in Maryland. Along with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, Goddard has assembled more than 100 free exhibits and activities for kids and adults at the Baltimore Convention Center, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Visitors can meet NASA astronaut and Baltimore native Ricky Arnold, just back from a shuttle flight to the International Space Station; explore interactive exhibits on Earth science and planetary exploration, and speak with real space scientists and engineers about their careers.

NASA officials said Thursday that they will try to launch their mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope a day earlier than planned. The push to launch the shuttle Atlantis on May 11 instead of May 12 is driven by a desire to add a third day to the available launch window. Failure to launch by May 13 would delay the Hubble mission until May 27 because of competing demands on the Florida launch facilities, officials said. "I feel fairly confident we can make a May 11 launch date," said LeRoy Cain, deputy manager of NASA's shuttle program.

NASA officials have again postponed the launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a final mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. The delay, from February to at least May, means astronomers will have to wait three months more before two of Hubble's key scientific instruments can be used again. Engineers told Hubble managers they need more time to inspect and test the 18-year-old hardware that will replace a science data computer that failed on Sept. 27, and to train astronauts and build the tools they need to install it. "Our plan is to try to have it ready to ship to Kennedy [Space Center]

GREENBELT - Astrophysicists like to dance. Who knew? Another thing you might have learned yesterday at the Goddard Space Flight Center was that if you zip yourself into a striped suit of a certain adhesive material you will stick to a wall made of Velcro. And if you do it once, you'll have to do it twice. "I just want to go on the Velcro again," said Maria Cummings, one of seven children in a Gaithersburg family, who was so excited by the prospect of reconnecting with the wall that she became momentarily confused as to whether she was 8 or 9. Her 6-year-old brother John - no question about his age - was more concerned with the cookies being doled out by members of the Goddard Dance Club, run by scientists and other brainy types who apparently like to shake a leg when they're not busy figuring out the trajectory of some billion-dollar spaceship hurtling toward the stars.

BUDGET IMPACTS IN MARYLAND Chesapeake Bay: Clean Water State Revolving Fund for the six states of the bay watershed would be reduced from $50.7 million to $40.9 million. Oyster-restoration funds would be cut from $4.27 million to $850,000. Chesapeake Bay Watershed Education and Training Program and Chesapeake Bay Environmental Restoration and Protection Program would be eliminated. Impact aid: There would be no increase in funding for local school districts for the children of military families, whose numbers are expected to increase in Maryland as Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort Meade and other bases expand.

America is headed for the moon again, and Maryland scientists will be in the vanguard of the effort. NASA has chosen research teams from the University of Maryland, College Park and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to work on ideas for upgrading instruments that Apollo crews left behind in the lunar dust. Two other scientific proposals from area institutions - a small radio telescope array from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and a Goddard instrument to measure X-rays were also selected.

Jack Evans, a retired mechanical engineer and former Rockdale resident, died Friday of Parkinson's disease at a health care center in Rock Hill, S.C. He was 87. Mr. Evans was born and raised in Crumpler, W.Va. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1946. After earning his master's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1949, he went to work for Monroe Auto Equipment in Michigan. He came to Baltimore in the early 1950s when he took a job at Rheem Manufacturing Co. in Sparrows Point where water heaters were manufactured.

John Wagener in Pikesville asks, "How far away from a candle would I have to hold my hand to equal the heat that the Earth gets from the sun?" Huh? You'd need a bazillion candles to match the heat the sun pours onto the Earth. But let's say you're asking for heat per square inch. My experts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center say you have to get very close to feel any heat beside a candle flame. Their best answer to your query: a tenth of an inch.

WASHINGTON -- Better practice your royal wave. The queen is coming to Maryland. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has added a stop at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to the schedule for her state visit to America next month. The 81-year-old monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 85, will spend about two hours at Goddard on May 8, the British embassy and the space center said yesterday. They will visit mission control and speak with astronauts on the International Space Station.

Imagine a window with 62,000 shutters - each the width of a human hair. That's what scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are building to capture light from the most distant stars ever seen - in the most complex stargazer they have ever constructed. They say their contribution to the $4.5 billion James Webb Space Telescope will help answer lingering questions about the dawn of the universe, the fate of the earliest stars and the formation of the planets. "Nothing like this has ever been put in space before," said Murzy Jhabvala, chief engineer of Goddard's Instrument Technology Center in Greenbelt.