Send Your Name Around The Earth On NASA's Glory Mission
baa...@earthlink.net
Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen...@nasa.gov
Leslie McCarthy
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York
212-678-5507
leslie.m...@nasa.gov
Sarah DeWitt
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-286-0535
sarah.l...@nasa.gov
RELEASE: 08-242
SEND YOUR NAME AROUND THE EARTH ON NASA'S GLORY MISSION
WASHINGTON - Members of the public can send their names around Earth
on NASA's Glory satellite, the first mission dedicated to
understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the
sun's variability on our climate.
The "Send Your Name Around the Earth" Web site enables everyone to
take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for
years to come. The Web site, where participants can submit their
information, is located at:
http://polls.nasa.gov/utilities/sendtospace/jsp/sendName.jsp
Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have
their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the
spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is Nov. 1, 2008.
The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne
particles more accurately from space than ever before. The particles,
known as "aerosols," are tiny bits of material found in Earth's
atmosphere, like dust and smog.
"Undoubtedly, greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect,"
said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "But the uncertainty
in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the
present."
Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry
Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two
cameras for cloud identification. The APS instrument will help
quantify the role of aerosols as natural and human-produced agents of
climate change more accurately than existing measurement tools. The
TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar
irradiance, the amount of energy radiating from the sun to Earth,
with improved accuracy and stability. Understanding the sun's energy
is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth.
Glory is scheduled for launch in June 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force
Base in California. Glory will orbit as part of the Afternoon
Constellation, or "A-Train," a series of Earth-observing satellites.
The A-Train spacecraft follow each other in close formation, crossing
the equator a few minutes apart shortly after 1:30 p.m. local time
each day. The A-Train orbits Earth once every 100 minutes.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is responsible
for Glory project management. Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles,
Va., is responsible for development, integration and operations of
the spacecraft. Raytheon in El Segundo, Calif., is responsible for
development of the APS. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics in Boulder, Colo., is responsible for the development of the
TIM. Glory's cloud cameras were built by Ball Aerospace and
Technologies of Boulder.
For more information on Glory, visit:
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