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Otago Daily Times
16 hours ago
- Science
- Otago Daily Times
Our timeless companion: Michelle Thaller's starry eyed gaze
Astrophysicist Dr Michelle Thaller has spent a lifetime with her head in the stars, she tells Paul Gorman. In a world where terrible things are happening, a reminder we are inconsequential motes on the scale of the universe can be somewhat comforting. ''For you are dust, and to dust you shall return'', the sage words from The Book of Genesis say. The same message is coming from one of Nasa's top scientists, astrophysicist Dr Michelle Thaller, who arrived in Dunedin at Matariki to be the special guest at this week's New Zealand International Science Festival. ''I've been wanting to spend a good amount of time in New Zealand for decades,'' she says. ''When it comes to celebrating Matariki, the idea that we come from the stars and we will go back to the stars, this is literally true.'' Recently retired after 27 years at Nasa, she will be sharing her knowledge of space and the universe at several festival events. Thaller has specialised in the evolution of binary-star systems and is one of the world's top science communicators. She sees the universe as a wondrous place, not something to fear because its stupendous vastness makes it cold and frightening. ''For me it's a bit more of a thrill than a fear. You know, the reason you get on a roller coaster is that sort of pleasant type of fear - you can play with the emotions: 'I'm afraid of this, but it's going to be OK'. ''But the interesting thing for me is that, and I don't know why, but the night sky has always seemed like an old friend, and I've met people all over the world who feel that way.'' While the universe has no emotional state to it, she says astronomy is not the study of ''something far away and dark and uncaring''. It is where we come from. ''There's nothing that makes the atoms of our bodies other than the stars - carbon and calcium and all of that - and the only place you have natural nuclear fusion is inside the core of a star, and you build up the atoms into bigger and bigger atoms. ''Then there's some of the things that our body needs, like iodine. Our bodies would not work without some of those trace elements, and the only time we've ever seen those trace elements made is with pulsars, these neutron stars, in unimaginably huge explosions.'' Thaller's Nasa career began at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California as a senior scientist after graduating with her doctorate from Georgia State University and carrying out postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 2009, she moved to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and ultimately became the assistant director of science there. She also did a three-year stint at Nasa headquarters in Washington DC. While at JPL she became interested in science communication and was heavily involved in live Nasa broadcasts and also as a spokesperson on television programmes including How The Universe Works , and on news stories. Her resume lists two Webby awards highlighting Nasa's social media programme among her achievements, as well as this year's accolade of Nasa's Exceptional Achievement Medal, which has previously been won by late astronomer Carl Sagan and the Apollo mission astronauts. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin and also works with the Smithsonian Institution on adult education and travel programmes. Hailing from Waukesha, Wisconsin, Thaller says her love of astronomy began before she can even remember, about the age of 2. ''Mum said it was as soon as I could walk. She was like, 'kid, why do you care about the little lights in the sky?'. It became kind of a running joke. ''I've tried to get her interested in astronomy. She'd ask, 'well what causes the Moon phases', and as a little kid I'd get flashlights out and balls, and she's just like, 'I don't really care, I'm sorry'. ''But I just loved the stars. I was fascinated by them.'' She went to Harvard University to take her undergraduate degree in astrophysics, but found it challenging and initially intimidating. ''I was the first person in my town ever to go to Harvard. I'm from a small, rural community. That was a surprise to everybody, including me, that I got in. Harvard made it possible for me to come, with a combination of loans and scholarships and work-study programmes. ''In high school I was still doing pretty well in science classes, but then when I hit college, I was just struggling the whole time. I felt very lost, very confused. ''The professors meant well, but at that time, back in the late '80s-early '90s, you brought your notebook to class and literally wrote down what the professor was doing on the blackboard. And that was all you did. Then you went home to your dorm room. ''People have different ways of learning. And science in the past was taught, I think, in a very linear, kind of intimidating way. You know, like 'Do you have what it takes to study astrophysics?'. ''You know, if you can study anything, you can study astrophysics. It's like any other topic - I mean, how do you study enough to become a lawyer or a doctor?'' Through ''pure pig-headedness'' she stuck it out. ''I just loved astronomy, so I stayed there and suffered through it. About midway through my college career, I started to do research projects with the professors as part of my coursework and then things just lit up, because it was the practical application of these things. ''Say we want to observe these monsters called neutron stars. What sort of data do we need to take? How do we analyse the data? All of a sudden, it's your own exploration and your own questions, and working with other people.'' That carried on when she worked on her doctorate. ''A lot of people are worried that if they want to do a doctorate they have to come up with a brilliant idea all on their own. But no, you start working with a team of astronomers; you usually have one adviser, that's a professor, and they get you started on something. ''They might say, 'hey, look at this data that I have. Why don't you just start with that, and we'll talk about what you're seeing', and so you became part of a wonderful team.'' Had she ever wanted to be an astronaut? ''When I was young, yes. I went to space camp, which was run by the US Space and Rocket Centre, and I loved it. I loved astronaut training, and I had pictures of astronauts on my wall as a kid. ''And I got interested in the science behind the stars a little bit more than the actual going-to-space part of it. But I have a lot of astronaut friends, and some of the astronauts hopefully on the next Artemis missions, they're friends of mine. ''To put it kind of honestly, you know, as I got into college and grad school, I developed a fear of flying. So, you know, probably not the best thing for an astronaut to be afraid of. ''I still fly everywhere, I fly all over the world, but I'm getting better, but I'm not real comfortable in a plane. It gives me fear, especially turbulence where we bounce around. I understand everything about it, I mean turbulence isn't dangerous, but I'm getting much more calmed down about it.'' Thaller carried out much of her doctoral research on massive binary stars at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia. ''These stars that are orbiting each other are sometimes 30 to 50 times the mass of the Sun. There's more of them in the southern sky than there are in the northern sky, because the centre of the galaxy appears higher in the sky in the southern sky than it does in the north, so there are actually more stars in the southern sky. ''These stars are not necessarily physically all that much bigger than the Sun, but the big thing is their mass. They have a very strong wind of particles coming off them, like winds of hot hydrogen gas, so they actually slam together a lot of molecules. ''The stars produce all of the atoms that we know but then, in these shock waves, in the winds of stars, you can get things like water molecules produced. In one of the systems I was studying, the shock wave of the winds between the stars produced enough water to fill Earth's oceans 60 times a day. ''It's making very hot, very gaseous, water, very diffuse gas, and that gets fed into the dust between the stars as we travel around the galaxy at about 700,000kmh. In the course of Earth's history, we've been around the whole galaxy about 20 times.'' Astronomers now have a sample of Asteroid Bennu, which shows how water reacted with the minerals, she says. ''It must have been part of a dwarf planet that got broken up at some point. But there was liquid water around, dissolving the minerals, which is amazing.'' Pulsars, the dead cores of stars that spin fast and emit regular bursts of electromagnetic radiation, also fascinate Thaller. ''There are some that spin a couple of hundred times a second. These are only about 30km across but with the mass of twice the Sun. That actually turns out to be twice the density of an atomic nucleus - it's the densest matter that we know of. So, pulsars are incredible monsters. ''There was an event in 2008 where there was a burst of high-energy radiation and a noticeable amount of atmosphere got blown up into space. And our magnetic field was ringing like a bell. And we were like, 'OK, what just happened?'. ''We traced it back to a little glitch - one of the pulsars had a tiny, tiny little change in the rate it was rotating. That pulsar was 50,000 light years away - a light year being about 10 trillion kilometres. We think there was a tiny shift in the crust of the pulsar, maybe about 1cm or less, and in a millisecond that produced more energy than the Sun puts out in a quarter billion years. ''We got a glancing blow of high-energy radiation from that thing. Some people wonder if such events might actually limit the lifetimes of civilisations. I mean, there are thousands, millions of pulsars all around us. ''One little bad day on a pulsar, and it takes out planets for light years.'' That potential threat to our existence is larger than from an asteroid, she says. ''The huge asteroid that took out the dinosaurs, it may have caused a huge shift in our climate but life survived that. But if you get a direct hit by one of these gamma-ray bursts, it can just strafe the atmosphere off.'' We're back to the returning-to-the-stars narrative. On a brighter note, Thaller says she has had a great visit so far. Her Ōtepoti experience kicked off with a train trip through the Taieri Gorge on a Stargazer journey operated by Dunedin Railways, Tūhura Otago Museum and the Dunedin Astronomical Society. The events allow passengers to alight at Hindon and view the universe through up-to-date telescopes in a streetlight-free area. ''I've never done anything like it,'' she says. ''This was such a unique astronomy experience. A lovely historic train took off from the station, we were served a good meal on board, and in about an hour we got to a site that had telescopes and other activities set up. The young people running the show were just wonderful - full of knowledge and energy. ''We lucked out - there were patchy clouds around, but the holes were big enough to get good views of star clusters. Mulled wine and hot chocolate on the way back, and I answered astronomy questions over the train intercom.'' For an astronomer, that sounds like a heavenly cocktail. The festival Expect the usual eclectic mixture of workshops, talks, tours and shows over the week, as more than 100 organised events are held across Dunedin until the festival closes next Sunday. A random dive into the festival programme reveals events including: ''An Introvert's Guide to Extroverts'', ''A Flying Photon'', ''Atomically Correct'' (a quantum comedy), ''Coastal Parasites: The good, the bad and the ugly'', ''Death in the Distillery: A Forensic Mystery'', ''Exploring Dunedin's Extinct Volcano'', ''Heart Science for Kids'', ''Jean Stevens and 'Blooming Impossible', ''Living Alongside Pakake'', ''The Science Behind Everyday Appliances'', ''Te Tahu-Nui-ā-Rangi (Aurora) clay tile making'', and ''Fight Like a Physicist''. • Check out the full listings at
Forbes
20 hours ago
- Science
- Forbes
White House Could Jeopardize Mars Missions By Slashing NASA's Funding
The White House scheme to reshape NASA by slashing its funding could jeopardize future human flights ... More to Mars. Shown here is NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft - one of the three Mars orbiters set to be terminated under the president's plan. (Photo) With its radical reshaping of NASA's future by decimating its funding, the White House is imperiling the upcoming human missions to Mars that it purports to back. In a new masterplan for NASA—with a proposed budget that slits in half appropriations for planetary science endeavors—the president still states he aims to advance precursor flights to astronauts landing on Mars. Yet the plan paradoxically terminates funding for three of the five orbiters circling the Red Planet that have been pivotal to landing robotic explorers on Mars, and would be crucial to a safe human expedition. The orbiting stations, equipped with cutting-edge cameras to image spacecraft as they descend onto the Martian dunes, and powerful radio antennas to speed communications between rover-scouts and mission planners back on Earth, collectively make up the Mars Relay Network. This constellation played a central role in the latest NASA expedition to Mars, during the arrival of the robotic cameraman Perseverance and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity, says Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA's leading-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. The ring of spacecraft observing and mapping Mars, Gladden tells me in an interview, should actually be expanded to set the stage for American spacefarers to begin their first odysseys across the ancient volcanos and disappeared oceans of the mysterious orange-red orb. 'In the next few years, there is talk by many institutions and companies of sending many vehicles to the surface of Mars,' in the lead-up to astronaut flights, he says. 'Losing these [Mars Network] orbiters reduces our options for providing relay support to future missions.' One of the leading lights in NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Gladden has co-written a cascade of breakthrough papers on the Mars Relay Network that he oversees, its history in providing orbital beacons for NASA spacecraft as they approach Mars, and its potential to guide future space pilots to perfect landing sites. The Mars-encircling coalition of satellites represents a grand space entente between NASA and the European Space Agency, with the U.S. sending the Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN spacecraft to circumnavigate the planet, and ESA deploying its Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The president's scheme would halt a grand space entente between NASA and European Space Agency ... More around Mars, and halt funding for ESA's Mars Express orbiter, part of the Mars Relay Network that has been pivotal to safe spacecraft landings on the Red Planet. AFP PHOTO/ ESA /Illustration by Medialab (Photo credit should read -/AFP via Getty Images) This orbital alliance 'represents a highly successful international collaboration and continues as critical infrastructure for NASA's and ESA's ongoing Mars exploration,' Gladden states in one paper he co-authored with vanguard space-tech scholars at JPL, which is affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, one of the top science universities in the U.S. But under the new blueprints for NASA sketched out by the White House, funding for two of the American orbiters, and one ESA spacecraft, would be terminated to recoup the minimal cost of their continued operations. In a preface to the White House's proposed draconian downsizing of the American space agency, its acting administrator, Janet Petro, concedes that NASA will be forced to cut away at its ranks of illustrious scientists. While professing 'to prepare for human missions to Mars,' Petro adds that NASA's slashed funding would likewise trigger halts to an array of Red Planet-focused science missions. So far, Gladden tells me, 'We have not yet received direction from NASA HQ to stop work on these [Mars Relay] projects, and we wait for further instruction.' Gladden's team says that even while roboticists and aerospace engineers at JPL were testing Perseverance and Ingenuity for their Mars quest, the orbiters helped mission planners 'select scientifically interesting landing sites and properly design the vehicle for successful delivery to the surface of Mars.' The Mars orbiters helped NASA mission planners select the perfect landing site for the Perseverance ... More rover and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity to start exploring Mars. (Photo illustration by NASA via Getty Images) The flightpaths of two of these satellites were altered to pass over the target landing zone at the precise moment when Perseverance began its atmospheric entry and descent to the Martian surface, and the orbiters beamed the spacecraft's telemetry back to Earth, tens of millions of kilometers distant, in near real-time. With the help of these satellites, 'the events of the Perseverance landing were broadcast live from JPL to the world,' they say. This dual-planet livestream 'allowed everyone to share in the excitement (and 'terror') of the day.' 'The images returned thereafter included … video of the landing itself taken from a variety of vantage points, and eventually the historic images of the first powered flight on another planet.' The orbiters' high-resolution cameras had earlier mapped the ordained touchdown site, producing sophisticated atlases that enabled the AI-enhanced rover and rotorcraft—both equipped with computer vision—to navigate their alien surroundings the moment they began moving across the ghosts of waterways that once rushed through Mars. NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Mars orbiters imaged the entire descent and ... More touchdown of these robotic explorers, and could perform the same function for future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images) Since then, the Mars satellites have acted as a super-speed web of cosmic messengers, passing data, imagery, software changes and commands between the Martian robotic scouts and their commanders across NASA. Yet if the White House scheme to axe three-fifths of the Mars constellation is executed, Gladden tells me, 'Shuttering [the orbiters] Odyssey and MAVEN would have significant impacts on the relay network.' 'Odyssey, operating in a sun-synchronous orbit that passes over the rovers at about 7 pm each day, is uniquely positioned to receive data from the rovers at the end of their work day.' 'The return of this data on that timeline facilitates next-day planning, which enables the rover teams to ensure that each day on Mars is a meaningful one.' MAVEN, he adds, 'has a very robust radio system. It can move more data than any of the other orbiters and actually holds the record for the most data returned from a single relay session.' 'Losing access to either (or both) of these orbiters would require the rover projects to slow down their operations and reduce the amount of data that can be returned from the surface of Mars.' That would threaten not only twin-planet communications with these robotic scouts, but also with any astronaut corps sent to Mars in the future. But if an alternative future emerges—one where NASA's Mars Exploration flights are instead revived with a new boost in financial backing, Gladden says, 'We can more intentionally build up the relay network to continue supporting the robotic exploration of Mars and hopefully be ready for human explorers.' The fantastical Mars orbiters can image the atmospheric entry and touchdown of spacecraft sent from ... More Earth, including those carrying future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images) One of the Jet Propulsion Lab's foremost scientists says the futuristic outpost is still hoping against hope that the president's plan for NASA will be overturned by Congress. 'It is very, very important to understand that the budget process is not yet concluded.' 'Though the president's budget proposed the shuttering of these [Mars Relay] efforts,' he says, 'Congress has the final say in how much money is allocated to NASA.' 'They can itemize that budget to specifically reinstate missions that were zeroed out by the president's proposed budget.' 'This does occasionally happen,' he adds. There are already signs that the most powerful advocates of NASA retaining its position as the supreme global leader in spaceflight and in exploring the solar system could rally to overturn the president's plan to strip down the agency. The US Congress has the power to overturn the president's plan to radically downsize NASA, and save ... More the agency's world-leading planetary exploration missions (Photo by) Senator Ted Cruz, a longtime champion of NASA and its breakthroughs across the realm of space, recently introduced a special appropriations bill that would astonishingly add $9.99 billion to NASA's funding, which would allow it to catapult even higher ahead of the other world space powers. Cruz's White Knight legislation specifically provides $700,000,000 for the procurement of 'a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that is capable of providing robust, continuous communications for … future Mars surface, orbital, and human exploration missions.' The senator's amazing lifeline to NASA also reverses a death sentence the president's plan placed on the colossal Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule - a sentence that was set to take effect after the Artemis III lunar mission that would land the first Americans on the Moon since the last millennium. Cruz's special appropriation would extend the lifetime of the SLS/Orion at least through the late 2020s. Back at JPL, Roy Gladden, torchbearer of the Mars Relay Network and of its future, says the $700 million outlined in Senator Cruz's NASA-rescue bill 'would be fantastic if that were to come around.' Cruz's NASA-wide boost, and the specialized allocation for orbital spacecraft around the Red Planet, could push forward the construction of a next-generation Mars relay constellation, he says, and the lofting of the first American discoverers to trek across the flame-colored planet. This future-tech version of the Mars Network, Gladden predicts, could in turn become the seed of a fantastical Solar System Internet that connects the Earth's eight billion citizens with the robots and aeronauts spreading out to explore all the planets and moons circling the Sun.
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Science
- Sky News AU
‘Massive consequence': Experts reveal city-killer asteroid could collide with the moon
An asteroid the size of a 10-story building could now make impact with the moon, which would global communications and sending the planet into digital meltdown. The city-killing asteroid known as YR4 was first discovered in late 2024 and was initially given a 3 per cent chance of colliding with Earth. However, the latest observations by NASA's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggested that there was now a 4.3 per cent likelihood of YR4 smashing into the moon in 2032, up from 3.8 per cent in April and 1.7 per cent in February. Scientists believe that if this occurs, the impact would be similar to a nuclear bomb, triggering an unprecedented meteor shower that could potentially put Earth's vital satellite systems in critical jeopardy. Astrologist and cosmologist at the Australian National University Brad Tucker said that while the giant rock was no longer hurtling towards Earth, there would still be disastrous consequences for the planet if the massive asteroid hit the moon. 'So, when the odds shifted away from the earth they shifted towards the moon, it's still only four per cent - it's not even four per cent [it's] just about that - it's almost 1 in 25. That's enough that you want to pay attention to,' Mr Tucker said. Mr Tucker, who has been closely following YR4's trajectory, stressed that although it remained unlikely for any debris fragments to hit the Earth's surface, rogue fragments of rock could enter the atmosphere and endanger hundreds of crucial satellites. 'We're not worried about it hitting the ground because it would be so small our atmosphere would absorb it; there's actually a worry it may hit all of those satellites that we have going around us and that would cause a problem,' Mr Tucker stated. 'There could be a massive consequence in relation to them breaking up and creating their own ring of debris.' "We shouldn't just think about the earth in terms of safety, we really must think about the moon as well.' New studies have shown the callosal amount of debris that could be pulled into the atmosphere if the moon was struck made it 1,000 times more likely a satellite would be compromised. 'So it's one of those downward scenarios where we are thinking because of the way earth is now set up it actually may still have an impact.' If satellites were suddenly lost the ramifications would be widespread, disrupting global connectivity, navigation systems, financial markets and military operations. Dr Paul Wiegert, an expert in solar system dynamics at Western University in Ontario who has studied the asteroids journey said YR4 would be the largest space rock to hit the moon 'in at least 5,000 years,' and could easily take out a satellite or a human-inhabited space station. Discussions have now begun as to how governments and space agencies can divert the asteroid's course to protect the planet. 'There's a question now of can we do a mission to alter it away from the moon, we've done that before and once we reach a certain threshold, we should consider this mission because of the moon and because of that downward impact.'
Metro
3 days ago
- Science
- Metro
'Secret tunnels' under Greenland may be the safest place if war breaks out
Deep below the thick ice of Greenland lies a labyrinth of tunnels that were once thought to be the safest place on Earth in case of a war. First created during the Cold War, Project Iceworm saw the US plan to store hundreds of ballistic missiles in a system of tunnels dubbed 'Camp Century'. Could the sprawling underground complex still be a safe place in case of war? At the time, US military chiefs had hoped to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union during the height of Cold War tensions if things escalated. But less than a decade after it was built, the base was abandoned in 1967 after researchers realised the glacier was moving. The sprawling sub-zero tunnels have been brought back to attention after recent tensions between Iran, Israel and the United States have brought up the possibility of another World War. Talk of World War 3 is nothing new. For years, tense geopolitical moments have stoked fears that we are on the brink of a catastrophic conflict. But these fears were all too common years ago, during the Cold War, when Camp Century – the city under Greenland's ice sheet – was made. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The underground three-kilometre network of tunnels was dubbed Century City and once played host to labs, shops, a cinema, a hospital, and accommodation for hundreds of soldiers. Alex Gardner, a cryospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: 'We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn't know what it was at first. In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they've never been before.' But the icy Greenland site is not without its dangers – it continues to store nuclear waste. Assuming the site would remain frozen in perpetuity, the US Army removed the nuclear reactor installed on site but allowed waste, equivalent to the mass of 30 Airbus A320 aeroplanes, to be entombed under the snow. But other sites around the world, without nuclear waste, could also serve as a safe haven in case of World War 3. More Trending Wood Norton is a tunnel network running deep into the Worcestershire forest, originally bought by the BBC during World War 2 in case of a crisis in London. Peters Mountain in Virginia, USA, serves as one of several secret centres also known as AT&T project offices, which are essential for the US government's continuity planning. Further north in the United States, Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania is a base that could hold up to 1,400 people. And Cheyenne Mountain Complex in El Paso County, Colorado, is an underground complex boasting five chambers of reservoirs for fuel and water, and in one section, there's even reportedly an underground lake. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Vietnam veteran's last words before execution after 47 years on death row MORE: M&S is the official tailor of the England Football team and we're obsessed with the latest formalwear MORE: Bombing for democracy? You must be joking, says reader
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Longtime Southern California NASA engineer, space mission manager dies at 92
John R. Casani, a longtime Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, project manager and researcher, died at the age of 92 last week. Casani served a central role in many of NASA's historic deep space missions, the space agency said in a statement. Born in Philadelphia in 1932, Casani studied electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at an Air Force research lab before he moved to SoCal to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, way back in 1956, two years before NASA itself was formed. He went on to become an engineer on some of America's earliest spacecraft after initially working on missiles. He worked on the design team for the Ranger and Mariner series of spacecraft and was a payload engineer on Pioneer 3 and 4 – NASA's first two missions to the moon; he was tasked with the very important job of carrying each of the 20-inch probes in a suitcase from JPL to the launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where he installed them in the rocket's nose cone. By the time the mid 1960s rolled around, Casani had established himself as a 'meticulous' worker and started working on the design team for the Mariner project. Shortly after, he helped lead NASA's flagship mission to the outer planets and beyond: Voyager, which is still active today. 'He not only led the mission from clean room to space, he was first to envision attaching a message representing humanity to any alien civilization that might encounter humanity's first interstellar emissaries,' NASA's statement reads. LAPD: Kidnapping call leads to discovery of federal operation in downtown L.A. Casani presented that idea to famed astronomer Carl Sagan, who ended up making the 'Golden Record,' a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on earth, according to NASA. Voyager 1 and 2 both launched in 1977, meaning that Casani – described as 'an engineer's engineer' — was quickly shuttled to the Galileo team, the first mission to orbit a gas giant planet. He led the project from inception to assembly while navigating several attempts by Congress to end the project. After leading Galileo for 11 years, Casani became a deputy assistant laboratory director for flight projects in 1988 before being promoted just over a year later to serve as project manager of Cassini, which was NASA's flagship mission to orbit Saturn. He was then named as JPL's first chief engineer in 1994, a role in which he served for five years before retiring, temporarily. In retirement, Casani served on several committees and helped conduct investigations into the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander failures. He also led the James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel. Probationer caught with 400 pounds of illegal fireworks at business complex By 2003, however, Casani was back at JPL serving as project manager for Project Prometheus, which was the first attempt at nuclear-powered systems for long-range missions. The project was canceled in 2005. After the cancelation of Prometheus, Casani was appointed as the manager of the Institutional Special Projects Office at JPL, which was a position he held until his second retirement in 2012. '[John's] work helped advance NASA spacecraft in areas including mechanical technology, system design and integration, software and deep space communication,' NASA's statement reads. 'No less demanding were the management challenges of these multifaceted missions, which led to innovations still in use today.' Charles Elachi, the JPL director from 2001 through 2016, said Casani 'reflected the true spirit of JPL.' 'He was bold, innovative, visionary and welcoming,' Elachi said in the NASA statement. 'He was an undisputed leader with an upbeat, fun attitude and left an indelible mark on the laboratory and NASA. I am proud to have called him a friend.' Deputies find pair of burglars inside San Bernardino County home In addition to his impressive résumé, Casani received many awards throughout his long career, including NASA's Exceptional Achievement Medal and the Air and Space Museum Trophy for Lifetime Achievement. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Sapienza University of Rome. The 92-year-old, who died Thursday, is survived by his wife of 39 years, Lynn, and their five sons. A cause of death was not revealed. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
