Tag: NASA

February 19, 1943: Aerospace Engineer and Author Homer Hickam Born

Author Homer Hickam Jr. was born in Coalwood on February 19, 1943. After serving in Vietnam, he worked for NASA for 17 years as an aerospace engineer. During this time, he wrote his first book, Torpedo Junction. His second book, published in 1998, brought Hickam international acclaim.

Rocket Boys: A Memoir recalls Hickam’s childhood in McDowell County. The true story depicts the waning days of mining in Coalwood, where Hickam’s dad worked as a mine superintendent. Inspired by the 1950s space race, Hickam and five close friends from Big Creek High School build and launch rockets from an abandoned coal dump they name “Cape Coalwood.” Their study of amateur rocketry then earns the boys the top prize at the 1960 National Science Fair.

The bestseller was picked as one of the New York Times’s ‘‘Great Books of 1998’’ and was nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as the Best Biography of the year. The following year, Rocket Boys was turned into the hit movie October Sky.

Hickam followed up Rocket Boys with another popular memoir entitled The Coalwood Way and has since written a series of novels.

West Virginia State University Honors NASA Mathematician

West Virginia State University has honored NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson with a bronze statue and scholarship dedication on the eve of her 100th birthday.

Six of Johnson’s grandchildren revealed the statue during a ceremony Saturday on the West Virginia State campus in Institute.

The university also awarded a scholarship in Johnson’s name to two students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math.

Johnson turned 100 on Sunday. She graduated from the school in 1937 at age 18 with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and French.

Johnson and three other women crunched numbers at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. They worked in the pre-computer age, calculating rocket trajectories and orbits for the earliest American space flights.

Johnson was featured in the book and 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”

Lewisburg Natives Receive 'Living the Dream' Award for Honoring Medal of Freedom Winner

The Martin Luther King, Jr. State Holiday Commission honored Lewisburg natives Pamela Barry and Neely Seams with the “Living the Dream” award this year.

The two wrote and performed a powerful monologue that honored another notable West Virginia native, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson. Johnson is an African-American whose work in mathematics was critical to NASA’s moon landing.

The award was in the area of “Sharing of Self – Selfless Leadership in the Public and Private Sector.”

Pamela Barry and Neely Seams wrote and performed the monologue on Johnson’s life for the 2017 Greenbrier Historical Society Homes Tour Weekend. 

The Commission said in a news release the script and performance “provide inspiration to minorities, women, and those considering careers in science and math.”

The Commission noted the monologue will be presented to all high school students in Greenbrier, Monroe, and Pocahontas Counties in March.

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She is a native of White Sulphur Springs.

Marshall Team Involved in Eclipse Balloon Project

Some Marshall University students and faculty will participate in a project to launch high-altitude balloons during next week’s solar eclipse.

Marshall says the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium chose the team to launch a helium-filled balloon next Monday in southern Illinois. The balloon will carry a video camera and other equipment to an altitude of up to 100,000 feet. The live video feed will be available on NASA’s website.

The statement says 55 teams are participating across the United States. The Marshall team chose the remote site near Cobden, Illinois, in part because it’s in the area of the total eclipse.

Marshall associate physics professor Jon Saken also says he grew up in Cobden and his parents still live in the same house, so his team will have a free place to stay.

Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope Dedicated: August 25, 2000

On August 25, 2000, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope was dedicated at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Pocahontas County. At 16-million pounds, it’s the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope.

Its accuracy is so precise it’s like seeing the width of a human hair from six feet away. The telescope’s 2,004 panels are mounted on actuators, little motor-driven pistons that adjust the shape of the surface.

The telescope replaced an earlier 300-foot meridian transit telescope that operated from 1961 until collapsing in 1988.

Green Bank—located in a beautiful pastoral setting—was chosen to host the National Radio Astronomy Observatory because of its low population, lack of industrial development, and surrounding mountains, which shield it from radio interference. The observatory opened in 1959. The next year, noted astronomer Frank Drake launched the NASA Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, at Green Bank.

In January 2016, a new project was started to search nearby stars for radio emissions that might indicate intelligent life. This 10-year, $100 million initiative is led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

NASA Analyst in West Virginia on Jupiter Spacecraft Team

A West Virginia-based NASA analyst with expertise in software has contributed to the Juno spacecraft’s five-year, 1.8 billion-mile trip to Jupiter.

The solar-powered spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit Monday, last leg of a $1.1 billion mission to gather scientific data and photograph the giant planet.

Sam Brown, an analyst for NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, said he worked on the project while dividing his time between his West Virginia office and facilities in California and Colorado.

He told the Charleston Gazette-Mail Friday that he sought to find and fix any bugs with the spacecraft’s critical operating software.

“We find things that may be problems in the future, we point them out and they get fixed,” Brown told the paper.

Fairmont’s NASA facility opened in 1993.

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