This is the first monthly newsletter from the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.  We thought long and hard before starting this, so we have a pretty good idea of what we are doing and why.  Our conviction is that the faculty and students in the center are doing great things that their friends and colleagues would like to know about; attending meetings, publishing papers, submitting proposals and receiving grants and so on.  We hope that by highlighting them this way we will encourage interaction between each other and appreciation of each other.  The newsletter will also be a vehicle to announce meetings and seminars, and generally share news of interest.  I am grateful to Mark Penrose for taking on the duty of editing and producing this publication for us.

The space center is a little over two years old now, and making the transition from seed funds to permanent funds.  It is a difficult transition that many centers do not make.  We have many irons in the fire to support our efforts and we are grateful to the Universities, both UArk and OSU, for supporting them.  We are also transitioning from start-up mode in our center-based research programs, the Andromeda environmental chamber is on-line for instance, and we are making progress in our efforts to create graduate programs in space and planetary science.  These are complicated matters that of necessity involve lots of colleagues and we are grateful to them all for their efforts.  So please cast a glance over our newsletter, and share some of the excitement, and if you have items to contribute please do not hesitate to send them to us.

Derek Sears, Director

Dr. Sears,
Thank you for your kind words and for the opportunity to share a few thoughts about recent events.

I have been working for NASA for about eighteen years now and I worked for McDonnell Douglas and Hughes Aircraft for six years prior to that after I graduated from the UofA.  In the 24 years I’ve worked in the space business, I have witnessed many significant events— some happy, some sad.

I saw the space shuttle Columbia land in California after its very first flight.  To witness the first landing of a spaceplane returning from orbit with 500,000 other screaming space nuts was one of the high points of my life.  Another was
working graveyard shift on the very first Spacelab mission in the Huntsville, Alabama operations center.  Coming to Kennedy Space Center in Florida and working with the team that prepared science experiments for flight aboard the subsequent Spacelabs was an honor that lasted for close to fifteen years.

Certainly the saddest points in my career were witnessing the Challenger explode in the sky right outside my office and now the loss of the Columbia.  We attended a memorial service today where many good and kind words were spoken by many distinguished speakers, but the real power of the service was to be standing there on the shuttle landing strip on the exact spot where the Columbia would have come rest.  When the T-38’s came roaring overhead, right down the center of the strip and one peeled off straight up out of sight in the missing when many a tear was shed.

One thing I have learned, though, from the Challenger and from other tragedies, is that we won’t stop.  We are still going to explore our home solar system and beyond and we are still going to have the support of the nation and we are still going to find many fine energetic starry-eyed engineers, scientists, workers of all skills showing up at our doorstep asking how they can help with this great endeavor.  I feel so privileged to be able to participate in this monumental exploration of space.  I feel so privileged to be able to work every day with people of the caliber of the crew of Columbia.

I am grateful for all the thoughts and prayers of the faculty and students at the Arkansas-Oklahoma Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.

Thank You,
Jim

James E. Sudermann
Control Systems Analysis
NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida
(Jim graduated from UArk with a BSEE in 1978.)

John graduated from a rural Arkansas high school in 1991 in a class of 21 students.  He received a scholarship from both the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas Academy of Mechanical engineers.

In college he worked three 6-month cooperative education tours at the Arkansas Nuclear One in Russelleville, Arkansas John graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1997 with a BSME specializing in thermal and fluid system studies.  He joined Swales Aerospace as a thermal systems engineer in early 1998.  Projects that he worked on include EO-1, Triana, EOS Aura MLS instrument and flight operations for the HEAT payload on STS-IOS and EOS Aqua.

In June 2002, John visited the center and gave a talk to students on what a career in the aerospace industry can offer.  He also went over the near and long-term trends in the aerospace industry.

Victor Baker is Regents’ Professor and Head of the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

His lecture will focus on recent data from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecraft that have revealed startling evidence that water has been active in shaping portions of the martian surface within the last few million years.  Dr. Baker will show that this new data includes evidence for extensive near-surface ice at high latitudes, gully erosion and debris flows, ponding of water in temporary lakes, modification of terrain by subsurface ice, and the outburst of megafloods, which are closely related to volcanic eruptive processes.  Finally, he will discuss the profound importance this hydrological activity is to the planning of future missions to Mars for planetary exploration, including the search for fossil or extant life, and the eventual human presence on the planet.