Rita Owens: Keeper of NASA’s Digital Knowledge

Name: Rita Owens

Formal Job Classification: Data Systems Engineer

Organization: Data Steward, Data Stewardship and Governance

Information, Data, & Analytics Services (IDAS)

Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)

(Detailed to IDAS/OCIO from GSFC Code 565, Engineering and Technology Directorate)

What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? 

As a data systems engineer, I support Data Governance and Stewardship under Data and Analytics Services with evaluation of data cataloging solutions and manage implementation of data governance, stewardship policies and data catalog. I enjoy working and gaining experience with other professionals in various information technology specialties at other NASA centers.

What is your educational background?

My favorite subjects in high school were math, science, and art. While in high school, I went to a summer camp at the Rochester Institute of Technology to learn about STEM careers. I chose engineering because women were in high demand in this male-dominated field for diversity, and it also offered plenty of job opportunities. I majored in undeclared engineering during my freshman year at RIT. I met with an advisor at RIT to discuss my major of study and he suggested electrical engineering because of the technical advances, the increasing importance of electronics, and the amount of math involved. He gave a good example of a mechanical typewriter becoming an electronic typewriter. 

I graduated from RIT with a BS degree in electrical engineering in 1993. Also, I got a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1998 while working for NASA.

Why did you come to Goddard? 

In 1991, while a student at RIT, I participated in a summer internship program at Goddard that was sponsored by Gallaudet University. I thought it was an exciting opportunity to work for NASA near my home in Maryland. I developed and implemented several programs for an image compression project at the Flight Data Systems Branch.

The next fall and then the following summer, I participated in a co-op program and assisted with the power supply designs for spacecraft in the Space Power Applications Branch at Goddard. I was offered a permanent position at that branch early before I graduated in 1993. I was excited and accepted that offer immediately.

How does your detail to OCIO help with NASA’s digital transformation? 

Digital transformation helps NASA’s people by improving data quality, accessibility, and security. We are transforming how NASA operates by using our own digital capabilities to be smarter about storing and managing knowledge. NASA has learned a lot and built a valuable collection of information, so curating, securing, and organizing that information is an important and satisfying responsibility.

It makes everyone’s job easier and more efficient and aligns with NASA’s goals – discovering and expanding knowledge for the benefit of humanity. Since last year, I have been gaining experience and developing skills in IT and software areas such as data systems, visualization tools, and web development.

After working over 30 years at Goddard, what are some of your most memorable moments?

In my earlier career, I designed and developed power supplies for electrical power systems on a variety of spacecraft that have flown in space. Specifically, I worked with the power and switching distribution units for spacecraft instruments such as the Suzaku mission’s X-ray Spectrometer, Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.   

I also have done digital designs and technical documentation for many spacecraft missions such as space shuttle Hitchhiker payloads, the James Webb Space Telescope, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, ICESat-2, and others. 

Building hardware to help scientists reach their goals and seeing successful launches of our spacecraft into orbit and the solar system made me feel very proud.

What is some of the most important advice your mentors have given you? 

A former director of the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate encouraged us to leave our comfort zones and learn new things to broaden our horizons and increase our skill base. He did not want us to get stuck in a rut and encouraged us to work outside our branch. I started in the Power Systems branch and then worked in several other branches doing digital electronics designs and many other projects including research and development. I am now in software development and IT. I worked in a lot of different areas that expanded my skills, showed me how things are done in different areas, and gave me a broader view.

As a mentor, what advice do you give?

I would advise students to get work experience in different areas of their major study to find what they feel is the best fit. A co-op would be a good way to go because they can work while in college which helps them select the right field. RIT required us to do co-ops as part of our undergraduate program in engineering. So, my work experience in several different engineering fields in both the private industry and government as co-ops helped lead me to the right career field. Take advantage of internships and co-ops. 

Are you involved with any of Goddard’s Employee Resources Groups (ERGs)?

Over 10 years ago, I was the chair of the Equal Accessibility Advisory Committee (EAAC). Advisory committees are now called employee resources groups. When I was a chair of the People with Disabilities Advisory Committee, it was quite small. I proposed to change the name of the committee to equal accessibility for a more positive image as we need to focus on accessibility instead of disabilities. It did help grow our popularity at Goddard. I also proposed expanding our EAAC community for more diversity to include those with non-disability health conditions such as diabetes and bipolar depression. As a result, many more employees joined our committee, including several managers. I also arranged many events to raise disability awareness, such as the employees with disabilities panel and etiquette workshops.

I am currently the co-chair of the Equal Accessibility ERG. I would like to see all employees continue to have equal accessibility in the workplace. So, I encourage Goddard to help break down all the barriers for everyone to become more productive at work, to support NASA’s goals more effectively. I also attempt to raise awareness of employees with disabilities and health conditions and their accommodations while helping educate the Goddard community through events such as American Sign Language (ASL) Brown Bag sessions and Disability & Health Awareness presentations and workshops such as Suicide Awareness, Deaf Awareness and Etiquette, Recruiting People with Disabilities Workshop, etc. We hope to educate everyone at Goddard about how to interact effectively with and be inclusive of people with disabilities.

I recently gave a presentation to our center director about some of our accomplishments and our plans for the coming year. I mentioned some of the challenges that employees with disabilities face including barriers at the workplace.

I also serve as part of the Goddard Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Implementation Team. The team is assisting in the development of the DEIA Implementation Plan that aligns with the NASA DEIA Strategic Plan. Also, I support Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP) as a recruiter for candidates with disabilities and attend job fairs as part of the disability recruitment efforts at NASA Headquarters.

Also, I serve as an area vice president of the Goddard Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians Association (GESTA) under the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 29. In that role, I advocate for STEM professionals and assist in improving our workplace.

What are some of the personal challenges you have faced?

When I started at Goddard, another deaf engineer and I brought up the need for expanded American Sign Language interpreting services for our heavily technical work. The center director at the time decided to allow me and other deaf engineers to develop our statement of work and choose the best interpreting service, since we knew exactly what we needed. We now have a much more robust interpreting services contract. That made a huge difference to our careers. 

What advice would you give to a manager of someone with disabilities?

Managers need to listen, communicate well, and be open-minded with a positive attitude toward those of us with disabilities or health conditions. Also, I encourage managers to take training in reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities for inclusion as well as provide plenty of work opportunities to everyone equally for their career growth. 

Managers should ask employees with disabilities to find out what accommodations they need and give them equal opportunities for growth in their careers. They should give the employees plenty of work opportunities to advance their careers, too. 

What do you do for fun?

I used to love making oil paintings of landscapes and florals. I go to paint nights sometimes with friends and family. I also enjoy traveling with my family and learning new things with them in other countries. It is fun exposing my three children to different cultures. Also, I love doing outdoor adventures such as hiking and cycling. 

Also, someday I would love to go to a launch and watch it live as I have never been to one!

Is there anyone you would like to thank?

I would like to thank my mom, who was my role model. She balanced a family with a career as a physician. I was so amazed at all her successes, and she was also my best friend. She encouraged me to be independent as a career professional and cherish family values.  

What is your “six-word memoir”? A six-word memoir describes something in just six words.

Independent. Determined. Persistent. Creative. Inquisitive. Mom. 

Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.

By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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New Patterns in Mars’s Clouds Revealed by Volunteers

The first journal article about clouds identified by participants of the Cloudspotting on Mars project has been accepted for publication and is now available online! The article, “The Cloudspotting on Mars citizen science project: Seasonal and spatial cloud distributions observed by the Mars Climate Sounder” will appear in a special issue of Icarus titled “MRO: 16 Years at Mars”. MRO is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Climate Sounder is an instrument on MRO. 

The paper shows several cloud maps, illustrating times and regions where many clouds were identified. The maps reveal several key cloud populations identified in data from the volunteers. The cloud populations include high-altitude CO2-ice clouds, clouds that form near the poles, and dusty-season water-ice clouds. The structure of the clouds follows the pattern of “thermal tides” in the atmosphere, which are global-scale oscillations in temperature. Where temperatures are lower than average, clouds are more common. 

The paper also explains the motivation for the project and describes its setup on Zooniverse. It digs into the details of how cloud identifications made by participants were turned into a cloud catalog using machine learning. “Thank you to all the Cloudspotting on Mars participants for driving this research forward!” said project PI Dr. Marek Slipski, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet propulsion Laboratory.

There’s plenty more to study in this dataset and there are more images online to analyze: the second Mars Year of data is only about 50% done. The data from the second Mars year will help reveal how changing dust conditions affect cloud formation. If you’d like to join the search for clouds in the Martian atmosphere, head to https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marek-slipski/cloudspotting-on-mars.

NASA’s Citizen Science Program:
Learn about NASA citizen science projects

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Six Rules for Surviving in a Government Organization

An interview of Dr. Paul Hertz, a senior leader in the Science Mission Directorate

By: Anna Ladd McElhannon, Summer 2022 Intern, Office of the Chief Scientist

Dr. Paul Hertz is a leader of NASA and had served as the Astrophysics Division Director since 2012 until 2022. Throughout his career, he remained a well‐respected and admired leader who accomplished things that an undergraduate physics student like me could only dream of.  

We met for the first time on a summer day full of sudden, fierce storms. On the way to a quiet meeting place (a video conference meeting, of course), the previously blue sky started pouring rain. I was surprised my laptop still worked when I finally came indoors. Paul, though, was sitting in his home office with a grin on his face, perfectly content to ignore my soaking shirt and dripping hair.  

Considering what I had been told, his easygoing kindness and immediate friendliness was no surprise.  

We started by bonding over our shared love for all things astrophysics. His passion began during the Apollo missions.  

“I remember John Glenn’s flight, and I must have been in second grade. From that point on, I was following everything that happened.” He would watch all the astronauts on TV, and he kept a scrapbook of any newspaper clippings he could find on the space program. “I remember when Armstrong walked and, my parents used to let me stay home from school whenever the astronauts were walking on the Moon.”

His passion for space did not end there. With undergraduate degrees in math and physics from MIT, he proceeded to earn his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard. Like most students going into the sciences, he assumed he would become a professor at a university. He realized, though, that professorship wasn’t the life for him. “I made a choice early on when I had young kids and a family, that I was going to have balance, and I wasn’t going to be a world‐famous scientist.”  

As a NASA intern interviewing the Paul Hertz, one of my newfound idols, I found this comment amusing. But the sentiment still stood. “I made the choice not to be a professor but to stay as a government scientist.”

Somehow, though, he was able to become a famous scientist with a prestigious job and still feel satisfied with his personal life. Naturally, I asked him for advice on how to obtain this sort of balance without letting either side of one’s life fall onto the backburner.  

He jumped at the opportunity to teach me these life lessons with a list of six rules he titled: How to Survive in a Government Organization.

6. Train your successor

When he first told me this rule, I applied it to my life. At my university, there is a Society of Physics Students. Every few years or so, we have incredible leadership that wins awards and involves students all over campus. Then the next election rolls around, and all the hard work dissipates. Paul says, “There’s all your institutional knowledge walking out the door every year.”  

“Train your successor” immediately propelled me into planning mode: how can we incorporate a system at my school where the previous leaders sufficiently train their successors every year?

Paul was happy about this application, but it wasn’t what he originally intended by the rule.  

“What I was thinking is that when people who are highly successful at their job start talking about getting another job, their boss says, ‘Sorry, you can’t go. I need you too badly.’”

As someone who has never worked in a similar system, I was appalled. Fortunately, this has not yet happened to him.

“I have been very successful in every job. I’ve had people around me say, ‘What are we going to do without you?… Nobody can replace you.’ I hate hearing that nobody can replace you because it’s patently untrue.”

Sometimes it turns out that the answer to your research is uninteresting. You realize, oh my‐ there was no ‘there’ there.

5. Delegate

“A lot of us competent people think that we can do it better than anybody else. And so we want to hold on to it and do it ourselves because we know it’ll be done best… I used to do everything myself, and I was bad at teaming. You’ll kill yourself that way.”

As the Director of Astrophysics at NASA, I assumed he would have to be the best of the best. Regardless, as he said before, there is always someone who could replace him. While this sounds a little sad, it can come as a relief to someone trying to find peace in their work life.

“People like that want to do the part of their job that they could easily hand off. They are overworked and overwhelmed because they want to do it all themselves. They think they can probably do it better— but that’s not the point.”

As Paul says, the point is to do your job efficiently and not perfectly.  

4.  Don’t Make Work

“A lot of times you get choices.” He began, “We could do it this way or that way, and this way is a lot more work.”  

Most bosses strive for perfection, but Paul understands how to balance perfection with importance. Asking, “How do I do it perfectly?” can cause problems and lead to employees feeling overworked.

[They say] ‘I’m just drowning.’  

[I say] ‘You only have three assignments. You’re making too much work, you’re not delegating, and it’s taking twice as long. Don’t do it this way.’

Paul believes that if you can make your project better by a small amount, but it takes twice the time, the extra mile just isn’t worth it.  “If it increased my chance of surviving surgery, then I would take that extra 10%.”  

If you’re level of perfection is plateauing over time, as it inevitably will, just accept it.

“If you insist on perfection… that’s making work.”

3. Don’t break it

“Don’t break it” was one of the first rules he came up with. It simply means “don’t make it worse.”

It goes hand in hand with “Don’t make work.” Sometimes people can be perfectionists to the point where it impacts their personal life, and sometimes it can impact their professional career as well. That is the secret to finding balance.

“People feel overwhelmed because they’re not practicing these rules… You keep them in mind and then you use them to help prioritize. You must have a feel for what’s the most important thing and then for what’s the most important thing to do very, very well.”

2. Don’t Take It Personally

“You should accept 90% of your projects are going to work.” He asserts, “You should not expect it to always go right. And you should keep it in context when failure happens.”  

That raises the question: what context?

It is difficult to imagine someone as successful as Paul to go through failure. But he has had his fair share of rough times in his own research. “Sometimes it turns out that the answer to your research is uninteresting. You realize, oh my ‐there was no ‘there’ there.”

Even when projects are cancelled, or someone else publishes their results before you can, your time isn’t waisted. There is a certain magic that comes with conducting scientific research, and it makes even failed projects worth the time and effort. “To me, the excitement is the hunt. It’s doing the research. It’s collecting the data and analyzing it. It’s looking for the signal that no one has ever seen before.”

…if something goes wrong, I’m going to hear about it. I want to hear about it from them—I want to hear their view on it and I want us to solve it together.

1. Don’t Surprise the Boss

“Somebody probably told me this rule when I showed up at NASA. You can Google it and find out that it was a rule back in the Roman Empire—or something like that.”

When asked how long he has considered himself a leader, he began at high school. “Every club that I joined, I ended up being president… I ended up being added to the yearbook. When I went to college, I was president of clubs. When I was a researcher, I put together collaborations to do research… I wasn’t a supervisor or boss, but I was a leader; that’s been true at all stops along my career.”

As for the importance of the number one rule, Paul says it’s important to be transparent so that issues can be solved quickly and efficiently. “I don’t want my team to sugarcoat things. I want them to tell me. If something goes wrong, I’m going to hear about it from someone. But, I want to hear about it from them—I want to hear their view on it, and I want us to solve it together.”

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Nighttime on the East Coast

While aboard the International Space Station on Oct. 26, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli captured the city lights of the northeastern United States and major urban areas including Long Island, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Washington, D.C. At the time of this photograph, the orbital lab was 262 miles above Maine. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets. To find out where the ISS is and when you can see it in your area, check out the Spot the Station site.

Image Credit: NASA/Jasmin Moghbeli

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NASA Flights Link Methane Plumes to Tundra Fires in Western Alaska

Methane ‘hot spots’ in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta are more likely to be found where recent wildfires burned into the tundra, altering carbon emissions from the land.

In Alaska’s largest river delta, tundra that has been scorched by wildfire is emitting more methane than the rest of the landscape long after the flames died, scientists have found. The potent greenhouse gas can originate from decomposing carbon stored in permafrost for thousands of years. Its release could accelerate climate warming and lead to more frequent wildfires in the tundra, where blazes have been historically rare.

The new study was conducted by a team of scientists working as part of NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), a large-scale study of environmental change in Alaska and Western Canada. Researchers found that methane hot spots were roughly 29% more likely to occur in tundra that had been scorched by wildfire in the past 50 years compared to unburned areas. The correlation nearly tripled in areas where a fire burned to the edge of a lake, stream, or other standing-water body. The highest ratio of hot spots occurred in recently burned wetlands.

The researchers first observed the methane hot spots using NASA’s next-generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG) in 2017. Mounted on the belly of a research plane, the instrument has an optical sensor that records the interaction of sunlight with molecules near the land surface and in the air, and it has been used to measure and monitor hazards ranging from oil spills to crop disease.

Roughly 2 million hot spots – defined as areas showing an excess of 3,000 parts per million of methane between the aircraft and the ground – were detected across some 11,583 square miles (30,000 square kilometers) of the Arctic landscape. Regionally, the number of hot spot detections in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta were anomalously high in 2018 surveys, but scientists didn’t know what was driving their formation.

Ice and Fire

To help fill this gap, Elizabeth Yoseph, an intern at the time with the ABoVE campaign, focused on a methane-active region located in a wet and peaty area of the massive delta. Yoseph and the team used the AVIRIS-NG data to pinpoint hot spots across more than 687 square miles (1,780 square kilometers), then overlaid their findings on historical wildfire maps.

“What we uncovered is a very clear and strong relationship between fire history and the distribution of methane hot spots,” said Yoseph, lead author of the new study.

The connection arises from what happens when fire burns into the carbon-rich frozen soil, or permafrost, that underlies the tundra. Permafrost sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and can store it for tens of thousands of years. But when it thaws and breaks down in wet areas, flourishing microbes feed on and convert that old carbon to methane gas. The saturated soils around lakes and wetlands are especially rich stocks of carbon because they contain large amounts of dead vegetation and animal matter.

“When fire burns into permafrost, there are catastrophic changes to the land surface that are different from a fire burning here in California, for example,” said Clayton Elder, co-author and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which developed AVIRIS-NG. “It’s changing something that was frozen to thawed, and that has a cascading impact on that ecosystem long after the fire.”

Rare but Increasing Risk

Because of the cool marshes, low shrubs, and grasses, tundra wildfires are relatively rare compared to those in other environments, such as evergreen-filled forests. However, by some projections the fire risk in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta could quadruple by the end of the century due to warming conditions and increased lightning storms – the leading cause of tundra fires. Two of the largest tundra fires on record in Alaska occurred in 2022, burning more than 380 square miles (100,000 hectares) of primarily tundra landscapes.

More research is needed to understand how a future of increasing blazes at high latitudes could impact the global climate. Arctic permafrost holds an estimated 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon – roughly 51 times the amount of carbon the world released as fossil fuel emissions in 2019.

All that stored carbon also means that the carbon intensity of fire emissions from burning tundra is extremely high, said co-author Elizabeth Hoy, a fire researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Tundra fires occur in areas that are remote and difficult to get to, and often can be understudied,” she noted. “Using satellites and airborne remote sensing is a really powerful way to better understand these phenomena.”

The scientists hope to continue exploring methane hot spots occurring throughout Alaska. Ground-based investigation is needed to better understand the links between fire, ice, and greenhouse gas emissions at the doorstep of the Arctic.

The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

News Media Contacts

Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Sally Younger

2023-159

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