NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star

This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

View this and many more images, as well as several videos, in an extensive multimedia gallery highlighting this discovery.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone ?’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”

Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone.

Credits: NASA

The TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it. This artist's concept appeared on the cover of the journal Nature on Feb. 23, 2017.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets.

This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system. Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.

The new results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature, and announced at a news briefing at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Using Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and developed first estimates of the masses of six of them, allowing their density to be estimated.

Based on their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces. The mass of the seventh and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated – scientists believe it could be an icy, "snowball-like" world, but further observations are needed.

"The seven wonders of TRAPPIST-1 are the first Earth-size planets that have been found orbiting this kind of star," said Michael Gillon, lead author of the paper and the principal investigator of the TRAPPIST exoplanet survey at the University of Liege, Belgium. "It is also the best target yet for studying the atmospheres of potentially habitable, Earth-size worlds."

This artist's concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In contrast to our sun, the TRAPPIST-1 star – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf – is so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun. The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth's sky.

The planets may also be tidally locked to their star, which means the same side of the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those on Earth, such as strong winds blowing from the day side to the night side, and extreme temperature changes.

Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. In the fall of 2016, Spitzer observed TRAPPIST-1 nearly continuously for 500 hours. Spitzer is uniquely positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing – transits – of the planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the system. Engineers optimized Spitzer’s ability to observe transiting planets during Spitzer’s “warm mission,” which began after the spacecraft’s coolant ran out as planned after the first five years of operations. 

"This is the most exciting result I have seen in the 14 years of Spitzer operations," said Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California. "Spitzer will follow up in the fall to further refine our understanding of these planets so that the James Webb Space Telescope can follow up. More observations of the system are sure to reveal more secrets.”

Following up on the Spitzer discovery, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has initiated the screening of four of the planets, including the three inside the habitable zone. These observations aim at assessing the presence of puffy, hydrogen-dominated atmospheres, typical for gaseous worlds like Neptune, around these planets.

This 360-degree panorama depicts the surface of a newly detected planet, TRAPPIST 1-d, part of a seven planet system some 40 light years away. Explore this artist’s rendering of an alien world by moving the view using your mouse or your mobile device.

Credits: NASA

In May 2016, the Hubble team observed the two innermost planets, and found no evidence for such puffy atmospheres. This strengthened the case that the planets closest to the star are rocky in nature.

"The TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets," said Nikole Lewis, co-leader of the Hubble study and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope also is studying the TRAPPIST-1 system, making measurements of the star's minuscule changes in brightness due to transiting planets. Operating as the K2 mission, the spacecraft's observations will allow astronomers to refine the properties of the known planets, as well as search for additional planets in the system. The K2 observations conclude in early March and will be made available on the public archive.

This poster imagines what a trip to TRAPPIST-1e might be like.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Spitzer, Hubble, and Kepler will help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone, and other components of a planet's atmosphere. Webb also will analyze planets' temperatures and surface pressures – key factors in assessing their habitability.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center, at Caltech, in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

For more information on the TRAPPIST-1 system, visit:

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/trappist1

For more information on exoplanets, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/exoplanets

-end-

Felicia Chou / Sean Potter

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 202-358-1536

felicia.chou@nasa.gov / sean.potter@nasa.gov

Elizabeth Landau

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-6425

elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Last Updated: Feb. 22, 2017

Editor: Karen Northon

Tags: Exoplanets, Spitzer Space Telescope

ORIGINAL: NASA

Feb. 22, 2017
RELEASE 17-015

Kate Rubins’ Space Station Science Scrapbook

As a child, Kate Rubins dreamed of being an astronaut and a scientist. During the past four months aboard the International Space Station, that dream came full circle. She became the first person to sequence DNA in space, among other research during her recent mission, adding to her already impressive experience. She holds a doctorate in molecular biology, and previously led a lab of 14 researchers studying viruses, including Ebola.

Here’s a look back at Rubins in her element, conducting research aboard your orbiting laboratory.

Kate inside Destiny, the U.S. Laboratory Module

Destiny houses the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG), in which Kate worked on the Heart Cells experiment.

The U.S. national laboratory, called Destiny, is the primary research laboratory for U.S. payloads, supporting a wide range of experiments and studies contributing to health, safety, and quality of life for people all over the world. 

Swabbing for Surface Samples

Microbes that can cause illness could present problems for current and future long duration space missions. 

Understanding what microbe communities thrive in space habitats could help researchers design antimicrobial technology. Here, Kate is sampling various surfaces of the Kibo module for the Microbe-IV investigation.

Culturing Beating Heart Cells in Space

The Heart Cells investigation uses human skin cells that are induced to become stem cells, which can then differentiate into any type of cell.

Researchers forced the stem cells to grow into human heart cells, which Rubins cultured aboard the space station for one month.

Rubins described seeing the heart cells beat for the first time as “pretty amazing. First of all, there’s a few things that have made me gasp out loud up on board the [space] station. Seeing the planet was one of them, but I gotta say, getting these cells in focus and watching heart cells actually beat has been another pretty big one.”

Innovative Applied Research Experiment from Eli Lilly

The Hard to Wet Surfaces investigation from Eli Lilly, and sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), looks at liquid-solid interactions and how certain pharmaceuticals dissolve, which may lead to more potent and effective medicines in space and on Earth. 

Rubins set up vials into which she injected buffer solutions and then set up photography to track how tablets dissolved in the solution in microgravity.

Capturing Dragon

Rubins assisted in the capture of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft in July. The ninth SpaceX resupply mission delivered more than two thousand pounds of science to the space station. 

Biological samples and additional research were returned on the Dragon spacecraft more than a month later. 

Sliding Science Outside the Station

Science doesn’t just happen inside the space station. External Earth and space science hardware platforms are located at various places along the outside of the orbiting laboratory. 

The Japanese Experiment Module airlock can be used to access the JEM Exposed Facility. Rubins installed the JEM ORU Transfer Interface (JOTI) on the JEM airlock sliding table used to install investigations on the exterior of the orbiting laboratory.

Installing Optical Diagnostic Instrument in the MSG

Rubins installed an optical diagnostic instrument in the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) as part of the Selective Optical Diagnostics Instrument (SODI-DCMIX) investigation. Molecules in fluids and gases constantly move and collide. 

When temperature differences cause that movement, called the Soret effect, scientists can track it by measuring changes in the temperature and movement of mass in the absence of gravity. Because the Soret effect occurs in underground oil reservoirs, the results of this investigation could help us better understand such reservoirs.

The Sequencing of DNA in Space

When Rubins’ expedition began, DNA had never been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team had sequenced their one billionth “base” – the unit of DNA - aboard the orbiting laboratory. 

The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation seeks to demonstrate that DNA sequencing in microgravity is possible, and adds to the suite of genomics capabilities aboard the space station.

The MinION™ DNA sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies fits in the palm of a hand.
Credits: Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Studying Fluidic Dynamics with SPHERES

The SPHERES-Slosh investigation examines the way liquids move inside containers in a microgravity environment. The phenomena and mechanics associated with such liquid movement are still not well understood and are very different than our common experiences with a cup of coffee on Earth.

Rockets deliver satellites to space using liquid fuels as a power source, and this investigation plans to improve our understanding of how propellants within rockets behave in order to increase the safety and efficiency of future vehicle designs. Rubins conducted a series of SPHERES-Slosh runs during her mission.

Retrieving Science Samples for Their Return to Earth

Precious science samples like blood, urine and saliva are collected from crew members throughout their missions aboard the orbiting laboratory. 

They are stored in the Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) until they are ready to return to Earth aboard a Soyuz or SpaceX Dragon vehicle.

Measuring Gene Expression of Biological Specimens in Space

Rubins ran several WetLab-2 RNA SmartCycler sessions during her mission.

Our WetLab-2 hardware system is bringing to the space station the technology to measure gene expression of biological specimens in space, and to transmit the results to researchers on Earth at the speed of light. 

Studying the First Expandable Habitat Module on the Space Station

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is the first expandable habitat to be installed on the space station. It was expanded on May 28, 2016. 

Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a spacecraft, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. Rubins conducted several evaluations inside BEAM, including air and surface sampling.

Better Breathing in Space and Back on Earth

Airway Monitoring, an investigation from ESA (the European Space Agency), uses the U.S. airlock as a hypobaric facility for performing science. Utilizing the U.S. airlock allows unique opportunities for the study of gravity, ambient pressure interactions, and their effect on the human body. 

This investigation studies the occurrence and indicators of airway inflammation in crew members, using ultra-sensitive gas analyzers to evaluate exhaled air. This could not only help in spaceflight diagnostics, but that also hold applications on earth within diagnostics of similar conditions, for example monitoring of asthma.

Hot Science with Cool Flames

Fire behaves differently in space, where buoyant forces are removed. Studying combustion in microgravity can increase scientists’ fundamental understanding of the process, which could lead to improvement of fire detection and suppression systems in space and on Earth. 

Many combustion experiments are performed in the Combustion Integration Rack (CIR) aboard the space station. Rubins replaced two Multi-user Droplet Combustion Apparatus (MDCA) Igniter Tips as part of the CIR igniter replacement operations.

Though Rubins is back on Earth, science aboard the space station continues, and innovative investigations that seek to benefit humans on Earth and further our exploration of the solar system are ongoing. Follow @ISS_Research to keep up with the science happening aboard your orbiting laboratory. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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ORIGINAL: NASA

558 notes Nov 3rd, 2016

Former NASA chief unveils $100 million neural chip maker KnuEdge

Add caption

It’s not all that easy to call KnuEdge a startup. Created a decade ago by Daniel Goldin, the former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, KnuEdge is only now coming out of stealth mode. It has already raised $100 million in funding to build a “neural chip” that Goldin says will make data centers more efficient in a hyperscale age.

Goldin, who founded the San Diego, California-based company with the former chief technology officer of NASA, said he believes the company’s brain-like chip will be far more cost and power efficient than current chips based on the computer design popularized by computer architect John von Neumann. In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus. Over the years, von Neumann machines have gotten faster by sending more and more data at higher speeds across the bus as processor and memory interact. But the speed of a computer is often limited by the capacity of that bus, leading to what some computer scientists to call the “von Neumann bottleneck.” IBM has seen the same problem, and it has a research team working on brain-like data center chips. Both efforts are part of an attempt to deal with the explosion of data driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Goldin’s company is doing something similar to IBM, but only on the surface. Its approach is much different, and it has been secretly funded by unknown angel investors. And Goldin said in an interview with VentureBeat that the company has already generated $20 million in revenue and is actively engaged in hyperscale computing companies and Fortune 500 companies in the aerospace, banking, health care, hospitality, and insurance industries. The mission is a fundamental transformation of the computing world, Goldin said.

“It all started over a mission to Mars,” Goldin said.

Above: KnuEdge’s first chip has 256 cores.Image Credit: KnuEdge

Back in the year 2000, Goldin saw that the time delay for controlling a space vehicle would be too long, so the vehicle would have to operate itself. He calculated that a mission to Mars would take software that would push technology to the limit, with more than tens of millions of lines of code.

Above: Daniel Goldin, CEO of KnuEdge.

Image Credit: KnuEdge

“I thought, holy smokes,” he said. “It’s going to be too expensive. It’s not propulsion. It’s not environmental control. It’s not power. This software business is a very big problem, and that nation couldn’t afford it.”

So Goldin looked further into the brains of the robotics, and that’s when he started thinking about the computing it would take.

Asked if it was easier to run NASA or a startup, Goldin let out a guffaw.

“I love them both, but they’re both very different,” Goldin said. “At NASA, I spent a lot of time on non-technical issues. I had a project every quarter, and I didn’t want to become dull technically. I tried to always take on a technical job doing architecture, working with a design team, and always doing something leading edge. I grew up at a time when you graduated from a university and went to work for someone else. If I ever come back to this earth, I would graduate and become an entrepreneur. This is so wonderful.”

Back in 1992, Goldin was planning on starting a wireless company as an entrepreneur. But then he got the call to “go serve the country,” and he did that work for a decade. He started KnuEdge (previously called Intellisis) in 2005, and he got very patient capital.

“When I went out to find investors, I knew I couldn’t use the conventional Silicon Valley approach (impatient capital),” he said. “It is a fabulous approach that has generated incredible wealth. But I wanted to undertake revolutionary technology development. To build the future tools for next-generation machine learning, improving the natural interface between humans and machines. So I got patient capital that wanted to see lightning strike. Between all of us, we have a board of directors that can contact almost anyone in the world. They’re fabulous business people and technologists. We knew we had a ten-year run-up.”

But he’s not saying who those people are yet.

KnuEdge’s chips are part of a larger platform. KnuEdge is also unveiling KnuVerse, a military-grade voice recognition and authentication technology that unlocks the potential of voice interfaces to power next-generation computing, Goldin said.

While the voice technology market has exploded over the past five years due to the introductions of Siri, Cortana, Google Home, Echo, and ViV, the aspirations of most commercial voice technology teams are still on hold because of security and noise issues. KnuVerse solutions are based on patented authentication techniques using the human voice — even in extremely noisy environments — as one of the most secure forms of biometrics. Secure voice recognition has applications in industries such as banking, entertainment, and hospitality.

KnuEdge says it is now possible to authenticate to computers, web and mobile apps, and Internet of Things devices (or everyday objects that are smart and connected) with only a few words spoken into a microphone — in any language, no matter how loud the background environment or how many other people are talking nearby. In addition to KnuVerse, KnuEdge offers Knurld.io for application developers, a software development kit, and a cloud-based voice recognition and authentication service that can be integrated into an app typically within two hours.

And KnuEdge is announcing KnuPath with LambdaFabric computing. KnuEdge’s first chip, built with an older manufacturing technology, has 256 cores, or neuron-like brain cells, on a single chip. Each core is a tiny digital signal processor. The LambdaFabric makes it possible to instantly connect those cores to each other — a trick that helps overcome one of the major problems of multicore chips, Goldin said. The LambdaFabric is designed to connect up to 512,000 devices, enabling the system to be used in the most demanding computing environments. From rack to rack, the fabric has a latency (or interaction delay) of only 400 nanoseconds. And the whole system is designed to use a low amount of power.

All of the company’s designs are built on biological principles about how the brain gets a lot of computing work done with a small amount of power. The chip is based on what Goldin calls “sparse matrix heterogeneous machine learning algorithms.” And it will run C++ software, something that is already very popular. Programmers can program each one of the cores with a different algorithm to run simultaneously, for the “ultimate in heterogeneity.” It’s multiple input, multiple data, and “that gives us some of our power,” Goldin said.

Above: KnuEdge’s KnuPath chip.

Image Credit: KnuEdge

“KnuEdge is emerging out of stealth mode to aim its new Voice and Machine Learning technologies at key challenges in IoT, cloud based machine learning and pattern recognition,” said Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research, in a statement. “Dan Goldin used his experience in transforming technology to charter KnuEdge with a bold idea, with the patience of longer development timelines and away from typical startup hype and practices. The result is a new and cutting-edge path for neural computing acceleration. There is also a refreshing surprise element to KnuEdge announcing a relevant new architecture that is ready to ship… not just a concept or early prototype.”

Today, Goldin said the company is ready to show off its designs. The first chip was ready last December, and KnuEdge is sharing it with potential customers. That chip was built with a 32-nanometer manufacturing process, and even though that’s an older technology, it is a powerful chip, Goldin said. Even at 32 nanometers, the chip has something like a two-times to six-times performance advantage over similar chips, KnuEdge said.

“The human brain has a couple of hundred billion neurons, and each neuron is connected to at least 10,000 to 100,000 neurons,” Goldin said. “And the brain is the most energy efficient and powerful computer in the world. That is the metaphor we are using.”

KnuEdge has a new version of its chip under design. And the company has already generated revenue from sales of the prototype systems. Each board has about four chips.

As for the competition from IBM, Goldin said, “I believe we made the right decision and are going in the right direction. IBM’s approach is very different from what we have. We are not aiming at anyone. We are aiming at the future.”

In his NASA days, Goldin had a lot of successes. There, he redesigned and delivered the International Space Station, tripled the number of space flights, and put a record number of people into space, all while reducing the agency’s planned budget by 25 percent. He also spent 25 years at TRW, where he led the development of satellite television services.

KnuEdge has 100 employees, but Goldin said the company outsources almost everything. Goldin said he is planning to raised a round of funding late this year or early next year. The company collaborated with the University of California at San Diego and UCSD’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

With computers that can handle natural language systems, many people in the world who can’t read or write will be able to fend for themselves more easily, Goldin said.

“I want to be able to take machine learning and help people communicate and make a living,” he said. “This is just the beginning. This is the Wild West. We are talking to very large companies about this, and they are getting very excited.”

A sample application is a home that has much greater self-awareness. If there’s something wrong in the house, the KnuEdge system could analyze it and figure out if it needs to alert the homeowner.

Goldin said it was hard to keep the company secret.

“I’ve been biting my lip for ten years,” he said.

As for whether KnuEdge’s technology could be used to send people to Mars, Goldin said. “This is available to whoever is going to Mars. I tried twice. I would love it if they use it to get there.”

ORIGINAL: Venture Beat

New Horizons' Best Close-Up of Pluto's Surface

This is the most detailed view of Pluto’s terrain you’ll see for a very long time. This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe. (Be sure to zoom in for maximum detail.) With a resolution of about 260 feet (80 meters) per pixel, the mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.

“This new image product is just magnetic,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “It makes me want to go back on another mission to Pluto and get high-resolution images like these across the entire surface.”

The view extends from the “limb” of Pluto at the top of the strip, almost to the “terminator” (or day/night line) in the southeast of the encounter hemisphere, seen below. The width of the strip ranges from more than 55 miles (90 kilometers) at its northern end to about 45 miles (75 kilometers) at its southern point. The perspective changes greatly along the strip: at its northern end, the view looks out horizontally across the surface, while at its southern end, the view looks straight down onto the surface.

This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe. 

Note: video is silent/no audio.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

This movie moves down the mosaic from top to bottom, offering new views of many of Pluto’s distinct landscapes along the way. Starting with

• hummocky, cratered uplands at top, the view crosses over 
• parallel ridges of “washboard” terrain, 
• chaotic and angular mountain ranges, 
• cellular plains, 
• coarsely “pitted” areas of sublimating nitrogen ice, 
• zones of thin nitrogen ice draped over the topography below, and 
• dark mountainous highlands scarred by deep pits.

The pictures in the mosaic were obtained by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) approximately 9,850 miles (15,850 kilometers) from Pluto, about 23 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

ORIGINAL: NASA
By Tricia Talbert. Editor
May 27, 2016

The Incredible Story of NASA’s Forgotten ‘Rocket Girls’

Tracking lunar missions with the troublesome IBM 704 in 1959 -- the punch cards were for programming.

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH)

Looking back, the technology that put man on the moon seems incredibly basic. In the early days of space exploration, when electronic computers weren’t reliable and cutting-edge calculators could barely do basic functions, nearly all of the math was done by hand. Women — underpaid, overworked, and ultimately forgotten by even the institution they served — did most of it.

Nathalia Holt, a science writer and microbiologist, stumbled upon their stories almost by fate.

Five years ago, like any good 21st century parent, she googled a prospective baby name — Eleanor Frances — and stumbled upon a picture of a woman named Eleanor Frances Helin accepting an award at NASA in the 1960s.

“I just remember just staring at this picture completely stunned. I have a PhD in Microbiology, and I consider myself very well-versed in the contributions of women scientists, but I had never heard of women working in NASA at this era, much less as scientists, and I really wanted to learn more,” Holt told ThinkProgress over the phone.

The Computers, 1953-
CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH)

 Holt’s research led her to an entire group of women who worked as human computers throughout the history of space exploration. Although her first inkling came through a fortuitous internet search, finding the whole story took painstaking digging. Even NASA’s archives had forgotten them. Using old photo captions that identified just one or two names in big groups of women, Holt cold called scores of women until she connected with the right ones. I had never heard of women working in NASA at this era, much less as scientists, and I really wanted to learn more.

The stories these women told her formed the basis of her new book, Rise of the Rocket Girls.

In it, Holt chronicles women’s central role in what we now think of as the key accomplishments in space exploration, and their lives as computers in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

These women took math classes for fun though it was considered impractical for a woman. They competed against each other in speed-calculation contests. They hid their pregnancies and hoarded their vacation time so they could come back to work after having children. They worked alongside famous figures like Carl Sagan, Wernher von Braun, and Richard Feynman, and they were ultimately essential to the discoveries that made those men household names.

Yet when NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first American satellite, the agency forgot to invite the women — living mere miles away — who were in the room when it happened.

Rise of the Rocket Girls unveils this forgotten history with nuance and insight, weaving in personal details about friendships, marriage, and motherhood with the technical problems these women solved, such as exactly how much fuel a rocket needed and how much would make it explode. And as the share of women graduating with technical degrees continues to plateau — and, in some cases, plummet — Holt’s book is an important reminder of how women’s work has been essential to advances in science and technology all along.

ThinkProgress spoke to Holt about the stories in her book, how JPL built and maintained such a strong group of female scientists, and the role of women in science and tech.

One thing that struck me is that in between all the details about JPL and all the science details, you really weave in a lot of detail about their personal lives. Is there a particular reason you felt like that was important?

In the beginning, I didn’t want to talk about their personal lives at all. I felt it would take away from what they did professionally, and from the contributions scientifically, and I worried if I talked too much about their personal lives it would undermine the contributions they had made.

Ultimately, I decided I wouldn’t be honoring their legacy if I didn’t tell the full story. Luckily, because this is a book, I had the space to tell both their scientific contributions and their personal lives. The reason I felt it was really important is because they were able to accomplish these incredibly long careers at a time when women with children did not typically work outside the home — so what they accomplished was really unique. They were able to do it because of very specific institutional dynamics and very specific ways that they were able to manage their personal lives as well, and I do think it’s a very powerful message for women today to hear.

The computers at work, 1955. Helen Ling is sitting at the second desk, left side. Barbara Lewis (Paulson) is on the phone at the back, and Macie Roberts is standing on the right side near the window.
CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

And you know, even the title is something that I gave a lot of thought about as well. I worried about putting “girls” in the title. Ultimately, I decided that it was a fitting title because this is what they called themselves. They actually called themselves the girls, Helen’s girls. The name that they didn’t like was computresses. That was the name that was really despised among the group.

That’s so funny, because isn’t that what they were? They were computers?

Yes they were, they were officially computers. And that name was fine. Computresses was the name they didn’t like. But yes, talking about their personal lives was not something that I did lightly, it’s something that I gave a lot of thought to.

Some parts of your book to me seemed like a very strong articulation for the importance of paid family leave, or just family leave at all. I was really struck by when — I believe it was Barbara Paulson — applied for a closer parking lot because she was pregnant and the administrators said, “Oh, you’re pregnant, you can’t work here anymore!” At that point she was an important manager, and they lost an important part of their team.

Barbara (Lewis) Paulson receiving her ten-year pin 

from Bill Pickering in 1959

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Yes, that was very upsetting. I mean this would happen quite often, that the women would hide their pregnancies as long as they could because, well, while the men and women they worked with didn’t care that they were pregnant, it was the administrators that would say no, this is an insurance liability and would immediately fire you that day, you had to leave the lab.

And when you were fired there was no maternity leave, so your job wasn’t waiting for you when you came back. That scene with Barbara, it was just so heartbreaking to hear her describe what that was like, and how hurtful that was for her. Luckily she was able to come back after having kids and had a very long career at the lab.

Why did you choose to focus specifically on the women at JPL, and how did JPL end up with such a strong female cohort, when other teams — NASA for example — doesn’t seem to have retained that diversity?

I chose the women at JPL because it was such a unique group. It started out with a married couple who were the first computers who worked at JPL, and then eventually — at that point there were still men and women who were working as computers — a woman was promoted to supervisor of the computers in 1942.

Her name was Macie Roberts, and she decided that she wanted to make the team all female. Her reasons for this were that she wanted it to be a cohesive group, she wanted it to feel like a family, and she worried that if she hired a man he simply wouldn’t listen to her. So she hired all women, and even her successor hired women as well. The strength they had in that group is really quite remarkable. They were really able to create their own culture at JPL

This wasn’t the same at other NASA centers. Of course, there were other computers that worked at other NASA centers and many of them were women, especially the ones that were hired during WWII when there was a shortage of men. But what I found that was quite sad at the other NASA centers was that once IBMs (electronic computers) came in, the women who worked as computers lost their jobs.

And so, I really loved the stories of the women at JPL because that didn’t happen to them. Instead they are the ones who became the first computer programmers. They became the engineers in the lab and just had these remarkable careers because of it.

At one point, you said it became the official rule that everybody who was hired had to have an engineering degree. At that time, they had all these women working there that — some of them didn’t even have bachelor’s degrees. As this was in the 70s and engineering programs weren’t yet letting in women, in a way it just set the diversity back.

Yes, this was a really critical time. I feel like that was happening not just at JPL but in labs all over the world, because you had this critical moment where degrees were becoming vital to have a job. But, so many of these engineering programs didn’t admit women yet. But at JPL, the women — even though many of them didn’t even have bachelor’s degrees, some of them did, some of them even had master’s degrees — but they were grandfathered in as engineers.

Helen Ling working on Mariner 2, 1962-

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

One story I really love is Helen Ling, who was a very long-time supervisor of the computing section. She took over after Macie Roberts retired. She specifically sought out women who had bachelor’s degrees in math and computer science, and then she would hire them and encourage them to go to night school in engineering. Because of her you have all these women who came in and were able to rise up the ranks, and you have these great stories of women, — such as Sylvia Miller — who went on to have this long career and become the director of the Mars program office. And it’s really just because of Helen Ling that they were able to do this.

I should probably note here, the sad case of Susan Finley — she is Nasa’s longest serving female employee, and she’s been in the lab since 1958, so she’s had this incredible long career. She was hired by Macie Roberts and was there since the beginning of NASA.

Then in 2004, NASA decided to change the rules and decided that you can’t be an engineer if you don’t have a bachelors’ degree. They essentially took away that grandfathering that happened in the 1970s. This didn’t affect most of the women because many of them retired in the mid to late 1990’s, but it affected Sue.

They took away her engineering position and they put her on an hourly salary. It’s just really a terrible tragedy that I’m hoping that my book can change. That is one thing that i would most like to change with my book.

Is there anything else you’re hoping that the book will change?

In general I felt like we deserved to have recognition of these women, and not just because they deserve it, but because of the situation of women in technology today.

There has been such a drop in the number of women who are receiving bachelor’s degrees in computer science. I talk about it in the book a little bit, and I mention that really disheartening statistic — that 37 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science were awarded to women in 1984, that’s dropped down to 18 percent today. My hope is that the book will inspire women to go into technology today as well.

One of the main theories is that a lot of women don’t think of themselves as engineers because they don’t see representative examples. And yet, here we have this really strong example of all these really amazing women, who helped put rockets into space, and yet they’ve been completely forgotten.

I think it’s sad that so many of our female scientists have stories that were forgotten. It’s important that we go back and we find their stories and we recognize their contributions.

Could you talk a little bit about Janez Lawson?

Tracking spacecraft position in the control room during the Venus flyby, 1962

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH

She just has an amazing story. She was the first African American hired in a technical position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She had a degree in chemical engineering from UCLA — so today she would have been hired as an engineer — but back then she was hired as a computer. There was a lot of discussion about hiring her — they wondered if this was going to create turmoil at the lab. It was really Macie Roberts who stood up for her and said no, we need to hire her, and helped promote Janez Lawson’s career.

She was one of the first people sent to the IBM training school, and she did incredibly well there. She had an amazing career and she did eventually become a chemical engineer. So i just think her story is so inspiring. I wish i could have interviewed her directly (she had passed away), but luckily i was able to speak with her friends and her family and get her story that way.

Your book also serves as a pretty good primer in the early history — or rather the complete history — of the space program. Is there a particular milestone that was your favorite when you were researching this?

Oh that’s such a hard question! There’s really quite a few; there are so many stories that I found surprising. One of my favorite things about researching this book was that I spoke with so many primary sources, and I did a lot of archival research as well. I was able to come across stories about these missions that really hadn’t been published before. Especially some of the early moon missions, I was just really fascinated with how many failures there were.I was shocked to learn that we could have put a satellite up a year before Sputnik

Hard decision, but I think maybe my favorite one is Jupiter C. This was the forerunner to Explorer One, the first American satellite. I was shocked to learn that we could have put a satellite up a year before Sputnik.

So, on September 20th, 1956, Jupiter C was launched — and this rocket was just incredible. It had a new altitude record — it went up to 3335 miles into the air — and it was just amazing for everyone watching it. But at its apex, it was loaded down with sandbags. Whereas if it had just had a satellite at the top we could have launched a satellite a year before Sputnik.

Analog computer equipment in 

the old Space Flight Operations control center, 1960

CREDIT: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH)

It’s just an amazing story. It’s really incredible how sneaky the group at JPL and their army collaborators, including Wernher von Braun, were at going around the Eisenhower Administration to make the first American satellite happen. I loved hearing about how they had this sort of design satellite that they had to keep locked away in cabinets, so that they had to make sure NASA administrators — or those who would become NASA administrators — wouldn’t see it.

It’s kind of funny too because I feel like that spirit really kept on. With the Voyagers, there’s sort of a similar story of sneakiness. Even in missions today, i think it’s kind of a mischievous lab. They like to push the limits.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

ORIGINAL: Think Progress

BY LAUREL RAYMOND

MAY 19, 2016