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July 3, 2025

Jefferson Davis Howell, Jr., former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, died July 2, in Bee Cave, Texas. He was 85 years old.

Howell was a champion of the construction of the International Space Station, working on a deadline to complete the orbiting lab by 2004. He oversaw four space shuttle crews delivering equipment and hardware to reach that goal. He also served as director during a pivotal moment for the agency: the loss of STS-107 and the crew of space shuttle Columbia. He made it his personal responsibility to meet with the families, look after them, and attend memorial services, all while keeping the families informed of the accident investigation as it unfolded.

“Gen. Howell led NASA Johnson through one of the most difficult chapters in our history, following the loss of Columbia and her crew,” said acting associate administrator Vanessa Wyche. “He brought strength and steady direction, guiding the workforce with clarity and compassion. He cared deeply for the people behind the mission and shared his leadership skills generously with the team. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and all who knew and loved him.”

At the time of his selection as director, he was serving as senior vice president with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as the program manager for the safety, reliability, and quality assurance contract at Johnson. Following the accident, he made it his mission to improve the relationship between the civil servant and contractor workforce. He left his position and the agency, in October 2005, shortly after the Return-to-Flight mission of STS-114.

“General Howell stepped into leadership at Johnson during a pivotal time, as the International Space Station was just beginning to take shape. He led and supported NASA’s successes not only in space but here on the ground — helping to strengthen the center’s culture and offering guidance through both triumph and tragedy,” said Steve Koerner, Johnson Space Center’s acting director. “On behalf of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, we offer our deepest sympathies to his family, friends, and all those who had the privilege of working alongside him. The impact of his legacy will continue to shape Johnson for decades to come.”

The Victoria, Texas, native was a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Marine Corps with a decorated military career prior to his service at NASA. He flew more than 300 combat missions in Vietnam and Thailand.

Howell is survived by his wife Janel and two children. A tree dedication will be held at NASA Johnson’s memorial grove in the coming year.

-end-

Chelsey Ballarte

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-483-5111

chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov

Since launching in 2023, NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution mission, or TEMPO, has been measuring the quality of the air we breathe from 22,000 miles above the ground. June 19 marked the successful completion of TEMPO’s 20-month-long initial prime mission, and based on the quality of measurements to date, the mission has been extended through at least September 2026. The TEMPO mission is NASA’s first to use a spectrometer to gather hourly air quality data continuously over North America during daytime hours. It can see details down to just a few square miles, a significant advancement over previous satellites.

“NASA satellites have a long history of missions lasting well beyond the primary mission timeline. While TEMPO has completed its primary mission, the life for TEMPO is far from over,” said Laura Judd, research physical scientist and TEMPO science team member at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “It is a big jump going from once-daily images prior to this mission to hourly data. We are continually learning how to use this data to interpret how emissions change over time and how to track anomalous events, such as smoggy days in cities or the transport of wildfire smoke.” 

When air quality is altered by smog, wildfire smoke, dust, or emissions from vehicle traffic and power plants, TEMPO detects the trace gases that come with those effects. These include nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and formaldehyde in the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

“A major breakthrough during the primary mission has been the successful test of data delivery in under three hours with the help of NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group. This information empowers decision-makers and first responders to issue timely air quality warnings and help the public reduce outdoor exposure during times of higher pollution,” said Hazem Mahmoud, lead data scientist at NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center located at Langley Research Center.

…the substantial demand for TEMPO's data underscores its critical role…

hazem mahmoud

NASA Data Scientist

TEMPO data is archived and distributed freely through the Atmospheric Science Data Center. “The TEMPO mission has set a groundbreaking record as the first mission to surpass two petabytes, or 2 million gigabytes, of data downloads within a single year,” said Mahmoud. “With over 800 unique users, the substantial demand for TEMPO’s data underscores its critical role and the immense value it provides to the scientific community and beyond.” Air quality forecasters, atmospheric scientists, and health researchers make up the bulk of the data users so far.

The TEMPO mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, whose Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian oversees daily operations of the TEMPO instrument and produces data products through its Instrument Operations Center.

Datasets from TEMPO will be expanded through collaborations with partner agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is deriving aerosol products that can distinguish between smoke and dust particles and offer insights into their altitude and concentration.

“These datasets are being used to inform the public of rush-hour pollution, air quality alerts, and the movement of smoke from forest fires,” said Xiong Liu, TEMPO’s principal investigator at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. “The library will soon grow with the important addition of aerosol products. Users will be able to use these expanded TEMPO products for air quality monitoring, improving forecast models, deriving pollutant amounts in emissions and many other science applications.”

“The TEMPO data validation has truly been a community effort with over 20 agencies at the federal and international level, as well as a community of over 200 scientists at research and academic institutions,” Judd added. “I look forward to seeing how TEMPO data will help close knowledge gaps about the timing, sources, and evolution of air pollution from this unprecedented space-based view.”

An agency review will take place in the fall to assess TEMPO’s achievements and extended mission goals and identify lessons learned that can be applied to future missions.

The TEMPO mission is part of NASA’s Earth Venture Instrument program, which includes small, targeted science investigations designed to complement NASA’s larger research missions. The instrument also forms part of a virtual constellation of air quality monitors for the Northern Hemisphere which includes South Korea’s Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Sentinel-4 satellite. TEMPO was built by BAE Systems Inc., Space & Mission Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). It flies onboard the Intelsat 40e satellite built by Maxar Technologies. The TEMPO Instrument Operations Center and the Science Data Processing Center are operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge.

For more information about the TEMPO instrument and mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/tempo/

About the Author

Charles G. Hatfield

Science Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center

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Hubble captured the data used to create this image of ESO 591-12 as part of a study intended to resolve individual stars of the entire globular cluster system of the Milky Way. Hubble revolutionized the study of globular clusters since earthbound telescopes are unable to distinguish individual stars in the compact clusters. The study is part of the Hubble Missing Globular Clusters Survey, which targets 34 confirmed Milky Way globular clusters that Hubble has yet to observe.

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Many of us grew up using paint-by-number sets to create beautiful color pictures.

For years now, NASA engineers studying aircraft and rocket designs in wind tunnels have flipped that childhood pastime, using computers to generate images from “numbers-by-paint” – pressure sensitive paint (PSP), that is.

Now, advances in the use of high-speed cameras, supercomputers, and even more sensitive PSP have made this numbers-by-paint process 10,000 times faster while creating engineering visuals with 1,000 times higher resolution.

So, what’s the big difference exactly between the “old” capability in use at NASA for more than a decade and the “new?”

“The key is found by adding a single word in front of PSP, namely ‘unsteady’ pressure sensitive paint, or uPSP,” said E. Lara Lash, an aerospace engineer from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

With PSP, NASA researchers study the large-scale effects of relatively smooth air flowing over the wings and body of aircraft. Now with uPSP, they are able to see in finer detail what happens when more turbulent air is present – faster and better than ever before.

In some cases with the new capability, researchers can get their hands on the wind tunnel data they’re looking for within 20 minutes. That’s quick enough to allow engineers to adjust their testing in real time.

Usually, researchers record wind tunnel data and then take it back to their labs to decipher days or weeks later. If they find they need more data, it can take additional weeks or even months to wait in line for another turn in the wind tunnel.

“The result of these improvements provides a data product that is immediately useful to aerodynamic engineers, structural engineers, or engineers from other disciplines,” Lash said.

Robert Pearce, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics, who recently saw a demonstration of uPSP-generated data displayed at Ames, hailed the new tool as a national asset that will be available to researchers all over the country.

“It’s a unique NASA innovation that isn’t offered anywhere else,” Pearce said. “It will help us maintain NASA’s world leadership in wind tunnel capabilities.”

How it Works

With both PSP and uPSP, a unique paint is applied to scale models of aircraft or rockets, which are mounted in wind tunnels equipped with specific types of lights and cameras.

When illuminated during tests, the paint’s color brightness changes depending on the levels of pressure the model experiences as currents of air rush by. Darker shades mean higher pressure; lighter shades mean lower pressure.

Cameras capture the brightness intensity and a supercomputer turns that information into a set of numbers representing pressure values, which are made available to engineers to study and glean what truths they can about the vehicle design’s structural integrity.

“Aerodynamic forces can vibrate different parts of the vehicle to different degrees,” Lash said. “Vibrations could damage what the vehicle is carrying or can even lead to the vehicle tearing itself apart. The data we get through this process can help us prevent that.”

Traditionally, pressure readings are taken using sensors connected to little plastic tubes strung through a model’s interior and poking up through small holes in key places, such as along the surface of a wing or the fuselage. 

Each point provides a single pressure reading. Engineers must use mathematical models to estimate the pressure values between the individual sensors.

With PSP, there is no need to estimate the numbers. Because the paint covers the entire model, its brightness as seen by the cameras reveals the pressure values over the whole surface.

Making it Better

The introduction, testing, and availability of uPSP is the result of a successful five-year-long effort, begun in 2019, in which researchers challenged themselves to significantly improve the PSP’s capability with its associated cameras and computers.

The NASA team’s desire was to develop and demonstrate a better process of acquiring, processing, and visualizing data using a properly equipped wind tunnel and supercomputer, then make the tool available at NASA wind tunnels across the country.

The focus during a capability challenge was on NASA’s Unitary Plan Facility’s 11-foot transonic wind tunnel, which the team connected to the nearby NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility, both located at Ames.

Inside the wind tunnel, a scale model of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket served as the primary test subject during the challenge period.

Now that the agency has completed its Artemis I uncrewed lunar flight test mission, researchers can match the flight-recorded data with the wind tunnel data to see how well reality and predictions compare.

With the capability challenge officially completed at the end of 2024, the uPSP team is planning to deploy it to other wind tunnels and engage with potential users with interests in aeronautics or spaceflight.

“This is a NASA capability that we have, not only for use within the agency, but one that we can offer industry, academia, and other government agencies to come in and do research using these new tools,” Lash said.

NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities portfolio office, an organization managed under the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, oversaw the development of the uPSP capability.

Watch this uPSP Video

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Jim Banke

Managing Editor/Senior Writer

Jim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on the NASA website.

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The United States flag adorns an aluminum plate mounted at the base of the mast, or “head,” of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. This image of the plate was taken on June 28, 2025 (the 1,548th day, or sol, of the mission), by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover’s robotic arm.

WATSON, part of an instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), was built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego and is operated jointly by MSSS and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. JPL, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

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