STScI Annual Report 2002: A Living Mission

52 achievements
We completed a major redesign of the JWST exhibit for outreach to the professional science community.
The redesign focuses on the basic science goals of the mission. It uses backlit boxes and video materials
showcasing the latest news.
We began work with the National Park Service to produce a resource CD for park rangers who give
interpretive night-sky talks.
Origins Education Forum
OPO is the home to the Origins Education Forum, a part of the NASA Office of Space Science Education
and Public Outreach support network. We help missions communicate and coordinate outreach activities
with each other. Also, we provide unique services to enhance the value of their outreach efforts.
We organize monthly telecons, splinter meetings at astronomical meetings, and an annual outreach
retreat for the Origins missions, which are scattered around the country. We capture and disseminate lessons
learned by missions about developing and disseminating educational products. We also provide programand
product-evaluation services. We coordinate exhibits, staffing, schedule, and material dissemination
at numerous conferences each year.
In 2002, the Origins Education Forum provided evaluation services to the Space Infrared Telescope
Facility, Space Interferometry Mission, NASA Astrobiology Institute, and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared
Astronomy. We held ‘tag-up’ meetings in conjunction with each American Astronomical Society meeting.
We released a new version of the NASA Space Science Education Resource Directory (SSERD),
improving usability for the missions entering products into the directory.
We initiated developing a new strategic plan for the Origins Education Forum. We began with in-depth
interviews with our stakeholders to develop a consensus on the role and charter of the Forum.
Goal 5: Facilitate technology transfer
We will continue to facilitate the transfer of our technical innovations to other fields of research and
to the private sector.
The astronomical community recognizes our software products for operating Hubble for their effectiveness,
efficiency, and quality. Several other NASA space astronomy missions have adopted our planning
and scheduling software and our distributed data processing pipeline software. Such reuse of our software
has permitted those missions to become operational with lower cost and lower risk, and it has
afforded the community of astronomers the benefits of multiple missions performing efficiently.
While our first commitment is to the advancement of astronomical science, as called for in the
charter of AURA, we know there are wider applications for our software systems than their originally
designed purpose. Already, commercial industry has two of our systems—our fully distributed data
processing pipeline system and our multi-mission planning and scheduling system—for help in running
their enterprises. We seek to make our software products available to this wider spectrum of industry.
This year, we provided greater focus to technology transfer by vesting our Community Missions
Office with responsibility to coordinate our response to industry enquiries and to manage any resulting
activity to provide products and services. This office provides a centralized, unified approach for dealing
with potential clients in a professional and helpful way.
We also made our products more visible on the website of our Engineering and Software Services
Division (ESS). There, interested parties—both within the scientific community and in other industries—
can find clear and up-to-date descriptions of the range of products we have developed and use today on
Hubble. Because our systems were designed to deal with changing suites of science instruments on
Hubble, and to accommodate different generations of computer hardware at the Institute, their built-in
flexibility and resilience makes them easily adaptable to other uses.
To support our users around the world, ESS has initiated ‘help-desk’ type support for our software
systems currently employed on other missions and in commercial industry. Aimed at responding to
problems, this support is also effective answering community enquiries about the technical characteristics
of these products. With such information available, we believe the commercial world will find our
systems attractive and useful—benefiting both themselves and the science community through the
continued evolution of these products.