models we will use to interpret exo-Venus planets,” said Giada Arney, deputy principal investigator for DAVINCI at Goddard. “DAVINCI’s investigation of the evolution of Venus may help us better understand how habitable worlds are distributed elsewhere in the universe, and how habitable planets evolve over time in a general sense.” NASA Goddard is the principal investigator institution and will perform project management for the mission, as well as project systems engineering to develop the probe flight system and instrument development of the Venus mass spectrometer. Major partners are Lockheed Martin, Denver, Colorado; the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California; NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California’s Silicon Valley and KinetX, Inc., Tempe, Arizona. The University of Michigan is a key university partner associated with major instrumentation. v CONTACTS James.B.Garvin@nasa.gov or 301-286-5154 Giada.N.Arney@nasa.gov or 301-614-6627 Stephanie.A.Getty@nasa.gov or 301-614-5442
Image credits: NASA Goddard visualization and CI Labs Michael Lentz and colleagues
cuttingedge • goddard’s emerging technologies
Volume 17 • Issue 4 • Summer 2021
DAVINCI will send a meter-diameter probe to brave the high temperatures and pressures near Venus’ surface and to explore the atmosphere from above the clouds to just above a mountainous landscape that may have been a past continent. During its final kilometers of free-fall descent (depicted here), the probe will capture spectacular images and chemistry measurements of the deepest atmosphere on Venus for the first time.
Award-Winning Thermal Imager Captures Data for Agriculture and Wildfire Monitoring Goddard’s newest compact infrared sensor is licensed for commercial CubeSats, and under consideration for NASA Earth science missions. It’s been an eventful few years for the Goddard-developed Compact Thermal Imager (CTI). In 2019, it received its first patent license, and in 2021, the CubeSat-compatible thermal imager was named co-winner of NASA’s Invention of the Year Award: honoring inventions that significantly contributed to NASA programs. NASA recognized inventors Murzy Jhabvala, Donald Jennings, and Compton Tucker for their patent “Compact, High Resolution Thermal Infrared Imager,” which was submitted in 2014 and issued in 2019. This patented concept served as the basis for the CTI instrument that flew with Robotic Refueling Mission 3 from late 2018 to 2019 aboard the International Space Station. Over the course of PAGE 4
several months, CTI captured more than 15 million infrared images of Earth in two spectral bands. “I’m thrilled to see CTI acknowledged in this way,” Jhabvala said of the NASA Invention of the Year recognition. “It’s very gratifying to me and the team that NASA recognizes and utilizes this technology, particularly given some of the challenges we overcame to get to this point.” The technology, conceived by Jhabvala at Goddard, is small enough to fit on miniaturized satellites, such as CubeSats, and represents the latest advances in infrared detectors. Funded by NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) and bolstered by technology developed through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, CTI represents many years of collaboration and innovation. Continued on page 5
www.nasa.gov/gsfctechnology
