Ripon education allowed Jennifer White ’03 to reach for the stars

The next time you look at images taken from outer space, think of someone from close to home.

In the photos taken of Earth by Landsat 8 and 9 satellites, Ripon College graduate Jennifer White ’03 of Pasadena, Maryland, had a role in their success.

When man-made objects orbit the Earth without colliding into debris, White’s team may have eyes on their safety.

When a new space telescope is launched later this decade, software developed by her team will be vital in its launch and eventual mission peering into deep space.

And it all started with a love of astronomy and encouragement from her professors at Ripon College.

A double major in physics and mathematics at Ripon, White bonded with the late Professor Mary Williams-Norton, who helped White become one of 16 students nationwide to attend NASA Academy during the summer before White’s senior year.

“Both Professor Norton and Professor (Brad) Halfpap were encouraging whenever I had a crazy idea to apply to NASA internships or other programs,” White says.

This laid the groundwork for opportunities that came later with NASA. From 20042006, White worked as a research associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Years later, she joined a.i. solutions, a company that does contract work with NASA.

This enabled White to be assigned to several high-profile projects, such as the Landsat program. According to NASA’s website, “The NASA/USGS Landsat Program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data give us information essential for making informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.”

Such images are used to show how topography changes following a natural disaster, for instance. The images also are used as evidence of the effects of climate change, with the Landsat photographic record stretching back to 1972. It can be viewed free at earthexplorer.usgs.gov.

This doesn’t make White a glorified photographer; rather, her role on Landsat 8 and 9 is as a flight dynamics engineer.

“I was part of a team that monitored the orbital path of our satellite(s),” she says. “On a daily basis, we would calculate where the spacecraft was using the on-board GPS … and use that solution to determine where the spacecraft would be in the future…. This information is used to determine where and when the spacecraft will be over specific points on the Earth so the instruments can take images at the correct time.”

“My primary goal for this position is to ensure that each subtask has good communication and knowledge of what is happening with each other,” she said, noting that her “various experiences at Ripon have helped me immensely” in taking on these leadership roles.

White recalls participating in the launch of Landsat 9 on Sept. 27, 2021. “We had worked so hard for years to prepare the ground system, learn how we would perform maneuvers, and participated in simulations that it felt unreal to be sending it to space,” she says. “Then there was the moment we executed the maneuver: I knew that I had written the commands for the sequence to perform the burn, many people had reviewed it, and we had performed simulations of it, but there were still butterflies in my stomach just hoping everything worked as it should. In the end, it did all work.”

During this time, she also became a certified NASA Conjunction Assessment and Risk Analysis (CARA) Collision Avoidance Operations Engineer. The CARA group works with the 18th Space Defense Squadron and NASA non-manned missions in order to assure the safety of the NASA satellites and the space environment for all missions.

“There have been several events that have created a large amount of space debris, and there are more satellites being launched all the time, so it is becoming ever more prudent to ensure satellites that can maneuver do so” with a limited likelihood of collision, White says. “... We work with NASA missions, private companies and foreign nations because we all want to preserve the orbit regimes for future science programs, and technology that will enhance all of us on Earth. … Being a part of the team that helps protect that and specifically NASA missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope is very exciting!”

Since joining the group, she’s moved into a su- pervisory role as the task lead for CARA, which means that it’s her job to ensure that subgroups within CARA communicate successfully. That accounts for three-quarters of her time at work these days. The other 25%? Task lead of a new endeavor known perhaps only by deep space aficionados.

White is the head of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Flight Dynamics Analysis group, which is in the process of creating software that “will assist the flight dynamics group during the launch and mission lifetime of the Roman Space Telescope.”

According to NASA, “The Roman Space Tele- scope is a NASA observatory designed to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics.”

That love of astrophysics grew at Ripon College, where she remembers a positive and nurturing experience that prepared her well for what became an out-of-this-world career.

“Ripon prepared me to be open-minded and provided me with the opportunity to learn how to learn and not be afraid to go for what you want,” White says.