Two NASA employees cited for their civic service, 'spirit of exploration'
The Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, also known as the Sammies, recognize outstanding federal employees addressing many of the country's greatest challenges.
Rich Burns from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and John Blevins of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., were chosen out of 350 nominees and are a part of the 23 individuals and teams to earn this achievement.
"Rich and John exemplify the spirit of exploration and service that defines NASA and our nation's civil servants," said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro. "Their leadership, ingenuity and dedication have not only advanced America's space program but also inspired the next generation of innovators. We are proud to see their achievements recognized among the very best of federal service."
Burns worked as a project manager of Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx). This mission started on Sept. 18, 2016, with a goal of retreiving a sample of an asteroid.
"It's humbling to accept an award based on the achievements of the amazingly talented, dedicated, and innovative OSIRIS-REx team," Burns said. "I consider myself privileged to be counted among a team of true explorers who let no obstacle stand in the way of discovery."
Blevins was the chief engineer of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. He led the team as part of Artemis l, first test flight on Nov. 16, 2022. He's currently leading the engineering team of Artemis II as that project prepares for the first crewed lunar mission.
"This is a reflection on the hard work and dedication of the entire Artemis Team," Blevins said. "I am working with an incredibly competent, dedicated team agency-wide that goes above and beyond to promote the space exploration goals of our nation. I am honored to accept the award on their behalf."
A ceremony will be held in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and a live-stream on the Sammies website.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Wire
19 minutes ago
- Business Wire
Industry Leaders, Policymakers to Gather at Annual DC-based SPIE Photonics Industry Summit on 18 September
BELLINGHAM, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On 18 September, in Washington, DC, SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, will host its fourth annual Photonics Industry Summit. The event will bring together leaders from the optics and photonics community, executives from related businesses, high-level US government agency representatives, and US congressional representatives. Collectively, they will be sharing their plans and expectations for optics and photonics-related programs in key areas such as directed energy, semiconductors, space, biotechnology, quantum, and other emerging technologies. The featured speakers include: US Congressperson Joe Morelle NASA Acting Deputy Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate Mark Clampin NIH Director of the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Bruce Tromberg Akin Senior Counsel Matthew S. Borman NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Kerri Dugan US Department of Energy Program Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy Emily R. Kinser Defense Innovation Unit Technical Program Manager Jeffrey Wright SPIE CEO Kent Rochford Prior to the summit SPIE will host a Congressional Reception, which will be held on Capitol Hill at the Rayburn House Office Building, from 5:00 PM-8:00 PM on 17 September. No additional registration is required for this opportunity to network, speak directly with congressional representatives, and advocate on behalf of the photonics industry. 'I'm very much looking forward to this year's SPIE Photonics Industry Summit,' says SPIE Director of Government Affairs Jennifer O'Bryan. 'The constantly changing policy landscape can be challenging for company executives. This unique opportunity allows direct access to a range of senior government officials with significant budget authority. Additionally, the complementary congressional reception offers a truly unique opportunity to engage with your elected representatives.' The event is sponsored by Hamamatsu, Leonardo, Optimax, Sydor Optics, Thorlabs, and TOPTICA. For more information and to register for the SPIE Photonics Industry Summit, please visit our website. Be sure to register early: prices will increase after 5 September. About SPIE SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, brings engineers, scientists, students, and business professionals together to advance light-based science and technology. The Society, founded in 1955, connects and engages with our global constituency through industry-leading conferences and exhibitions; publications of conference proceedings, books, and journals in the SPIE Digital Library; and career-building opportunities. Over the past five years, we have invested more than $25 million in the international optics community through our advocacy and support, including scholarships, educational resources, travel grants, endowed gifts, and public-policy development.
UPI
20 minutes ago
- UPI
Study: AI programs might help ER overcrowding in hospitals
New York researchers said artificial intelligence programs can help doctors and nurses predict hours earlier which ER patients will likely require hospital admission. File Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo Artificial intelligence programs can help doctors and nurses predict hours earlier which ER patients will likely require hospital admission, a new study says. An AI program trained on nearly 2 million patient visits became slightly more accurate than ER nurses in predicting which patients would need to be admitted, according to findings published Aug. 11 in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health. If this approach proves successful, it could help reduce overcrowding in hospital emergency departments, researchers say. "Emergency department overcrowding and boarding have become a national crisis, affecting everything from patient outcomes to financial performance," said lead researcher Jonathan Nover, vice president of nursing and emergency services at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. "Industries like airlines and hotels use bookings to forecast demand and plan. In the ED, we don't have reservations," he continued in a news release. "Could you imagine airlines and hotels without reservations, solely forecasting and planning from historical trends? Welcome to health care." Up to 35% of ER patients who require admission wind up spending four or more hours biding their time in spare rooms or busy hallways awaiting a bed, a practice known as "boarding," according to a recent study in the journal Health Affairs. Worse, nearly 5% of patients wait a full day for a bed during the busy winter months, the earlier study found. "Our goal was to see if AI combined with input from our nurses could help hasten admission planning, a reservation of sorts," Nover said. "We developed a tool to forecast admissions needs before an order is placed, offering insights that could fundamentally improve how hospitals manage patient flow, leading to better outcomes." For the project, researchers trained the AI on more than 1.8 million ER visits that had occurred between 2019 and 2023. "By training the algorithm on more than a million patient visits, we aimed to capture meaningful patterns that could help anticipate admissions earlier than traditional methods," co-senior researcher Dr. Eyal Klang, chief of generative AI at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a news release. The team then put the AI up against a cadre of more than 500 ER nurses in evaluating nearly 47,000 patient visits that occurred in September and October 2024 at six emergency departments in the Mount Sinai Health System. The nurses were asked to judge whether a patient would need hospital admission, after performing a quick triage. Researchers also fed the triage results to the AI, to see what it would predict. The nurses proved about 81% accurate in predicting which patients would need hospital admission, compared to 85% accuracy from the AI. "We were encouraged to see that AI could stand on its own in making complex predictions," co-senior researcher Robert Freeman, chief digital transformation officer at Mount Sinai Health System, said in a news release. "But just as important, this study highlights the vital role of our nurses -- more than 500 participated directly -- demonstrating how human expertise and machine learning can work hand in hand to reimagine care delivery." Researchers next plan to implement their AI into real-time workflows and monitor how the program affects boarding times and patient flow through the ER. "This tool isn't about replacing clinicians; it's about supporting them. By predicting admissions earlier, we can give care teams the time they need to plan, coordinate, and ultimately provide better, more compassionate care," Freeman said. "It's inspiring to see AI emerge not as a futuristic idea, but as a practical, real-world solution shaped by the people delivering care every day." More information The American College of Emergency Physicians has more on ER boarding and crowding. Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Only one person has ever been hit directly by a meteorite. Here's the strange story of Ann Hodges.
The Sylacauga meteorite, which is also called the Hodges meteorite, probably broke off the asteroid 1685 Toro. 1685 Toro, a mid-sized asteroid, has been classified by NASA JPL as a "Near Earth Asteroid" because of its orbit's proximity to Earth. Its size is similar to the island of Manhattan. An asteroid is a rocky object in space that orbits the sun. When an asteroid or a piece of one enters the Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor. What remains after impact is a meteorite. On the afternoon of November 30, 1954, locals in Sylacauga, Alabama, reported a bright streak in the sky. At a time when both the threat of an atomic bomb and little green men in flying saucers invaded public fear, it was perhaps unsurprising that residents in the small Alabama town started calling 911. The Decatur Daily reported that many people thought they were witnessing a plane crash. Ann Hodges, with her husband, rented a house in the Oak Grove community. Incredibly, across the street was the Comet Drive-In Theater, which had a neon sign depicting a comet falling through the sky, the Decatur Daily reported. A part of the meteor crashed through the roof of Ann Hodges' home. Hodges, who was 34 at the time, had been home with her mother on the afternoon of November 30. The meteorite crashed through the roof of Hodges' home at 2:46 p.m., Slate Magazine reported. "Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her living room couch and she was under a blanket, which probably saved her life somewhat," Prondzinski said. "The meteorite came down through the roof in the living room and it ricocheted off a stand-up console radio that was in the room and landed on her hip." Her mother, who was in another room, ran to her daughter's assistance when she heard her scream. In the aftermath, neither Hodges nor her mother knew what had happened. "All she knew is that something had hit her," Prondzinski said. "They found the meteorite, this big rock, and they couldn't figure out how it had got there." It weighed around 8.5 pounds. Prondzinski said the meteorite is a chondrite or stony meteorite and composed of iron and nickel. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the meteorite is an estimated 4.5 billion years old. When the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere, it broke apart. One fragment hit Hodges while another was located a few miles away. A farmer, Julius Kempis McKinney, discovered the second fragment while driving a mule-drawn wagon and later sold it for enough money to buy both a house and car, the Decatur Daily reported. Neighbors and law enforcement rushed to Ann Hodges' home. "Before you knew it, everyone in town was surrounding the house wanting to see what had happened," Prondzinski said. "In those days they didn't have Facebook, but word still traveled quickly," she added. A doctor and the police were called to the home. Prondzinski said it was Mayor Ed Howard and the police chief who discovered the hole in the ceiling where the meteorite had crashed through. The Decatur Daily reported the impact of the meteorite left a large "grapefruit"-sized bruise on Hodges' hip. "She had this incredible bruise on her hip," Prondzinski told Business Insider. "She was taken to the hospital, not because she was so severely injured that she needed to be hospitalized, but because she was very distraught by the whole incident. She was a very nervous person, and she didn't like all the notoriety or all the people around." Hodges' husband, Eugene, arrived home from work to find his house surrounded by a crowd of people. Hodges' radio may have saved her from being seriously injured. "The fact that it came through the roof, that slowed its trajectory, and the fact that it did bounce off the radio — if she had been lying under the radio, it would have broken her leg or her back. It probably wouldn't have killed her, but it would have done a lot more damage to her," Prondzinski said. The Air Force confiscated the meteorite so they could determine its origin. "The Air Force looked at it because they thought it was a flying saucer and all this other wild and crazy stuff," Prondzinski said. After it was confirmed a meteorite, the Hodgeses faced a lengthy litigation process to acquire ownership of it. Their landlord, Birdie Guy, believe the meteorite belonged to her because she owned the house. "Suing is the only way she'll ever get it," Hodges told reporters at the time. "I think God intended it for me. After all, it hit me!" The Decatur Daily News reported Guy wanted money to fix the house's roof. Litigation went on for a year, and Prondzinski said Guy settled the case for $500. The house eventually caught fire and was demolished to make way for a mobile home park. Hodges became an overnight celebrity and was even featured on a game show. "She became famous for 15 minutes. She had all these photo shoots. She was invited to go to New York City to be on Garry Moore's show '["I've Got a Secret"] where the panel had to guess what's her profession or what happened to her, why she is a notable figure," Prondzinski said. Hodges would receive fan mail from churches, children, and educators asking about the meteorite, but she never answered any of them, leaving it to her lawyer. "She was a very quiet person. She was a very private person," Prondzinski said. "She did not like having all the notoriety." Hodges decided to donate the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History. "By the time she had got the meteorite in her possession, she was so sick of the whole thing. She said, 'You can have it,'" Prondzinski said. All Hodges asked in return was for the museum to reimburse her for her attorney fees. Prondzinski said the meteorite created problems between Hodges and her husband, Eugene. Her husband wanted to make money off the meteorite but failed to secure a buyer. The two eventually divorced in 1964. In 1972, aged 52, Hodges died of kidney failure in a nursing home. Hodges is the first documented person to have been hit by a meteorite. Recently, a man in Georgia narrowly missed being hit by another. "She's the only one who's ever been hit by a meteorite and lived to tell about it. Because of that, the meteorite has been appraised at over a million dollars," Prondzinski said. In an interview with National Geographic, Florida State College astronomer Michael Reynolds said, "You have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time." There have been some near misses in the years since Hodges was hit. Most recently, on June 26, people in Southern states reported seeing a fireball fly across the sky, and pieces of a meteorite hit a house in McDonough, Georgia, with some piercing its roof, denting its flooring, and missing a resident inside. He likely heard what sounded like a gunshot. "I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things," said Scott Harris, a researcher at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences' department of geology, the university reported. "One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment. "There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments." Harris studied the rocks and concluded the meteorite could have formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it older than the Earth. It is still being studied at the university. Every day, Earth is hit with more than 100 tons of space dust and debris. According to NASA, about once a year a car-sized asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere but burns up before it can touch down. One expert told Live Science that while it's impossible to know for sure how many asteroids hit Earth each year, he estimated "about 6,100 meteorite falls per year over the entire Earth, and about 1,800 over the land." Most of these go undetected, but occasionally they'll capture the public's attention, like Hodges' meteorite. For instance, in 1992 a 26-pound meteorite landed on a red Chevy Malibu in New York, and in 2013, one exploded over Russia. There has also been evidence of a meteorite killing a man and injuring another in 1888. Meteor Crater, which is almost a mile wide, in Arizona shows the impact a large meteorite can have. Prondzinski told Business Insider that in the years since Hodges was struck, her story remains popular, and people have contacted the museum about using the story in movies, plays, and even a graphic novel.
