When
Where
Title
Innovative Scientific Applications of Technology at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Abstract
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is a federally funded research and development center located in Pasadena, California. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology as a NASA center, with a primary focus on robotic exploration of the solar system – including missions such as the Mars rovers. JPL also has developed a significant number of instruments to study the earth from both aircraft and satellites, ranging from optical instruments to synthetic aperture radar. This talk will discuss some of the ways that science and engineering technology interface with one another at JPL. For example, Earth science instruments launched into orbit are carefully designed to accomplish specific tasks. However, after launch novel approaches have been developed that allow these same instruments to be used in ways unforeseen even by their designers. In other cases, new technologies have been discovered, but close partnership between engineers and scientists is required to bring these technologies to bear on important scientific questions.
Bio
Michael Garay began working on satellite remote sensing while a graduate student at the University of Arizona in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences in 1997. He joined JPL in 2003 as an intern while enrolled in graduate school at UCLA. After 5 years at Raytheon in Pasadena, California, he joined JPL full time in 2011. He has extensive experience with satellite and airborne instruments that operate throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, including polarization. He was a co-investigator on the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on the NASA Terra satellite, the upcoming Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) instrument scheduled for launch in 2026, and the compact Fire Infrared Radiance Spectral Tracker (c-FIRST) that is under development by the NASA Instrument Incubator Program. He is an author or co-author on over 50 peer-reviewed papers.