Dr. Thomas Z

Originally Published: May 26, 2018

Sometimes, one deliberately loses for the community to win!

Yesterday, after months of deliberation and tension in the community, I accepted the Academy’s recommendation to start the Astrophysics decadal activities right away. The Academy’s recommendation went against my own – so, obviously I lost this one. Right?

Well, here is some context: The topical strategic studies recommending the most important science to be pursued during the next decade (aka “decadals”) are the most important strategic ingredients to NASA Science and accepted by all key stakeholders. They provide both the framework for prioritization, and also persisting strategic goals that help focus and align. Missions like Hubble, Chandra and Webb are the results of such recommendation. Some decadals were strong and pushed communities, and some of them are like a bag of rocks a community has to carry on their backs for a decade, trying to do the very best with a strategy that missed its target.

There are at least two ways a decadal strategy can fail. On the one hand, a strategy can be based on dreams and unrealistic expectations – a “miracle strategy”: “Let’s do missions x,y and z – they will be great!” Well, they would be, except that we need a whole bunch of “miracles” to make them happen. Or, collectively, the missions are so expensive that they just are not possible, except if they become a national priority and thus the budget massively increases. The Academy did some very good things to protect the science community from itself and to try to ensure the community knows what they are actually proposing, with cost, new technology, etc implications.

The second failing strategy is a “defensive strategy”, one that misses ambition and is often dominated by a community who seeks to never again make the same mistakes that led to challenges they have now- often, a community recovering from the ills of a “miracle strategy”. Here is the problem with a defensive strategy: even though there might be some nice recommendations in there, this type of strategy does not allow for true upside, true inspiration, alignment, and a chance to expand. A decade is a long time if you are stuck with a defensive strategy like this! It is a lot harder for the Academy to protect the community from itself when the community feels bad about its current status quo.

That is why I spoke up when it came to the Astrophysics decadal. All signs looked to me like we were going down the path to a defensive strategy and discussions with community groups – especially up-and-coming leaders – worried me. No, we cannot protect the community from itself either, but we can talk about the importance of ambition and alignment in a decadal strategy. It would be a lot easier to do a decadal when there is a clear success is sight, than when two or more challenges are pulling the collective psyche of the community down. One point that made less news, but was very important to me, is to ask the Academy to ensure that the decadal is also relevant in other ways: a strategy cannot be important if it is put together by representatives of the top-10 University programs, and by a community group that is all male and has an average age north of 65! Diverse groups make better strategies, and provide better alignment and buy-in.

So, do I really care when the Astrophysics decadal is going to be? No – the decadal belongs to the community, not to me. But, I truly care to have had the discussion we just had about ambition, about alignment, and about inclusion of the broad community which makes up one of the world’s best and most exciting science communities in the history of science!

That is worth losing for.

Originally Published May 6, 2018

We launched a mission to Mars on Saturday, a risky mission – humanity’s record to land on Mars is only 40%. In fact, the US is the only country to ever successfully accomplish a landing and surface operation on this planet.

We think and talk a lot about risk at NASA. We are an agency whose very purpose implies that we *have* to take risks – do things that nobody has ever done before. NASA processes are built around that, have been successfully implemented many times, and have evolved as we learn. And, it has not all been great!

Robert Lightfoot, in his last speech as outgoing Acting Administrator told his audience that NASA needs to reconsider how we take risks, and do so deliberately and with focus. I think that everybody who works on big projects – especially for and within NASA. You can read full the full remarks on NASA’s website.

Here is what I learned about taking risk from the helm of NASA Science and during my career in innovation as a whole:

1) Innovation and iteration always go together. The kicker: to an outsider, especially one who is not innovative, iteration looks like failure. Yet, the world of innovation is not a linear world imagined in many management courses in highly ranked schools, and the most detailed plan does not imply the most progress – perhaps the opposite is true. But, most stakeholders do not understand this.

2) “Pounding risks flat” has opportunity cost, and they are often not part of the discussion. Yes, we can chase every option of failure we can think of, but that has real costs and slows us down. What are we *not* doing during this process? What are we missing by going slower?

3) Process does not eliminate the need for sound judgment and deep skill. Of the 10 signatures supporting a decision, how many indicate a detailed understanding and focus on the issue? These are the only signatures that count!

4) The best decisions are the ones scrutinized by great people with a diversity of view-points. Yes – innovative decisions require tension in the team. That implies a strong focus on talent and career growth and experiences. How do we attract and enable growth of our top talent? How do we learn from other stakeholders, such as commercial companies or other innovators?

5) Projects, like investments, should have a portfolio approach when it comes to risk. We need parts of the project portfolio where we focus on experimenting and learning. Because of that, we at NASA Science recently changed the way we manage lower cost science missions to include less oversight, fewer reviews, and higher speed. We are thus creating elements in our portfolio where we can take more risks and learn from innovators outside of the agency.

6) Finally, managing risk is a leadership challenge. Lacking risk tolerance is not the fault of our engineers and lower level managers, nor those tasked with risk assessment, but a reflection of values and ambition driving leadership. So, what are we saying about our projects, about risks? How do we react to iterations/learning experiences when they happen in our organization?

In summary, taking risks is a necessary ingredient of innovation and leadership! Thus, how we handle risk needs to remain a topic of discussion not just focused on “the how”, but also “the what” and “the why”!

On August 21, the first total solar eclipse across the continental U. S. in almost a century moved our nation to hit the pause button of our hectic lives, to look upwards, and be part of a celestial moment provided by nature to all of us. As the leader of NASA Science, I also was transfixed. But I was also holding my breath hoping that the celestial event would pass without incident.  NASA had done all we could to prepare.  Requiring all of our 120 official events to have safety plans prepared and requesting our partners across the land to do so too.  When we identified any uncertified solar viewing glasses we could find, we worked with the American Astronomical Society to spread the word so everybody would be safe that day.

Yet, across this great land for those 90 minutes of lunar passage, celebrations and exclamations of awe and inspiration brought our country together.  Connections on a deeply human level were felt. People with glasses you met for the first time became part of that experience, no matter their background, their history – we all felt like one.  Afterwards, while hundreds of thousands of homeward bound citizens endured hours of traffic–the day passed without any major incident, and I felt a lot better.

As a professional scientist, I have devoted my life to learning about the mysteries of the universe and inspiring others to seek answers.  I knew that previous eclipses spurred scientific advances from luminaries like Edison, Eddington, and Einstein.  Imagine my elation that the object of my lifelong pursuit provided such a great opportunity for science today and it brought together the Nation that I love so much, looking at the star that affects them each and every day.  Science is not only inspiring, it is imminently useful in our daily lives. Our investments in space science pay dividends for decades to come. They result in better forecasts for Earth-based quantities that affect our lives on all time-scales, they safe lives, they are at the heart of new companies, and support National defense.

My sincere hope is this eclipse inspires a new movement of citizen scientists, science hobbyists who do important work together, just because they can.  All NASA science data is online, freely accessible and ready for use.  In fact, never before in human history do we have the entire span of knowledge at our literal fingertips.  These data enable citizens of any type to do what professional scientists do: true science starts with questions or suspicions, and with an open mind. Yes, all questions are ok to ask. In the realm of science, doubt is not feared, but welcomed. In the end, we don’t believe in the opinions of individuals, but in what nature answers us to these questions through experiments that we do in our laboratories and also in flight. These answers again should always be open to scrutiny and doubt.

When new data are observed, new questions are asked, and knowledge is expanded.  In 2014, headlines shocked with the National Science Foundation survey results that one out of every four adults in the U.S. could not accurately answer whether the Earth rotated around the Sun or Sun circled the Earth.  That one metric created a NASA science literacy goal to improve results by the 2020 survey.  My hope is that with this year’s total solar eclipse the public has an improved sense of the relationship of our Earth/Moon/Solar system. To everybody who does not believe in these scientific facts, here is a simple challenge: predict the next solar eclipse using your own theory!

Just as the “can do” optimistic culture of NASA attracted me to leave a tenured position in academia, NASA’s involvement in the eclipse across 14 states, in 6900 libraries, over 200 museums, planetaria and science centers, 40 Challenger Centers, NASA Visitor Centers, national parks, zoos, and even baseball stadiums provided a connection. We had over 5 billion engagements of social media, more than 50 million unique viewers watched our TV broadcast, and another 50 million users watched our YouTube channel either real-time or since then.

Previous total solar eclipses have spawned cadres of chasers that travel the globe seeking those brief eerie minutes of totality. But my hope is that this eclipse creates a new appreciation for and relationship with our nearest star and the tool that allow us to learn about nature.  Learning about nature is inspiring and important and always rewarding. My only suggestions:  Start making plans for the next total solar eclipse in this country on April 8, 2024.  Check out science.nasa.gov and nasa.gov to learn about this past eclipse, the next one, as well as other science!

Originally Published June 3, 2017

The Parker Solar Probe is in the news everywhere!

Prof. Eugene Parker at the University of Chicago is a truly amazing scientist with an overall impact for the Nation’s space program that is rarely matched. Looking at the current NASA mission lists, we have more than 10 missions today we are working on or flying for which Parker has done foundational work.

Originally Published: April 29

One of my friends asked me about my work this week at NASA.

Well, here are some highlights under the rubric, #myWeekatNASA:

1) I testified to the House Science Committee this week, with approximately a dozen members present during this highly bi-partisan hearing. It was all about “finding Earth elsewhere”, an objective that was added to NASA’s mission-statement.

Originally Published: April 9, 2017

A few weeks ago, NASA announced a stunning news-story which became one of the biggest NASA science stories ever: over 3 billion interactions with NASA’s online content, hundreds of newspapers (including New York Times) carried the story on the front-page, tens of thousands of articles were written in the worldwide press, and a Google Doodle topped it all off (https://www.google.com/…/seven-earth-size-exoplanets-discov…).

The story is compelling: Based on NASA Spitzer observations, Trappist-1 is a newly discovered mini-solar system with 7 rocky planets, 3 of which in the habitable zone where water can pool on the surface. This post is about things that happened since, and that shows how exoplanet research is becoming increasingly inter-disciplinary.

A couple of weeks after the initial announcement, Kepler on its K2 mission provided 74 days of monitoring of the Trappist-1 system and its cosmic neighborhood (https://www.nasa.gov/…/nasas-kepler-provides-another-peek-…/). Within 2.5 hours, the first tweet came out indicating a result: An astronomer had found a second pass of planet H, the outer-most planet. Within weeks, that result was already summarized online as part of the arXiv e-print series (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017arXiv170304166L): planet H is at the snow-line, beyond which water can exist only in its frozen state. Many of the other results of the initial paper were also confirmed. Obviously, these results (as well as others mentioned below) will have to go through review before the results are fully accepted.

The data also provided important additional information about the activity of the star. Just like our Sun, Trappist-1 has magnetic activity that leads to flares. In fact, astronomers know that this type of dwarf star tends to have a very violent past when it comes to stellar activity – possibly providing an important ingredient whether or not life can persist on this planet.

One researcher told me that using the data about the magnetic field known from this star, it seems that the field is such that the planets sit in a subsonic part of its stellar wind, and not the super-sonic part as all planets here in the solar system. If this is correct, the Trappist-1 planets have a fundamentally different space weather environment than the Earth with stellar wind coming towards them from all directions, not just from the direction of its star.

There is another result that is important in this context, and this one is from our neighborhood – from MAVEN, currently orbiting Mars. Based on their data of atmospheric loss of specific components, the team concluded that Mars lost most of its atmosphere and its water during its history, making it far less hospitable than the Earth. According to the authors, the culprit for this loss is the absence of a global-scale magnetic field that suppresses such loss to space. Do Trappist-1 planets have magnetic fields? We don’t know at this point.

Finally, a submitted paper by Wolf (https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05815) does the first analysis of a climate model for the Trappist-1 planets. Needless to say, there are lots of assumption in there, put the paper points out that – under several assumptions – planet E has the best chance to be a habitable world. To me, the paper indicates how many observations about the planets’ atmospheres we need to make to actually nail down some of the very hard questions about the habitability of these strange worlds.

In summary, the Trappist-1 discovery announced a few weeks ago is already spurring research that goes far beyond the initial observations. The follow-up studies give an indication that to answer the fundamental question: “Is there life out there?”, is a fundamental question that will require scientific breakthroughs from many different science fields, including ones who currently are not deeply engaged in this exciting research.

This demonstrates the nature of great research: it’s not just about answering questions that have been asked in the past, it is about asking entirely new questions that will have impact for a long time to come!

Originally Published: February 12, 2017

It took nearly 100 years for predictions about frame-dragging, a direct consequence of Einstein’s theory of general relativity published in 1915, to be confirmed using a sophisticated analysis of three spacecraft in orbit about the Earth. The Earth is very, very slowly dragging space with its rotation, subtly changing satellite orbits, as predicted by two Austrian scientist in 1918, and finally confirmed at the <10% level around 2010.

It also took more than 100 years for the ground-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to make the first observations (announced almost exactly 1 year ago!) and to confirm one of the most fundamental predictions of the same theory – the existence of gravitational waves. This prediction has ignited more interest in space-born detections of these waves by spacecraft such as LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which will open up a whole new window into the universe.

It will have taken 60+ years for NASA’s Solar Probe mission to launch in 2018 in order to test the fundamental predictions made by Parker in his profound 1957 paper that almost was rejected by reviewers. It just seemed too unlikely – why would the Sun eject supersonic plasma that fills space? Now, we are finally building the spacecraft to examine the solar wind where it matters most, at its source.

Sometimes, doing the best science takes a lot of time! It turns out that the most important physical effects we seek to confirm are extra-ordinarily subtle or tough to access.

To do the frame-dragging experiment, we had to learn how to launch spacecraft, how to shoot lasers at them and to measure times and positions at highest accuracy. It took a deep understanding of radiation pressure forces and also of the Earth gravity field and levels we could only imagine in the 1900s.

The engineering challenges for LIGO almost seem hopeless: detect motions of scales of 1/1000 of an atomic nucleus. Build 4 km long vacuum chambers, and do so twice, 3000 km apart, but in precise coordination. It seems hopeless when you start, but it leads to the best science and it launches a storm of innovation to make it reality.

So, what does it take to get so close to the Sun that you can observe the waves that accelerate the solar wind? You need to be at 10 solar radii, with nearly 50,000 more heat hitting the spacecraft surface than near Earth. To survive this heat, one has to invent a thermal protection system that not only can survive, but do so that the sensitive science measurements next to them are still possible. The spacecraft has to be on auto-pilot for some of the most important phases. It is really, really hard!

Looking at history, it turns out, that we always need to invent some totally new and innovative technologies to enable new ambitious science. This interplay between ambitious science and innovative technologies is one of the most impactful aspects of NASA’s science program. Projects like LISA, the James Webb Space Telescope, or Solar Probe are like science moon shots: We invent all the steps of the path till we finally get the desired goal!

This science-driven technology development not only enables scientific leadership, it also feeds an innovation engine with impacts that are well beyond the realm of the initial question and application space. We know about the economic impact of the Apollo program, and we are in awe about the broad applicability of space technologies for National defense, our technological leadership and also our economy. And in rare cases, our observations we make in space change everything, even the way we think! There is nothing more profound than that.

Broad and lasting impacts are not coming from playing it safe, they come from ambitious science driving innovative technology. Note that we have a NASA science program that has a variety of tools with different objectives. But, when it comes to breakthrough science, playing it safe intellectually does not cut it!

Final point: intellectual ambition is not proportional to the cost of a system. In fact, the most entrepreneurial solutions are the ones that pair intellectual ambition with nearly impossible financial constraints!

Originally Published: February 4, 2017

Last week, I did my first trip abroad as Associate Administrator of Science at NASA, visiting both Switzerland and France.

My first talk was to an audience of about 600+ at the University of Bern, my alma mater. I started my presentation by announcing that we were making history today since I was the first NASA Associate Administrator to give a science talk in German (pic below from U Bern). I had prepared for over four hours to ensure that i knew all the words. During this chat, I discussed the impact that science has in the world. From benefiting humanity on Earth, to the importance of fundamental research, the science that NASA does on a daily basis is critical.

I also gave a lunch talk in Swiss German three days later where I focused on the power of innovation and leadership in organizations. The next day, I finally gave a talk to a French audience. Even though I took some questions in French, I did not dare give my talk in French just having arrived in Paris the day before.

Originally Published: Jan. 21, 2017

I spent the weekend home in Ann Arbor, with my family. I made that decision after receiving a message from the people running my apartment-house in DC telling me to stay away from windows and off balconies during the Inauguration related events.

In fact, I was glad to spend time in Ann Arbor and I even had time to visit some friends and former colleagues at the University of Michigan and do an interview for Gary Krenz’s Bicentennial activities. The interview made me think because of a question he asked that was very hard to answer. It was a question about “my home” and how I feel about it.

Originally Published: Jan. 14, 2017

Living in D.C., I get a unique front-window view on US politics and learn about the country in a new and unprecedented way.

Right now, the entire city is buzzing about the inauguration and the peaceful change of power that is typical of presidential transitions since the beginning of the US. Last week, the entire county listened to current president and his associates reflect on his last 8 years of presidential politics. We watched the vice-president’s tearful reaction when he was surprised by his friend, the president, awarding him the medal of freedom, with distinction. Yes, this change is filling the news worldwide. But there are things you only see in DC.