EPS Associate Professor, Dr. Juliane Gross, and the rest of the Contamination and Research Integrity (CaRI) Team are being awarded a NASA Group honors award, one of the most prestigious NASA awards. Please read the full citation of the award below. Congratulations, Dr. Gross!
"The Contamination and Research Integrity (CaRI) Team has played a critical role in ensuring that science's needs will be met by the Artemis Program. In early 2021, it was recognized that scientific guidance was needed for HEOMD and STMD to ensure high-quality science from the Artemis Program. The ability to provide rapid responses was needed to ensure that Artemis engineering decisions were well-informed to best optimize science goals, as delineated in the Artemis III SDT report and other guiding documents. NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) chartered the CaRI team to provide this input while a formal Science Team was put into place. Over the following year, the CaRI Team of Civil Servant scientists distinguished themselves by responding quickly to queries from the Artemis team and providing detailed and thoughtful information. Examples of this include determining materials and processes for tool design to minimize contamination for lunar sample collection; assessing options for stowing and transporting cold samples from the lunar surface back to Earth; and identifying science requirements for EVA utility of the multi-purpose handheld camera. Their contribution to Artemis was vital and came at a critical moment of project development – it is truly worthy of recognition. Throughout their activities, the team went above and beyond. While individual team members were already enormously over-committed, they enthusiastically confronted each challenge presented to them and never cut corners. Working as a team and leveraging each other's strengths, they took deep dives into material science, optics, and organics. They dug deep into Apollo archives. And at every juncture, they took pains to make sure that their responses spoke for the needs of the current and future lunar science community. Their timely responses were particularly critical for the tool development team, resulting in well-informed decisions and significant forward progress. Further, starting with a blank slate, the CaRI team developed a process for ingesting and adjudicating requests – a process that has been adopted by the Artemis Internal Science Team. The CaRI Team stood down in March of 2022, as their function was taken over by the newly-established Artemis Internal Science Team. Because of their commitment to excellence, outstanding teamwork, and integrity in representing diverse community viewpoints, the CaRI Team has earned this Group Achievement recognition."
Wright-Rieman Laboratories