Teamwork

Human interest stories about the designAmerica team

The Day IMAGE Came Back to Life — Almost

A story about George Wofford and Team DAI, 2018

Just another day in the life of a DAI engineer, when our lead engineer George Wofford was awakened out of the blue with some really exciting news back in 2018! Yes, our very excited team of scientists, engineers and managers from one of our previous highly successful and long decommissioned mission IMAGE, were thrilled to tell DAI and particularly George that an amateur astronomer way north of Whistler BC had discovered a repeating faint signal from a satellite.

And indeed it turned out indeed to be our IMAGE satellite coming back to life after Team NASA tracked it down! And then asked Team DAI and particularly George Wofford could you please help us cobble together the retired IMAGE ground system so we can all get it going again so and the great science mission can continue (which by the way we all missed very much including George! because indeed it was such a great mission and team to work on and work with).

SO of course we couldn't say no.... and of course everybody especially the scientists were rightfully very excited to see IMAGE possibly get turned back on so more could be learned on the important magnetopause interaction. At the time, it almost seemed like the initial froth of excitement was like 'getting the band' back together and with the great IMAGE satellite providing the new instruments!

But alas the rest is history too.... After all the very detailed and hard work and analysis, it turned out the batteries were indeed dead as a doornail, and the signal a fleeting event caused by coming in and out of solar eclipse with brief moments of transmission... and IMAGE could not be saved, sadly.

But at least under George's leadership and hard work together with our extended NASA GSFC IMAGE family and team, the gallant effort was very much appreciated (even if not with the desired fairy tale ending).

And perhaps that was the real 'last' message from our great mission IMAGE: a magic moment to remind us all what our work at NASA really is all about, and the dedicated vision and teamwork it continually takes for a successful mission like IMAGE! Thank you, George Wofford (we hope someday you will be the VP lead at DAI to us all to our proud future!).