• Former astronaut Pam Melroy and Kathryn Sullivan also named to review teams
• Former XPRIZE vice president leads OSTP team

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

President-elect Joe Biden has appointed former NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan to lead the review team assigned to the space agency.

Stofan, a planetary scientist who became the first female director of the National Air and Space Museum in 2018, leads an eight-member team that includes former NASA astronaut Pam Melroy and former NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati.

Biden has also appointed Kathryn Sullivan, who was part of the first group of women recruited as NASA astronauts, to serve on the agency review team for the Department of Commerce.

The two MoonKAM systems before attachment to the GRAIL-A (“Ebb”) and GRAIL–B (“Flow”) spacecraft. Each system consists of a Digital Video Controller electronics unit and four separate color video cameras. (Credit: Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation.)

Pasadena, CA – March 22, 2012 – Two four-camera color video systems supplied by Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation to NASA’s dual-spacecraft Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) project have been turned on and are generating stunning video views of the Moon’s surface from a vantage point in low lunar orbit.

The video systems, called Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students (MoonKAM) by the GRAIL project, were designed, built and tested by Ecliptic and benefit from the strong heritage of Ecliptic’s popular RocketCam™ product family.  Over two-dozen similar systems have been launched on rockets and spacecraft since 2005, and all operated successfully, including RocketCam’s first lunar mission:  NASA’s LCROSS lunar impactor in 2009.
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