NASA-Goddard's Hartman, Gilbert Among 2016 WIA Award Winners

Women in Aerospace (WIA) has announced the winners of its 2016 awards.  Among the six women being honored are Colleen Hartman and Holly Gilbert from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  WIA will present all of its awards on October 13, 2016 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, VA.

Hartman currently is Director of Goddard’s Sciences & Exploration Directorate and has worked at Goddard and NASA headquarters since 1994.  She is receiving the 2016 WIA Leadership Award for “30 years of exemplary leadership at the highest levels of government and for inspiring the next tier of scientists, engineers and managers.”

Gilbert is Deputy Director of the Heliophysics Science Division within Goddard’s Sciences & Exploration directorate.  She is being recognized with the 2016 Aerospace Awareness Award for “outstanding leadership in bringing heliophysics science to the public.”   NASA’s heliophysics discipline incorporates the study of the Sun and solar-terrestrial interactions (the field is sometimes referred to as solar and space physics).

WIA is also honoring four other women, one of them posthumously.

WIA’s 2016 Achievement Award will be presented to Celia Blum of Lockheed Martin for “leading the team that reduced the mass of the Orion Crew Module pressure vessel and delivered it to Kennedy Space Center for Exploration Mission 1 integration.”   Orion is part of NASA’s new human space transportation system intended to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo lunar missions.  Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) will be the first flight of Orion aboard the Space Launch System (SLS), a large rocket NASA is building for that purpose.  The EM-1 mission will not carry a crew.  It is a test launch scheduled for 2018.

Mary Bowden of the University of Maryland, College Park, is receiving the 2016 Aerospace Educator Award for “motivating interest in space systems, being an inspiring role model and promoting the success of students at all levels.”

Lt. Amanda Lippert, Naval Air Systems Command, is the winner of the 2016 Initiative, Inspiration, Impact Award for “her multiple achievements and contributions to the field of aerospace science and industry within the past twenty-four months.”

The 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented posthumously to Molly Macauley, who was murdered in July.  Macauley was one of the few economists who specialized in the economic aspects of the space program.

The WIA Awards Dinner is October 13, 2016 at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Arlington, VA.   WIA will also honor the late Patti Grace Smith, who died of cancer earlier this year.  She will be recognized for “her tremendous impact not only for women in the aerospace community, but for her influence on the aerospace industry as a whole.”