UPDATED: 1 December 2015
Martin Slade is the Supervisor of the Planetary Radar Group.
His own active scientific interests include radar ranging of the planet Mercury in order to directly measure the gravitational oblateness of the Sun, to set limits on a time variation of the Newtonian gravitational constant G (predicted by some cosmological theories), and for testing Gravitational theories which are generalizations of "metric" theories such as General Realivity. Other interests are radar imaging of the unphotographed side of Mercury using both Goldstone/VLA and Arecibo; and mapping the topography of Mercury and Mars. Radar albedo maps of the Galilean satellites and Titan remain as possible future Arecibo -> Goldstone targets.
Martin is the "Friend of the Radar", the principal point of contact for anyone with peer-reviewed planetary funding wishing to submit a proposal for using the Radar. Accepted peer-reviewed proposals to the VLA using 3.5-cm illumination from Goldstone are automatically accepted by the Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR). The GSSR is operated for NASA by JPL.
Ray Jurgens received his Ph.D. from Cornell for his early work at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. He concentrated mostly on the imaging of Venus and its radar scattering properties, spin rate, and the geological implications of the surface markings. He continued this work at JPL, and the triple interferometer maps of the Venus equatorial regions enabled the determination of the spin rate and pole direction so that the Magellan spacecraft could safely enter orbit about Venus and begin mapping immediately.
Ray has a deep interest in music and composing modern music using "conventional" and modern, electronic means.
Ray is now retired and works part time through the Interim Employees Program.
Carl Franck came to JPL in 1976. He is the digital engineer responsible for maintaining and enhancing the hardware at Goldstone which we use in the High Speed Data Acquisition System (HSDAS). He has overseen considerable many changes in this, while keeping the interruptions of the planned Radar observations to a minimum. Carl is a key member of the GSSR team, sustaining the new DAS while retaining its full functionality of the HSDAS until all acceptance testing is completed for the VME DAS.
Kevin is a systems engineer and the Unix and IT Security Administrator for us, the Radar group, and for much of Section 332. He helps to maintain the network connections between our many workstations, servers, Goldstone systems, and the electronic world outside JPL. Kevin is also responsible for building and maintaining the specialized, high performance Linux computers we use to capture our radar data inside the pedestal of DSS-14. He speaks Linux, Solaris, SunOS, Bash, and Perl fluently. His focus is keeping our networking alive, our backups intact, GSSR working, and the hackers out.
He is known for his positive attitude in very trying situations, as well as his fanatical love for Linux.
Joseph is a software engineer. He is developing remote control and system monitoring capabilities for radar operations. The goal is to allow U.S. investigators to have appropriate command and control of the observations from approved institutions using the Internet as the communications channel.
Under construction.
Under construction.
Ginny Azevedo
Ginny is the Section Secretary and has responsibility for Group F affairs. Ginny handles hardware procurements for new system development, travel arrangements for experiments and general JPL company business. She is the point of contact when radar experiments are in process and is responsible for the communication between scientists, experimenters and developers of the Solar System Radar.
Transmitter Group members and their specialties.
