James Paul Mason
James Paul Mason
Research Scientist/Engineer
Research Scientist/Engineer
STUFF I WORK ON
Satellites
CubeSats, in particular
I've been heavily involved in every aspect of the highly successful NASA MinXSS CubeSat missions, among others.
Solar physics
Explosions on the sun
I study explosions on the sun and how we can use the void they leave behind in the corona to predict how much mass was kicked out and at what speed: useful for space weather and exoplanet habitability.
Sounding rockets
Launched and recovered in New Mexico
We send up a rocket every other year to measure how bright the sun is in ultraviolet and x-ray light.
Click the image above to watch the GoPro-like onboard videos.
CURRENT POSITION
I used to work at University of Colorado Boulder, Stanford University, and University of California Santa Cruz
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow
2017 September – Present
I write open source code in python, IDL, and other languages to analyze large amounts of data collected by satellites observing the sun. Plus I'm still involved in satellite development and operations; and sounding rockets.
Projects
software, video, music
CubeSat beacon decoder / forwarder
Ham radio operators around the world can and have been using this application to listen to beacons from the MinXSS CubeSat and see real time telemetry from the satellite. It automatically forwards the data to the MinXSS team.
I wrote this software from scratch.
It's cross platform.
Making of MinXSS video
I had taken 55 GB of video as we built and tested this satellite and knew no one would ever see it unless I compressed it into 5 minutes. I wrote the orchestral music for it as well.
Music
I write music in a variety of styles: orchestral, electronic, and (way back in time) metal. You can find the stuff I'm not embarrassed about on soundcloud.
Public lecture
I gave a public talk about how great MinXSS is from a variety of perspectives.
Publications
You can find a listing of all my publications on solar physics, space weather, and aerospace engineering on the Astrophysics Data System or ResearchGate.
