The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Vanessa Marquez

Center for Astrophysics

Mechanical Engineer

Vanessa Marquez

vmarquez@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Vanessa is an engineer in the CfA Central Engineering's Mechanical group. She joined the CfA in 2011, coming from a career as a structural analyst at NASA Glenn, NASA Goddad, and SwRI. She has worked on adjustable optics and AIR-Spec and is currently project and lead mechanical engineer on CORSAIR. She also serves on the CfA Gender Equity Committee.

Telescopes and Instruments

Lynx X-Ray Observatory

The Lynx X-ray Observatory is a proposed X-ray space telescope, designed to be the next generation following NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Athena Telescope. This observatory will be able to take images of a larger area of the sky in X-ray light with better resolution than any existing telescope, allowing astronomers to study the first supermassive black holes, the hot gas surrounding galaxies as they evolve, and radiation from the earliest stars. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and other universities are presenting Lynx to NASA for consideration in the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a proposed launch date in the mid-2030s.

Visit the Lynx X-Ray Observatory Website

AIR-Spec/ASPIRE

The Sun generates a powerful magnetic field, which drives the solar storms that occasionally batter the worlds of the Solar System. However, the magnetic fields in the solar corona are very hard to observe, despite their importance in creating space weather. For that reason, scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian developed the Airborne Infrared Spectrometer (AIR-Spec), an instrument carried aboard an airplane to measure the properties and effects of the coronal magnetic field during solar eclipses, where the corona is most plainly visible. AIR-Spec was inaugurated during the 2017 total solar eclipse visible across the United States; an improved version will fly during the 2019 eclipse visible from South America and the southern Pacific Ocean.

Visit the AIR-Spec Website