Embry-Riddle Professor Awarded NASA's Outstanding Public Leadership Medal

Dr. Aroh Barjatya, professor in the Department of Physical Sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, has been honored with NASA's prestigious Outstanding Public Leadership Medal — the second-highest recognition given to a non-governmental employee.

Barjatya — who is also associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, director of the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab and interim executive director of the Center for Space and Atmospheric Research — earned the award for initiating, organizing and leading a mission to launch six sounding rockets during two solar eclipses.

NASA bestows the prestigious Outstanding Public Leadership Medal “for notable leadership accomplishments that have significantly influenced the NASA mission.”

The mission encompassed the launching of three rockets from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in October of 2023, and an additional three from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in April of 2024. Instruments aboard the rockets captured measurements before, during and after the eclipses to understand the small-scale response in the upper atmosphere and ionosphere of the moon blocking the sun’s radiation along the paths of the eclipses.

Referring to the project as an “immense undertaking,” requiring the orchestration of several participants and organizations, Dr. Robert Pfaff, project scientist for Sounding Rockets at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said the mission was “a first-of-its-kind endeavor to simultaneously collect multi-point in situ data of the dynamic interactions of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere in response to blocking of extreme ultraviolet radiation during the eclipses.”

Dr. J. Daniel Moses, program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said that the Atmospheric Perturbations Around Eclipse Path sounding rocket campaign “was the only dedicated NASA spaceflight initiative for these eclipses, and the success of the mission has garnered recognition for Dr. Barjatya and NASA’s sounding rocket program from the U.S. and international science community.”

Moses added that Barjatya shared the results of the mission broadly, including in conference presentations and interviews for NASA-TV.

“None of this would have been possible without the extended effort, dedication and enthusiasm of Aroh Barjatya in carrying out this remarkable campaign,” Moses said.

Barjatya said he was “humbled and grateful for the recognition and deeply indebted to all at NASA and at Embry-Riddle who helped make the sounding rocket mission a success.”

Barjatya specifically recognized the students and scientists at Embry-Riddle who helped build the more than three dozen scientific instruments that flew aboard the sounding rockets to measure the changes in the atmosphere related to the eclipses. Data from the instruments continues to advance scientific investigation of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere, regions that are critical to communications and monitoring of explosions and natural events like earthquakes here on Earth.

Dr. Jeremy Ernst, Embry-Riddle’s vice president for research and doctoral programs, said that “Dr. Barjatya is highly deserving of the prestigious Outstanding Public Leadership Medal from NASA. He continues to be a leader, distinguished scholar and outstanding ambassador for our institution. His dedication to advancing atmospheric and space science through the development of complex instrumentation is of significant impact. My congratulations go to Dr. Barjatya on this acknowledgment.”