Valley Stream native to study the sun

What happens on the sun doesn’t necessarily stay on the sun. NASA engineer Steve Christe, a native of Valley Stream, will soon be embarking on a project to study solar flares, which have an impact on many of the satellites above the Earth.

Christe and his partner, Jessica Gaskin, have launched Project HEROES — High Energy Replicated Optics to Explore the Sun, after being chosen for NASA’s Hands-on Project Experience training award. An existing balloon-borne X-ray telescope will be modified to study the sun, in addition to stars.

“The sun is much brighter, it’s much bigger,” Christe said about why the modifications are necessary. “It’s a much different target all together.”

By studying solar flares, Christe said, scientists can hopefully more accurately predict when they are going to happen. Typically, he said, the flares occur without much warning. Accelerating particles from solar flares are a danger to astronauts in space and can damage satellites.

Christe, a 1996 Central High School graduate, also attended Clear Stream Avenue School and Memorial Junior High School. He studied physics and math at Stony Brook University, and did his graduate work at Berkeley.

He got his start studying optics at the Marshall Space Center in Alabama on project Foxsi. Now, he works at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and has been employed by NASA for nearly two years.

The center where he works is like a college campus, Christe explained, with numerous buildings and thousands of people. “There’s a lot of good scientists and engineers that work there,” he said.

There is no typical day for Christe, though much of his time is spent planning his project, which is set to launch in September 2013. He explained that the balloon will rise in the morning, and will take a few hours to get to its maximum altitude before it starts taking pictures of the sun. It will focus on the sun for two days, and return to Earth the second night.

The images will be transmitted to a computer, then will require several months of study, Christe said. The images have to be processed in a form that is useful to scientists, he explained.

Christe said he enjoys trying to answer the questions of the universe, but specifically likes to study the parts of space that affect the Earth directly. Stars are nice to look at, he said, but the sun has a much greater impact on the planet. “The sun is like a local laboratory,” he said. “The stuff that happens on the sun is happening in other places.”

It was in high school where Christe developed his interest in science and said he had a teacher at Central who really inspired him. He was a member of the Physics Olympiad team.

Christe gets back to Valley Stream a few times a year, where he visits his grandmother, Gladys Keefe, who lives in the Monica Village senior housing complex. While in town, he always makes sure to visit Magic Bagels and sees friends.

His job at NASA, Christe said, is the type of job that children dream of having someday and he hopes to have a long career there. “Working for NASA, it’s as neat as it sounds,” he said. “How could you not like doing these kinds of awesome things?”