NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018.

The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries.

“The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics – why is the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington. “We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers.”

As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation.

The spacecraft will have an up close and personal view of the sun enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.

NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Thirteen were reviewed by a panel of NASA and outside scientists.

The total dollar amount for the five selected investigations is approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests.

The selected proposals are:

– Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: principal investigator, Justin C. Kasper, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

This investigation will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind - electrons, protons and helium ions - and measure their properties. The investigation also is designed to catch some of the particles for direct analysis.

– Wide-field Imager: principal investigator, Russell Howard, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun's corona, or atmosphere. The experiment will also provide 3-D images of the solar wind and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft. This investigation complements instruments on the spacecraft providing direct measurements by imaging the plasma the other instruments sample.

– Fields Experiment: principal investigator, Stuart Bale, University of California Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun's atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the spacecraft's antenna.

– Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun: principal investigator, David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

This investigation consists of two instruments that will monitor electrons, protons and ions that are accelerated to high energies in the sun's atmosphere.

– Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: principal investigator, Marco Velli of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Velli is the mission's observatory scientist, responsible for serving as a senior scientist on the science working group. He will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission.

“This project allows humanity's ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before,” said Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in Washington. “For the very first time, we'll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun.”

The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program is designed to understand aspects of the sun and Earth's space environment that affect life and society.

The program is managed by NASA'S Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., with oversight from NASA's Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Division. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., is responsible for formulating, implementing and operating the Solar Probe Mission.

For more information about the Solar Probe Plus mission, visit http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/ . For more information about the Living with a Star Program, visit http://science.nasa.gov/about-us/smd-programs/living-with-a-star/ .

This article has been updated. In spite of water remaining on the roadway, the cutoff has been reopened.

NICE, Calif. – Lake County’s Water Resources and Public Works departments are in the midst of a pumping project meant to improve conditions so the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff can be reopened in the weeks ahead.

The road has been closed since Feb. 22, when a nearby state-maintained levee was overtopped due to the flooding taking place at that time, as Lake County News has reported.

The overtopping of the levee led to water filling up the water basin to the north of the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff, a portion of which also has remained under water, officials said.

Rather than wait weeks or months for the water to naturally drain off or evaporate, Lake County Public Works and Water Resources, which had been discussing options with the California Department of Water Resources, began a project on March 11 to pump the water out.

County Public Works Director Scott De Leon said the pumping is taking place around the clock, but there’s still water on the road.

“We can't open it until it's completely dry,” De Leon said Friday.

Water Resources Director Phil Moy said the water level is dropping about an inch per day. “We need to dry the road bed, not just the surface.”

He said people also need to stay off the road to prevent road damage.

There have been ongoing problems with people simply ignoring the signs and driving through the closure. The California Highway Patrol said its officers will ticket individuals they find driving through the closure.

As for when they estimate the road could reopen, De Leon on Friday, said, “Hopefully in the next few days.”

Moy, however, was more cautious, estimating, “Another week plus.”

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday, the Calistoga Joint Unified School District confirmed that it has hired the Lakeport Unified School District superintendent as its new leader.

The announcement came the day after the Lakeport Unified School Board voted to begin a recruitment process because of Superintendent Erin Smith-Hagberg getting the job offer in Napa County, as Lake County News has reported.

Smith-Hagberg has served as Lakeport Unified’s superintendent for 12 and a half years, and has spent her 30 years in the district in roles including middle and high school English teacher, middle school principal and Lakeport Elementary School principal.

Smith-Hagberg will succeed Dr. Esmeralda Mondragon, Ed.D., who announced last year she was retiring from Calistoga Joint Unified.

In the Friday announcement, Calistoga Joint Unified Board President Jeff Maxfield said the recruitment process that led to Smith-Hagberg’s hiring included a nationwide search that resulted in more than 40 applications and the final interviews of six top candidates.

He said Smith-Hagberg has been offered the position “pending a few final steps in the process.”

One of those steps is a site visit by a delegation of Calistoga Joint Unified Board members and district office personnel to Lakeport Unified on Monday, according to statements made at the special Lakeport Unified Board meeting on Thursday night and the Friday announcement.

In selecting Smith-Hagberg for the new job, Maxfield cited accomplishments including her leadership on the $17 million Measure T bond, passed by voters in November 2014; her leadership in curriculum and instruction initiatives; and community involvement in groups such as Rotary, with Smith-Hagberg having been selected to be Lakeport Rotary Club’s president next year.

Maxfield said reference checking also has confirmed his district’s feelings about Smith-Hagberg. In talking to people from Lakeport Unified, he said feedback has lauded her for being collaborative, open and transparent, a strong leader and a professional.

“We are grateful to all who participating in providing input regarding what is most desired to see in our next superintendent. We are confident you will find that Ms. Smith-Hagberg is a perfect match,” Maxfield said.

He said she will be in the Calistoga Joint Unified district for several days before the end of the year to begin to meet everyone and to hear about the district, which has about 850 students, just over half of Lakeport Unified’s student count.

Smith-Hagberg and her husband, Dave, are reported to be in the process of seeking a place to live in Calistoga.

She is due to leave when her contract ends at the end of the school year, June 30, according to Lakeport Unified School Board President Dennis Darling.

The Lakeport Unified School Board voted unanimously on Thursday night to hire Scott Mahoney of Mahoney Consulting to lead an abbreviated and confidential hiring process in the hopes of having a candidate selected by mid-May and in place by Smith-Hagberg’s departure.

Mahoney, incidentally, is the consultant who has led the Calistoga Joint Unified hiring process that led to Smith-Hagberg’s hiring there.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Friday, more than 24 hours after he had gone missing while on the way to an appointment, a Lakeport man returned home on his own.

Gilbert Navas, 70, returned home at 1:45 p.m. Friday, according to the Lakeport Police Department.

Navas had left in his Toyota Tacoma pickup on Thursday morning en route to Sutter Lakeside Hospital, but police said he never arrived at the hospital.

After he was reported missing later on Thursday, the Lakeport Police Department began issuing community alerts in an effort to find Navas.

Police also entered Navas into the Department of Justices’ Missing Persons System and, due to concerns for his well-being, into the California Highway Patrol’s Silver Alert System for missing seniors.

On Friday, police said they had been able to track Navas to the Bay Area where, on Thursday evening, he rented a Hyundai Sonata and, hours later, checked into a San Jose motel.

However, when San Jose Police tried to contact him at the hotel on Friday, he already had left, authorities said.

Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen said his staff sent out be on the lookout notices to every law enforcement agency in California, with emphasis on the Bay Area. Additionally, they updated the Silver Alert three times.

“We were trying to track his movements and hoping that he would be found by police,” Rasmussen said.

As police were continuing their search, Navas returned home on Friday afternoon, driving the rental car, said Rasmussen.

“He did not not know we were looking for him,” said Rasmussen.

Police still aren’t sure what happened to Navas’ pickup, leading to Navas renting the car. Rasmussen said they’re still investigating to find out the status of the pickup.

Rasmussen, who has known Navas for nearly 30 years, said that after Navas returned home, police met with him. “He was happy to see us, we were happy to see him.”

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – A Willits man was injured early Friday when the semi he was driving crashed into a restaurant in Hopland.

The California Highway Patrol said the driver, identified as 48-year-old C. Hammack, suffered moderate injuries in the crash.

The crash occurred at 3:50 a.m. Friday, according to the CHP.

The CHP said Hammack was driving a Peterbilt semi with two trailers southbound on Highway 101 north of Center Street in Hopland at about 25 to 30 miles per hour.

The report said that, for an unknown reason, Hammack made an unsafe turning movement in an easterly direction and crashed into the Hopland Tap House, located at 13351 Highway 101.

Subsequent media reports have attributed the turning movement to a coughing fit that Hammack told authorities he had.

Due to his injuries, Hammack was transported to the Ukiah Valley Medical Center and later flown to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for treatment, the CHP said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – With the district superintendent expected to take a new job out of county, the Lakeport Unified School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously in a special Thursday night meeting to begin the process of recruiting her successor.

Erin Smith-Hagberg, Lakeport Unified’s superintendent for 12 and a half years, is expected to shortly finalize an offer to become the Calistoga Joint Unified School District superintendent.

Lakeport Unified Board President Dennis Darling called it a “once-in-a-lifetime, fabulous opportunity” for Smith-Hagberg, who has spent her entire educational career in the Lakeport Unified School District.

“Erin has served this district with great love and support for many, many years. I don't think any of us should begrudge her the opportunity to move on and better herself,” said Darling.

This year marks her 30th year in the district, where she worked first as a teacher and later entered the administrative level. She was Lakeport Elementary’s principal when she was hired as the district’s superintendent.

When she was hired, the district board did an internal recruitment only, as it knew that Smith-Hagberg was the person it wanted to be superintendent, Darling told Lake County News following the meeting,

“We knew then what we had and we know now what we’re losing,” Darling said.

During her tenure, Smith-Hagberg has successfully led the district through bond measures and building projects that are creating state-of-the-art learning facilities for the district’s six schools, which serve more than 1,500 students.

At Thursday night’s meeting, Smith-Hagberg also was lauded by district administrators for creating a sense of security for them and a professional, trusting atmosphere in which they can do their jobs.

If Smith-Hagberg’s offer from Calistoga Joint Unified is soon finalized, as it’s expected to be, she would leave at the end of the school year, June 30, when her contract ends, said Darling.

With that deadline looming, Darling began quickly moving the process forward to find her successor.

“This is, I think, an awkward situation,” said Darling, both for the board and for Smith-Hagberg, who hasn’t yet given formal notice of her resignation to Lakeport Unified.

He said he had known a little before his fellow board members about Smith-Hagberg’s potential new job and, as such, “I’m all the way through my five stages of grief.”

Darling said Smith-Hagberg has been a central part of the district for three decades years, and they will certainly miss her.

The main purpose in calling the special hour-long meeting was for the board to consider hiring a consultant to lead the hiring process.

Darling proposed hiring Scott Mahoney, a Windsor-based educational hiring consultant who himself began his career in Lake County. From 1983 to 1992, he served as principal at three local schools – Lower Lake Junior High, Oak Hill Middle School and Lower Lake Elementary.

Mahoney also is the consultant leading the superintendent hiring process for Calistoga Joint Unified, which Darling said Smith-Hagberg has reported to be “grueling.”

Both Darling and Board Clerk Phil Kirby, himself a retired school administrator and superintendent, know Mahoney and spoke confidently during the meeting of his abilities to lead a successful search for Smith-Hagberg’s successor.

“He's a person who knows our community,” and will know the available candidates, Darling said.

During the discussion, Darling also led the board through a timeline for the hiring process, which follows the structure commonly used for finding a superintendent.

However, Darling explained that Lakeport Unified’s timeline is more abbreviated. It proposes to have a final candidate ready for the board to accept at its May 11 meeting.

Despite that “condensed” schedule, Darling said Mahoney has told him that the district still has time to have a good, inclusive hiring process.

Darling said the process steps include a position announcement that’s expected to come out on March 27 in the Association of California School Administrators’ publication and on the EDJOIN national education job board.

At the end of March, the district also will begin holding meetings to solicit input from stakeholders – parents, teachers, administrators and community members, he said.

The timeline called for the board to approve a list of qualifications and attributes for a new superintendent at its April 13 meeting. Once the application deadline passes, there will then be a paper screening process by education professionals, an initial interview of about half a dozen candidates and a final interview of half that number before the board makes a decision. Darling said Mahoney also will do a thorough background check of the candidates.

Mahoney’s typical fee for such work is $14,500, but he has agreed to a fee of $10,000 for Lakeport Unified because it is doing a lot of work in the process. Darling said Mahoney also agreed to that fee because he knows Kirby is with the district and can assist in the work.

Darling said that fee is about half of what a larger search firm typically charges.

He said there are other search options, including the one that is currently under way in the Upper Lake Unified School District, which is recruiting a successor for longtime Superintendent Patrick Iaccino, who retires at the end of June. However, due to time constraints, Darling said he didn’t consider that option a good one for Lakeport Unified.

Darling then moved to discussing the type of recruitment process the district should follow – open or confidential.

In both methods, the board would pick a firm to conduct the search and stakeholder groups would be able to contribute input on professional qualifications and personal attributes for the ideal candidate.

From there, the two methods diverge significantly.

In the open method, the identities of candidates would not be protected during the hiring process, and stakeholder groups would be invited to interview the candidates. That’s the method Upper Lake Unified is following.

The confidential search would have the candidates being screened and taking part in confidential interviews conducted by the board of trustees alone.

Darling said Mahoney encouraged the district to pursue the confidential process, as it is likely to draw a more qualified pool of applicants, which is what he said the district wanted.

“I want to do this process as openly and as transparently as we can,” Darling said, added, “If we do it this way, we're going to get better applicants.”

The confidential route was a concern for the small group of the district’s teachers and administrators who were at the meeting.

Lakeport Elementary teacher Meg Harper said candidates the board interviews will meet the basic qualifications. “Then it's a gut-level pick,” she said, adding that it was unfortunate that the district’s staff couldn’t be part of that pick.

Rachel Paarsch, principal of Terrace Middle School, was unhappy about being excluded from the process due to concerns about having to work for someone she couldn’t trust, which is an experience she’s had before.

“I need you to hear what we're saying too,” she said, adding that Smith-Hagberg was the reason she had left her previous district to come and work for Lakeport Unified.

Clear Lake High School Assistant Principal Jennifer Scheel asked if the board will meet with teachers and principals to get their input.

Kirby said he would be happy to meet with staff at their school sites to get input prior to or during the hiring process. Board member Lori Holmes also suggested surveying the district’s administrators.

Darling assured the group that the board was committed to ensuring multiple opportunities for input. “Ultimately, it is the board’s responsibility to get it right,” he said of the hiring process.

Board member Tom Powers moved to enter the contract with Mahoney Consulting and have the district pursue the confidential hiring process option, with Holmes seconding and the board voting 5-0.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.