NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research.
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers. The change in forest structure could absorb more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, or increase permafrost thawing, resulting in the release of ancient carbon. Millions of data points from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) and Landsat missions helped inform this latest research, which will be used to refine climate forecasting computer models. La…
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Students attending the 2024 Blue Skies Competition toured NASA’s Ames Research Center during the Forum. NASA In the 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, the theme is AgAir: Aviation Solutions for Agriculture. NASA asks collegiate teams to investigate either new or improved aviation capabilities that could assist the agriculture industry by improving production, efficiency, environmental impact and extreme weather/climate resilience. The agriculture industry plays a vital role in providing food, fuel, and fiber for the global population; however, it is facing several challenges, inc…
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Learn Home Celebrate Heliophysics Big… Heliophysics Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Stories Science Activation Highlights Citizen Science 2 min read Celebrate Heliophysics Big Year: Free Monthly Webinars on the Sun Touches Everything Once a month (usually on the first Tuesday), the Heliophysics Education Community meets online to share knowledge and opportunities. During the Heliophysics Big Year (HBY) – a global celebration of the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire solar system, beginning with the Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023, continuing through the Total Solar Eclipse o…
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Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, in preparation for the agency’s Artemis II crewed mission to the Moon, conduct testing of four emergency egress baskets on the mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2024. The baskets are used in the case of a pad abort emergency to allow astronauts and other pad personnel to escape quickly from the mobile launcher to the base of the pad to be driven to safety by emergency transport vehicles.NASA/Amanda Arrieta Since NASA began sending astronauts to space, the agency has relied on emergency systems for personnel to safely leave the launch pad and escape the hazar…
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Bindu Rani had childhood dreams of flight. Today she lifts her gaze even higher, helping researchers study stars, planets beyond our solar system, and black holes billions of times more massive than our Sun. Name: Bindu Rani Title: Astrophysicist, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Guest Investigator Program Lead Scientist Organization: Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, Science Directorate (Code 661) Bindu Rani is an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.Photo credit: NASA/Jay Friedlander What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? I study supermassive black holes using both space-based and ground-…
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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Akeem Shannon showcasing Flipstik attached to a smartphone. The product’s design was improved by looking at NASA research to inform its gecko-inspired method of adhering to surfacesCredit: Flipstik Inc. When it comes to innovative technologies, inventors often find inspiration in the most unexpected places. A former salesman, Akeem Shannon, was inspired by his uncle, who worked as an engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to research the agency’s published technologies. He came across a sticky NASA invention that would help him launch his breakout product. …
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6 min read Quantum Scale Sensors used to Measure Planetary Scale Magnetic Fields Magnetic fields are everywhere in our solar system. They originate from the Sun, planets, and moons, and are carried throughout interplanetary space by solar wind. This is precisely why magnetometers—devices used to measure magnetic fields—are flown on almost all missions in space to benefit the Earth, Planetary, and Heliophysics science communities, and ultimately enrich knowledge for all humankind. These instruments can remotely probe the interior of a planetary body to provide insight into its internal composition, structure, dynamics, and even evolution based on the magnetic history f…
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Technicians with the University of Kansas prepare their KUbeSat-1 for integration at Firefly’s Payload Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California on Thursday, April 25, 2024.Credit: NASA NASA announced a new round of opportunities for CubeSat, developers to build spacecrafts on that will fly on upcoming launches through the agency’s CSLI (CubeSat Launch Initiative). CubeSats are a class of small spacecraft called nanosatellites. The initiative provides space access to U.S. educational institutions, certain non-profit organizations, and informal educational institutions such as museums and science centers, as well as NASA centers focused on workfo…
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The NASA Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS) formally launched on 6/13/24 during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters with Administrator Nelson as the keynote speaker. The DRCS is a revamped one NASA approach in how the agency responds to natural hazards and disasters domestically and internationally to support partners and stakeholders The DRCS will be organized by the Program Office located at LaRC. MSFC and Earth Science Branch Disasters team will continue to support the DRCS and events that agency respond too by tapping into expertise and subject matter expertise here at MSFC. MSFC was represented at the DRCS launch by Center Response Coordinators Jordan Bell (ST…
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This graphic shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. The blue haloes represent stars observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers are using these X-ray data to determine how habitable exoplanets may be based on whether they receive lethal radiation from the stars they orbit. This research will help guide observations with the next generation of telescopes aiming to make the first images of planets like Earth. Researchers used almost 10 days of Chandra observations and 26 days of XMM observations to examine the X-ray behavior of 57 nearby stars, some of them with known planets. Results were presented at the 244th meeting of …
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May 2024 was a very active month for severe weather across the United States, with several hundred tornadoes occurring throughout the United States. The MSFC Disasters team has been working with several National Weather Service (NWS) Offices across the Southeast this spring to help support their damage surveys with high-resolution commercial imagery and derived products. The imagery and products are created using data provided by NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. The MSFC Disasters Team’s support and expertise are providing another tool for forecasters to use when trying to understand the impacts of severe weather on their forecast area. The MSFC…
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Personnel from the MSFC Earth Science Branch and local partners participated in the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS), and they are members of the IMPACTS team that recently won the prestigious Presidential Rank Group Achievement Award from NASA. IMPACTS was a highly successful NASA Earth Venture Suborbital airborne field campaign that examined why and how heavy snowfalls occur, as well as how NASA missions can better detect and measure these events. The suborbital mission had three flight campaigns in 2020, 2022, and 2023, and used the NASA ER-2 and P-3 aircraft. MSFC contributed the Advanced Microwave Pre…
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Michael Zanetti (ST13), Kyle Miller (EV42), and Chris Whetsel (ES52) conducted a technology demonstration and field work with the NASA JSC 5th Joint EVA Test Team (JETT-3) from 5/17-23/24, near SP Crater, Flagstaff, AZ. JETT5 tested full-up mission operations with communication to JSC-Houston, and included astronauts Kate Rubins and Andre Douglas testing ATLAS suits and 4-6 hr. planned traverses near SP-Crater – a former Apollo astronaut geology training site. The Kinematic Navigation and Cartography Knapsack (KNaCK) team members were invited to demonstrate GPS-denied navigation solutions using our person-mounted velocity-sensing LiDAR sensors that provide local position …
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Muthukumaran Ramasubramanian, Slesa Adhikari, and Nish Pantha from IMPACT/ST11 organized hands-on workshops and a hackathon in collaboration with the Department of Computational Intelligence at SRMIST’s School of Computing in Chennai, India. These sessions were held as part of the IEEE GRSS-ESI TC (Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society – Earth Science Informatics Technical Committee) Remote Sensing Working Group (RSDS) outreach activities during 4/23-26/24. The team provided students with materials and resources on remote sensing data systems, large language models, and natural language processing for data discovery and visualization. Following the workshops, 15 teams com…
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On 5/13/24, in alignment with the NASA Interagency Agreement with the US Department of State Advancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in Bhutan through Increased Earth Observation Capacity, Aparna R. Phalke, Sarah Cox and Tony Kim (ST11) traveled to Thimphu, Bhutan, to represent the SERVIR SCO at the official launch on 5/17/24 of the “Farm Action Toolkit” service (https://crops.servirglobal.net/dashboard/) with the implementing partners from Bhutan Druk Holdings and Investments (DHI) Super Fablab, National Statistical Bureau (NSB), Department of Agriculture, National Center of Organic Agriculture, National Land Commission and GovTech Bhutan. The service was pr…
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Manil Maskey (ST11/IMPACT) represented NASA at a discussion on the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot program held on Capitol Hill. The event brought together key members of the House AI Caucus, including Representatives Anna Eshoo, Bill Foster, Haley Stevens, Jim Baird, and Sean Casten. In attendance were several congressional staffers and the director of the National Science Foundation. During the discussion, Dr. Maskey highlighted the AI initiatives of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and emphasized the potential benefits of the NAIRR to NASA’s activities. He also showcased the advancements in SMD’s AI foundation model developments…
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On 5/22/24, Chinmay Deval, the Water Security Lead at the SERVIR Science Coordination Office, moderated a virtual panel for the ResilienceLinks monthly webinar series. ResilienceLinks is the knowledge platform for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Center for Resilience. The theme for May focused on Water Data and Climate Resilience. The panel featured distinguished water experts from the SERVIR global network, including: Jamilatou Chaibou Begou from the Agrometeorology, Hydrology, and Meteorology Regional Center/SERVIR West Africa, Chinaporn Meechaiya from the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center/SERVIR Southeast Asia, Jim Nelson, Principal Investigator of…
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A collaboration between IMPACT and IBM has produced INDUS, a comprehensive suite of large language models (LLMs) tailored for the domains of Earth science, biological and physical sciences, heliophysics, planetary sciences, and astrophysics and trained using curated scientific corpora drawn from diverse data sources. Kaylin Bugbee (ST11), team lead of NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE), spoke to the benefit INDUS offers to existing applications: “Large language models are rapidly changing the search experience. The Science Discovery Engine, a unified, insightful search interface for all of NASA’s open science data and information, has prototyped integrating INDUS into …
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Alphonse Sterling (ST13) gave an invited seminar presentation to the Space Science group at UNH, on 4/26/24. Sterling, who obtained his PhD from UNH, also had round table discussions with some of the current UNH students interested in careers in space science. View the full article
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Dennis Gallagher (ST13) provided a lecture to this summer’s 15 REU students titled “Inner Magnetospheric Physics”. Mehmet Yalim of UAH Space Science Department is managing the program this year. View the full article
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Alphonse Sterling (ST13) gave a lecture on solar physics to at a one-day school on 5/5/24, in Krakow, Poland. The lecture was entitled “Introduction to the Solar Interior and Atmosphere,” and was just given prior to the start of IAU Symposium 388 on Solar and Stellar Coronal Mass Ejections. The audience included students and postdocs from various international locations who were attending the Symposium. View the full article
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Phil Kaaret (ST12) is lead author on the paper which describes Chandra X-ray Observatory observations of the galaxy NGC 2366. Escape of Lyman continuum (LyC) emission from galaxies found in the early universe was essential for the reionization of the universe when the intergalactic medium (IGM) changed from being neutral gas to the ionized IGM that we observe today. Compact emission-line galaxies (LCGs) are the most abundant class of confirmed Lyman continuum (LyC) emitters and provide (relatively) nearby analogs of the galaxies found in the early universe. An optical integral field study of NGC 2366 revealed an outflow originating at a star cluster known as “knot B” that…
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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The 2025 RASC-AL Competition is seeking undergraduate and graduate teams to develop new concepts that leverage innovation to improve our ability to operate on the Moon, Mars and beyond. Each team’s response should address novel and robust technologies, capabilities, and operational models that support expanding humanity’s ability to thrive beyond Earth. In this year’s RASC-AL Competition, teams and their faculty advisors are invited to design and propose innovative solutions with supporting original engineering and analysis in response to one of the following themes: Sustained Lunar Evolut…
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Alphonse Sterling (ST13) is co-author on a paper describing CMEs that appear to be initiated by a series of recurrent coronal jets. The paper is entitled: “Source Region and Launch Characteristics of Magnetic-arch-blowout Solar Coronal Mass Ejections Driven by Homologous Compact-flare Blowout Jets.” It is led by Binal Patel, a graduate student of Sterling’s colleague in India, Bhuwan Joshi; Ronald Moore of UAH is also a co-author. The paper will appear in ApJ shortly, and a preprint is available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.03292. Pre-eruptive coronal magnetic field configurations of the source region obtained from the NLFFF extrapolations using HMI vector magneto…
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Phil Kaaret (ST12) gave a talk on “Particle acceleration and magnetic field geometry in the eastern jet of the microquasar SS 433” at the session on Black Holes on 6/12/24. At the end of his talk, Kaaret promoted the upcoming IXPE GO cycle 2 and the NICER/IXPE workshop that will be a hybrid meeting held 7/29-8/1/24 and the International X-ray POlarimetry Symposium being organized by USRA that will be held in Huntsville on 9/16-19/24. View the full article
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