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3 min read NASA, Partners Explore Sustainable Fuel’s Effects on Aircraft Contrails NASA Armstrong’s DC-8 aircraft flies over the northwestern U.S. to monitor emissions from Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator Explorer aircraft. As the largest flying science laboratory in the world, the DC-8 is equipped to collect crucial data about the sustainable aviation fuel and its effects on condensation trail formation.NASA/Jim Ross Contrails, the lines of clouds left by high-flying aircraft that crisscross the skies, are familiar sights, but they may have an unseen effect on the planet – trapping heat in the atmosphere. Working with Boeing, United Airlines, and other industry, government, and international partners, NASA researchers are collecting data to see how new, greener aviation fuels can help reduce the problem. Throughout October, NASA has supported contrail research through Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program, a multi-year effort to analyze sustainable aviation fuel its capacity to benefit the environment. Boeing’s current ecoDemonstrator Explorer aircraft, a 737-10, has conducted test flights switching between tanks filled either with 100% sustainable aviation fuel or conventional fuel. NASA’s DC-8 aircraft, the world’s largest flying science laboratory, has followed, measuring emissions and contrail ice formation from each type of fuel. This data will help determine whether sustainable aviation fuels help reduce the formation of contrails. “Contrails are believed to be a major source of pollution,” said Rich Moore, a research physical scientist in NASA’s Langley Aerosol Research Group Experiment. Moore was among the researchers who flew aboard the DC-8. “With this mission, we’re looking not so much at correcting contrails, but at preventing them.” In addition to the DC-8, which is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the agency contributed other critical capabilities, including a mobile laboratory for ground testing. Other collaborators for the ecoDemonstrator flights include General Electric Aerospace, the German Aerospace Center, National Research Council Canada, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Within a year, the researchers will publish their results. “One of the most amazing things about this collaboration is that this data will be released publicly with the world,” Moore said. Contrail clouds form when aircraft operate in the cold temperatures at high altitudes and water vapor in engine exhaust condenses and freezes. Made up of ice particles, contrail clouds can have both a cooling and warming effect based on ambient conditions, timing, and persistence – but scientists estimate that their warming effect is greater on a global scale. Over the past decade, NASA-funded research has shown that sustainable aviation fuels have significant benefits for reducing engine particle emissions that can influence local air quality near airports and contribute to the formation of contrails. Efforts to develop and evaluate sustainable aviation fuels focus on delivering the performance of conventional jet fuel without releasing new carbon dioxide into the environment. These fuels can be derived from sustainable sources such as feedstocks and waste resources. Flight testing remains the gold standard for understanding aerospace innovations and their environmental impacts, making partnerships like ecoDemonstrator and research aircrafts like NASA’s DC-8 important sources for data that can help make aviation more sustainable, protecting the environment and improving life on Earth. Share Details Last Updated Oct 30, 2023 Editor Ryan M. Henderson Contact Location Armstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms Armstrong Flight Research CenterAtmospheric CompositionClimate ChangeDC-8Earth's AtmosphereScience in the Air Explore More 3 min read See SWOT Mission’s Unprecedented View of Global Sea Levels Article 2 hours ago 4 min read NASA Technologies Receive Multiple Nods in TIME Inventions of 2023 Article 3 days ago 4 min read Aviones de movilidad aérea avanzada: un viaje suave en el futuro Article 4 days ago View the full article

Two artist’s concepts show the WISE spacecraft, left, in front of an image of the infrared sky it observed during its prime mission, and NASA’s Lucy mission, right, during its Nov. 1 encounter with asteroid Dinkinesh. NASA/JPL-Caltech and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Researchers have utilized infrared survey data to refine the asteroid’s size and surface brightness in support of the Nov. 1 encounter by NASA’s Lucy mission. NASA’s Lucy mission will soon have its first asteroid encounter as the spacecraft travels through deep space en route to Jupiter’s orbit. But before the spacecraft passes 265 miles (425 kilometers) from the surface of the small asteroid Dinkinesh, researchers have used 13-year-old infrared data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to support the mission’s flyby. Their new study provides updated estimates of the asteroid’s size and albedo – a measurement of surface reflectivity – that could help scientists better understand the nature of some near-Earth objects. Located between Mars and Jupiter, the main asteroid belt is home to most asteroids in our solar system, including Dinkinesh, which is following an orbit around the Sun that places it near Lucy’s path. The Lucy mission is using the Dinkinesh encounter as an opportunity to test systems and procedures that are designed to keep the asteroid within the science instruments’ fields of view as the spacecraft flies past at 10,000 mph (4.5 kilometers per second). This will help the team prepare for the mission’s primary objective: investigating the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, a population of primitive small bodies orbiting in tandem with Jupiter. In the new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, University of Arizona researchers used observations made by the WISE spacecraft, which serendipitously scanned Dinkinesh in 2010 during its prime mission. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, WISE launched on Dec. 14, 2009, to create an all-sky infrared map of the universe. Although the signal was weak in the exposures captured by WISE, the authors managed to identify 17 infrared observations of the region of sky where Dinkinesh’s signal could be seen. Then they used an algorithm to align and stack the images. The observations were made in March 2010 and represent 36.5 hours of observing time. “Dinkinesh wasn’t initially detected by WISE, because the asteroid’s infrared signal was too weak for the software that was designed to find objects in a single exposure,” said Kiana De’Marius McFadden, a graduate student at the University of Arizona and lead author of the study. “But the asteroid’s dim infrared signal was still there, so our main challenge was to first find Dinkinesh and then to stack multiple exposures of the same region of sky to get its signal to emerge from the noise.” Beyond WISE Dinkinesh was discovered in 1999 – over a decade before WISE made the observations – and although its approximate size has been known, the new analysis refines not only its size, but also its albedo. The WISE observations suggest the asteroid has a diameter of about a half-mile (760 meters) and an albedo consistent with stony (S-type) asteroids. Although WISE’s purpose wasn’t to detect asteroids, the spacecraft was sensitive to the infrared light (which is invisible to the naked eye) radiating from them as a result of sunlight heating their rocky surfaces. WISE had recorded about 190,000 asteroid observations by the end of its prime mission. In 2013, NASA reactivated WISE and renamed the mission Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE). Its purpose: to detect and track asteroids and comets that stray close to Earth’s orbit. “Dinkinesh is the smallest main belt asteroid to be studied up-close and could provide valuable information about this type of object,” said the University of Arizona’s Amy Mainzer, a study co-author and the principal investigator for NEOWISE. “This population of main-belt asteroids overlap in size with the potentially hazardous near-Earth object population. Studying Dinkinesh could provide insights as to how these small main-belt asteroids form and where near-Earth asteroids come from.” Targeting a late-2027 launch, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) will take over where NEOWISE leaves off. Scanning the sky in infrared wavelengths for hard-to-find asteroids and comets, NEO Surveyor could also utilize the same technique used to detect faint signals hiding in WISE observations, boosting the next-generation space telescope’s power. Mainzer is the principal investigator for NEO Surveyor. More About the Mission Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based at the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Explore Lucy's flyby of Dinkinesh with NASA's Eyes on the Solar System News Media Contact Ian J. O’Neill Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-2649 ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov 2023-155 Share Details Last Updated Oct 30, 2023 Related Terms AsteroidsJet Propulsion LaboratoryLucyNear-Earth Asteroid (NEA)NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor Space Telescope)NEOWISEPlanetary DefenseTrojan AsteroidsWISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) Explore More 3 min read See SWOT Mission’s Unprecedented View of Global Sea Levels Article 2 hours ago 5 min read NASA Is Locating Ice on Mars With This New Map Article 4 days ago 5 min read How NASA Is Protecting Europa Clipper From Space Radiation Article 6 days ago View the full article

NASA Iron-rich sediment colors the red-orange waters of the Betsiboka River Delta in Madagascar in this image taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station on Sept. 30, 2023. The sediment can clog waterways in the delta’s estuarial environment, but it can also form new islands that become colonized by mangroves. Despite its rusty color, this artery of water is important for biodiversity. Within the Betsiboka River Delta, the estuary supplies food, such as seagrasses, to the endangered green turtle and vulnerable dugong, or sea cow. Text credit: Sara Schmidt Image Credit: NASA View the full article

This animation shows global sea level data collected by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite from July 26 to Aug. 16. Red and orange indicate higher-than-average ocean heights, while blue represents lower-than-average heights. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Data on sea surface heights around the world from the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission yields a mesmerizing view of the planet’s ocean. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite is sending down tantalizing views of Earth’s water, including a global composite of sea surface heights. The satellite collected the data visualized above during SWOT’s first full 21-day science orbit, which it completed between July 26 and Aug. 16. SWOT is measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface, providing one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s oceans and freshwater lakes and rivers. The satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). The animation shows sea surface height anomalies around the world: Red and orange indicate ocean heights that were higher than the global mean sea surface height, while blue represents heights lower than the mean. Sea level differences can highlight ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream coming off the U.S. East Coast or the Kuroshio current off the east coast of Japan. Sea surface height can also indicate regions of relatively warmer water – like the eastern part of the equatorial Pacific Ocean during an El Niño – because water expands as it warms. The SWOT science team made the measurements using the groundbreaking Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument. With two antennas spread 33 feet (10 meters) apart on a boom, KaRIn produces a pair of data swaths (tracks visible in the animation) as it circles the globe, bouncing radar pulses off the water’s surface to collect surface-height measurements. “The detail that SWOT is sending back on sea levels around the world is incredible,” said Parag Vaze, SWOT project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The data will advance research into the effects of climate change and help communities around the world better prepare for a warming world.” More About the Mission Launched on Dec. 16, 2022, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, SWOT is now in its operations phase, collecting data that will be used for research and other purposes. SWOT was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES provided the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations. CSA provided the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the agency’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, managed the associated launch services. To learn more about SWOT, visit: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/ News Media Contacts Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874 jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov 2023-156 Share Details Last Updated Oct 30, 2023 Related Terms Climate ChangeEarthJet Propulsion LaboratoryOceansSWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography)Water on Earth Explore More 4 min read NASA Technologies Receive Multiple Nods in TIME Inventions of 2023 Article 3 days ago 6 min read NASA-ISRO Radar Mission to Provide Dynamic View of Forests, Wetlands Article 3 days ago 5 min read NASA Is Locating Ice on Mars With This New Map Article 4 days ago View the full article

4 Min Read NASA C-130 Makes First-Ever Flight to Antarctica for GUSTO Balloon Mission NASA's Wallops Flight Facility C-130 aircraft delivered the agency’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) payload to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Oct. 28, 2023. The GUSTO mission will launch on a scientific balloon in December 2023. Credits: NASA/Scott Battaion On Oct. 28, 2023, NASA’s C-130 Hercules and crew safely touched down at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, after an around-the-globe journey to deliver the agency’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO). The United States research station, operated by the National Science Foundation, is host to NASA’s Antarctic long-duration balloon campaign in which the GUSTO mission will take a scientific balloon flight beginning December 2023. The C-130 crew, which has now completed half of the 26,400-nautical-mile round-trip journey, first stopped at Fort Cavazos, Texas, on Oct. 17, to load the GUSTO observatory and members of its instrument team. Additional stops to service the aircraft and for crew rest included Travis Air Force Base (AFB), California; Hickman AFB, Hawaii; Pago Pago, American Samoa; and Christchurch, New Zealand, before finally reaching McMurdo, Antarctica – a mere 800 miles from the South Pole. Aircraft Office teams prepare the C-130 aircraft for departure at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The aircraft will deliver the agency’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) payload to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The GUSTO mission will launch on a scientific balloon in December 2023.NASA/Terry Zaperach GUSTO, part of NASA’s Astrophysics Explorers Program, is set to fly aboard a football-stadium-sized, zero-pressure scientific balloon 55 days and beyond, on a mapping mission of a portion of the Milky Way Galaxy and nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. A telescope with carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen emission line detectors will measure the interstellar medium, the cosmic material found between stars, and trace the full lifecycle of that matter. GUSTO’s science observations will be performed in a balloon launch from Antarctica to allow for enough observation time aloft, access to astronomical objects, and solar power provided by the austral summer in the polar region. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Aircraft Office in Wallops Island, Virginia, which manages the C-130, spent nearly a year in coordination efforts preparing for GUSTO’s trip to its launch site. From international clearances with agencies, cargo configurations with NASA’s Balloon Program Office, logistical support with the National Science Foundation at McMurdo, to specialized training on nontraditional navigation systems in Antarctica, the Aircraft Office developed an extensive plan to safely deliver the intricate science payload. The first-ever mission to Antarctica for the NASA C-130 aircraft presented several long-haul cargo flight challenges. Mission managers and NASA’s Office of International and Interagency Relations (OIIR) started early to stay ahead of coordination of international flight clearances. “We work very hard to make sure that we execute the mission at a high standard of technical competence and professionalism to maintain NASA’s international reputation,” said John Baycura, Wallops research pilot on the GUSTO mission. Large time-zone changes challenge the crew’s circadian rhythm. Ninety hours in flight across multiple time zones requires an extra pilot and flight engineer on the mission to share the workload. Mandatory crew rest days at strategic locations, per NASA policy, ensure the crew receives enough time to rest, adjust to the schedule, and proceed safely. Visit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Flickr for more photos. Unexpected weather also tops the list of most pressing challenges for this type of flight. Oceanic crossings come with the added risk of weather complicated by no radar coverage over the ocean. The crew uses DOD and civilian weather agencies to identify hazardous weather and adjust flight routes, altitude, and timings accordingly. “For the specific case of McMurdo, while en route, we called the weather shop at McMurdo Station to get a forecast update before we reached our ‘safe return’ point. Using a conservative approach, we decided whether to continue to McMurdo Station or return to Christchurch and try again the next day,” said Baycura. For this mission, no commercial entities supported the final leg to Antarctica. U.S. Air Force C-17’s and the New York Air National Guard LC-130’s that typically transport to McMurdo Station had limited space in their schedules. By using NASA’s C-130 for this specialized cargo mission, “the balloon program gained a dedicated asset with a highly experienced crew and support team. This greatly reduced the standard project risks to schedule, cargo, and cost,” said Baycura. For more information, visit nasa.gov/wallops. Share Details Last Updated Oct 30, 2023 Editor Jamie Adkins Contact Olivia F. Littletonolivia.f.littleton@nasa.gov Location Wallops Flight Facility Related Terms AeronauticsNASA AircraftScientific BalloonsWallops Flight Facility Explore More 4 min read NASA Technologies Receive Multiple Nods in TIME Inventions of 2023 Article 3 days ago 4 min read Aviones de movilidad aérea avanzada: un viaje suave en el futuro Article 4 days ago 3 min read NASA Retires UHF SmallSat Tracking Site Ops at Wallops Article 5 days ago View the full article

Exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example. Image: Crab Nebula This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) reveals new details in infrared light. The supernova remnant is comprised of several different components, including doubly ionized sulfur (represented in red-orange), ionized iron (blue), dust (yellow-white and green), and synchrotron emission (white). In this image, colors were assigned to different filters from Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI: blue (F162M), light blue (F480M), cyan (F560W), green (F1130W), orange (F1800W), and red (F2100W). : Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University). Using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a team led by Tea Temim at Princeton University is searching for answers about the Crab Nebula’s origins. “Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” explained Temim. Image: Webb and Hubble This side-by-side comparison of the Crab Nebula as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in optical light (left) and the James Webb Space Telescope in infrared light (right) reveals different details. By studying the recently collected Webb data, and consulting previous observations of the Crab taken by other telescopes like Hubble, astronomers can build a more comprehensive understanding of this mysterious supernova remnant.: Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (Arizona State University); Webb Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University). At first glance, the general shape of the supernova remnant is similar to the optical wavelength image released in 2005 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: In Webb’s infrared observation, a crisp, cage-like structure of fluffy gaseous filaments are shown in red-orange. However, in the central regions, emission from dust grains (yellow-white and green) is mapped out by Webb for the first time. Additional aspects of the inner workings of the Crab Nebula become more prominent and are seen in greater detail in the infrared light captured by Webb. In particular, Webb highlights what is known as synchrotron radiation: emission produced from charged particles, like electrons, moving around magnetic field lines at relativistic speeds. The radiation appears here as milky smoke-like material throughout the majority of the Crab Nebula’s interior. This feature is a product of the nebula’s pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. The pulsar’s strong magnetic field accelerates particles to extremely high speeds and causes them to emit radiation as they wind around magnetic field lines. Though emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, the synchrotron radiation is seen in unprecedented detail with Webb’s NIRCam instrument. Video: Tour of Webb Image To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video This video tours the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant that lies 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Despite this distance from Earth, the Crab Nebula is a relatively close example of what remains after the explosive death of a massive star. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures in unprecedented detail the various components that comprise the Crab, including the expanding cloud of hot gas, cavernous filaments of dust, and synchrotron emission. The synchrotron emission is the result of the nebula’s pulsar: a rapidly rotating neutron star that is located in the center. To locate the Crab Nebula’s pulsar heart, trace the wisps that follow a circular ripple-like pattern in the middle to the bright white dot in the center. Farther out from the core, follow the thin white ribbons of the radiation. The curvy wisps are closely grouped together, outlining the structure of the pulsar’s magnetic field, which sculpts and shapes the nebula. At center left and right, the white material curves sharply inward from the filamentary dust cage’s edges and goes toward the neutron star’s location, as if the waist of the nebula is pinched. This abrupt slimming may be caused by the confinement of the supernova wind’s expansion by a belt of dense gas. The wind produced by the pulsar heart continues to push the shell of gas and dust outward at a rapid pace. Among the remnant’s interior, yellow-white and green mottled filaments form large-scale loop-like structures, which represent areas where dust grains reside. The search for answers about the Crab Nebula’s past continues as astronomers further analyze the Webb data and consult previous observations of the remnant taken by other telescopes. Scientists will have newer Hubble data to review within the next year or so from the telescope’s reimaging of the supernova remnant. This will mark Hubble’s first look at emission lines from the Crab Nebula in over 20 years, and will enable astronomers to more accurately compare Webb and Hubble’s findings. Learn More Want to learn more? Through NASA’s Universe of Learning, part of NASA’s Science Activation program, explore images of the Crab Nebula from other telescopes, a 3D visualization, data sonification, and hands-on activities. These resources and more information about supernova remnants and star lifecycles can be found at NASA’s Universe of Learning. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA’s Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Media Contacts Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu , Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edi Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Downloads Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Related Information Neutron Stars – https://universe.nasa.gov/stars/types/#otp_neutron_stars Universe/Stars Basics – https://universe.nasa.gov/stars/basics/ Universe Basics – https://universe.nasa.gov/universe/basics/ More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/ More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/ Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/ En Español Ciencia de la NASA NASA en español Space Place para niños Keep Exploring Related Topics Stars Overview Stars are giant balls of hot gas – mostly hydrogen, with some helium and small amounts of other elements.… How does the universe work? How does the universe work? Understanding the universe’s birth and its ultimate fate are essential first steps to unveil the… The Big Bang Overview The origin, evolution, and nature of the universe have fascinated and confounded humankind for centuries. New ideas and major… Universe Explore the universe: Learn about the history of the cosmos, what it’s made of, and so much more. Share Details Last Updated Oct 30, 2023 Editor Steve Sabia Contact Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes ResearchGoddard Space Flight CenterJames Webb Space Telescope (JWST)Neutron StarsOrigin & Evolution of the UniverseStarsThe Universe View the full article

5 min read NASA’s Modern History Makers: Sarah Tipler Sarah Tipler poses in front of a mural of NASA astronaut Michael Anderson in Plattsburgh, New York. Credit: Sarah Tipler <back to gallery Growing up, Sarah Tipler always felt out of place. She had trouble with time management, structuring her day, and focusing her attention, but she didn’t know why. “For all of my undergraduate education, I really struggled to keep up despite understanding the material,” Tipler said. “It took a ton of work to make good grades happen, including asking for extensions and pulling last-minute all-nighters. I used to beat myself up for my apparent lack of self-control.” Tipler enrolled in college after high school but withdrew after facing depression and other mental health challenges. A few years later, she took another stab at school to become a French teacher but found the career wasn’t for her. After realizing studying computer science and engineering fascinated her, she applied for a Pathways internship at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “At NASA, I knew that I was working on the kinds of projects that are helping advance humanity’s knowledge of the universe and the world we live in,” she said. It wasn’t until transitioning to a full-time computer scientist job at Glenn that she finally got some answers about herself. “At NASA, I was feeling happy, I was in a great place in my life, and I was excited about where I was, but I was still struggling to effectively manage my workload,” she said. “That’s what led me to seek help and obtain a diagnosis of ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], which has really helped me understand a lot of the issues that I’ve had in my life and put a lot of things in a different perspective.” Tipler’s colleagues provided her encouragement and a support system, and she’s now helping NASA take its next giant leap with the Artemis missions. Tipler’s team develops code that models the power systems of the International Space Station, the Orion spacecraft, and the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) that will help propel Gateway, NASA’s future lunar space station. This SPACE (or system power analysis for capability evaluation) code can predict how much power is generated by solar arrays and determine whether it is sufficient to support important spacecraft systems, like life support and propulsion. For example, throughout Gateway’s journey, the solar arrays that generate power for PPE won’t always be able to face the sun and generate maximum energy. “We need to make sure that when Gateway is using its thrusters, which require a lot of electrical power, we’ll have enough for the rest of the spacecraft,” Tipler explains. Tipler’s team is also developing a graphical user interface that will make it easier for the Flight Operations Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to use the code. “It’s an incredible feeling to know that I’m some small part of that giant puzzle,” she said. “It makes all of the challenges and obstacles that I go through feel worth it when I get to sit down and look at things from the big picture.” Learning to navigate ADHD has been a long journey, Tipler says, but her family, friends, fiancé, and five rambunctious cats have been there to cheer her up and encourage her. In addition, being able to work remotely from her home in northern New York has been critical to her success at work. “I have found that teleworking and being fully remote has really helped with my ADHD because my focus isn’t always consistent, so this adds a lot more flexibility into my work life and has helped me be the best productive person I can be,” she said. Ensuring open communication with coworkers and having conversations about expectations has also kept Tipler on the right track, and she has found ways to thrive. “I think there are some really cool, unique perspectives that people living with different disabilities can bring to the workplace in the ways we think differently or work to overcome obstacles or problems,” she said. Often, practices that help people with disabilities can be beneficial to all workers, Tipler says, such as offering written agendas and notes instead of just verbal information or being open to new workplace approaches. “You don’t always need to know what someone is dealing with to make things better for everyone,” she said. Tipler wants people working to overcome their own obstacles to know that they are not alone and to remind others that some disabilities, like ADHD, can seem invisible. “Remember that you never know what someone else is going through,” she said. “The best approach is to operate with kindness.” NASA is in a Golden Era of aeronautics and space exploration. In partnership with commercial and private businesses, NASA is currently making history with significant missions such as Artemis, Quesst, and electrified aviation. The NASA’s Modern History Makers series highlights members of NASA Glenn’s workforce who make these remarkable missions possible. Ellen Bausback NASA’s Glenn Research Center Explore More 4 min read NASA, JAXA Benefit from Collaborative Fellowship Experience Article 3 days ago 4 min read Progress Continues Toward NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test to Station Article 3 days ago 3 min read NASA Updates Commercial Crew Planning Manifest Article 3 days ago View the full article

Celebrating International Observe the Moon Night on This Week @NASA – October 27

2 min read NASA Supports Tests of Dust Sensor to Aid Lunar Landings University of Central Florida researchers tested an instrument designed to measure the size and speed of surface particles kicked up by the exhaust from a rocket-powered lander on the Moon or Mars. The four tethered flights on Astrobotic’s Xodiac rocket-powered lander took place in Mojave, California, from Sept. 12 through Oct. 4, 2023. Researchers tested the Ejecta STORM technology’s integration with a lander and operation in flight conditions that simulated the plume effects of a lunar lander. Credits: Astrobotic A research team from the University of Central Florida recently tested an instrument designed to measure the size and speed of surface particles kicked up by the exhaust from a rocket-powered lander on the Moon or Mars. Supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, researchers evaluated the instrument in a series of flight tests on Astrobotic’s Xodiac rocket-powered lander in Mojave, California. When spacecraft land on the Moon or Mars, the rocket exhaust plume creates regolith ejecta – abrasive dust and large particles moving at high speeds – that can damage the lander and surrounding structures. Understanding how a rocket engine’s exhaust affects this ejecta will help mission designers plan more effectively for lunar landings by allowing them to model the soil erosion rate, the particle size distribution, and the velocities associated with plume-surface interaction. Researchers at the University of Central Florida developed the laser-based instrument, named Ejecta STORM (Sheet Tracking, Opacity, and Regolith Maturity), to answer this need while embracing the Flight Opportunities program’s “fly, fix, fly” ethos to quickly advance the technology. Four tethered flights enabled researchers to test the system’s integration with a lander and operation in flight conditions that simulated the plume effects of a lunar lander. These tests build on data collected during a 2020 flight campaign leveraging Xodiac. These 2020 flight tests, funded by the program’s TechFlights solicitation, allowed researchers to measure the density and size of particles during terrestrial simulations of lunar landings. Researchers expect the technology to inform model development and reduce risk for future lunar landings, ultimately improving mission design for rover-based planetary science missions, crewed missions to the Moon and other bodies, and in-situ resource utilization. Flight Opportunities is managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and is part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. By Chloe Tuck NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Facebook logo @NASATechnology @NASA_Technology Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate Flight Opportunities News Moon to Mars Architecture Armstrong Flight Research Center Share Details Last Updated Oct 27, 2023 Editor Loura Hall Contact Related Terms Flight Opportunities ProgramSpace Technology Mission Directorate View the full article

As NASA explores, innovates, and inspires through its work, agency inventions aimed at monitoring atmospheric pollution, studying samples from asteroids, extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and revolutionizing flight have been named TIME’s Inventions of 2023. TIME announced the honorees on Oct. 24. “For more than 65 years, NASA has innovated for the benefit of humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “From turning carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars, to delivering the largest asteroid sample to Earth, helping improve air quality across North America, and changing the way we fly, our MOXIE, TEMPO, OSIRIS-REx and X-59 Quesst missions are proof that NASA turns science fiction into science fact. It’s all made possible by our world-class workforce who, time after time, show us nothing is beyond our reach when we work together.” Improving Air Quality Data NASA graphic showing basic path of TEMPO scanning. Image Credit: NASA NASA’s TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) mission is the first space-based instrument to measure pollution hourly during the daytime across North America, spanning from Mexico City to Northern Canada and coast-to-coast. Launched in April 2023, TEMPO provides unprecedented daytime measurement and monitoring of major air pollutants. The first-of-its-kind instrument can monitor pollution within a four-square-mile area and is helping climate scientists improve life on Earth by providing openly accessible air quality data for studies of rush hour pollution, the transport of pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, and even the effects of fertilizers, and it also has the potential to help improve air quality alerts. Making Oxygen on Mars Technicians lower the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument into the belly of the Perseverance rover. Photo credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech In September, a microwave-size device known as MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover generated oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for the 16th and final time. Extracting oxygen from the atmospheric resources found on Mars via In-situ Resource Utilization processes will be critical to long-term human exploration of the Red Planet, providing explorers with breathable air and rocket propellant. Since Perseverance landed in 2021, MOXIE has proven far more successful than expected, generating more than 130 grams of oxygen, including 9.8 grams on its final run. At its most efficient, MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen an hour – twice as much as NASA’s original goals for the instrument – at least 98% purity. Asteroid Sampler Curation teams process the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in a cleanroom, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Photo Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber On Sept. 24, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a sample from asteroid Bennu to Earth. The sample is the first asteroid collected in space by NASA, and the largest ever collected from an asteroid. The rock and dust represent relics of our early solar system and could shed light on the origins of life. Early analysis of the sample at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has revealed high carbon content and water, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock. The Bennu sample will be divided and shared with partner space agencies and other institutions, providing generations of scientists a window about 4.5 billion years into the past. Quiet Sonic Thumps The X-59 Quesst aircraft is rolled out at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Palmdale, California. Photo credit: Lockheed Martin NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft, the agency’s first purpose-built, supersonic X-plane in decades, is currently scheduled to take to the skies in 2024. The centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, the agency will fly the X-59 to demonstrate the ability to fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the typically loud sonic boom to a quieter “sonic thump”. NASA will use the X-59 to provide data to help regulators amend current rules that ban commercial supersonic flight over land, opening the door to greatly reduced flight times. NASA will fly the X-59 over several U.S. cities in the final phase of the mission, gathering public input to the hushed sonic thumps. The TEMPO instrument is managed by NASA Langley’s Science Directorate in collaboration with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It was built by Ball Aerospace and integrated onto Intelsat 40E by Maxar. The MOXIE experiment was built Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the project for the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched on Sept. 8, 2016, was led by the University of Arizona. It is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, under the agency’s Science Mission Directorate’s New Frontiers Program. The Low-Boom Flight Demonstration project is managed by NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the X-59 Quesst is managed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and both efforts are led by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. For more information about the agency’s missions, visit: https://www.nasa.gov View the full article

NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Katherine Cook, fourth from the left, attends a welcome reception for the 26th class of Mansfield Scholars at the Iikura House in Japan on Sept. 1, 2022. The reception was jointly hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, the Mansfield Foundation, and the National Personnel Authority of Japan.Contributed photo A yearlong journey of cultural and professional development overseas has a NASA Deep Space Logistics employee excited about current and future collaboration with one of America’s key international partners in the agency’s Artemis program. Katherine Cook, who develops cargo delivery services for NASA’s Gateway, recently returned to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after an immersive experience in Japan. There, she collaborated with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), government ministries contributing to Japan’s space activities, and The National Diet’s House of Representatives. Katherine Cook speaks at Kumamoto University Graduate School for Science and Technology in Japan on Dec. 16, 2022. The university is located on Kyushu, the southernmost main island of Japan.Contributed photo “Everything I did involved Artemis and human exploration,” Cook said. “Developing technologies for Moon to Mars is challenging, but if we can find a good balance of leveraging the strengths of each partner and continue to evolve the partnership, we’ll be able to share knowledge in an even more integrated way.” As part of her trip, Cook spent about five months at the Tsukuba Space Center, approximately one hour north of Tokyo, working under JAXA Vice President and Director General for Human Spaceflight Technology Hiroshi Sasaki. She partnered with JAXA subject matter experts to host themed discussions for the directorate team, sharing and discussing ideas about the U.S and Japanese approaches, including future partnering opportunities. Her research themes included: NASA’s Moon to Mars objectives; commercial capabilities such as commercial low Earth orbit development; lunar surface transportation such as rovers and utility vehicles; lunar in-situ resource utilization, human landing systems, and science priorities to enable human exploration to the Moon and beyond. This required intense language training – before and throughout Cook’s trip – so she could understand, write, and speak Japanese with an audience ranging from students and coworkers to Japanese dignitaries, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi and JAXA President Dr. Hiroshi Yamakawa. On June 15, 2022, Koji Tomita (fourth from the left), ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States, hosts six members of the Mansfield Fellowship, including NASA’s Katherine Cook, fifth from the left, in Washington, D.C., before their departure to Japan.Contributed photo “I think a lot of growth came out of challenging myself – both in learning more about NASA and U.S. agencies collaborating on space and learning about it deeply enough to explain it and communicate it in a succinct way that could make it through translation,” Cook said. Cook was just the third NASA person selected in the nearly 30-year history of the Mansfield Fellowship, a program named for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield. Invited to lecture at several university graduate programs, Cook was inspired by students’ interest in NASA’s Moon to Mars plans, as well as their knowledge and in-depth questions. Her interaction with Japanese colleagues was equally positive, as they welcomed her to their group with open arms. During the Artemis I launch in November 2022, Cook invited members of the JAXA human spaceflight team to a launch viewing party. Aware that she was disappointed about missing the launch live, they blew her away by showing up in great numbers, doling out high-fives and ecstatically cheering on the launch in front of a big screen TV at the Tsukuba Space Center. After a ride on the new Superconducting Maglev, the world’s fastest bullet train that travels up to 311 mph and operates on a magnetic levitation railway system, Mansfield Fellows stop by a convenience store for a drinkable ice cream treat on May 18, 2023. NASA’s Katherine Cook is pictured third from the left.Contributed photo “One thing that leaves an impression on you from Japan is their hospitality. The word for it is ‘omotenashi,’” Cook said. “It’s more than just a word; it’s culturally ingrained in how they interact with each other and the level of consideration that they put into everything they do.” Enriched technically, culturally, and spiritually from her transformative experience in Japan, Cook returned to NASA “forever changed.” She learned a great deal about science, life, and her own agency. She even picked up a saying that she incorporated into her daily work routine. “In Japan, at the end of every day, you say, ‘Otsukaresama deshita,’ which means, ‘Thank you for your hard work.’ When you pass a coworker in the hall and when you toast in celebration with coworkers, you say ‘Otsukaresama des,’ ” Cook said. “Even still, when I meet with my Japanese counterparts, I will often say it. And it reminds me to carry that appreciation of my team throughout my day back at NASA. The simple phrase bonds us all together across the international Artemis work we do.” View the full article

6 min read NASA-ISRO Radar Mission to Provide Dynamic View of Forests, Wetlands NISAR will use radar to study changes in ecosystems around the world, such as this forest in Tikal National Park in northern Guatemala, to understand how these areas are affected by climate change and human activity, and the role they play in the global carbon cycle.Credit: USAID NISAR will help researchers explore how changes in Earth’s forest and wetland ecosystems are affecting the global carbon cycle and influencing climate change. Once it launches in early 2024, the NISAR radar satellite mission will offer detailed insights into two types of ecosystems – forests and wetlands – vital to naturally regulating the greenhouses gases in the atmosphere that are driving global climate change. NISAR is a joint mission by NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), and when in orbit, its sophisticated radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The data it collects will help researchers understand two key functions of both ecosystem types: the capture and the release of carbon. Pictured in this artist’s concept, NISAR, short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, marks the first time the U.S. and Indian space agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. Its two radar systems will monitor change in nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Forests hold carbon in the wood of their trees; wetlands store it in their layers of organic soil. Disruption of either system, whether gradual or sudden, can accelerate the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Tracking these land-cover changes on a global scale will help researchers study the impacts on the carbon cycle – the processes by which carbon moves between the atmosphere, land, ocean, and living things. “The radar technology on NISAR will allow us to get a sweeping perspective of the planet in space and time,” said Paul Rosen, the NISAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It can give us a really reliable view of exactly how Earth’s land and ice are changing.” Tracking Deforestation Forestry and other land-use changes account for about 11% of net human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. NISAR’s data will improve our understanding of how the loss of forests around the world influences the carbon cycle and contributes to global warming. “Globally, we do not understand well the carbon sources and sinks from terrestrial ecosystems, particularly from forests,” said Anup Das, an ecosystems scientist and co-lead of the ISRO NISAR science team. “So we expect that NISAR will greatly help address that, especially in less dense forests, which are more vulnerable to deforestation and degradation.” To show the kind of imagery NISAR will produce, researchers pointed to this composite that uses data from two Japanese L-band SAR missions to reveal land-cover change in Brazil’s Xingu River basin between 1996 and 2007. Black shows forest areas converted to farmland before 1996, and red shows additional areas cleared by 2007.Credit: Woodwell Climate Research Center/Earth Big Data LLC. Data courtesy of METI and JAXA. The signal from NISAR’s L-band radar will penetrate the leaves and branches of forest canopies, bouncing off the tree trunks and the ground below. By analyzing the signal that reflects back, researchers will be able to estimate the density of forest cover in an area as small as a soccer field. With successive orbital passes, it will be able to track whether a section of forest has been thinned or cleared over time. The data – which will be collected in early morning and evening and in any weather – could also offer clues as to what caused the change, such as disease, human activity, or fire. It’s an important set of capabilities for studying vast, often cloud-covered rainforests such as those in the Congo and Amazon basins, which lose millions of wooded acres every year. Fire releases carbon into the air directly, while the deterioration of forests reduces the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The data could also help improve accounting of deforestation and forest degradation – as well as forest growth – as countries that rely on logging try to shift toward more sustainable practices, said Josef Kellndorfer, a member of the NISAR science team and founder of Earth Big Data LLC, a provider of large data sets and analytic tools for research and decisions support. “Reducing deforestation and degradation is low-hanging fruit to address a substantial part of the global carbon emission problem,” he added. Monitoring Wetland Flooding Wetlands present another carbon puzzle: Swamps, bogs, peatlands, inundated forests, marshes, and other wetlands hold 20 to 30% of the carbon in Earth’s soil, despite constituting only 5 to 8% of the land surface. When wetlands flood, bacteria go to work digesting organic matter (mostly dead plants) in the soil. Through this natural process, wetlands are the planet’s largest natural source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which bubbles to the water’s surface and travels into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, when wetlands dry out, the carbon they store is exposed to oxygen, releasing carbon dioxide. NISAR will track wetland flooding to study how these carbon-rich ecosystems are reacting to climate change. It will generate images like this one from an airborne radar that flew over Peru in 2013. Black indicates water, gray is rainforest, green is low vegetation, and red and pink are flooded plants.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech “These are huge reservoirs of carbon that can be released in a relatively short time frame,” said Erika Podest, a NISAR science team member and a carbon cycle and ecosystems researcher at JPL. Less well understood is how changing temperature and precipitation patterns due to climate change – along with human activities such as development and agriculture – are affecting the extent, frequency, and duration of flooding in wetlands. NISAR will be able to monitor flooding, and with repeated passes, researchers will be able to track seasonal and annual variations in wetlands inundation, as well as long-term trends. By coupling NISAR’s wetlands observations with separate data on the release of greenhouse gases, researchers should gain insights that inform the management of wetland ecosystems, said Bruce Chapman, a NISAR science team member and JPL wetlands researcher. “We have to be careful to reduce our impact on wetland areas so that we don’t worsen the situation with the climate,” he added. NISAR is set to launch in early 2024 from southern India. In addition to tracking ecosystem changes, it will collect information on the motion of the land, helping researchers understand the dynamics of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and subsidence and uplift (when the surface sinks and rises). It will also track the movements and melting of both glaciers and sea ice. More About the Mission NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. To learn more about NISAR, visit: https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/ See the NISAR spacecraft in 3D in NASA's interactive Eyes on the Earth News Media Contacts Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307 andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov 2023-151 Share Details Last Updated Oct 27, 2023 Related Terms EarthEarth ScienceEarth Science DivisionEarth System Observatory (ESO)NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Explore More 5 min read NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness Article 23 hours ago 5 min read AWE Launching to Space Station to Study Atmospheric Waves via Airglow NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, mission is scheduled to launch to the International Space… Article 2 days ago 4 min read New Software Enables Atmospheric Modeling with Greater Resolution Next-generation software is making it easier for researchers, policy makers, and citizen scientists to model… Article 3 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

“Obviously, Spanish has a lot to do with accessibility and broadening our audiences. We are using Spanish as a tool to break those barriers to connect with audiences. Spanish is the language I grew up with in Uruguay, and the language that I feel more comfortable with. It is amazing that I get to use it as a bridge to communicate with our audiences on different platforms. “We want to inform, but we also want to inspire and tell the stories that go beyond the mission and science. We want to tell the personal stories in [‘Universo Curioso de la NASA,’ NASA’s first-ever Spanish podcast]. “We started as a bonus episode of a miniseries of an existing podcast, ‘NASA’s Curious Universe,’ but we wanted to build something that was unique, specifically tailored to the Hispanic audience in the U.S. and worldwide. That would have our style and our voice. And I feel very, very lucky and proud and thankful to have had that opportunity to kind of build the podcast from the ground up with the guidance and work of other colleagues. “As an immigrant myself reporting on stories about other immigrants, I want to show people that space is for all, and that’s something that we repeat over and over. I keep confirming how true that message is because it goes beyond NASA. It goes beyond the United States. There are no borders in space. These people that work on these missions are doing something for humanity, not just for the space agency. I am not a scientist or an engineer, and I feel a part of it. I am a part of these historic moments, like when we launched Artemis and DART [the Double Asteroid Redirection Test].” – Noelia González, NASA en español Senior Science Writer and Editor, ADNET Systems, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Image Credit: NASA / Angeles Miron Interviewer: NASA / Angel Kumari Check out some of our other Faces of NASA. View the full article

2 min read Join NASA to Celebrate Worm Design, Influence with Original Designer Dr. Christine Mann Darden holding a model of Mach II in the Unitary Tunnel at NASA’s Langley Research Center on Aug. 18, 1990. Darden is pictured in a lab coat with a NASA ‘worm’ logotype patch across her back. NASA / Carol Petrachenko Chapman Media are invited to hear a discussion on the design and cultural significance of the worm logotype with NASA and its creator Richard Danne at 11:30 a.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 6, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The logotype, a simple, red unique type style of the word NASA, replaced the agency’s official logo (meatball) for several decades beginning in the 1970s before it was retired. The worm has since been revived for limited use. The event will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and on the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms. Following opening remarks by Marc Etkind, associate administrator for NASA’s Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters, Danne and David Rager, creative art director at NASA, will provide remarks followed by a panel discussion with Danne and others including: Bert Ulrich, entertainment and branding liaison, NASA Headquarters Michael Beirut, designer, Pentagram Shelly Tan, design reporter, The Washington Post (moderator) Julia Heiser, head of live event merchandise, Amazon Music NASA experts and Danne are available for on-site interviews, as well as remote interviews after the event. Media interested in participating in person must RSVP to the NASA Headquarters newsroom by 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3, at hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. The televised event will take place in the agency’s Webb Auditorium in the West Lobby inside NASA Headquarters located at 300 E St. SW in Washington. Learn more about NASA’s missions at: https://www.nasa.gov -end- News Media Contacts: Claire O’Shea / Melissa Howell Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 claire.a.oshea@nasa.gov / melissa.e.howell@nasa.gov Read More Share Details Last Updated Oct 27, 2023 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms NASA History Explore More 5 min read 25 Years Ago: Launch of Deep Space 1 Technology Demonstration Spacecraft Article 3 days ago 7 min read 30 Years Ago: The STS-58 Spacelab Life Sciences-2 Mission Article 1 week ago 11 min read 55 Years Ago: Nine Months Before the Moon Landing Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

5 min read NASA Rocket to See Sizzling Edge of Star-Forming Supernova A new sounding rocket mission is headed to space to understand how explosive stellar deaths lay the groundwork for new star systems. The Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Experiment, or INFUSE, sounding rocket mission, will launch from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on Oct. 29, 2023, at 9:35 p.m. MDT. For a few months each year, the constellation Cygnus (Latin for “swan”) swoops through the northern hemisphere’s night sky. Just above its wing is a favorite target for backyard astronomers and professional scientists alike: the Cygnus Loop, also known as the Veil Nebula. This image shows an illustration of the constellation Cygnus, Latin for “swan,” in the night sky. The Cygnus Loop supernova remnant, also known as the Veil Nebula, is located near one of the swan’s wings, outlined here in a rectangular box. NASA The Cygnus Loop is the remnant of a star that was once 20 times the size of our Sun. Some 20,000 years ago, that star collapsed under its own gravity and erupted into a supernova. Even from 2,600 light-years away, astronomers estimate the flash of light would have been bright enough to see from Earth during the day. This image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows part of the Veil Nebula or Cygnus Loop. To create this colorful image, observations were taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument using five different filters. New post-processing methods have further enhanced details of emissions from doubly ionized oxygen (shown here in shades of blue), ionized hydrogen, and ionized nitrogen (shown here in shades of red). ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Levay Supernovae are part of a great life cycle. They spray heavy metals forged in a star’s core into the clouds of surrounding dust and gas. They are the source of all chemical elements in our universe heavier than iron, including those that make up our own bodies. From the churned-up clouds and star stuff left in their wake, gases and dust from supernovae gradually clump together to form planets, stars, and new star systems. “Supernovae like the one that created the Cygnus Loop have a huge impact on how galaxies form,” said Brian Fleming, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and principal investigator for the INFUSE mission. The Cygnus Loop provides a rare look at a supernova blast still in progress. Already over 120 light-years across, the massive cloud is still expanding today at approximately 930,000 miles per hour (about 1.5 million kilometers per hour). What our telescopes capture from the Cygnus Loop is not the supernova blast itself. Instead, we see the dust and gas superheated by the shock front, which glows as it cools back down. “INFUSE will observe how the supernova dumps energy into the Milky Way by catching light given off just as the blast wave crashes into pockets of cold gas floating around the galaxy,” Fleming said. To see that shock front at its sizzling edge, Fleming and his team have developed a telescope that measures far-ultraviolet light – a kind of light too energetic for our eyes to see. This light reveals gas at temperatures between 90,000 and 540,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 50,000 to 300,000 degrees Celsius) that is still sizzling after impact. INFUSE is an integral field spectrograph, the first instrument of its kind to fly to space. The instrument combines the strengths of two ways of studying light: imaging and spectroscopy. Your typical telescopes have cameras that excel at creating images – showing where light is coming from, faithfully revealing its spatial arrangement. But telescopes don’t separate light into different wavelengths or “colors” – instead, all of the different wavelengths overlap one another in the resulting image. Spectroscopy, on the other hand, takes a single beam of light and separates it into its component wavelengths or spectrum, much as a prism separates light into a rainbow. This procedure reveals all kinds of information about what the light source is made of, its temperature, and how it is moving. But spectroscopy can only look at a single sliver of light at a time. It’s like looking at the night sky through a narrow keyhole. The INFUSE instrument captures an image and then “slices” it up, lining up the slices into one giant “keyhole.” The spectrometer can then spread each of the slices into its spectrum. This data can be reassembled into a 3-dimensional image that scientists call a “data cube” – like a stack of images where each layer reveals a specific wavelength of light. PhD student Emily Witt installs the delicate image slicer – the core optical technology for INFUSE – onto its mount in a CU-LASP clean room ahead of integration into the payload. CU Boulder LASP/Brian Fleming Using the data from INFUSE, Fleming and his team will not only identify specific elements and their temperatures, but they’ll also see where those different elements lie along the shock front. “It’s a very exciting project to be a part of,” said lead graduate student Emily Witt, also at CU Boulder, who led most of the assembly and testing of INFUSE and will lead the data analysis. “With these first-of-their-kind measurements, we will better understand how these elements from the supernova mix with the environment around them. It’s a big step toward understanding how material from supernovas becomes part of planets like Earth and even people like us.” To get to space, the INFUSE payload will fly aboard a sounding rocket. These nimble, crewless rockets launch into space for a few minutes of data collection before falling back to the ground. The INFUSE payload will fly aboard a two-stage Black Brant 9 sounding rocket, aiming for a peak altitude of about 150 miles (240 kilometers), where it will make its observations, before parachuting back to the ground to be recovered. The team hopes to upgrade the instrument and launch again. In fact, parts of the INFUSE rocket are themselves repurposed from the DEUCE mission, which launched from Australia in 2022. NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program is conducted at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program for the agency. The development of the INFUSE payload was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division. View the full article

NASA and Boeing are working to complete the agency’s verification and validation activities ahead of Starliner’s first flight with astronauts to the International Space Station. While Boeing is targeting March to have the spacecraft ready for flight, teams decided during a launch manifest evaluation that a launch in April will better accommodate upcoming crew rotations and cargo resupply missions this spring. The Starliner team works to finalize the mate of the crew module and new service module for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test that will take NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to and from the International Space Station.Boeing/John Grant Once the spacecraft meets the agency’s safety requirements, NASA’s Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) will see astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams perform the first crewed mission of the spacecraft designed to take astronauts to and from the orbital laboratory. Ahead of CFT, Boeing has completed P213 tape removal in the upper dome of the Starliner crew compartment and work is underway to remove or remediate the tape in the lower dome of the spacecraft. These hardware remediation efforts inside the Starliner production facility at NASA Kennedy are expected to be completed during the next several weeks. After the P213 tape remediation efforts conclude, engineers will conduct final assessments to ensure acceptable risk of any remaining tape. A set of parachutes is on track to be delivered and installed on the CFT spacecraft by the end of this year to support the current target launch date. Separately, the team also is planning a drop test of Starliner’s updated drogue and main parachutes. The parachutes will incorporate a planned strengthening of main canopy suspension lines and the recent design of the drogue and main parachute soft-link joints, which will increase the safety factor for the system. The drop test is planned for early 2024 based on the current parachute delivery schedule. Boeing and NASA also are planning modifications to the active thermal control system valves to improve long-term functionality following a radiator bypass valve issue discovered during ground operations earlier this year. As discussed during a Starliner media teleconference in June, teams have modified the spacecraft hardware and identified forward work to prevent a similar issue in the future. Options include a system purge to prevent stiction, component upgrades and operational mitigations. Additionally, about 98% of the certification products required for the flight test are complete, and NASA and Boeing anticipate closure on remaining CFT certification products early next year. Meanwhile, NASA and Boeing have made significant progress on requirement closures related to manual crew control of the spacecraft and abort system analysis. The latest version of Starliner’s CFT flight software completed qualification testing and is undergoing standard hardware and software integration testing inside Boeing’s Avionics and Software Integration Lab. Starliner’s crew and service modules remain mated and await continuation of standard preflight processing. The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket also is in Florida at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station awaiting integration with the spacecraft. The NASA astronauts who will fly aboard CFT continue to train for their roughly eight-day mission to the orbiting laboratory, which includes working with operations and mission support teams to participate in various simulations across all phases of flight. Starliner completed two uncrewed flight tests, including Orbital Flight Test-2, which docked to the space station on May 21, 2022, following a launch two days prior from Kennedy. The spacecraft remained docked to space station for four days before successfully landing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Follow NASA’s commercial crew blog or CFT mission blog for the latest information on progress. Details about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program can be found by following the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on X, and commercial crew on Facebook. View the full article

The International Space Station’s U.S. segment and portions of the Russian segment are pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a fly around of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module’s space-facing port on Nov. 8, 2021. Prominent at the top in this view, are the Columbus laboratory module, the Harmony module and its space-facing docking port, and the Kibo laboratory module with its external pallet. NASA NASA and its industry partners Boeing and SpaceX are planning for the next set of missions to the International Space Station for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Crew-8 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the orbiting laboratory is targeted to launch no earlier than mid-February. The mission will carry NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, commander; Michael Barratt, pilot; and mission specialist Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin to the space station to conduct a wide range of operational and research activities. Routine maintenance and processing of the Crew-8 SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft is in work. This will be the first spaceflight for Dominick, Epps, and Grebenkin, and the third for Barratt. Crew-8 is expected to return to Earth in late August 2024, following a short handover with the agency’s Crew-9 mission. Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) The first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft, named NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), is planned for no earlier than mid-April. CFT will send NASA astronauts and test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on a demonstration flight to prove the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner system. Starliner will launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, spend approximately eight days docked to the space station, and return to Earth with a parachute and airbag-assisted ground landing in the desert of the western United States. NASA will provide an updated status of CFT readiness as more information becomes available. Crew-9 Looking further ahead in 2024, NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than mid-August for the launch of the agency’s Crew-9, SpaceX’s ninth crew rotation mission to the space station for NASA. A crew of four will be announced at a later date. 10th Crew Rotation Mission The 10th commercial crew rotation opportunity to the space station is targeted for early 2025. NASA is planning for either SpaceX’s Crew-10 or Boeing’s Starliner-1 mission in this slot. The Starliner-1 date was adjusted to allow for the post-flight review of the Crew Flight Test and incorporation of anticipated learning, approvals of final certification products, and completion of readiness and certification reviews ahead of that mission. For more insight on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program missions to the orbiting laboratory follow the commercial crew blog. More details can be found @commercial_crew on X and commercial crew on Facebook. View the full article

4 min read Glenn Hangar Has Long Been the Face of the Center Painters completing work on NASA Glenn Research Center’s new hangar roof design in July 2016. It was the first time that the roof featured an insignia.Credit: NASA/Bridget Caswell The Flight Research Building, or hangar, at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has not only housed the center’s aircraft and Flight Operations team for decades, but has also served as a visual representation of the center for the public. NASA has taken advantage of the hangar’s size and shape — along with its location near the center’s main entrance, the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and multiple freeways — to raise awareness about Glenn to both the local community and Cleveland visitors. In the fall of 1941, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) completed the first building at its Cleveland laboratory: the hangar. The letters “N-A-C-A” over a pair of wings were installed above its front and back aircraft entrances shortly thereafter. In 1946, “N-A-C-A” was painted in large white block letters onto the black roof facing the airport. This configuration remained in place for twelve years. Pilot Bill Swann climbs into the cockpit of a McDonnell F2H-2B Banshee at the Lewis laboratory in February 1958. Eight months later, the NACA logo on the hangar was removed as the NACA became part of NASA. Swann, who joined the NACA in 1945, spent 35 years flying Lewis aircraft before retiring in 1980.Credit: NASA/Ernie Walker On Oct. 1, 1958, the NACA disbanded, and the laboratory was incorporated into NASA — the nation’s new space agency — as the Lewis Research Center. The next day, the “C” on the hangar roof was painted over with an “S,” and two weeks later, the NACA wings on the front and back were taken down and replaced with small “N-A-S-A” lettering. Transformation of the hangar to reflect the lab’s Oct. 1, 1958, transition from the NACA to NASA and its rechristening as the Lewis Research Center. Credit: NASA During this period, the new agency asked its employees to submit concepts for an official seal. In December 1958, the NASA administrator approved the design of James Modarelli, a graphic illustrator at Lewis and head of the Technical Publications Division. Soon thereafter, he was asked to create a simpler, easier to reproduce version to be used more broadly. In early 1959, Modarelli came up with the large blue insignia that later became known as the “meatball.” In September 1962, a large NASA insignia was installed on the front entrance of the Lewis hangar facing Brookpark Road, where it remained along with the “N-A-S-A” letters on the back and roof for nearly 30 years. In an effort to rebrand the agency in the mid-1970s, NASA replaced Modarelli’s blue insignia with the highly-stylized logo type, also known as “the worm.” Although the change of logos was mandated, the meatball never fully went away, and it remained on the front of the Lewis hangar. Workers install the NASA insignia on the front of the Lewis Research Center hangar on Sept. 14, 1962. The new sign replaced small “N-A-S-A” letters.Credit: NASA With its fiftieth anniversary approaching in 1991, the center began developing strategies to improve its visibility in the community. The most significant action was a redesign of the hangar graphics. In November 1990, the large red worm logo was installed on the front, and “Lewis Research Center” was added below with lighting to make graphics visible at night. The Lewis Research Center hangar in December 1994 featuring the red NASA worm logo and the light fixtures to make it visible at night.Credit: NASA/Tom Jares In 1992, new NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin decided to reinstate the meatball as the agency’s insignia to improve morale. Two large new meatball signs were constructed in the center’s shops to replace the worm on the front of the hangar and take the place of the 35-year-old insignia on the back. To mark the occasion, the center invited the retired Modarelli to participate in a rededication event at Lewis on Oct. 1, 1997. Modarelli and many of the 250 attendees signed their names on the back of the emblem, which remained above the back entrance until 2022. In 1993, Congress decided to rename the Cleveland facility the Glenn Research Center. By early 1999, the Lewis Research Center text on the front of the hangar was changed to “Glenn Research Center” with “Lewis Field” in smaller type underneath. The hangar roof was painted white in the early 1990s, first with black “N-A-S-A” letters, then with pale blue ones. In 2016, the center chose to repaint the roof with a large NASA meatball insignia, with “Glenn Research Center” in text below. The meatball remains today, a larger-than-life symbol of NASA Glenn’s presence in the community. Read more about the development and applications of the NACA and NASA logos and insignias: https://go.nasa.gov/3FcOGe5 Robert S. Arrighi NASA’s Glenn Research Center Explore More 4 min read Aviones de movilidad aérea avanzada: un viaje suave en el futuro Article 17 hours ago 4 min read Submit Your 2024 Event Proposal to NASA Glenn Article 1 day ago 1 min read Dr. Guy Bluford Reflects on 40th Anniversary of Historic Shuttle Flight Article 2 weeks ago View the full article

2 min read Hubble Captures a Galactic Dance NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures the dance of interacting galaxies in Arp-Madore 2339-661 (NGC 7733, NGC 7734). ESA/Hubble and NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgement: L. Shatz This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of peculiar galaxies, and this group’s particular peculiarity might be odder than first meets the eye, as there are three galaxies interacting here, not just two. The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N and is visible if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733. There you can spot knot-like structure, glowing with a different color than the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed and direction) involved reveals that this knot has a considerable additional redshift. This means it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733. This galaxy group presents one of the many challenges that observational astronomers face: working out whether an astronomical object really is just one, or multiple objects, one lying in front of another as seen from Earth’s perspective! All three galaxies lie quite close to each other, roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Tucana, and, as this image shows, they are interacting gravitationally with one another. In fact, some science literature refers to them as a ‘merging group,’ which means they will ultimately become a single entity. Text credit: European Space Agency Media Contact: Claire Andreoli NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD claire.andreoli@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Oct 27, 2023 Related Terms Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions Spiral Galaxies The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Stars Stories Galaxies Stories Exoplanets Our Solar System View the full article

4 min read Aviones de movilidad aérea avanzada: un viaje suave en el futuro Los aviones eléctricos de despegue y aterrizaje vertical, como el que se muestra en este diseño conceptual, podrían ser una parte fundamental de la próxima generación de transporte aéreo. Para crear un mercado realmente viable, los diseñadores tendrán que crear una experiencia cómoda para el pasajero. La misión de movilidad aérea avanzada de la NASA está investigando la calidad del viaje para comprender mejor cómo se deben diseñar estas aeronaves.Gráficos de la NASA/Kyle Jenkins Lee esta historia en inglés aquí. Hoy en día, los pasajeros de avión esperan un viaje tranquilo con pocas turbulencias. Aunque las turbulencias no siempre pueden evitarse, las consideraciones y diseños de los aviones limitan lo que siente el pasajero. Los aviones eléctricos de despegue y aterrizaje vertical (eVTOL por sus siglas en inglés) podrían ser una parte fundamental de la próxima generación de transporte aéreo, pero para crear un mercado viable, los diseñadores tendrán que crear una experiencia cómoda para el pasajero. La misión de Movilidad Aérea Avanzada (AAM por sus siglas en inglés) de la NASA está investigando la calidad de viajes para comprender mejor cómo deben diseñarse estas aeronaves para una experiencia ideal del pasajero. La investigación de la NASA proporciona orientación de diseño a los fabricantes de la industria para garantizar que los pasajeros disfruten de un viaje tranquilo y seguro. “Nosotros creemos que las aeronaves de AAM deberán tener un bajo nivel de ruido en la cabina, una baja vibración de los rotores y ser más resistentes a las turbulencias”, dijo Carlos Malpica, jefe técnico de dinámica y control de vuelo del proyecto de tecnología de elevación vertical revolucionaria (RVLT por sus siglas en inglés) de la NASA. “Tendrán que ser volados de una manera predecible, repetible y no agresiva que no resulte en aceleraciones o rotaciones repentinas de la aeronave”. La misión AAM de la NASA está investigando la respuesta fisiológica humana a los estímulos de movimiento, vibración y ruido que el equipo espera que experimenten los pasajeros en los aviones eVTOL. El año pasado, el proyecto RVLT llevó un estudio en el Simulador de Movimiento Vertical del Centro de Investigación Ames de la NASA en Silicon Valley (California). Voluntarios que se hicieron pasar por pasajeros experimentaron dos vuelos de simulador de corta duración en diferentes niveles de turbulencia. Un viaje fue tranquilo y el otro agitado. El estudio examinó la susceptibilidad al mareo en estas condiciones en aviones eVTOL. La NASA está planeando otros estudios de este tipo para mejor comprender las consecuencias para los pasajeros. La misión AAM incluye varios proyectos centrados en distintas áreas para ayudar a que los aviones eVTOL y otras aeronaves innovadoras vuelen por los cielos. Esto incluye trabajos sobre automatización, ruido, vertipuertos y diseño de vehículos, así como integración del espacio aéreo para mantener la seguridad de todos mientras vuelan. Las agencias gubernamentales, la industria y el público necesitarán combinar sus esfuerzos para construir nuevas autopistas en el cielo. La visión de la NASA consiste en diseñar nuevos sistemas de transporte aéreo seguros, accesibles y económicos junto con socios de la industria, la comunidad, y la Administración Federal de Aviación. Estas nuevas capacidades permitirían a los pasajeros y a la carga viajar a pedido en aviones innovadores y automatizados a través de la ciudad, entre ciudades vecinas o a otros lugares a los que hoy en día se suele acceder en automóvil. La visión de la NASA para la Movilidad Aérea Avanzada, o AAM por sus siglas en inglés, es trazar un nuevo sistema de transporte aéreo seguro, accesible y económico junto con socios de la industria, socios comunitarios y la Administración Federal de Aviación (FAA por sus siglas en inglés). La NASA está investigando cómo podría ser la calidad del viaje para los pasajeros que viajan en aviones eléctricos de despegue y aterrizaje vertical para asegurarse de que es un viaje tranquilo y seguro. En este episodio del Manual de Movilidad Aérea Avanzada de la NASA, analizamos cómo la NASA está especialmente cualificada para esta investigación y por qué es importante para el futuro del vuelo. Artículo Traducido por: Elena Aguirre Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 4 min read Submit Your 2024 Event Proposal to NASA Glenn Article 7 hours ago 2 min read Follow NASA’s Starling Swarm in Real Time Article 3 days ago 5 min read NASA’s Dragonfly Tunnel Visions Article 3 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans In Space NASA en español Explora el universo y descubre tu planeta natal con nosotros, en tu idioma. Explore NASA’s History Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Editor Lillian Gipson Contact Jim Bankejim.banke@nasa.gov Related Terms AeronáuticaAmes Research CenterArmstrong Flight Research CenterDrones & YouGlenn Research CenterLangley Research CenterNASA en español View the full article

NASA / Kim Shiflett NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems conducts a water flow test with the mobile launcher at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s in Florida on Oct. 24, 2023. It is the third in a series of tests to verify the overpressure protection and sound suppression system is ready for launch of the Artemis II mission. During liftoff, 400,000 gallons of water will rush onto the pad to help protect NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, mobile launcher, and launch pad from any overpressurization and extreme sound produced during ignition and liftoff. Artemis II is the first crewed mission under Artemis and will test all the Orion spacecraft’s systems with astronauts aboard before future missions to the Moon. Get Artemis II updates on the blog. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett View the full article

The blue areas on this map of Mars are regions where NASA missions have detected subsurface water ice (from the equator to 60 degrees north latitude). Scientists can use the map – part of the Subsurface Water Ice Mapping project – to decide where the first astronauts to set foot on the Red Planet should land.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Planetary Science Institute These Mars global maps show the likely distribution of water ice buried within the upper 3 feet (1 meter) of the planet’s surface and represent the latest data from the SWIM project. Buried ice will be a vital resource for astronauts on Mars, serving as drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel.NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSI The map could help the agency decide where the first astronauts to the Red Planet should land. The more available water, the less missions will need to bring. Buried ice will be a vital resource for the first people to set foot on Mars, serving as drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel. But it would also be a major scientific target: Astronauts or robots could one day drill ice cores much as scientists do on Earth, uncovering the climate history of Mars and exploring potential habitats (past or present) for microbial life. The need to look for subsurface ice arises because liquid water isn’t stable on the Martian surface: The atmosphere is so thin that water immediately vaporizes. There’s plenty of ice at the Martian poles – mostly made of water, although carbon dioxide, or dry ice, can be found as well – but those regions are too cold for astronauts (or robots) to survive for long. That’s where the NASA-funded Subsurface Water Ice Mapping project comes in. SWIM, as it’s known, recently released its fourth set of maps – the most detailed since the project began in 2017. Led by the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, SWIM pulls together data from several NASA missions, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), 2001 Mars Odyssey, and the now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor. Using a mix of data sets, scientists have identified the likeliest places to find Martian ice that could be accessed from the surface by future missions. The ice-exposing impact crater at the center of this image is an example of what scientists look for when mapping places where future astronauts should land on Mars. It’s one of several such impacts incorporated into the latest version of a series of NASA-funded maps of subsurface water ice on the Red Planet.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Instruments on these spacecraft have detected what look like masses of subsurface frozen water along Mars’ mid-latitudes. The northern mid-latitudes are especially attractive because they have a thicker atmosphere than most other regions on the planet, making it easier to slow a descending spacecraft. The ideal astronaut landing sites would be a sweet spot at the southernmost edge of this region – far enough north for ice to be present but close enough to the equator to ensure the warmest possible temperatures for astronauts in an icy region. “If you send humans to Mars, you want to get them as close to the equator as you can,” said Sydney Do, JPL’s SWIM project manager. “The less energy you have to expend on keeping astronauts and their supporting equipment warm, the more you have for other things they’ll need.” Building a Better Map Previous iterations of the map relied on lower-resolution imagers, radar, thermal mappers, and spectrometers, all of which can hint at buried ice but can’t outright confirm its presence or quantity. For this latest SWIM map, scientists relied on two higher-resolution cameras aboard MRO. Context Camera data was used to further refine the northern hemisphere maps and, for the first time, HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) data was incorporated to provide the most detailed perspective of the ice’s boundary line as close to the equator as possible. Scientists routinely use HiRISE to study fresh impact craters caused by meteoroids that may have excavated chunks of ice. Most of these craters are no more than 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, although in 2022 HiRISE captured a 492-foot-wide (150-meter-wide) impact crater that revealed a motherlode of ice that had been hiding beneath the surface. In this artist’s concept, NASA astronauts drill into the Martian subsurface. The agency has created new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts.NASA “These ice-revealing impacts provide a valuable form of ground truth in that they show us locations where the presence of ground ice is unequivocal,” said Gareth Morgan, SWIM’s co-lead at the Planetary Science Institute. “We can then use these locations to test that our mapping methods are sound.” In addition to ice-exposing impacts, the new map includes sightings by HiRISE of so-called “polygon terrain,” where the seasonal expansion and contraction of subsurface ice causes the ground to form polygonal cracks. Seeing these polygons extending around fresh, ice-filled impact craters is yet another indication that there’s more ice hidden beneath the surface at these locations. There are other mysteries that scientists can use the map to study, as well. “The amount of water ice found in locations across the Martian mid-latitudes isn’t uniform; some regions seem to have more than others, and no one really knows why,” said Nathaniel Putzig, SWIM’s other co-lead at the Planetary Science Institute. “The newest SWIM map could lead to new hypotheses for why these variations happen.” He added that it could also help scientists tweak models of how the ancient Martian climate evolved over time, leaving larger amounts of ice deposited in some regions and lesser amounts in others. SWIM’s scientists hope the project will serve as a foundation for a proposed Mars Ice Mapper mission – an orbiter that would be equipped with a powerful radar custom-designed to search for near-surface ice beyond where HiRISE has confirmed its presence. News Media Contacts Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov Karen Fox / Alana Johnson NASA Headquarters, Washington 301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501 karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov 2023-150 Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Related Terms Jet Propulsion LaboratoryMarsThe Solar System Explore More 5 min read NASA’s Scientists and Volunteers Tackle the October 14 Solar Eclipse Did you see October 14th’s solar eclipse? Most of the time we can easily forget… Article 1 day ago 5 min read How NASA Is Protecting Europa Clipper From Space Radiation Article 2 days ago 6 min read Why NASA’s Roman Mission Will Study Milky Way’s Flickering Lights Article 2 days ago View the full article

5 min read NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness Communities worldwide now have access to a powerful tool to increase their awareness of landslide hazards, thanks to NASA and the Pacific Disaster Center. A humanitarian worker from USAID observes the impacts of a landslide. USAID deployed an elite Disaster Assistance Response Team on Nov. 17, 2020, to lead the U.S. response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota.USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance After years of development and testing, NASA’s Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness model (LHASA) has been integrated into the Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) multi-hazard monitoring, alerting, and decision-support platform, DisasterAWARE. LHASA allows researchers to map rainfall-triggered landslide hazards, giving DisasterAWARE users around the world a robust tool for identifying, tracking, and responding to these threats. The aim is to equip communities with timely and critical risk awareness that bolsters disaster resilience and safeguards lives and livelihoods. Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage every year. Developing countries often bear disproportionate losses due to lack of access to hazard early warning systems and other resources for effective risk reduction and recovery. Reports from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction emphasize that early warning systems and early action are among the most effective ways to decrease disaster-related deaths and losses. The distribution of reported fatalities from 10,804 rainfall-triggered landslides in NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) from 2007 to 2017. White dots represent incidents with zero reported fatalities and dots in the color scale from pink to red represent incidents in the range of 1-5000 fatalities. The NASA landslides team, based primarily out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, develops the Global Landslide Catalog and LHASA with support from NASA’s Disasters program. NASA Scientific Visualization Studio “Some local authorities develop their own systems to monitor landslide risk, but there isn’t a global model that works in the same way. That’s what defines LHASA: it works all the time and it covers most regions of the world,” says Robert Emberson, NASA Disasters associate program manager and a key member of the NASA landslides team. “Thanks to our collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center, this powerful landslide technology is now even more accessible for the communities that need it most.” LHASA uses a machine learning model that combines data on ground slope, soil moisture, snow, geological conditions, distance to faults, and the latest near real-time precipitation data from NASA’s IMERG product (part of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission). The model has been trained on a database of historical landslides and the conditions surrounding them, allowing it to recognize patterns that indicate a landslide is likely. The result is a landslide “nowcast” – a map showing the potential of rainfall-triggered landslides occurring for any given region within the past day. This map of hazard likelihood can help agencies and officials rapidly assess areas where the current landslide risk is high. It can also give disaster response teams critical information on where a landslide may have occurred so they can investigate and deploy life-saving resources. In 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, triggering a series of landslides across the country. Landslides can destroy infrastructure and impede the movement of people and life-saving aid. United Nations World Food Programme Partnering to Protect the Vulnerable Generating landslide nowcasts is merely the first step. To be truly effective, vulnerable communities must receive the data in a way that is accessible and easy to integrate into existing disaster management plans. That’s where the Pacific Disaster Center comes in. PDC is an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaii, and it shares NASA’s goal to reduce global disaster risk through innovative uses of science and technology. Its flagship DisasterAWARE software provides early warnings and risk assessment tools for 18 types of natural hazards and supports decision-making by a wide range of disaster management agencies, local governments, and humanitarian organizations. Prominent users include the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), and the World Food Programme (WFP). “The close pairing of our organizations and use of PDC’s DisasterAWARE platform for early warning has been a special recipe for success in getting life-saving information into the hands of decision-makers and communities around the world,” said Chris Chiesa, PDC deputy executive director. The collaboration with PDC brings NASA’s landslide tool to tens of thousands of existing DisasterAWARE users, dramatically increasing LHASA’s reach and effectiveness. Chiesa notes that teams in El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic have already begun using these new capabilities to assess landslide hazards during the 2023 rainy season. This screenshot from PDC’s DisasterAWARE Pro software shows LHASA landslide hazard probabilities for Myanmar in Sept. 2023. Red areas indicate the highest risk for landslide occurrence within the past three hours, while orange and yellow indicate lesser risk. Pacific Disaster Center PDC’s software ingests and interprets LHASA model data and generates maps of landslide risk severity. It then uses the data to generate landslide hazard alerts for a chosen region that the DisasterAWARE mobile app pushes to users. These alerts give communities critical information on potential hazards, enabling them to take protective measures. DisasterAWARE also creates comprehensive regional risk reports that estimate the number of people and infrastructure exposed to a disaster – focusing specifically on things like bridges, roads, and hospitals that could complicate relief efforts when damaged. This information is critical for allowing decision-makers to effectively deploy resources to the areas that need them most. DisasterAWARE landside risk report for Myanmar, showing estimated population, infrastructure and capital exposure to landslide risk, as well as the community’s needs. Pacific Disaster Center This effort between NASA and the PDC builds upon a history of fruitful cooperation between the organizations. In 2022, they deployed a NASA global flood modeling tool to enhance DisasterAWARE’s flood early-warning capabilities. They have also shared data and expertise during multiple disasters, including Hurricane Iota in 2020, the 2021 earthquake in Haiti, and the devastating August 2023 wildfires in Maui, PDC’s base of operations. “The LHASA model is all open-source and leverages publicly available data from NASA and partners,” says Dalia Kirschbaum, lead of the NASA landslides team and director of Earth Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This enables other researchers and disaster response communities to adapt the framework to regional or local applications and further awareness at scales relevant to their decision-making needs.” Kirschbaum and her team were recently awarded the prestigious NASA Software of the Year award for their work developing LHASA. Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Related Terms EarthNatural Disasters Explore More 3 min read International Ocean Satellite Monitors How El Niño Is Shaping Up Article 1 week ago 3 min read All Together Now: Drill Joins Other Moon Rover Science Instruments Article 1 week ago 2 min read NASA’s Global Science Hackathon Attracts Thousands of Participants Article 3 weeks ago 5 min read NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness View the full article

4 min read NASA Tech Breathes Life Into Potentially Game-Changing Antenna Design Some 30 years ago, a young engineer named Christopher Walker was home in the evening making chocolate pudding when he got what turned out to be a very serendipitous call from his mother. Taking the call, he shut off the stove and stretched plastic wrap over the pot to keep the pudding fresh. By the time he returned, the cooling air in the pot had drawn the wrap into a concave shape, and in that warped plastic, he saw something – the magnified reflection of an overhead lightbulb – that gave him an idea that could revolutionize space-based sensing and communications. That idea became the Large Balloon Reflector (LBR), an inflatable device that creates wide collection apertures that weigh a fraction of today’s deployable antennas. Now, with an assist from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, funded by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, which supports visionary innovations from diverse sources, Walker’s decades-old vision is coming to fruition. The concept turns part of the inside surface of an inflated sphere into a parabolic antenna. A section comprising about a third of the balloon’s interior surface is aluminized, giving it reflective properties. With NIAC funding, and a grant from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Walker was able to develop and demonstrate technologies for a 33-foot-diameter (10 meters) LBR that was carried to the stratosphere by a giant balloon. For comparison, the aperture of NASA’s massive James Webb Space Telescope is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter. “There was no place other than NIAC within NASA to get this off the ground,” says Walker, now a astronomy and optical engineering professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “At first, I was afraid to share the idea with colleagues because it sounded so crazy. You need a program within NASA that will actually look at the radical ideas, and NIAC is it.” Parabolic dish antennas use their concave shape to capture and concentrate electromagnetic radiation. The larger the antenna’s diameter, or aperture, the more effective it is for capturing light or radio waves and transmitting radio signals over great distances. In astronomy, there is a tremendous advantage to placing telescopes above the Earth’s atmosphere, which tends to distort or degrade signals coming from space. The challenge is that traditional large reflector antennas are heavy, unwieldy, and difficult to stow, leading to launch constraints and risky in-space deployment schemes. The LBR design solves both problems. Made of a thin film structure, it inflates like a beachball, providing a stable parabolic-dish shape without the need for bulky and complex deployable hardware, and can fold into a tiny volume. In 2018, Freefall Aerospace, a company co-founded by Walker to develop and market the technology, demonstrated the LBR’s potential aboard NASA’s stadium-sized stratospheric balloon, which carried a 3.28-foot scale model to an altitude of 159,000 feet. Next up for the technology is a high-speed communications demonstration in low Earth orbit aboard a 6-unit CubeSat, about the size of a shoebox, called CatSat. It was selected for flight in 2019 as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. It is a joint effort involving NASA, Freefall Aerospace, the University of Arizona, and Rincon Research Corporation in Tucson, Arizona. After reaching low-Earth orbit, CatSat’s inflatable antenna deployment system will deploy from its container, inflate to a diameter of about one-and-a-half feet, and begin transmitting back high-definition Earth photos. The mission is slated for launch with several other CubeSats on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket as part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 43 mission. A more ambitious lunar mission concept is also being explored. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, would use the inflatable antenna in tandem with a new instrument called Terahertz Spectrometer for In-Situ Resource Utilization, a miniature, high-power laser precisely calibrated to detect water, a critical exploration resource. “The technology demonstrated by CatSat opens the door to the possibility of future lunar, planetary and deep-space missions using CubeSats,” said Walker. It might be difficult to believe this all started because a young engineer’s idea of dinner one evening was what most would consider dessert. Then again, one could say the proof was in the pudding. Downloads NESC Pilot Breathing Assessment Data Jun 11, 2022 PDF (7.06 MB) Facebook logo @NASATechnology @NASA_Technology Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts About Goddard SmallSats and CubeSats These miniaturized spacecrafts are used to deliver small payloads into space. LTB (Lunar Trailblazer) is an example of a SmallSat… Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Editor Loura Hall Contact Related Terms Space Technology Mission Directorate View the full article

4 min read IXPE Untangles Theories Surrounding Historic Supernova Remnant This new image of supernova remnant SN 1006 combines data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The red, green, and blue elements reflect low, medium, and high energy X-rays, respectively, as detected by Chandra. The IXPE data, which measure the polarization of the X-ray light, is show in purple in the upper left corner, with the addition of lines representing the outward movement of the remnant’s magnetic field. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO (Chandra); NASA/MSFC/Nanjing Univ./P. Zhou et al. (IXPE); IR: NASA/JPL/CalTech/Spitzer; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.Schmidt NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope has captured the first polarized X-ray imagery of the supernova remnant SN 1006. The new results expand scientists’ understanding of the relationship between magnetic fields and the flow of high-energy particles from exploding stars. “Magnetic fields are extremely difficult to measure, but IXPE provides an efficient way for us to probe them,” said Dr. Ping Zhou, an astrophysicist at Nanjing University in Jiangsu, China, and lead author of a new paper on the findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal. “Now we can see that SN 1006’s magnetic fields are turbulent, but also present an organized direction.” Situated some 6,500 light-years from Earth in the Lupus constellation, SN 1006 is all that remains after a titanic explosion, which occurred either when two white dwarfs merged or when a white dwarf pulled too much mass from a companion star. Initially spotted in spring of 1006 CE by observers across China, Japan, Europe, and the Arab world, its light was visible to the naked eye for at least three years. Modern astronomers still consider it the brightest stellar event in recorded history. Since modern observation began, researchers have identified the remnant’s strange double structure, markedly different from other, rounded supernova remnants. It also has bright “limbs” or edges identifiable in the X-ray and gamma-ray bands. “Close-proximity, X-ray-bright supernova remnants such as SN 1006 are ideally suited to IXPE measurements, given IXPE’s combination of X-ray polarization sensitivity with the capability to resolve the emission regions spatially,” said Douglas Swartz, a Universities Space Research Association researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “This integrated capability is essential to localizing cosmic-ray acceleration sites.” Previous X-ray observations of SN 1006 offered the first evidence that supernova remnants can radically accelerate electrons, and helped identify rapidly expanding nebulae around exploded stars as a birthplace for highly energetic cosmic rays, which can travel at nearly the speed of the light. Scientists surmised that SN 1006’s unique structure is tied to the orientation of its magnetic field, and theorized that supernova blast waves in the northeast and southwest move in the direction aligned with the magnetic field, and more efficiently accelerate high-energy particles. IXPE’s new findings helped validate and clarify those theories, said Dr. Yi-Jung Yang, a high-energy astrophysicist at the University of Hong Kong and coauthor of the paper. “The polarization properties obtained from our spectral-polarimetric analysis align remarkably well with outcomes from other methods and X-ray observatories, underscoring IXPE’s reliability and strong capabilities, Yang said. For the first time, we can map the magnetic field structures of supernova remnants at higher energies with enhanced detail and accuracy – enabling us to better understand the processes driving the acceleration of these particles. Dr. Yi-Jung Yang High-energy astrophysicist at the University of Hong Kong Researchers say the results demonstrate a connection between the magnetic fields and the remnant’s high-energy particle outflow. The magnetic fields in SN 1006’s shell are somewhat disorganized, per IXPE’s findings, yet still have a preferred orientation. As the shock wave from the original explosion passes through the surrounding gas, the magnetic fields become aligned with the shock wave’s motion. Charged particles are trapped by the magnetic fields around the original point of the blast, where they quickly receive bursts of acceleration. Those speeding high-energy particles, in turn, transfer energy to keep the magnetic fields strong and turbulent. IXPE has observed three supernova remnants – Cassiopeia A, Tycho, and now SN 1006 – since launching in December 2021, helping scientists develop a more comprehensive understanding of the origin and processes of the magnetic fields surrounding these phenomena. Scientists were surprised to find that SN 1006 is more polarized than the other two supernova remnants, but that all three show magnetic fields oriented such that they point outward from the center of the explosion. As researchers continue to explore IXPE data, they are re-orienting their understanding of how particles get accelerated in extreme objects like these. IXPE is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/ixpe Elizabeth Landau NASA Headquarters elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov 202-358-0845 Jonathan Deal NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov 256-544-0034 Share Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Related Terms IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer)Marshall Space Flight Center Explore More 17 min read The Marshall Star for October 25, 2023 Article 16 hours ago 4 min read NASA’s Innovative Rocket Nozzle Paves Way for Deep Space Missions Article 7 days ago 24 min read The Marshall Star for October 18, 2023 Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article