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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) What is a NASA Spinoff? Well, to answer that question, we’re going to have to go all the way back to 1958, back to the legislation that originally created the space agency, NASA. So in that legislation, there’s some forward-looking language that says, “Make sure that all the cool stuff you develop for space doesn’t just get blasted off into the universe, but comes back down to the Earth in the form of practical and terrestrial benefits.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. The legislation is actually a little bit dry like legislation should be. Since that time, NASA has worked to get the technologies it created into the hands of the public. These become products and services and they save lives, they improve lives, they generate income, they create jobs, they boost the economy, they increase crop yields, they make airplane travel safer, they make train transportation safer. NASA’s everywhere you look. One example I like to bring up is the camera in your cell phone. That was actually developed at JPL. We were working on a lightweight, high resolution camera for a satellite application, and that became the very first camera on a chip, camera in the cell phone. We’ve also worked on things like indoor agriculture, which is increasingly important as the world gets denser and people need access to healthy foods. During the pandemic, some researchers developed a ventilator that had fewer than 100 parts, none of which were required in the supply chain to make other ventilators. We gave that to dozens of companies all around the world to help save lives. If you check out spinoff.nasa.gov you can find thousands of examples of how NASA is everywhere in your life. [END VIDEO TRANSCRIPT] Full Episode List Full YouTube Playlist Share Details Last Updated Mar 05, 2025 Related TermsSpace Technology Mission DirectorateSpinoffsTechnologyTechnology TransferTechnology Transfer & Spinoffs Explore More 1 min read Novel Recuperator Design for Cryogenic Fluid Management System Article 5 hours ago 3 min read NASA Successfully Acquires GPS Signals on Moon Article 1 day ago 5 min read Fourth Launch of NASA Instruments Planned for Near Moon’s South Pole Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission pictured during an equipment test at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Credit: SpaceX NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff is targeted for 7:48 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, March 12, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The targeted docking time is approximately 10 a.m., Thursday, March 13. Coverage of the mission overview teleconference will be available on the agency’s website. The crew news conference, launch, the postlaunch news conference, and docking will be live on NASA+. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media. The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Anne McClain, commander; and Nichole Ayers, pilot; along with mission specialists JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the orbiting laboratory for a science mission of about four months. This is the 10th crew rotation mission and the 11th human spaceflight mission for NASA to the space station supported by the Dragon spacecraft since 2020 as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The deadline for media accreditation for in person coverage of this launch has passed. The agency’s media credentialing policy is available online. For questions about media accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. Media who need access to NASA live video feeds may subscribe to the agency’s media resources distribution list to receive daily updates and links. NASA’s mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations): Friday, March 7 2 p.m. – Crew arrival media event at NASA Kennedy with the following participants: Anne McClain, Crew-10 spacecraft commander, NASA Nichole Ayers, Crew-10 pilot, NASA Takuya Onishi, Crew-10 mission specialist, JAXA Kirill Peskov, Crew-10 mission specialist, Roscosmos Watch live coverage of the crew arrival media event on NASA Kennedy’s social media accounts. This event is open to in person media only previously credentialed for this event, and questions will be taken only during the crew news conference scheduled for later that day. Follow @CommercialCrew and @NASAKennedy on X for the latest arrival updates. 5:30 p.m. – Mission overview teleconference at NASA Kennedy (or no earlier than one hour after the completion of the Flight Readiness Review) with the following participants: Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy Dana Weigel, manager, International Space Station Program, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston Meg Everett, deputy chief scientist, NASA’s International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson William Gerstenmaier, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX Junichi Sakai, manager, International Space Station Program, JAXA NASA will provide audio-only coverage of the teleconference. Media may ask questions in person and via phone. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than 4 p.m., Friday, March 7, at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. 6:30 p.m. – Crew-10 crew news conference (or directly following the completion of the mission overview news conference) with the following participants: Anne McClain, Crew-10 spacecraft commander, NASA Nichole Ayers, Crew-10 pilot, NASA Takuya Onishi, Crew-10 mission specialist, JAXA Kirill Peskov, Crew-10 mission specialist, Roscosmos Watch live coverage of the mission overview news conference on NASA+. Media may ask questions via phone only. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than 4 p.m., Friday, March 7, at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. Wednesday, March 12 3:45 p.m. – Launch coverage begins on NASA+. 7:48 p.m. – Launch Following the conclusion of launch and ascent coverage, NASA will switch to audio only and continue audio coverage through Thursday, March 13. Continuous coverage resumes on NASA+ at the start of rendezvous and docking and continues through hatch opening and the welcome ceremony. 9:30 p.m. – Postlaunch news conference with the following participants: Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy Dana Weigel, manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson Sarah Walker, director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX Mayumi Matsuura, vice president and director general, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA Watch live coverage of the postlaunch news conference on NASA+. Media may ask questions in person and via phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, please contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 12, at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. Thursday, March 13 8:15 a.m. – Arrival coverage begins on NASA+. 10 a.m. – Targeted docking to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module 11:45 a.m. – Hatch opening 12:20 p.m. – Welcome ceremony All times are estimates and could be adjusted based on real-time operations after launch. Follow the space station blog for the most up-to-date operations information. Live Video Coverage Prior to Launch NASA will provide a live video feed of Launch Complex 39A approximately six hours prior to the planned liftoff of the Crew-10 mission. Pending unlikely technical issues, the feed will be uninterrupted until the prelaunch broadcast begins on NASA+, approximately four hours prior to launch. Once the feed is live, find it online at: http://youtube.com/kscnewsroom. NASA Website Launch Coverage Launch day coverage of the mission will be available on the NASA website. Coverage will include livestreaming and blog updates beginning no earlier than 3:45 p.m., March 12, as the countdown milestones occur. On-demand streaming video on NASA+ and photos of the launch will be available shortly after liftoff. For questions about countdown coverage, contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom at 321-867-2468. Follow countdown coverage on the commercial crew or Crew-10 blog. Attend Launch Virtually Members of the public may register to attend this launch virtually. NASA’s virtual guest program for this mission also includes curated launch resources, notifications about related opportunities or changes, and a stamp for the NASA virtual guest passport following launch. Watch, Engage on Social Media Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtags #Crew10 and #NASASocial. You may also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts: X: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASASocial, @Space_Station, @ISS_Research, @ISS National Lab, @SpaceX, @Commercial_Crew Facebook: NASA, NASAKennedy, ISS, ISS National Lab Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @ISS, @ISSNationalLab, @SpaceX Coverage en Espanol Did you know NASA has a Spanish section called NASA en Espanol? Check out NASA en Espanol on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for additional mission coverage. Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425; antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov; o Messod Bendayan: 256-930-1371; messod.c.bendayan@nasa.gov. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has delivered on its goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station from the United States through a partnership with American private industry. This partnership is changing the arc of human spaceflight history by opening access to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station to more people, more science, and more commercial opportunities. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in space exploration, including future missions to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars. For more information about the mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew -end- Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1100 joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov Steven Siceloff / Stephanie Plucinsky Kennedy Space Center, Florida 321-867-2468 steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov Kenna Pell Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 kenna.m.pell@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Mar 05, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related TermsHumans in SpaceAstronautsCommercial CrewInternational Space Station (ISS)ISS ResearchJohnson Space CenterKennedy Space Center View the full article

Tess Caswell, a stand-in crew member for the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation, executes a moonwalk in the Prototype Immersive Technology (PIT) lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The simulation was a test of using VR as a training method for flight controllers and science teams’ collaboration on science-focused traverses on the lunar surface. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz When astronauts walk on the Moon, they’ll serve as the eyes, hands, and boots-on-the-ground interpreters supporting the broader teams of scientists on Earth. NASA is leveraging virtual reality to provide high-fidelity, cost-effective support to prepare crew members, flight control teams, and science teams for a return to the Moon through its Artemis campaign. The Artemis III Geology Team, led by principal investigator Dr. Brett Denevi of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, participated in an Artemis III Surface Extra-Vehicular VR Mini-Simulation, or “sim” at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in the fall of 2024. The sim brought together science teams and flight directors and controllers from Mission Control to carry out science-focused moonwalks and test the way the teams communicate with each other and the astronauts. “There are two worlds colliding,” said Dr. Matthew Miller, co-lead for the simulation and exploration engineer, Amentum/JETSII contract with NASA. “There is the operational world and the scientific world, and they are becoming one.” NASA mission training can include field tests covering areas from navigation and communication to astronaut physical and psychological workloads. Many of these tests take place in remote locations and can require up to a year to plan and large teams to execute. VR may provide an additional option for training that can be planned and executed more quickly to keep up with the demands of preparing to land on the Moon in an environment where time, budgets, and travel resources are limited. VR helps us break down some of those limitations and allows us to do more immersive, high-fidelity training without having to go into the field. It provides us with a lot of different, and significantly more, training opportunities. BRI SPARKS NASA co-lead for the simulation and Extra Vehicular Activity Extended Reality team at Johnson. Field testing won’t be going away. Nothing can fully replace the experience crew members gain by being in an environment that puts literal rocks in their hands and incudes the physical challenges that come with moonwalks, but VR has competitive advantages. The virtual environment used in the Artemis III VR Mini-Sim was built using actual lunar surface data from one of the Artemis III candidate regions. This allowed the science team to focus on Artemis III science objectives and traverse planning directly applicable to the Moon. Eddie Paddock, engineering VR technical discipline lead at NASA Johnson, and his team used data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and planet position and velocity over time to develop a virtual software representation of a site within the Nobile Rim 1 region near the south pole of the Moon. Two stand-in crew members performed moonwalk traverses in virtual reality in the Prototype Immersive Technology lab at Johnson, and streamed suit-mounted virtual video camera views, hand-held virtual camera imagery, and audio to another location where flight controllers and science support teams simulated ground communications. A screen capture of a virtual reality view during the Artemis III VR Mini-Simulation. The lunar surface virtual environment was built using actual lunar surface data from one of the Artemis III candidate regions. Credit: Prototype Immersive Technology lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew stand-ins were immersed in the lunar environment and could then share the experience with the science and flight control teams. That quick and direct feedback could prove critical to the science and flight control teams as they work to build cohesive teams despite very different approaches to their work. The flight operations team and the science team are learning how to work together and speak a shared language. Both teams are pivotal parts of the overall mission operations. The flight control team focuses on maintaining crew and vehicle safety and minimizing risk as much as possible. The science team, as Miller explains, is “relentlessly thirsty” for as much science as possible. Training sessions like this simulation allow the teams to hone their relationships and processes. Members of the Artemis III Geology Team and science support team work in a mock Science Evaluation Room during the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Video feeds from the stand-in crew members’ VR headsets allow the science team to follow, assess, and direct moonwalks and science activities. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz Denevi described the flight control team as a “well-oiled machine” and praised their dedication to getting it right for the science team. Many members of the flight control team have participated in field and classroom training to learn more about geology and better understand the science objectives for Artemis. “They have invested a lot of their own effort into understanding the science background and science objectives, and the science team really appreciates that and wants to make sure they are also learning to operate in the best way we can to support the flight control team, because there’s a lot for us to learn as well,” Denevi said. “It’s a joy to get to share the science with them and have them be excited to help us implement it all.” Artemis III Geology Team lead Dr. Brett Denevi of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, left, Artemis III Geology Team member, Dr. Jose Hurtado, University of Texas at El Paso, and simulation co-lead, Bri Sparks, work together during the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz This simulation, Sparks said, was just the beginning for how virtual reality could supplement training opportunities for Artemis science. In the future, using mixed reality could help take the experience to the next level, allowing crew members to be fully immersed in the virtual environment while interacting with real objects they can hold in their hands. Now that the Nobile Rim 1 landing site is built in VR, it can continue to be improved and used for crew training, something that Sparks said can’t be done with field training on Earth. While “virtual” was part of the title for this exercise, its applications are very real. “We are uncovering a lot of things that people probably had in the back of their head as something we’d need to deal with in the future,” Miller said. “But guess what? The future is now. This is now.” Test subject crew members for the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation, including Grier Wilt, left, and Tess Caswell, center, execute a moonwalk in the Prototype Immersive Technology lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz Grier Wilt, left, and Tess Caswell, crew stand-ins for the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation, execute a moonwalk in the Prototype Immersive Technology (PIT) lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz Engineering VR technical discipline lead Eddie Paddock works with team members to facilitate the virtual reality components of the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation in the Prototype Immersive Technology lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: Robert Markowitz Flight director Paul Konyha follows moonwalk activities during the Artemis III Virtual Reality Mini-Simulation at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz Rachel Barry NASA’s Johnson Space Center Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Astromaterials Artemis Science A Time Capsule The Moon is a 4.5-billion-year-old time capsule, pristinely preserved by the cold vacuum of space. It is… Lunar Craters Earth’s Moon is covered in craters. Lunar craters tell us the history not only of the Moon, but of our… Solar System View the full article

5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) An artist’s concept depicts one of NASA’s Voyager probes. The twin spacecraft launched in 1977.NASA/JPL-Caltech The farthest-flung human-made objects will be able to take their science-gathering even farther, thanks to these energy-conserving measures. Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24. Three science instruments will continue to operate on each spacecraft. The moves are part of an ongoing effort to manage the gradually diminishing power supply of the twin probes. Launched in 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 rely on a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of decaying plutonium. Both lose about 4 watts of power each year. “The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL. “But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.” The two spacecraft carry identical sets of 10 science instruments. Some of the instruments, geared toward collecting data during planetary flybys, were turned off after both spacecraft completed their exploration of the solar system’s gas giants. The instruments that remained powered on well beyond the last planetary flyby were those the science team considered important for studying the solar system’s heliosphere, a protective bubble of solar wind and magnetic fields created by the Sun, and interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere. Voyager 1 reached the edge of the heliosphere and the beginning of interstellar space in 2012; Voyager 2 reached the boundary in 2018. No other human-made spacecraft has operated in interstellar space. Last October, to conserve energy, the project turned off Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument, which measures the amount of plasma — electrically charged atoms — and the direction it is flowing. The instrument had collected only limited data in recent years due to its orientation relative to the direction that plasma flows in interstellar space. Voyager 1’s plasma science instrument had been turned off years ago because of degraded performance. Interstellar Science Legacy The cosmic ray subsystem that was shut down on Voyager 1 last week is a suite of three telescopes designed to study cosmic rays, including protons from the galaxy and the Sun, by measuring their energy and flux. Data from those telescopes helped the Voyager science team determine when and where Voyager 1 exited the heliosphere. Scheduled for deactivation later this month, Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument measures the various ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from our solar system and galaxy. The instrument consists of two subsystems: the low-energy particle telescope for broader energy measurements, and the low-energy magnetospheric particle analyzer for more focused magnetospheric studies. Both systems use a rotating platform so that the field of view is 360 degrees, and the platform is powered by a stepper motor that provides a 15.7-watt pulse every 192 seconds. The motor was tested to 500,000 steps — enough to guarantee continuous operation through the mission’s encounters with Saturn, which occurred in August 1980 for Voyager 2. By the time it is deactivated on Voyager 2, the motor will have completed more than 8.5 million steps. “The Voyager spacecraft have far surpassed their original mission to study the outer planets,” said Patrick Koehn, Voyager program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Every bit of additional data we have gathered since then is not only valuable bonus science for heliophysics, but also a testament to the exemplary engineering that has gone into the Voyagers — starting nearly 50 years ago and continuing to this day.” Addition Through Subtraction Mission engineers have taken steps to avoid turning off science instruments for as long as possible because the science data collected by the twin Voyager probes is unique. With these two instruments turned off, the Voyagers should have enough power to operate for about a year before the team needs to shut off another instrument on both spacecraft. In the meantime, Voyager 1 will continue to operate its magnetometer and plasma wave subsystem. The spacecraft’s low-energy charged particle instrument will operate through the remainder of 2025 but will be shut off next year. Voyager 2 will continue to operate its magnetic field and plasma wave instruments for the foreseeable future. Its cosmic ray subsystem is scheduled to be shut off in 2026. With the implementation of this power conservation plan, engineers believe the two probes could have enough electricity to continue operating with at least one science instrument into the 2030s. But they are also mindful that the Voyagers have been weathering deep space for 47 years and that unforeseen challenges could shorten that timeline. Long Distance Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 remain the most distant human-made objects ever built. Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away. Voyager 2 is over 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) from Earth. In fact, due to this distance, it takes over 23 hours to get a radio signal from Earth to Voyager 1, and 19½ hours to Voyager 2. “Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where no spacecraft has gone before,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL. “That also means every day could be our last. But that day could also bring another interstellar revelation. So, we’re pulling out all the stops, doing what we can to make sure Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their trailblazing for the maximum time possible.” For more information about NASA’s Voyager missions, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager News Media Contacts DC Agle / Calla Cofield Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-653-6297 / 626-808-2469 agle@jpl.nasa.gov / calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov 2025-032 Share Details Last Updated Mar 05, 2025 Related TermsJet Propulsion Laboratory Explore More 3 min read University High Knows the Answers at NASA JPL Regional Science Bowl Article 2 days ago 3 min read NASA Uses New Technology to Understand California Wildfires Article 5 days ago 6 min read NASA’s Europa Clipper Uses Mars to Go the Distance Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

Cryocoolers are essential systems in many space exploration missions to maintain propellants at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic recuperators are a key component of these cryocoolers and dictate the performance of the system. NASA is seeking to reduce the cost and increase the performance of cryogenic recuperators (also called Heat Exchangers) by utilizing Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies. Award: $7,000 in total prizes Open Date: March 5, 2025 Close Date: May 2, 2025 For more information, visit: https://grabcad.com/challenges/novel-recuperator-design-for-cryogenic-fluid-management-system View the full article

ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sankrit In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a famous — and frequently photographed — supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. The remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10,000 years ago, the Veil Nebula is situated about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Hubble images of this photogenic nebula were first taken in 1994 and 1997, and again in 2015. This view combines images taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, highlighting emission from hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms. The image shows just a small fraction of the Veil Nebula; if you could see the entire nebula without the aid of a telescope, it would be as wide as six full Moons placed side-by-side. Although this image captures the Veil Nebula at a single point in time, it helps researchers understand how the supernova remnant evolves over decades. Combining this snapshot with Hubble observations from 1994 will reveal the motion of individual knots and filaments of gas over that span of time, enhancing our understanding of this stunning nebula. View the full article

What is a NASA Spinoff? We Asked a NASA Expert

Pictured from left: Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut mission specialist Takuya Onishi train at SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California (Credit: SpaceX). During NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to launch in March, select members of the four-person crew will participate in exercise and medical research aimed at keeping astronauts fit on future long-duration missions. Crew members living and working aboard the space station have access to a designated training area outfitted with a weight-lifting system, a stationary bike, and a specialized treadmill called T2. The space station is expansive enough for bulky exercise equipment that helps preserve the health and performance of astronauts in space and when they return to Earth. However, as NASA looks to explore beyond low Earth orbit, the agency anticipates future spacecraft will not have room for large exercise equipment, like treadmills. Since walking and running are essential parts of workouts aboard the space station, NASA does not fully understand how long-duration spaceflights without a treadmill will impact crews’ health and motor functions. Consequently, NASA researchers are adjusting astronauts’ training regimens, including eliminating the use of the treadmill in some cases, to study ways that maintain crews’ strength, fitness, bone health, and balance. In an ongoing study called Zero T2, expedition crews are divided into three groups with different workout regimens. One group continues exercising normally, using all the available equipment aboard the orbiting complex. A second group forgoes using the treadmill, relying solely on the other available equipment. While a third group will only exercise using a new, experimental, less bulky workout machine. NASA compares the groups’ health data collected before, during, and after flight to determine if the lack of treadmill use negatively impacts the crews’ fitness, muscle performance, and recovery after return to Earth. “A treadmill takes up a lot of mass, space, and energy. This is not great for missions to Mars where every kilogram counts,” explained NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, who participated in the same study while serving as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission in 2024. “The Zero T2 experiment is helping us figure out if we can go without a treadmill and still be healthy.” Results of the Zero T2 study will help researchers determine how treadmill-free workouts may affect crew health, which will, in turn, help NASA build realistic exercise protocols for future deep space missions. Additionally, this investigation could support design improvements for exercise devices used to prevent or treat bone, muscle, and cardiovascular health on Earth. Beyond the Zero T2 study, select NASA crew members will perform additional studies supported by the agency’s Human Research Program during their mission. Participating crew will conduct medical exams, provide biological samples, and document spaceflight-related injuries, among other tasks. “Astronauts choose which studies to participate in based on their interests,” explained Cherie Oubre, a NASA scientist at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who helps oversee human research studies carried out aboard the space station. “The experiments address important risks and gaps associated with human spaceflight.” One set of experiments, called CIPHER (Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research), will help researchers understand how multiple systems within the human body adjust to varying mission durations. CIPHER study members will complete vision assessments, cognitive tests, and MRI scans to help provide a clearer picture of how the entire body is affected by space. “The CIPHER experiment tracks changes in the eyes, bones, heart, muscles, immune system, and more,” Oubre said. “The investigation provides the most comprehensive overview of how long-duration spaceflight affects the entire human body ever conducted, helping us advance human expeditions to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.” Some crew members also will contribute to a core set of measurements called Spaceflight Standard Measures. The measurements represent how the human body and mind adapt to space travel over time and serve as a basis for other spaceflight studies like CIPHER. Additionally, crew members may provide biological samples for Omics Archive, a separate study analyzing how the body reacts to long-duration spaceflight at the molecular level. In another study, select crew members will test a potential treatment for spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, a condition associated with brain changes and swelling of the back of the eye. Researchers are unsure what causes the syndrome or why only certain astronauts develop it, but the shift of bodily fluids toward the head in weightlessness may play a role. Some scientists believe genetics related to how the body processes B vitamins may affect how astronauts respond to those fluid shifts. Participating crew will test whether a daily B vitamin supplement can ease or prevent the development of symptoms. They also will investigate if cuffs worn on astronauts’ thighs to keep fluids in the legs could be an effective intervention. Upon return, the select crew members will complete surveys that record any discomfort or injuries associated with landing, such as scrapes and bruises. Results of the surveys­­ ̶ when combined with data retrieved by sensors in the vehicle­­ ̶ will help researchers catalog these injuries and improve the design of spacecraft. Crew members began participating in the studies about a year before their mission, learning about the work and offering baseline health data. They will continue to provide data for the experiments for up to two years after returning home. ____ NASA’s Human Research Program pursues the best methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, commercial missions, and the International Space Station, the program scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research drives NASA’s quest to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready as human space exploration expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Learn More About Exercising in Space Astronauts aboard the International Space Station typically exercise for two hours each day. From running to cycling to weightlifting, learn how crew members complete fitness regimens in space and commit to staying healthy – even in microgravity (Credit: NASA). Explore More 2 min read NASA Prepares Gateway Lunar Space Station for Journey to Moon Assembly is underway for Gateway's Power and Propulsion Element, the module that will power the… Article 1 week ago 5 min read NASA Marks Artemis Progress With Gateway Lunar Space Station NASA and its international partners are making progress on Gateway – the lunar space station… Article 2 weeks ago 5 min read NASA Readies Moon Rocket for the Future with Manufacturing Innovation Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Living in Space Artemis Human Research Program Space Station Research and Technology View the full article

Explore This Section Science Science Activation 2025 Aviation Weather Mission:… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 2 min read 2025 Aviation Weather Mission: Civil Air Patrol Cadets Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere with GLOBE Clouds The Science Activation Program’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) is working alongside the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to launch the 2025 Aviation Weather Mission. The mission will engage cadets (students ages 11-20) and senior members to collect aviation-relevant observations including airport conditions, Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Cloud observations, commercial aircraft information (including registration number and altitude), and satellite collocations provided by the NASA GLOBE Clouds team at NASA Langley Research Center. This mission results from a highly successful collaboration between NESEC and CAP as cadets and senior members collected cloud, air temperature, and land cover observations during the partial and total solar eclipses in 2023 and 2024, engaging over 400 teams with over 3,000 cadets and over 1,000 senior members in every state, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico. The 2025 Aviation Weather Mission will take place from April through July 2025, collecting observations over two 4-hour periods while practicing additional skills, such as flight tracking, orienteering, and data management. So far, over 3,000 cadets in 46 wings (states) have signed up to participate. Science Activation recently showed support for this mission through a letter of collaboration sent to CAP Major General Regena Aye in early February. NASA GLOBE Clouds and GLOBE Observer are part of the NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC), which is led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A. NESEC is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn Cadets from the Virginia wing making cloud observations as they prepare for the 2025 Aviation Weather Mission. Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 Editor NASA Climate Editorial Team Location NASA Langley Research Center Related Terms Science Activation Clouds Opportunities For Students to Get Involved Weather and Atmospheric Dynamics Explore More 2 min read Sharing PLANETS Curriculum with Out-of-School Time Educators Article 1 week ago 3 min read Eclipses to Auroras: Eclipse Ambassadors Experience Winter Field School in Alaska Article 2 weeks ago 2 min read An Afternoon of Family Science and Rocket Exploration in Alaska Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA James Webb Space Telescope Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the… Perseverance Rover This rover and its aerial sidekick were assigned to study the geology of Mars and seek signs of ancient microbial… Parker Solar Probe On a mission to “touch the Sun,” NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona… Juno NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter in 2016, the first explorer to peer below the planet’s dense clouds to… View the full article

Credit: NASA NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace Inc. of Cedar Park, Texas, to provide the launch service for the agency’s Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) mission, which aims to understand why, when, and where tropical convective storms form, and why some storms produce extreme weather. The mission will launch on the company’s Alpha rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The selection is part of NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract. This contract allows the agency to make fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity awards during VADR’s five-year ordering period, with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts. The INCUS mission, comprised of three SmallSats flying in tight coordination, will investigate the evolution of the vertical transport of air and water by convective storms. These storms form when rapidly rising water vapor and air create towering clouds capable of producing rain, hail, and lightning. The more air and water that rise, the greater the risk of extreme weather. Convective storms are a primary source of precipitation and cause of the most severe weather on Earth. Each satellite will have a high frequency precipitation radar that observes rapid changes in convective cloud depth and intensities. One of the three satellites also will carry a microwave radiometer to provide the spatial content of the larger scale weather observed by the radars. By flying so closely together, the satellites will use the slight differences in when they make observations to apply a novel time-differencing approach to estimate the vertical transport of convective mass. NASA selected the INCUS mission through the agency’s Earth Venture Mission-3 solicitation and Earth System Science Pathfinder program. The principal investigator for INCUS is Susan van den Heever at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Several NASA centers support the mission, including Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Key satellite system components will be provided by Blue Canyon Technologies and Tendeg LLC, both in Colorado. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contract. To learn more about NASA’s INCUS mission, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/incus -end- Tiernan Doyle Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov Patti Bielling Kennedy Space Center, Florida 321-501-7575 patricia.a.bielling@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related TermsInvestigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS)Earth SciencePlanetary Science DivisionScience & ResearchScience Mission DirectorateSmallSats ProgramWallops Flight Facility View the full article

Chris Wade is a visiting vehicle integration manager for SpaceX vehicles in the International Space Station Transportation Integration Office. He plays a key role in ensuring that all vehicle requirements are on track to support SpaceX missions to the space station. Chris also manages a team of real-time mission support personnel who follow launch, docking, undocking, and splashdown operations. Read on to learn about his career with NASA and more! Where are you from? I am from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Tell us about your role at NASA.  I manage horizontal integration between the SpaceX vehicle provider and the Commercial Crew and International Space Station Programs. In this role, I work to ensure all vehicle requirements will close in time to support upcoming SpaceX missions to the orbiting laboratory and achieve final certification prior to launch. Additionally, as a vehicle integration manager, I manage a team of real-time mission support personnel who follow launch, docking, undocking, and splashdown operations. Chris Wade in Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center following the arrival of a visiting vehicle to the International Space Station. I enjoy telling people that we have a space station that has been in low Earth orbit with people on it for nearly 25 years. cHRIS wade Visiting Vehicle Integration Manager for SpaceX Vehicles How would you describe your job to family or friends who may not be familiar with NASA?  In my current position, I am responsible for ensuring SpaceX Dragon vehicles have met all requirements to conduct missions to the space station. How long have you been working for NASA?  I have been working at Johnson Space Center for 25 years. What advice would you give to young individuals aspiring to work in the space industry or at NASA?  I would advise young individuals to focus their studies on the STEM fields and work hard. I would also advise aspiring candidates to start applying for NASA internships as soon as feasible and don’t be opposed to opportunities in the contractor workforce. What was your path to NASA?  My path to NASA was through the contractor workforce. I started working in space station robotic assembly analysis for Lockheed Martin directly out of college, then later became a civil servant at NASA. Is there someone in the space, aerospace, or science industry that motivated or inspired you to work for the space program? Or someone you discovered while working for NASA who inspires you?   The Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51-L crew motivated me to pursue a career at NASA. I vividly remember watching the launch from an elementary classroom in Mississippi and thinking, I wish I could do something to help one day. When I got an opportunity to work at Johnson, it was a no-brainer for me to accept the offer. What is your favorite NASA memory?  My favorite NASA memory is when I saw my first rocket launch, which was HTV-1 in Kagoshima, Japan. Chris Wade accepting a group achievement award as a member of the Latching End Effector Return Team with Johnson Space Center’s Deputy Center Director Vanessa Wyche and Center Director Mark Geyer in 2019.NASA/Robert Markowitz What do you love sharing about station? What’s important to get across to general audiences to help them understand its benefits to life on Earth?  I enjoy telling people that we have a space station that has been in low Earth orbit with people on it for nearly 25 years and we rotate crews of astronauts every six months. If you could have dinner with any astronaut, past or present, who would it be?  I would have dinner with NASA astronaut Ron McNair. Growing up in a small southern town, my path to NASA was very similar to his. I find it fascinating how individuals from different eras can end up on similar paths in life, and I would love to have a conversation with him about the choices he made that lead to his career as an astronaut. Do you have a favorite space-related memory or moment that stands out to you?  My favorite space-related memory is watching the SpaceX Demo-2 Crew Mission arrive at the International Space Station. That was the first launch of NASA astronauts from American soil since the Space Shuttle Program had ended almost 10 years prior. What are some of the key projects you’ve worked on during your time at NASA? What have been your favorite?   Some of the key projects I’ve worked on include: Robotic assembly of the International Space Station Robotic visiting vehicle capture Cargo and crew dragon visiting vehicle mission certification Of these, my favorite was the robotic visiting vehicle capture project. For this project, I got to work with the Canadian Space Agency and develop a method of using the space station’s robotic arm to grab unmanned visiting resupply vehicles. Chris Wade at Kennedy Space Center in front of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard atop a mobile launcher at Launch Complex 39B. What are your hobbies/things you enjoy outside of work?  Some of my favorite hobbies include running, reading, listening to audio books, and visiting family and friends back in Mississippi. Day launch or night launch?   Day launch! Favorite space movie?  Armageddon NASA “worm” or “meatball” logo?  Worm Every day, we’re conducting exciting research aboard our orbiting laboratory that will help us explore further into space and bring benefits back to people on Earth. You can keep up with the latest news, videos, and pictures about space station science on the Station Research & Technology news page. It’s a curated hub of space station research digital media from Johnson and other centers and space agencies. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter to get the updates delivered directly to you. Follow updates on social media at @ISS_Research on Twitter, and on the space station accounts on Facebook and Instagram. View the full article

6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Dwane Roth (right), a fourth generation grain farmer in Finney County, Kansas, stands with nephew Zion (left) in one of their corn fields. Roth’s farm became one of the first Water Technology Farms in Kansas around 2016, and he has been using OpenET data for the past few years to track evapotranspiration rates and conserve water. Photo courtesy of Dwane Roth A NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)-supported research and development team is making it easier for farmers and ranchers to manage their water resources. The team, called OpenET, created the Farm and Ranch Management Support (FARMS) tool, which puts timely, high-resolution water data directly in the hands of individuals and small farm operators. By making the information more accessible, the platform can better support decision-making around agricultural planning, water conservation, and water efficiency. The OpenET team hopes this will help farmers who are working to build greater resiliency in local and regional agriculture communities. build greater resiliency in local and regional agriculture communities. “It’s all about finding new ways to make satellite data easier to access and use for as many people as possible,” said Forrest Melton, the OpenET project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. “The goal is to empower users with actionable, science-based data to support decisions about water management across the West.” The goal is to empower users with actionable, science-based data to support decisions about water management across the West. Forrest melton OpenET Project Scientist OpenET Data Explorer Tool: The Road to FARMS The OpenET data explorer tool centers on providing evapotranspiration data. Evapotranspiration (ET) refers to the amount of water leaving Earth’s surface and returning to the atmosphere through evaporation (from soil and surface water) and transpiration (water vapor released by crops and other plants). Evapotranspiration is an important factor in agriculture, water resource management, irrigation planning, drought monitoring, and fire risk evaluation. The FARMS resource is the third phase of OpenET’s Data Explorer tool, launched in 2021, which uses satellite data to quantify evapotranspiration across the western U.S. It starts with using Landsat data to measure patterns in land surface temperature and key indicators of vegetation conditions. The satellite data is combined with agricultural data, such as field boundaries, and weather data, such as air temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, and precipitation. All of these factors feed into a model, which calculates the final evapotranspiration data. The new FARMS interface was designed to make that data easier to access, with features that meet specific needs identified by users. “This amount of data can be complicated to use, so user input helped us shape FARMS,” said Jordan Harding, app developer and interface design leader from HabitatSeven. “It provides a mobile-friendly, map-based web interface designed to make it easy as possible to get automated, regular reports.” Top: A section of the 2024 annual report Roth submits to the Farm Service Agency, with hand-written annotations marking which crop will be grown that year. Bottom: Those same fields in the new OpenET FARMS interface, with a dashboard on the left displaying evapotranspiration data over the course of 2024 at monthly intervals. Each color line corresponds to the same color field on the map, showcasing how much evapotranspiration rates can differ between different crops in the same vicinity. The unique shape of the purple field (forage sorghum), is an example of a case where FARMS’ custom shape feature is helpful. Once the initial report is set up, Roth can re-run reports for the same fields at any time. NASA/OpenET “The FARMS tool is designed to help farmers optimize irrigation timing and amounts, simplify planning for the upcoming irrigation season, and automate ET and water use reporting,” said Sara Larsen, CEO of OpenET. “All of this reduces waste, lowers costs, and informs crop planning.” Although FARMS is geared towards agriculture, the tool has value for other audiences in the western U.S. Land managers who evaluate the impacts of wildfire can use it to evaluate burn scars and changes to local hydrology. Similarly, resource managers can track evapotranspiration changes over time to evaluate the effectiveness of different forest management plans. New Features in FARMS To develop FARMS, the OpenET team held listening sessions with farmers, ranchers, and resource managers. One requested function was support for field-to-field comparisons; a feature for planning irrigation needs and identifying problem areas, like where pests or weeds may be impacting crop yields. The tool includes numerous options for drawing or selecting field boundaries, generating custom reports based on selected models and variables, and automatically re-running reports at daily or monthly intervals. The fine spatial resolution and long OpenET data record behind FARMS make these features more effective. Many existing global ET data products have a pixel size of over half a mile, which is too big to be practical for most farmers and ranchers. The FARMS interface provides insights at the scale of a quarter-acre per pixel, which offers multiple data points within an individual field. “If I had told my father about this 15 years ago, he would have called me crazy,” said Dwane Roth, a fourth-generation farmer in Kansas. “Thanks to OpenET, I can now monitor water loss from my crops in real-time. By combining it with data from our soil moisture probes, this tool is enabling us to produce more food with less water. It’s revolutionizing agriculture.” The FARMS mobile interface displays a six-year evapotranspiration report of a pear orchard owned by sixth-generation California farmer Brett Baker. The purple line in the dashboard report (left) corresponds with the field selected in purple on the map view (right), which users can toggle between using the green buttons in the top right corners. Running multi-year reports allows farmers to review historical trends.NASA/OpenET For those like sixth-generation California pear farmer Brett Baker, the 25-year span of ET data is part of what makes the tool so valuable. “My family has been farming the same crop on the same piece of ground for over 150 years,” Baker said. “Using FARMS gives us the ability to review historical trends and changes to understand what worked and what didn’t year to year: maybe I need to apply more fertilizer to that field, or better weed control to another. Farmers know their land, and FARMS provides a new tool that will allow us to make better use of land and resources.” According to Roth, the best feature of the tool is intangible. “Being a farmer is stressful,” Roth said. “OpenET is beneficial for the farm and the agronomic decisions, but I think the best thing it gives me is peace of mind.” Being a farmer is stressful. OpenET is beneficial for the farm and the agronomic decisions, but I think the best thing it gives me is peace of mind. Dwane Roth Fourth-Generation Kansas Grain Farmer Continuing Evolution of FARMS Over the coming months, the OpenET team plans to present the new tool at agricultural conferences and conventions in order to gather feedback from as many users as possible. “We know that there is already a demand for a seven-day forecast of ET, and I’m sure there will be requests about the interface itself,” said OpenET senior software engineer Will Carrara. “We’re definitely looking to the community to help us further refine that platform.” “I think there are many applications we haven’t even thought of yet,” Baker added. “The FARMS interface isn’t just a tool; it’s an entirely new toolbox itself. I’m excited to see what people do with it.” FARMS was developed through a public-private collaboration led by NASA, USGS, USDA, the non-profit OpenET, Inc., Desert Research Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, Google Earth Engine, HabitatSeven, California State University Monterey Bay, Chapman University, Cornell University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, UC Berkeley and other universities, with input from more than 100 stakeholders. To use FARMS, please visit: https://farms.etdata.org/ For additional resources/tutorials on how to use FARMS, please visit: https://openet.gitbook.io/docs/additional-resources/farms About the AuthorMilan LoiaconoScience Communication SpecialistMilan Loiacono is a science communication specialist for the Earth Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 Related TermsAmes Research Center's Science DirectorateAmes Research CenterEarth ScienceEarth Science DivisionWater & Energy Cycle Explore More 2 min read NASA Marks 110 Years Since Founding of Predecessor Organization Article 1 day ago 3 min read NASA Uses New Technology to Understand California Wildfires Article 4 days ago 1 min read Commodity Classic Hyperwall Schedule NASA Science at Commodity Classic Hyperwall Schedule, March 2-4, 2025 Join NASA in the Exhibit… Article 5 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

Intuitive Machines-2 Lunar Landing (Official NASA Broadcast)

Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, entering lunar orbit on Monday, March 3. Credit: Intuitive Machines Carrying NASA technology demonstrations and science investigations, Intuitive Machines is targeting their Moon landing no earlier than 12:32 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 6. The company’s Nova-C lunar lander is slated to land in Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the Moon’s South Pole, as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign to establish a long-term lunar presence. Watch live landing coverage of the Intuitive Machines 2 (IM-2) landing, hosted by NASA and Intuitive Machines, on NASA+ starting no earlier than 11:30 a.m., approximately 60 minutes before touchdown. Beginning at 11 a.m. the agency will share blog updates as landing milestones occur. Following the Moon landing, NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a news conference from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss the mission, technology demonstrations, and science opportunities that lie ahead as lunar surface operations. begin. U.S. media interested in participating in person must request accreditation by 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, by contacting the NASA Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. To ask questions via phone, all media must RSVP by 4 p.m. March 5 to the NASA Johnson Newsroom, and dial in at least 15 minutes before the briefing begins. Full coverage of the IM-2 mission includes (all times Eastern): Thursday, March 6 11:30 a.m. – Landing coverage begins on NASA+ 12:32 p.m. – Landing 4 p.m. – Post-landing news conference on NASA+ After landing, NASA and Intuitive Machines leaders will participate in the news conference: Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Clayton Turner, associate administrator, Space Technology Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Steve Altemus, CEO, Intuitive Machines Tim Crain, chief growth officer, Intuitive Machines The IM-2 mission launched at 7:16 p.m. Feb. 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander is carrying NASA technology that will measure the potential presence of resources from lunar soil that could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen. In addition, a passive Laser Retroreflector Array on the top deck of the lander will bounce laser light back at any orbiting or incoming spacecraft to give future spacecraft a permanent reference point on the lunar surface. Other technologies on this delivery will demonstrate a robust cellular network to help future astronauts communicate and deploy a propulsive drone that can hop across the lunar surface to navigate its challenging terrain. NASA continues to work with multiple American companies to deliver technology and science to the lunar surface through the agency’s CLPS initiative. This pool of companies may bid on contracts for end-to-end lunar delivery services, including payload integration and operations, launching from Earth, and landing on the surface of the Moon. NASA’s CLPS contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum value of $2.6 billion through 2028. The agency awarded Intuitive Machines the contract to send NASA science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon using its American-designed and -manufactured lunar lander for approximately $62.5 million. Through the Artemis campaign, commercial robotic deliveries will test technologies, perform science experiments, and demonstrate capabilities on and around the Moon to help NASA explore in advance of Artemis Generation astronaut missions to the lunar surface, and ultimately crewed missions to Mars. Learn how to watch NASA content on various platforms, including social media, and follow all events at: https://www.plus.nasa.gov Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtag #Artemis. You can also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts: X: @NASA, @NASA_Johnson, @NASAArtemis, @NASAMoon, @NASA_Technology Facebook: NASA, NASAJohnsonSpaceCenter, NASAArtemis, NASATechnology Instagram: @NASA, @NASAJohnson, @NASAArtemis For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative: https://www.nasa.gov/clps -end- Karen Fox / Jasmine Hopkins Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov Natalia Riusech / Nilufar Ramji Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 natalia.s.riusech@nasa.gov / nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related TermsCommercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)ArtemisEarth's MoonJohnson Space CenterScience Mission Directorate View the full article

3 Min Read March’s Night Sky Notes: Messier Madness Showing a large portion of M66, this Hubble photo is a composite of images obtained at visible and infrared wavelengths. The images have been combined to represent the real colors of the galaxy. Credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin and Robert Gendler by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific What Are Messier Objects? During the 18th century, astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier wanted to distinguish the ‘faint fuzzies’ he observed from any potential new comets. As a result, Messier cataloged 110 objects in the night sky, ranging from star clusters to galaxies to nebulae. These items are designated by the letter ‘M’ and a number. For example, the Orion Nebula is Messier 42 or M42, and the Pleiades are Messier 45 or M45. These are among the brightest ‘faint fuzzies’ we can see with modest backyard telescopes and some even with our eyes. Stargazers can catalog these items on evenings closest to the new moon. Some even go as far as having “Messier Marathons,” setting up their telescopes and binoculars in the darkest skies available to them, from sundown to sunrise, to catch as many as possible. Here are some items to look for this season: M44 in Cancer and M65 and 66 in Leo can be seen high in the evening sky 60 minutes after sunset. Stellarium Web Messier 44 in Cancer: The Beehive Cluster, also known as Praesepe, is an open star cluster in the heart of the Cancer constellation. Use Pollux in Gemini and Regulus in Leo as guide stars. A pair of binoculars is enough to view this and other open star clusters. If you have a telescope handy, pay a visit two of the three galaxies that form the Leo Triplet – M65 and M66. These items can be seen one hour after sunset in dark skies. Locate M3 and M87 rising in the east after midnight. Stellarium Web Messier 3 Canes Venatici: M3 is a globular cluster of 500,000 stars. Through a telescope, this object looks like a fuzzy sparkly ball. You can resolve this cluster in an 8-inch telescope in moderate dark skies. You can find this star cluster by using the star Arcturus in the Boötes constellation as a guide. Messier 87 in Virgo: Located just outside of Markarian’s Chain, M87 is an elliptical galaxy that can be spotted during the late evening hours. While it is not possible to view the supermassive black hole at the core of this galaxy, you can see M87 and several other Messier-labeled galaxies in the Virgo Cluster using a medium-sized telescope. Locate M76 and M31 setting in the west, 60 minutes after sunset. Stellarium Web Plan Ahead When gearing up for a long stargazing session, there are several things to remember, such as equipment, location, and provisions: Do you have enough layers to be outdoors for several hours? You would be surprised how cold it can get when sitting or standing still behind a telescope! Are your batteries fully charged? If your telescope runs on power, be sure to charge everything before you leave home and pack any additional batteries for your cell phone. Most people use their mobile devices for astronomy apps, so their batteries may deplete faster. Cold weather can also impact battery life. Determine the apparent magnitude of what you are trying to see and the limiting magnitude of your night sky. You can learn more about apparent and limiting magnitudes with our Check Your Sky Quality with Orion article. When choosing a location to observe from, select an area you are familiar with and bring some friends! You can also connect with your local astronomy club to see if they are hosting any Messier Marathons. It’s always great to share the stars! You can see all 110 items and their locations with NASA’s Explore the Night Sky interactive map and the Hubble Messier Catalog, objects that have been imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. View the full article

3 Min Read NASA Successfully Acquires GPS Signals on Moon An artist's concept of the Blue Ghost lunar lander receiving GNSS signals from Earth. Credits: NASA/Dave Ryan NASA and the Italian Space Agency made history on March 3, when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) became the first technology demonstration to acquire and track Earth-based navigation signals on the Moon’s surface. The LuGRE payload’s success in lunar orbit and on the surface indicates that signals from the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) can be received and tracked at the Moon. These results mean NASA’s Artemis missions, or other exploration missions, could benefit from these signals to accurately and autonomously determine their position, velocity, and time. This represents a steppingstone to advanced navigation systems and services for the Moon and Mars. An artist’s concept of the LuGRE payload on Blue Ghost and its three main records in transit to the Moon, in lunar orbit and on the Moon’s surface.NASA/Dave Ryan “On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,” said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program. “Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon. This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions.” This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions. Kevin Coggins Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA SCaN The road to the historic milestone began on March 2 when the Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the Moon and delivered LuGRE, one of 10 NASA payloads intended to advance lunar science. Soon after landing, LuGRE payload operators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began conducting their first science operation on the lunar surface. Members from NASA and Italian Space Agency watching the Blue Ghost lunar lander touch down on the Moon. NASA With the receiver data flowing in, anticipation mounted. Could a Moon-based mission acquire and track signals from two GNSS constellations, GPS and Galileo, and use those signals for navigation on the lunar surface? Then, at 2 a.m. EST on March 3, it was official: LuGRE acquired and tracked signals on the lunar surface for the first time ever and achieved a navigation fix — approximately 225,000 miles away from Earth. Now that Blue Ghost is on the Moon, the mission will operate for 14 days providing NASA and the Italian Space Agency the opportunity to collect data in a near-continuous mode, leading to additional GNSS milestones. In addition to this record-setting achievement, LuGRE is the first Italian Space Agency developed hardware on the Moon, a milestone for the organization. The LuGRE payload also broke GNSS records on its journey to the Moon. On Jan. 21, LuGRE surpassed the highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition ever recorded at 209,900 miles from Earth, a record formerly held by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. Its altitude record continued to climb as LuGRE reached lunar orbit on Feb. 20 — 243,000 miles from Earth. This means that missions in cislunar space, the area of space between Earth and the Moon, could also rely on GNSS signals for navigation fixes. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured its first sunrise on the Moon, marking the beginning of the lunar day and the start of surface operations in its new home. Firefly Aerospace Traditionally, NASA engineers track spacecraft by using a combination of measurements, including onboard sensors and signals from Earth-based tracking stations. The LuGRE payload demonstrates that using GNSS signals for navigation can reduce reliance on human operators because these signals can be picked up and used autonomously by the spacecraft, even as far away as the Moon. The LuGRE payload is a collaborative effort between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the Italian Space Agency. Funding and oversight for the LuGRE payload comes from NASA’s SCaN Program office. It was chosen by NASA as one of 10 funded research and technology demonstrations for delivery to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospace Inc., a flight under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. Learn more about LuGRE: https://go.nasa.gov/41qwwQN The joint NASA and Italian Space Agency LuGRE team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center NASA About the AuthorKatherine SchauerKatherine Schauer is a writer for the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program office and covers emerging technologies, commercialization efforts, exploration activities, and more. Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 EditorGoddard Digital TeamContactKatherine Schauerkatherine.s.schauer@nasa.govLocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related TermsGeneralArtemisCommercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)Communicating and Navigating with MissionsSpace Communications & Navigation Program Explore More 5 min read NASA and Italian Space Agency Test Future Lunar Navigation Technology Article 2 months ago 3 min read NASA Delivers Hardware for Commercial Lunar Payload Mission Article 2 years ago 5 min read NASA Moon Mission Set to Break Record in Navigation Signal Test Article 3 years ago View the full article

On March 2, 1995, space shuttle Endeavour launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its eighth trip into space, on the STS-67 Astro-2 mission. The crew included Commander Stephen Oswald, Pilot William Gregory, Mission Specialists John Grunsfeld, Wendy Lawrence, and Tamara Jernigan – who served as payload commander on the mission – and Payload Specialists Samuel Durrance and Ronald Parise. During their then record setting 17-day mission, the astronauts used the three ultraviolet telescopes of the Astro-2 payload to observe hundreds of celestial objects. The mission ended with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Official photo of the STS-67 crew of Stephen Oswald, seated at left, Tamara Jernigan, and William Gregory; Ronald Parise, standing at left, Wendy Lawrence, John Grunsfeld, and Samuel Durrance. NASA The STS-67 crew patch. NASA The Astro-2 payload patch.NASA In August 1993, NASA assigned Jernigan as the payload commander for Astro-2, for a weeklong flight aboard Columbia then targeted for late 1994. Jernigan, selected by NASA in 1985, had previously flown aboard STS-40 and STS-52. Two months later, NASA assigned Grunsfeld, a space rookie from the class of 1992, as a mission specialist. In January 1994, NASA rounded out the crew by assigning Oswald, Gregory, Lawrence, Durrance, and Parise. Oswald, from the class of 1985, had flown previously as pilot on STS-42 and STS-56, while STS-67 represented the first spaceflight for Gregory, selected in 1990, and Lawrence, chosen in 1992. Durrance and Parise, selected as payload specialists in 1984, had flown on STS-35, the Astro-1 mission. Space shuttle Endeavour rolls out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.NASA The STS-67 crew during a countdown demonstration test. NASA The STS-67 astronauts walk out for their ride to the launch pad. NASA The Astro-2 science payload consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes mounted on a Spacelab instrument pointing system in the shuttle’s cargo bay. The trio of telescopes flew previously on STS-35, the Astro-1 mission, in December 1990. That mission, originally planned to fly on STS-61E in March 1986, remained grounded following the Challenger accident. Due to equipment malfunctions, the Astro-1 mission only achieved 80% of its objectives, leading to the reflight of the instruments on Astro-2, originally planned as a seven-day mission aboard Discovery. A switch to Columbia enabled a mission twice as long, with significantly more observation time. A scheduled maintenance period for Columbia resulted in Astro-2 switching to Endeavour, with a new flight duration of more than 15 days, but a launch delay to February 1995. The three telescopes supported 23 different studies, observing more than 250 celestial objects including joint observations with the Hubble Space Telescope of the planet Jupiter. The launch of space shuttle Endeavour on STS-67 to begin the Astro-2 mission.NASA The Astro-2 telescopes deployed in Endeavour’s payload bay. NASA Endeavour returned to Kennedy following its previous flight, STS-68, in October 1994. After servicing the orbiter, workers rolled it to the vehicle assembly building on Feb. 3, 1995, for mating with its external tank and solid rocket boosters, and then out to Launch Pad 39A on Feb. 8. At 1:38 a.m. EST on March 2, Endeavour thundered into the night sky to begin the STS-67 mission. Eight and a half minutes later, the shuttle and its crew had reached space. Shortly after reaching orbit, the crew opened the payload bay doors and deployed the shuttle’s radiators. Jernigan and Durrance activated the Spacelab pallet and its pointing system and the telescopes. The crew split into two shifts to enable data collection around the clock during the mission. Oswald, Gregory, Grunsfeld, and Parise made up the red shift while Lawrence, Jernigan, and Durrance comprised the blue shift. Stephen Oswald conducts a session with the Middeck Active Control Experiment. NASA Wendy Lawrence monitors a protein crystal growth apparatus. NASA John Grunsfeld, left, and Samuel Durrance at the controls of the telescopes on the shuttle’s aft flight deck. NASA William Gregory conducts a biotechnology experiment in Endeavour’s middeck. NASA Samuel Durrance and Tamara Jernigan assemble the day’s teleprinter message. NASA Ronald Parise floats near the shuttle’s overhead window.NASA For the remainder of the mission, the astronauts operated the telescopes, conducting 385 maneuvers of Endeavour to point the instruments at the celestial targets. The results met or exceeded preflight expectations. The crew also conducted a series of middeck investigations in technology demonstration and biotechnology. The Middeck Active Control Experiment studied the active control of flexible structures in space. Five years later, a newer version flew as one of the first experiments on the International Space Station. A selection of the STS-67 crew Earth observation photographs. Gulf of Batabano, Cuba.NASA Antofagasta, Chile. NASA Volcanic eruption on Barren Island, Andaman Islands.NASA Disappointment Reach, Western Australia. NASA Like all space crews, the STS-67 astronauts also spent time taking photographs of the Earth using handheld cameras. The mission’s long duration enabled them to image many targets. The seven-person STS-67 crew poses for an in-flight photo. NASA Endeavour touches down at Edwards Air Force Base in California. NASA On March 14, an eighth American joined the STS-67 crew in space when NASA astronaut Norman Thagard blasted off with two cosmonauts, headed for space station Mir. With three other cosmonauts already aboard Mir, the total number of humans in orbit grew to a then-record of 13. Two days later, Oswald and Thagard, who had flown together on STS-42, talked to each other via ship-to-ship radio. Inclement weather at Kennedy thwarted the planned reentry on March 17, and the astronauts spent an extra day in space. On March 18, they again waved off a Kennedy landing and one orbit later, Oswald and Gregory piloted Endeavour to a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The crew had flown 262 orbits around the Earth in 16 days, 15 hours, and 9 minutes, at the time the longest space shuttle mission. A few hours later, a large crowd greeted the astronauts upon their return to Houston’s Ellington Field. Endeavour began its ferry flight back to Kennedy on March 26, arriving there the next day. Workers towed Endeavour to the processing facility to prepare it for its next flight, STS-73, then planned for September 1995. Watch the crew narrate a video about the STS-67 mission. Explore More 8 min read NASA’s Hubble Celebrates Decade of Tracking Outer Planets Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA’s Voyager mission completed humankind’s first close-up exploration of the four… Article 3 months ago 11 min read 30 Years Ago: Hubble Launched to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe 30 Years Ago: Hubble Launched to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe Article 5 years ago 22 min read 35 Years Ago: NASA Selects its 13th Group of Astronauts Article 2 months ago View the full article

Carrying a suite of NASA science and technology, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed at 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, 2025, near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.Firefly Aerospace The shadow of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander can be seen in this photo from the Moon, taken after landing on March 2, 2025. The lander safely delivered a suite of 10 NASA science and technology instruments; these instruments will operate on the lunar surface for approximately one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days. The successful Moon delivery is part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign. This is the first CLPS delivery for Firefly, and their first Moon landing. Learn more about Blue Ghost Mission 1. Image credit: Firefly Aerospace View the full article

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand; A planet may have been destroyed by a white dwarf at the center of a planetary nebula — the first time this has been seen. As described in our latest press release, this would explain a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers have detected from the Helix Nebula for over 40 years. The Helix is a planetary nebula, a late-stage star like our Sun that has shed its outer layers leaving a small dim star at its center called a white dwarf. This composite image contains X-rays from Chandra (magenta), optical light data from Hubble (orange, light blue), infrared data from ESO (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula. Data from Chandra indicates that this white dwarf has destroyed a very closely orbiting planet. This artist’s impression shows a planet (left) that has approached too close to a white dwarf (right) and been torn apart by tidal forces from the star. The white dwarf is in the center of a planetary nebula depicted by the blue gas in the background. The planet is part of a planetary system, which includes one planet in the upper left and another in the lower right. The besieged planet could have initially been a considerable distance from the white dwarf but then migrated inwards by interacting with the gravity of other planets in the system.CXC/SAO/M.Weiss An artist’s concept shows a planet (left) that has approached too close to a white dwarf (right) and is being torn apart by tidal forces from the star. The white dwarf is in the center of a planetary nebula depicted by the blue gas in the background. The planet is part of a planetary system, which includes one planet in the upper left and another in the lower right. The besieged planet could have initially been a considerable distance from the white dwarf but then migrated inwards by interacting with the gravity of the other planets in the system. Eventually debris from the planet will form a disk around the white dwarf and fall onto the star’s surface, creating the mysterious signal in X-rays that astronomers have detected for decades. Dating back to 1980, X-ray missions, such as the Einstein Observatory and ROSAT telescope, have picked up an unusual reading from the center of the Helix Nebula. They detected highly energetic X-rays coming from the white dwarf at the center of the Helix Nebula named WD 2226-210, located only 650 light-years from Earth. White dwarfs like WD 2226-210 do not typically give off strong X-rays. In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula.X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand; A new study featuring the data from Chandra and XMM-Newton may finally have settled the question of what is causing these X-rays from WD 2226-210: this X-ray signal could be the debris from a destroyed planet being pulled onto the white dwarf. If confirmed, this would be the first case of a planet seen to be destroyed by the central star in a planetary nebula. Observations by ROSAT, Chandra, and XMM-Newton between 1992 and 2002 show that the X-ray signal from the white dwarf has remained approximately constant in brightness during that time. The data, however, suggest there may be a subtle, regular change in the X-ray signal every 2.9 hours, providing evidence for the remains of a planet exceptionally close to the white dwarf. Previously scientists determined that a Neptune-sized planet is in a very close orbit around the white dwarf — completing one revolution in less than three days. The researchers in this latest study conclude that there could have been a planet like Jupiter even closer to the star. The besieged planet could have initially been a considerable distance from the white dwarf but then migrated inwards by interacting with the gravity of other planets in the system. Once it approached close enough to the white dwarf the gravity of the star would have partially or completely torn the planet apart. WD 2226-210 has some similarities in X-ray behavior to two other white dwarfs that are not inside planetary nebulas. One is possibly pulling material away from a planet companion, but in a more sedate fashion without the planet being quickly destroyed. The other white dwarf is likely dragging material from the vestiges of a planet onto its surface. These three white dwarfs may constitute a new class of variable, or changing, object. A paper describing these results appears in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online. The authors of the paper are Sandino Estrada-Dorado (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Martin Guerrero (The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain), Jesús Toala (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Ricardo Maldonado (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Veronica Lora (National Autonomous University of Mexico), Diego Alejandro Vasquez-Torres (National Autonomous University of Mexico), and You-Hua Chu (Academia Sinica in Taiwan). NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/chandra https://chandra.si.edu Visual Description This release features two images; a composite image of the Helix Nebula, and an artist’s rendering of a planet’s destruction, which may be occurring in the nebula’s core. The Helix Nebula is a cloud of gas ejected by a dying star, known as a white dwarf. In the composite image, the cloud of gas strongly resembles a creature’s eye. Here, a hazy blue cloud is surrounded by misty, concentric rings of pale yellow, rose pink, and blood orange. Each ring appears dusted with flecks of gold, particularly the outer edges of the eye-shape. The entire image is speckled with glowing dots in blues, whites, yellows, and purples. At the center of the hazy blue gas cloud, a box has been drawn around some of these dots including a bright white dot with a pink outer ring, and a smaller white dot. The scene which may be unfolding inside this box has been magnified in the artist’s rendering. The artist’s digital rendering shows a possible cause of the large white dot with the pink outer ring. A brilliant white circle near our upper right shows a white dwarf, the ember of a dying star. At our lower left, in the relative foreground of the rendering, is what remains of a planet. Here, the planet resembles a giant boulder shedding thousands of smaller rocks. These rocks flow off the planet’s surface, pulled back toward the white dwarf in a long, swooping tail. Glowing orange fault lines mar the surface of the crumbling planet. In our upper left and lower right, inside the hazy blue clouds which blanket the rendering, are two other, more distant planets. After the rocks from the planet start striking the surface of the white dwarf, X-rays should be produced. News Media Contact Megan Watzke Chandra X-ray Center Cambridge, Mass. 617-496-7998 mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu Lane Figueroa Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 256-544-0034 lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov Explore More 6 min read NASA’s Hubble Finds Kuiper Belt Duo May Be Trio The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians… Article 12 mins ago 6 min read NASA’s Webb Exposes Complex Atmosphere of Starless Super-Jupiter An international team of researchers has discovered that previously observed variations in brightness of a… Article 1 day ago 1 min read Hubble Captures New View of Colorful Veil In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a… Article 4 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System View the full article

Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 6 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Finds Kuiper Belt Duo May Be Trio This artist’s concept depicts one of the possible scenarios for the 148780 Altjira system in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. Credits: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show “3 Body Problem.” There’s no problem, however, with what a team of researchers say is likely a stable trio of icy space rocks in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt, found using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. If confirmed as the second such three-body system found in the region, the 148780 Altjira system suggests there could be similar triples waiting to be discovered, which would support a particular theory of our solar system’s history and the formation of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). “The universe is filled with a range of three-body systems, including the closest stars to Earth, the Alpha Centauri star system, and we’re finding that the Kuiper Belt may be no exception,” said the study’s lead author Maia Nelsen, a physics and astronomy graduate of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Known since 1992, KBOs are primitive icy remnants from the early solar system found beyond the orbit of Neptune. To date, over 3,000 KBOs have been cataloged, and scientists estimate there could be several hundred thousand more that measure over 10 miles in diameter. The largest KBO is dwarf planet Pluto. The Hubble finding is crucial support for a KBO formation theory, in which three small rocky bodies would not be the result of collision in a busy Kuiper Belt, but instead form as a trio directly from the gravitational collapse of matter in the disk of material surrounding the newly formed Sun, around 4.5 billion years ago. It’s well known that stars form by gravitational collapse of gas, commonly as pairs or triples, but that idea that cosmic objects like those in the Kuiper Belt form in a similar way is still under investigation. This artist’s concept depicts one of the possible scenarios for the 148780 Altjira system in the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. It is likely a hierarchical triple formation, in which two very close companions are orbited by a third member at a greater distance. The inner bodies are too close together to be resolved by the Hubble Space Telescope. But Hubble observations of the orbit of the outermost object were used to determine that the central body is not a single spherical object. Other possibilities are that the inner object is a contact binary, where two separate bodies become so close they touch each other. Another idea is that the central body is oddly flat, like a pancake. Of the 40 identified binary objects in the Kuiper Belt, another system, Lempo, has been found to be a triple. The Altjira system is located in the outer reaches of the solar system, 3.7 billion miles away, or 44 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. In this artist’s concept, our Sun is in the constellation Sagittarius, with the Milky Way in the background. The bright red star Antares appears at the top center. Dust in the plane of our solar system glows as zodiacal light. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) The Altjira system is located in the outer reaches of the solar system, 3.7 billion miles away, or 44 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. Hubble images show two KBOs located about 4,700 miles (7,600 kilometers) apart. However, researchers say that repeated observations of the objects’ unique co-orbital motion indicate the inner object is actually two bodies that are so close together they can’t be distinguished at such a great distance. “With objects this small and far away, the separation between the two inner members of the system is a fraction of a pixel on Hubble’s camera, so you have to use non-imaging methods to discover that it’s a triple,” said Nelsen. This takes time and patience, Nelsen explained. Scientists have gathered a 17-year observational baseline of data from Hubble and the Keck Observatory, watching the orbit of the Altjira system’s outer object. “Over time, we saw the orientation of the outer object’s orbit change, indicating that the inner object was either very elongated or actually two separate objects,” said Darin Ragozzine, also of Brigham Young University, a co-author of the Altjira study. “A triple system was the best fit when we put the Hubble data into different modeling scenarios,” said Nelsen. “Other possibilities are that the inner object is a contact binary, where two separate bodies become so close they touch each other, or something that actually is oddly flat, like a pancake.” Currently, there are about 40 identified binary objects in the Kuiper Belt. Now, with two of these systems likely triples, the researchers say it is more likely they are looking not at an oddball, but instead a population of three-body systems, formed by the same circumstances. However, building up that evidence takes time and repeated observations. Recent research using data from the Keck Observatory and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a potential three-body system in the Kuiper Belt, known as the Altjira system. This discovery challenges traditional collision theories by suggesting that these triple systems might form directly from the gravitational collapse of material in the early solar disk. Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Producer: Paul Morris The only Kuiper Belt objects that have been explored in detail are Pluto and the smaller object Arrokoth, which NASA’s New Horizons mission visited in 2015 and 2019, respectively. New Horizons showed that Arrokoth is a contact binary, which for KBOs means that two objects that have moved closer and closer to one another are now touching and/or have merged, often resulting in a peanut shape. Ragozzine describes Altjira as a “cousin” of Arrokoth, a member of the same group of Kuiper Belt objects. They estimate Altjira is 10 times larger than Arrokoth, however, at 124 miles (200 kilometers) wide. While there is no mission planned to fly by Altjira to get Arrokoth-level detail, Nelsen said there is a different upcoming opportunity for further study of the intriguing system. “Altjira has entered an eclipsing season, where the outer body passes in front of the central body. This will last for the next ten years, giving scientists a great opportunity to learn more about it,” Nelsen said. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is also joining in on the study of Altjira as it will check if the components look the same in its upcoming Cycle 3 observations. The Hubble study is published in The Planetary Science Journal. The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA. Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact: Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov) NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland Leah Ramsay Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science The Kuiper Belt Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble Hubble Space Telescope Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe. Uncovering Icy Objects in the Kuiper Belt Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights View the full article

4 Min Read Lagniappe for March 2025 <a>Explore the March 2025 issue, highlighting the installation of the new production RS-25 engine at NASA Stennis, and more!</a> Explore Lagniappe for March 2025 featuring: NASA Stennis Teams Install New Production RS-25 Engine for Upcoming Hot Fire NASA Stennis Flashback: Learning About Rocket Engine Exhaust for Safe Space Travel NASA in NOLA for Super Bowl Gator Speaks Gator SpeaksNASA/Stennis Welcome to March. It is the month that refuses to sit still. One day, the sun is shining, and the next day, the wind is howling through the trees, especially in the 125,000-acre buffer zone at NASA Stennis. The buffer zone and location of NASA Stennis helps provide the right conditions for around-the-clock propulsion test capabilities. March, like NASA Stennis, is full of possibilities. The month kicks off a season of new beginnings. It is a time when farmers begin to plant seeds. Did you know powering space dreams at NASA Stennis is a lot like farmers planting seeds? Planting a seed is simple, yet profound. It signals a fresh start no matter if you are an experienced planter or if it is your first time. Picking the right seed, carefully choosing the spot, and preparing the soil are ways to get going. Anticipation begins in March as planters set the stage for something that will happen over time. Similarly, NASA Stennis is the right place to pick for many aerospace companies large and small. It is where the road to launch begins. Whether the company is brand new to the field, like a first-time planter, or more experienced, the soil is right at NASA Stennis. South Mississippi is where a team of experts can help companies achieve a successful outcome. Ah yes, the month of March and NASA Stennis are indeed alike. They both can be a bridge between what was and what is to come – one, a time of year and the other, a place to shake off the winter slumber, take a deep breath, and step into something new. There is something magical about planting seeds, just like there is something magical about powering space dreams at NASA Stennis. NASA Stennis Top News NASA Stennis Teams Install New Production RS-25 Engine for Upcoming Hot Fire NASA marked a key milestone Feb. 18 with installation of RS-25 engine No. E20001, the first new production engine to help power the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on future Artemis missions to the Moon. Read More About the New Production NASA Stennis Flashback: Learning About Rocket Engine Exhaust for Safe Space Travel NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, is widely known as the nation’s largest rocket propulsion test site. Read More About the Diagnostic Test Facility Center Activities NASA in NOLA for Super Bowl NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis representatives inspire the Artemis Generation at the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans Feb. 7-8 with activities and displays highlighting space exploration, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA Stennis Leaders Visit Kennedy Space Center NASA Stennis Deputy Director Christine Powell and NASA Rocket Propulsion Test Program Manager Michele Beisler tour the Vehicle Assembly Building to view the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket expected to fly on the Artemis II mission and the mobile launcher ground structure used to assemble, process, and launch SLS during a visit to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 31.NASA/Stennis NASA Stennis Deputy Director Christine Powell and NASA Rocket Propulsion Test Program Manager Michele Beisler tour the Vehicle Assembly Building to view the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket expected to fly on the Artemis II mission and the mobile launcher ground structure used to assemble, process, and launch SLS during a visit to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 31.NASA/Stennis NASA Stennis Deputy Director Christine Powell and NASA Rocket Propulsion Test Program Manager Michele Beisler tour the Vehicle Assembly Building to view the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket expected to fly on the Artemis II mission and the mobile launcher ground structure used to assemble, process, and launch SLS during a visit to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 31.NASA/Stennis Leadership Class Visits NASA Stennis The Pearl River County Leadership Class visits the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1/B-2) during a NASA Stennis tour on Feb. 20. NASA Stennis is at the front end of the critical path for the future of human deep space exploration through NASA’s Artemis campaign. The B-2 side of the Thad Cochran Test Stand is undergoing preparations for exploration upper stage testing. The upper stage is scheduled to undergo Green Run tests of its integrated systems before its first flight on the Artemis IV mission. The test series will culminate with a hot fire of the stage’s four RL10 engines, just as during an actual mission.NASA/Danny Nowlin Rocket Lab Leader Visits NASA Stennis NASA Stennis Director John Bailey, left, welcomes Richard French, Rocket Lab USA, Inc. vice president of business development and strategy of space systems, for a tour of NASA Stennis on Feb. 26. In 2022, NASA and Rocket Lab reached an agreement for the aerospace company to locate its engine test complex at NASA Stennis. The initial 10-year agreement between NASA and Rocket Lab includes an option to extend an additional 10 years. The Archimedes Test Complex includes 24 acres surrounding the site’s A-3 Test Stand. Archimedes is Rocket Lab’s liquid oxygen and liquid methane rocket engine to power its medium-lift Neutron rocket. The company successfully completed the first hot fire of the new Archimedes rocket engine at NASA Stennis in August 2024.NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA in the News NASA’s Advancements in Space Continue Generating Products on Earth – NASA What You Need To Know About the March 2025 Total Lunar Eclipse – NASA Science More Than 400 Lives Saved with NASA’s Search and Rescue Tech in 2024 – NASA Tests in Simulated Lunar Gravity to Prep Payloads for Moon Employee Profile: Jason Hopper NASA’s Jason Hopper is shown at the E Test Complex at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.NASA/Danny Nowlin Jason Hopper’s journey to NASA started with assessing the risk of stepping into the unknown. Read More About Jason Hopper Additional Resources Artemis II to the Moon: Launch to Splashdown (NASA Mission Animation) Subscription Info Lagniappe is published monthly by the Office of Communications at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. The NASA Stennis office may be contacted by at 228-688-3333 (phone); ssc-office-of-communications@mail.nasa.gov (email); or NASA OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS, Attn: LAGNIAPPE, Mail code IA00, Building 1111 Room 173, Stennis Space Center, MS 39529 (mail). The Lagniappe staff includes: Managing Editor Lacy Thompson, Editor Bo Black, and photographer Danny Nowlin. To subscribe to the monthly publication, please email the following to ssc-office-of-communications@mail.nasa.gov – name, location (city/state), email address. Explore More 4 min read Lagniappe for December 2024 Article 3 months ago 4 min read Lagniappe for January 2025 Article 2 months ago 3 min read Lagniappe for February 2025 Article 4 weeks ago View the full article

NASA’s Jason Hopper is shown at the E Test Complex at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.NASA/Danny Nowlin Jason Hopper’s journey to NASA started with assessing the risk of stepping into the unknown. One day, while taking a break from his hobby of rock climbing at Mississippi State University, a fellow student noticed Hopper reading a rocket propulsion textbook with a photo of a space shuttle launch on the cover. Rocket propulsion – the technology that propels vehicles into space, usually through liquid rocket engines or solid rocket motors – is a highly complex field. Engineers rigorously test the propulsion systems and components to understand their capabilities and limitations, ensuring rockets can safely reach space. “A guy just walked up and randomly said, ‘Hey, my dad works testing rocket engines,’” Hopper recalled. Hopper, an aerospace engineering student at the time, did not know about NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He soon would learn more. The fellow student provided him with contact information, and the rest is history. A Meridian, Mississippi, native, Hopper graduated from Mississippi State in 2007 and made his way to America’s largest rocket propulsion test site in south Mississippi. On the other side of Hopper’s risk of stepping into the unknown came the reward of realizing how far he had come from reading about rocket propulsion work to contributing to it. The career highlight happened when Hopper watched a space shuttle launch, powered in part by an engine he had fired up as a test conductor working at NASA Stennis. “You cannot really put it into words because it permeates all through you, knowing that you are a part of something that big while at the same time, you are just a little piece of it,” he said. Hopper transitioned from his contractor position to a civil servant role as test conductor when he joined NASA in 2011. His work as a test conductor throughout all the NASA Stennis test areas and as test director at the E Test Complex has benefited NASA and industry, while giving him a good perspective on the value of the center’s work. Among the projects he has played a large role in include the J-2X engine test program, build up for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stage hot fire ahead of the successful Artemis I launch and multiple projects throughout the E Test Complex. “We offer operational excellence that I would argue you cannot get anywhere else,” Hopper said. “NASA Stennis is a smaller, family-oriented center renowned for excellence in rocket propulsion testing. It is a small place, where we do amazing things.” Propulsion test customers at NASA Stennis include government and commercial projects. The NASA center is engaged in two projects to support the agency’s SLS rocket – testing of RS-25 engines to help power SLS launches and of NASA’s new exploration upper stage to fly on future missions to the Moon. Current commercial companies conducting work at NASA Stennis include Blue Origin; Boeing; Evolution Space; Launcher, a Vast company; Relativity Space; and Rolls-Royce. Three companies – Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, and Evolution Space – are establishing production and/or test operations onsite. After leaving south Mississippi for a four-year stint at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Hopper returned to NASA Stennis as risk manager of NASA’s Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office. In his day-to-day work, Hopper assesses risk around two questions – what is the risk and what do I really need to be focusing on? Making decisions through this filter helps the Poplarville, Mississippi, resident make the best use of the agency’s rocket propulsion test assets, activities, and resources. “With a risk perspective, if things are high risk, we need to address these items and focus our attention on them,” Hopper said. “If we lose a national test capability, that impacts more than just NASA; it impacts the nation because NASA is a significant enabler of commercial spaceflight.” Hopper helps oversee the maintenance and sustainment of propulsion test capabilities across four sites – NASA Stennis; NASA Marshall; NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio; and NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. By establishing and maintaining world-class test facilities, the agency’s Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office ensures that NASA and its partners can conduct safe, efficient, and cost-effective rocket propulsion tests to support the advancement of space exploration and technology development. Hopper looks to the future with optimism. “We have an opportunity to redefine kind of what we as NASA and NASA Stennis do and how we do it,” he said. “Before, we were trying to help commercial companies figure things out. We were trying to get them up and going, but now we are in more of a support role in a lot of ways and so if you look at it, and approach it the right way, it can be very exciting.” View the full article

The National Society of Professional Engineers recently named Debbie Korth, Orion deputy program manager at Johnson Space Center, as NASA’s 2025 Engineer of the Year. Korth was recognized during an award ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21, alongside honorees from 17 other federal agencies. The annual awards program honors the impactful contributions of federal engineers and their commitment to public service. Debbie Korth received the NASA 2025 Engineer of the Year Award from the National Society of Professional Engineers at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of Debbie Korth Korth said she was shocked to receive the award. “At NASA there are so many brilliant, talented engineers who I get to work with every day who are so specialized and know so much about a certain area,” she said. “It was very surprising, but very appreciated.” Korth has dedicated more than 30 years of her career to NASA, supporting human spaceflight development, integration, and operations across the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Orion Programs. Her earliest roles involved extravehicular and mission operations planning, as well as managing spaceflight hardware for shuttle missions and space station crews. Working on hardware such as the Crew Health Care System in the early days of space station planning and development was a unique experience for Korth. After spending significant time in Russia collaborating with Russian counterparts to integrate equipment such as a treadmill, cycle ergometer, and blood pressure monitor into their module, Korth recalled, “When we finally got that all delivered and integrated, it was a huge step because we had to have all of that on board before we could put crew members on the station for the first time. I remember feeling a huge sense of accomplishment and happiness that we were able to work through this international partnership and forge those relationships to get that hardware integrated.” Korth transitioned to the Orion Program in 2008 and has since served in a variety of leadership roles. In her current role, Korth assists the program manager in the design, development, testing, verification, and certification of Orion, NASA’s next-generation, human-rated spacecraft for Artemis missions. The spacecraft’s first flight test around the Moon during the Artemis I mission was a standout experience for Korth and a major accomplishment for the Orion team. “It was a long mission and every day we were learning more and more about the spacecraft and pushing boundaries,” she said. “We really wrung out some of the core systems – systems that were developed individually and for the first time we got to see them work together.” Korth said that understanding how different systems interact with each other is what she loves most about engineering. “In systems engineering, you really look at how changes to and the performance of one system affects everything else,” she said. “I like looking across the entire spacecraft and saying, if I have to strengthen this structure to take some additional landing loads, that’s going to add mass to the vehicle, which means I have to look at my parachutes and the thermal protection system to make sure they can handle that increased load.” The Orion team is working to achieve two major milestones in 2025 – delivery of the Artemis II Orion spacecraft to the Exploration Ground Systems team that will fuel and integrate Orion with its launch abort system at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and the spacecraft’s integration with the Space Launch System rocket, which is currently being stacked. These milestones will support the launch of the first crewed mission on NASA’s path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration, with liftoff targeted no earlier than April 2026. “It’s going to be a big year,” said Korth. View the full article

Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read Sols 4468-4470: A Wintry Mix of Mars Science NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image showing its wheel awkwardly perched atop one of the rocks in this location, as well as the textures of the layered sulfate unit bedrock blocks. The rover used its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam), one of a pair of stereo cameras on either side of the rover’s masthead, to record the image on Feb. 28, 2025, on sol 4466, or Martian day 4,466 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, at 00:34:10 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 28, 2025 Curiosity continues to climb roughly southward through the layered sulfate strata toward the “boxwork” features. Although the previous plan’s drive successfully advanced the rover roughly 21 meters southward (about 69 feet), the drive had ended with an awkwardly perched wheel. Because of this, unfortunately it was considered too risky to unstow the arm for contact science in this plan. Nevertheless the team made the most of the imaging and LIBS observations available from the rover’s current location. A large Mastcam mosaic was planned on the nearby Texoli butte to capture its sedimentary structures from the rover’s new perspective. Toward the west, the boxwork strata exposed on “Gould Mesa” were observed using the ChemCam long-distance imaging capability, with Mastcam providing color context. Several near-field Mastcam mosaics also captured some bedding and diagenetic structure in the nearby blocks as well as some modern aeolian troughs in the finer-grained material around them. On the nearby blocks, two representative local blocks (“Gabrelino Trail” and “Sespe Creek”) are to be “zapped” with the ChemCam laser to give us LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) compositional measurements. The original Gabrelino Trail on Earth near the JPL campus is currently closed due to damage from the recent wildfires. Meanwhile, the season on Mars (L_s ~ 50, or a solar longitude of about 50 degrees, heading into southern winter) has brought with it the opportunity to observe some recurring atmospheric phenomena: It’s aphelion cloud belt season, as well as Hadley cell transition season, during which a more southerly air mass crosses over Gale Crater. This plan includes an APXS atmospheric observation (no arm movement required!) to measure argon and a ChemCam passive-sky observation to measure O2, which is a small (less than 1%) but measurable component in the Martian atmosphere. Dedicated cloud altitude observations, a phase function sky survey, and zenith and suprahorizon movies have also been included in the plan to characterize the clouds. As usual, the rover also continues to monitor the modern environment with measurements of atmospheric opacity via imaging, temperature, and humidity with REMS, and the local neutron environment with DAN. Share Details Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 Related Terms Blogs Explore More 2 min read Smooshing for Science: A Flat-Out Success Article 3 days ago 4 min read Sols 4466-4468: Heading Into the Small Canyon Article 5 days ago 2 min read Sols 4464-4465: Making Good Progress Article 5 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited… All Mars Resources Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,… Rover Basics Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a… Mars Exploration: Science Goals The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four… View the full article

I’m really pleased that you agreed to take advantage of this opportunity. I don’t recall if I have actually met you personally, but if so, then I apologize for not remembering. I don’t think so, although you’ve certainly signed things for me. Well, I guess I have because I do remember seeing your name from time to time on various things. You’ve been at Ames a long time and we’ll have you talk about that in a little bit. The focus of these interviews is not specifically on your work. In fact, it was intended to broaden people’s understanding of who you are and what you do when you’re not at work, because we get compartmentalized and mostly get to know people through our work interactions, so we’ll be touching on your other interests. As you’ve seen if you’ve read some of these, we generally start with your childhood. I try to look up bios and things like that ahead of time to see what I can glean before these interviews but you don’t have a very substantial presence on the web. I’m not a very public person. I did find that out (laughs). I did not volunteer for these and I tried to lay low until you hunted me down! (laughs) Well, I think you’ll be pleased and as I said, you can stay as private as you want during this whole interview. Sounds good. We like to start with where you were born, your family at the time, what your parents did, if you have siblings, and then we ask when became aware of or developed an interest in what you have pursued as a career. OK, and I’m going to be looking sideways at my notes because I printed out your list of questions and thought about them. Hopefully I won’t mess it up too much. I’m a big believer in the written word. I was born in Oakland, just up the Bay. So was I, so we have a connection right there! Up through my preteen years I grew up split between Oakland and North Lake Tahoe. My dad was a masonry contractor. When school got out in June we would go up to Tahoe where there was lots of work for him, building foundations for homes and so forth. When Christmas break came in school, we came back down to Oakland. We had a home in both places and dad could get work in the winter in the Bay Area. In the middle of every year during my preteen years, I switched between two schools. It was usually a bit of a jolt because the Oakland schools were ahead of the Tahoe schools, so there were a couple weeks of flailing about in January trying to catch up. They all used the same textbooks, but we were a couple of chapters behind at that point and had to catch up. When I was 12, Dad had established his business well enough at Tahoe that my parents sold both of the houses, built a somewhat bigger one, and we moved to Tahoe permanently. So from seventh grade through high school it was all at the northern end of Lake Tahoe. I have one sibling, a brother. And when did I start thinking about becoming an astronomer? I can’t remember exactly, to be perfectly honest. I do remember my parents showing me the constellations. I can remember specifically which constellations my dad showed me and which ones my mom showed me. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested primarily in being an astronomer, but I probably went through an astronaut phase because it was the ‘60’s! I got an astronomy book for my birthday one year and I know it was before I could really read and understand it. I remember looking at the pictures. In thinking about this interview, I went back and looked. That book was published when I was five, so probably by the time I was five I was talking about it enough that I got this book for my birthday. I don’t have any similar books on other topics from that time. All the other books I have from back then are astronomy books for kids. Well, you were living in Lake Tahoe, which by the elevation and the clarity and lack of ambient lights around you would have had a really good view of the stars and constellations. Right. It was great. Although before we moved up there full time we were mostly there in the summer, so it didn’t get dark until after my bedtime. When we moved up there full time, then I could go out in the winter and yeah, we had a spectacular view of the southern sky. There were woods but we could see over the trees. We could see the center of the Milky Way, and so forth. I had binoculars and a couple of small telescopes that I’d use, along with a star atlas to point me toward interesting things to look at. Did you say what your mother did? Did she work outside the home? Mom was a writer. We traveled each year when we were growing up. She would write travelogues of those trips and try to get them published. She also wrote haiku poetry, and she tried her hand at writing other things. She was published a bit, but not a whole lot. Mom did get one of her travelogues published in the Christian Science Monitor. That was a highlight for her. And was your brother older or younger? My brother is two years younger, and we had somewhat similar trajectories. We’ll get to education later but he majored in physics as well. He followed me in similar universities, but ended up going into material sciences. He is now on the East Coast working for IBM. That’s great. He was named a Master Inventor in 2018. A what? A Master Inventor. He has over 200 patents, so IBM honored him with this title. That’s quite an honor! Your education was interesting because of the split between the two schools. But then at some point, when you went to college, you had to declare a major. You said you had already developed an interest in astronomy, so did you pursue that science discipline right off the bat? I went to UC Riverside for two years, and then I transferred to Caltech. My freshman year I really nailed down my choice for astronomy. I remember going to the Career Center and taking an interest survey, which has nothing to do with what you’re able to do. It just asks what you’re interested in doing, and it came up as physicist or musician. I have no musical skills so that pointed me in the other direction. I thought briefly about geology, since my dad had been a geology major, but I really settled on astronomy at that point, which is why I transferred. Riverside didn’t have an astronomy major, they only had a physics major. I really wanted to get an astronomy background and start on it early. My time at Caltech was probably the toughest two years I’ve ever had. I was behind because I had gone to Riverside for two years and the Caltech student body was extremely competitive. Caltech was not generous with their transfer credits. I ended up taking a very heavy course load, but I did make it out in two years. From there I applied to a number of grad schools. I settled on Cornell for a couple reasons: First of all because they had groups working in the areas of astronomy I thought I was interested in, which were radio and infrared. Second of all, after four years in southern California I really wanted to go to a more rural setting to continue my education. I have to ask this because when we’ve interviewed others who have gone to Cornell, most of them have mentioned the influence of Carl Sagan and I just wondered if that figured into your choice, or was he gone by the time you went there? Well, I did meet Carl, at a second year reception he threw for the grad students. He was gone most of my first year working on Cosmos the television show. He had taken a leave of absence and wasn’t around. When he came back he threw a reception for all of us, and I got to shake his hand. He was a planetary scientist, of course, and that was not where I was aiming my trajectory. I didn’t see him a whole lot other than that one reception. Although from time to time the kind of people you really don’t want wandering around the halls would come around the building looking for Carl Sagan. Security would chase them down and get them out. These are really my most distinct memories of Carl. And your PhD was in astronomy, not physics? It was in astronomy and my dissertation was on radio astronomy. I did it almost exclusively at Arecibo (Arecibo Observatory, National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo, Puerto Rico) with a little bit at the VLA (Very Large Array Radio Telescope facility, near Socorro, New Mexico). I got to work with some really smart people at Cornell, observational and theoretical. At this point we usually inquire about the connection or the influence, that brought you from your PhD to NASA Ames. My degree was in radio astronomy but the other interest I always had along the way, which I hadn’t been able to look into, was infrared astronomy. Getting post docs is very competitive, back then we called them NRC’s. The NRC offer from Ed Erickson’s group at Ames was the best offer, so I came out for that. It wasn’t a sure thing, there was back and forth and the highest rated candidate had to turn down the job before they would make me an offer. But fortunately for me the highest rated candidate was my office mate at Cornell. I knew he was going to turn down the offer as soon as he got another one he wanted, so I was aware a little bit in advance of getting the call from Ed that things had worked out. And Ed was your advisor? Ed was my advisor. So I came and did two years as an NRC and then continued working with the group. I had made myself sufficiently useful that when I was ready to apply for other jobs, Ed offered me a raise if I’d stay with the group and continue working. That was a really good time. We flew on the KAO (Kuiper Airborne Observatory). They didn’t really have facility instruments, so we had our own instrument, but we did support observers from outside our group. We probably had more flights than any other instrument on the KAO during that period. It was a lot of flights. We had to operate it ourselves. All of us had our own particular jobs on flights. We did everything from prepping for the observations, writing proposals, all the way through to seeing them published. We were a small team: Ed Erickson, Mike Haas; Jan Simpson, and Bob Rubin on the science side helped out. We had a shop guy, Gene Beckstrom, and others after him. We had a lab technician, Jim Baltz. Dave Hollenbach would also work with us, and that was very rewarding. He was a very sharp guy in terms of theory, ideas and projects to do. Here is a photo of some of us with our instrument rack getting ready for a KAO flight: Sean Colgan with his team on the KAO (Kuiper Airborne Observatory). So you came in on an NRC postdoctoral fellowship in the mid-‘80’s? Yes, I started on October 6th, 1986. And your first work was on the KAO and then probably a decade later you continued on SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy)? It was ‘95 or ‘96 when they shut down the KAO to use the funding for SOFIA development. I remember the meeting still. It was in the upstairs auditorium and they came in and announced they were shutting the KAO down. I think it was Dave Morrison, who was the division chief, who told us not to whine about shutting it down because planetary missions sometimes had years when they didn’t have their facilities. In this case it was only going to be two years and we would be up and flying in 1997. Of course, as we know, it was more like ten years after that before we were even close to flying. Yes, I thought the same thing, that it was not going to be two years. It always takes longer than that. Well, I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be as many years as it was. But you flew on both the KAO and SOFIA? I had ninety nine flights on the Kuiper (KAO) because I kept track of them, and on SOFIA I had two flights, so I was not a flyer on SOFIA. It was more of a facility observatory, and the people who flew a lot were really part of the observatory. They were operating the telescope or operating a science instrument. My flights on SOFIA were because I had written some software for the GREAT Instrument (German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies, a modular dual-color heterodyne instrument for high-resolution far-infrared spectroscopy) to help them interface with SOFIA. I was along on those commissioning flights for GREAT in case my software broke. They wanted me on board. Interestingly by the rules at the time, I wouldn’t be allowed to actually fix the software in flight because it was flight software and had to go through all the reviews. None of the people who could do the reviews were on the airplane, but I could see how it broke and maybe I could suggest workarounds. It was not nearly as much fun for me as the KAO. I didn’t really have a job. The software had issues from time to time, but it basically worked. Everybody else had jobs, so for me it was less interesting, which is why I didn’t make a huge effort to keep flying on SOFIA. Did you stay on the SOFIA project as a somewhat non flying support person? Yes, from when the Kuiper stopped flying until about, well now, my primary work on SOFIA has been first with the project science team during development – trying to make sure they met our requirements, helping everybody understand our requirements, trying to make sure they weren’t making any huge mistakes. They made them anyway, especially when they didn’t listen to us, but we did our best. During the early years of SOFIA, I was also on the Ames team developing AIRES – a facility Science Instrument for SOFIA. I led the software effort, but the development was canceled in 2001. I then got involved with the software that people would use to propose to SOFIA, the proposal software, the software to estimate how long you should be asking for time, the sensitivity of the instruments, pieces of software like that. I worked with Dave Goorvich. We got software from other observatories as starting points and then modified them for SOFIA, software “re-use” they called it. And that was basically my main job throughout SOFIA’s lifetime. Once we developed those, the USRA (Universities Space Research Association) folks built their team around maintaining them and I joined that team because I’d been working on this software for so long. I also got into the package I mentioned to help GREAT interface to SOFIA. It basically made SOFIA look like the telescope that the GREAT team had been using for years, an observatory called KOSMA. We called it the translator and it translated KOSMA commands into SOFIA commands; then SOFIA housekeeping back into KOSMA housekeeping, so they didn’t need to change their software to work with SOFIA. As the aircraft started flying, it became quite clear that I was oversubscribed. I was not meeting my deadlines for either of those two efforts, so I gave up the translator. They hired another fellow to maintain that, although I stayed in touch with it for some years, helping him when he had questions and so forth. I then focused my main effort over on SOFIA’s DCS (Data Cycle System) side. What has been your most interesting work here at Ames? I’d say it was flying on the KAO, but very specifically it was Supernova 1987A which occurred after I had been here for only a couple of months. It went off in February of 1987. Nobody really knew what it would look like in the infrared to an instrument on an observatory like the KAO, so it was obviously a huge deal since it was the closest supernova for hundreds of years. Our team just completely redirected to carry out observations of the supernova. Dave Hollenbach and I worked together to try and figure out what we would see. We wrote up the science portion of the proposal,. For these observations, our instrument – the CGS (Cooled-Grating-Spectrometer) – had to be fairly substantially reworked in the sense that the grating needed to be changed to go to lower resolution and the detectors needed to be changed to get wider bandwidth and go to shorter wavelengths. Ed and Mike worked long days, weeks, and months to make all of those changes happen. In our proposal we made some predictions about which lines we could see, mostly iron lines, and which ionization states. We put that in the proposal, which was accepted. We then wrote up the proposal as a separate paper. When we went down and did the observations, we actually got some of it right. Surprisingly, iron was indeed bright. We thought we’d be seeing all different ionized states of iron, from singly, doubly, triply ionized iron, when in fact it was very much concentrated in singly ionized iron with a little bit of doubly ionized iron, there was a faint line there. We had gotten the temperatures right, but we didn’t quite get the ionization right. We were in the ballpark, so I think this was really the most interesting work in that when we started nobody had really seen anything like it before. We were starting from very basic principles, and we followed that all the way through to a nice series of papers. We went down for three different epochs because the lines were changing with time as the supernova ejecta expanded. We obtained three sets of measurements, which resulted in three papers. What I’m currently working on? Well, SOFIA is, of course, shut down and I am working as part of the shutdown process. We’re trying to reprocess a lot of the data to bring it up to standard, especially the older data. We learned more about the instruments as time went on, so we can now do a better job of reducing the data. I’m helping out with reducing the data, getting it into the archive as we shut down, and of course, writing proposals. What comes next? So far I’ve collaborated mainly with Naseem, whom you have spoken to, Sarah Nickerson, whom you also have spoken to, and Doug Hoffman (whom we’ve also spoken to). So that’s proposals. How is your work relevant to Ames and the NASA mission? Well, I’ve worked on NASA missions almost my entire career, so I think that’s the closest to relevance as you can get. What is a typical day like for you? I mostly work, well before the pandemic in my office, but now it’s back and forth. I do like to come into the office although this week is a little different. That’s why we’re doing this interview from home. My wife is out of town and I like to work at home on those weeks just to keep the dog out of trouble. So I’m at a computer. I’m a software guy and a data analysis guy, not a lab guy, so I work at the computer. I actually have several computers on my desk. I look like a real developer (laughs). If you see my desk, I’ve got a couple of big screens and couple of computers underneath hooked up to different things and I can switch them around. So that’s a typical day, but at home it’s a little tougher. I don’t have a desk that can really manage the big screens, so I’ve just got one little laptop screen to work with. Is home close enough that the pandemic shut down of the Center didn’t really save you a whole lot of commute time? I live across the Bay in Newark, which physically is not far, but traffic wise is not good. I typically come in later and stay later because that works with my wife’s schedule and also works with the traffic. We’re not so close that it’s easy. I hated during the pandemic having to work at home all the time because of the small screen and with no room to spread out piles of paper or stay organized. That was definitely a challenge. I was very glad to get back on site. What do you like most and least about your job? Most would be doing science, but I also enjoy coding. Least is probably the standard sorts of things that most people whine about when given any opportunity. All the stuff that goes with the job that isn’t science or coding, like IT security and paperwork. Right now I’m in the midst of training, taking courses I’ve taken every year for the last ten years, which gets a little old after a while, things like that. But somebody thinks you need to do it, and I hope it makes us a better organization for everybody doing it. Do you have a favorite memory from your career? Or perhaps a research finding or breakthrough, or an unexpected research result? My favorite memory would be the Supernova 1987A work in general. We found some unexpected things there and we got some things right. If you could have a dream job, what would it be? My dream job is pretty close to what I have. Pretty close without all the extra stuff. What advice would you give to someone who wants a career like yours? Of course you’ve got to work hard, and you need to have an aptitude for it. It’s a very competitive field, so you’ve also got to realize that luck, or being in the right place at the right time, can be a factor in whether you continue or not. I’ve had colleagues who were very good at what they do, but they just weren’t in the right place at the right time. They ended up leaving the field or doing something less than what they hoped. Some things are just out of your control. I did get lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. I flew on the Kuiper, and I developed skills. When SOFIA started, those skills were very much in demand. That was my right place, right time moment, which is when I joined the civil service. I had been a contractor after my NRC ended through 1997. I became a civil servant then because there was so much work on SOFIA. I don’t know if that’s helpful advice, but it’s just my take on things. Well, you’re right. There’s something to being in the right place, at the right time and being prepared, but there’s always the serendipity aspect, which is just part of life. You could have wound up somewhere else and been just as happy, you know. Oh yes, It doesn’t necessarily relate to happiness, but you’ve got to make the best with what you have. I do feel lucky about that. Would you like to share anything about your family? Kids, pets, activities? You mentioned a dog? I’m going to mix the order up a little bit. Sure, go ahead. The accomplishment I’m most proud of that’s not science related would be 40 years of marriage to my fabulous wife. We just celebrated our 40th anniversary about a week and a half ago. Congratulations! That is indeed an accomplishment. So, no children but we do have a dog, a little Welsh Corgi. She’s our second corgi and she is just great. We do enjoy traveling. Typically, we’ll go on vacation in August. often to Europe. We’ve visited the UK five or six times, France a couple of times, Italy a couple of times. My father-in-law was born in Hungary, so we’ve gone there a couple times. Here is a photo of us at Lake Louise in 2019, with our Corgi. Sean Colgan with his wife and Corgi at Lake Louise in 2019 What do we do for fun the rest of the time? Besides leisure travel, I enjoy gardening. We also enjoy musical events. We have season tickets to the San Jose Opera, for example, and we’ll go up to San Francisco for concerts a couple of times a year. We probably have an event every other month. During the pandemic, the restaurants and movie theaters were closed, but wineries with outdoor spaces were open. They started serving food during the pandemic, and they allowed dogs, so we got in the habit of doing a lot of wine tasting on weekends just to get out. We still do some of that. To celebrate our 40th, we went up to Napa and tasted a lot of great wines. (laughs) You mentioned that you’re not particularly musical, so you don’t play an instrument or anything, but you enjoy music and opera. I enjoy listening to music. I played instruments as a child but had no particular talent for it, so. . . . Do you like to read? And if so, any particular genre? I read a fair bit, and it’s sort of divided. For entertainment, I’ll read fantasy and science fiction, but when we go on our trips, I’m always buying books about what we’re doing. For example, if we go to France and visit cathedrals, I’ll buy books about how they built cathedrals; or in England I’ll read about old Stone Age tombs. Everybody’s heard about Stonehenge, but there are stone circles and other stacks of stones, big ones, all over the landscape, so I will buy books and read about them. I have books about Roman battle tactics, etc. Oh yes, and I also have a lot of geology books, depending on where we go. When we went to the Canadian Rockies, I got a lot of geology books about that locale. I bring those home, stack them up, and read them, hopefully before the next trip. So yes, a lot of reading. When my wife travels, sometimes I’ll go hiking. She’s gone up to 15-20 weekends a year She’s a textile artist.She teaches lacemaking, which is the way they used to make lace by hand, before machines. There are groups around the country that enjoy lacemaking, so she travels to teach workshops for them on weekends. Wow, that’s fascinating! This week, she’s actually up in Sparks, next to Reno, where the National Convention is going on. It moves around every year, but this year it’s relatively close. She travels a lot for that, which keeps her busy. When she’s away, our dog and I will sometimes go for hikes, if we don’t have too much other stuff to do. Interestingly, we are not the only astronomer-lacemaker couple in the world (laughs). There’s an Australian couple – Ron and Jay Ekers – with Jay a lacemaker and Ron an astronomer. We had dinner with them once when they were visiting in the Bay Area because our wives knew each other. My wife had once traveled down to teach in Australia. Normally she just travels around the U.S., but she has done some international trips. Now, is this manual lacemaking with needles and thread or . . . ? There can be needles and thread. That’s one form of it. What my wife teaches is “bobbin lace”, which is made on a pillow usually stuffed with straw. Two bobbins are connected by a thread with many of these pairs used to weave threads together to create the pattern. Photos of Louise’s designs are on her website – https://colganlacestudio.com/. Here’s a photo of what a lace pillow looks like. “Bobbin lace”, which is made on a pillow usually stuffed with straw. Two bobbins are connected by a thread with many of these pairs used to weave threads together to create the pattern Interesting. And when did she get interested in this? Was it something she learned as a child, from her mother or grandmother? No, it was at Cornell. She was in grad school there, which is where we met. And what was her course of study? She was in a Master’s program for historic preservation, basically how to preserve old buildings, of which there are many in upstate New York and few in the Bay Area. She had finished her class work, and I still had several years to go on my dissertation. She looked around for something to fill her time, and one of her friends – a colleague in her department – had already taken this up, and brought her to a meeting. She started taking classes from a local teacher, and by the time we moved west, she was well-versed. Not many people out here knew how to do it, so she started taking on students. So I’m calculating back, since I’m a numbers guy, that if you just celebrated your 40th anniversary, then you must have married her while you were still in grad school? Yes, about halfway through grad school, in 1983. Interesting. So you’re a little bit responsible for her developing this interest in lacemaking? I wouldn’t claim any of that. But you’re responsible for giving her the time to develop this interest in lacemaking that she has done so well in. It was all her effort. If anything, I made conditions difficult for her, and she found her way out (laughs). That’s probably the way I would phrase it. Fair enough. But it’s very interesting. I like when we can poke around a little bit and find out interesting things, because then people who read this will say, “Well, I didn’t know that he went there or that his wife does lacemaking or the other things that you’ve talked about. That’s part of the purpose of these interviews. Who or what inspires you? That was a real easy one for me: the night sky. It’s not so great in the Bay Area most times, but there’s so much going on up there. I mean, it’s really all laid out for you. Since I studied and read about a lot about the sky as a kid, I know my way around it. a I also know fun little facts, so that’s entertaining to recall as well. When you get up in the mountains, of course it’s just beautiful. I feel the same way. I don’t see how anyone can look up at and ponder the night sky and not be just fascinated by it. The questions that come up about what it is, how it came to be, what its purpose is, if there is one, and all of that is just fascinating. Yes, I agree. Do you have a favorite image, of space or anything that is particularly meaningful to you? You know I don’t have one now. I mean, there are a lot of very nice ones out there. A big favorite I remember as a kid was a photo of H and Chi Persei, which is a double cluster of stars, not globular clusters but open clusters. It’s very colorful, with red stars and white stars and blue stars in the image – and just imagining it so far away, but these particular stars are so close together. I don’t know much about it, but something about it just impressed me. A photo like what I remember is at https://www.astrobin.com/337742/. The reason we ask about images is because we like to include them in the post, especially about things you’ve talked about. You mentioned for example, the Supernova 1987A. If a picture from SOFIA came out of that it would be a great addition to this interview. And then maybe you have a picture of you and the corgi on a hike, or your wife doing lace work, anything like that would be great. Well, we’ll work on that. [Photo thoughts: The three of us from Lake Louise, link to H & Chi Persei photo on the web, Lace Pillow showing bobbins] That would be for when you return it after editing. By the way the transcript is a living document so you can make changes right on it and that’s how it will go in. It isn’t all that formal, we’re not tracking edits or anything like that. We’ll add your pictures and get to a point where it’s set up as it would be when it gets posted and then we’ll send it to you for a final check. We’re also several months out in terms of the queue of those that are going to be posted, so it won’t be immediate. Good. We’ve posted about 50 of these, but we’ve done another 20 that are in various stages of being made ready. We’ve sent them out but haven’t gotten them back yet because everybody’s so busy. We do have a last question and that is do you have a favorite quote? One that you find meaningful, or witty, or clever, that kind of thing? I did think about it. Sometimes you asked the question in the online ones about inspirational quotes and this is definitely not inspirational. It doesn’t have to be. I was hoping that because you didn’t say it here. My favorite quote is one my mom said a lot when I was growing up. She always attributed it to her father. I actually looked it up on the web, because I would have thought Mark Twain perhaps said it. It doesn’t seem that anybody famous has said it though. The reference is in a book from just ten years ago. The quote is: “The reward for good work is more work.” Ah, I like that. That’s clever and witty and seems to be true. Right. One of my favorite quotes which I don’t think I put into my post because there’s so many of them is from Mike Griffin, former NASA Administrator. He was talking with the press, I think about risk management and why we do things that don’t always work out. He was explaining that there’s always a risk, and if you don’t accept the risk, then you don’t make progress, but they kept questioning him and pushing back on that idea. And he said, “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.” And I thought, that’s a good line! Anyway, you ran the table here on the questions and I appreciate that you prepared ahead of time and wrote some notes down, which made the interview go very well. As I said, I prefer the written word. I’m not as good at thinking on my feet. Is there something that you wish we had asked or had put down as a topic that we didn’t, that you would like to add here? And you can certainly add or change anything when we send this back. There’s a note on the transcript that you have full creative control. So if you wanted to say something but didn’t, you can type in an entire extra paragraph or extra question, or remove and cut out an entire section. And with that, I’ll take the recording and start putting it on a paper and within a couple of weeks, I’ll send you the initial draft and then you can do with it as you wish and send any pictures or anything that relate to things that you talked about and then we’ll get it ready and put it in the queue and eventually you’ll get perhaps a few of your entitled 15 minutes of fame when this goes up. I will add that it goes up on the public side of the of the website so that your family or your friends, anybody can access it and read it. So if somebody googles names of interviews you’ve done, the links to the interviews come up. Well, I hope that doesn’t cause you heartburn. I’ve thought about that as I was phrasing my answers, and changed some passwords so I can include names in the photo captions I hadn’t thought of that aspect of it, but you’re probably right. Yeah. I never know what’s going to touch someone’s concerns. Well, just to be careful. (Mark) There’s another thing that even after we publish, we can still edit them years into the future. Everything on the main sites can be changed at any given moment. Also, Fred, just to note, our interviews rank pretty high on the Google rankings. Usually when you Google someone’s name and then NASA, our interviews are near the top of their results, like on the first screen that comes up. (Fred) Oh, really? I didn’t know that. (Mark) Yeah. This is a pretty good series, people check it out a lot. Which means that people googling names are clicking on the interviews and reading them. (Mark) People read these a lot. (Fred) The other series I do for the website is “Interesting Fact of the Month”. Steve Howell suggested that would be a nice addition as we try to attract traffic to the website, and I heard a year or so ago that it was the top item on the code ST website, it got the most hits. (Mark) Yes, you’ve got spots one and two on your side projects! (Fred) Well, Sean, I appreciate that you were able to overcome your initial hesitation and take the time to work with us on this and I think you’ll be pleased with how it comes out. Thank you very much for being so organized. Thank you for your time. Interview conducted by Fred Van Wert and Mark Vorobets on June 29, 2023 View the full article