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By NASA
Through NASA’s Artemis campaign, astronauts will land on the lunar surface and use a new generation of spacesuits and rovers as they live, work, and conduct science in the Moon’s South Pole region, exploring more of the lunar surface than ever before. Recently, the agency completed the first round of testing on three commercially owned and developed LTVs (Lunar Terrain Vehicle) from Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.NASA/Bill Stafford Venturi Astrolab’s FLEX, Intuitive Machines’ Moon RACER, and Lunar Outpost’s Eagle lunar terrain vehicle – three commercially owned and developed LTVs (Lunar Terrain Vehicle) – are pictured at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in this photo from Nov. 21, 2024.
As part of an ongoing year-long feasibility study, each company delivered a static mockup of their vehicle to Johnson at the end of September, initiated rover testing in October and completed the first round of testing in December inside the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) test facility. Lunar surface gravity is one-sixth of what we experience here on Earth, so to mimic this, ARGOS offers an analog environment that can offload pressurized suited subjects for various reduced gravity simulations.
See how these LTVs were tested.
Image credit: NASA/Bill Stafford
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By NASA
2024 Year in Review – Highlights from NASA in Silicon Valley
by Tiffany Blake
As NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley enters its 85th year since its founding, join us as we take a look back at some of our highlights of science, engineering, research, and innovation from 2024.
Ames Arc Jets Play Key Role in Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield Findings
A block of Avcoat undergoes testing inside an arc jet test chamber at NASA Ames. The test article, configured with both permeable (upper) and non-permeable (lower) Avcoat sections for comparison, helped to confirm understanding of the root cause of the loss of charred Avcoat material that engineers saw on the Orion spacecraft after the Artemis I test flight beyond the Moon. photo credit: NASA Researchers at Ames were part of the team tasked to better understand and identify the root cause of the unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA Ames.
Starling Swarm Completes Primary Mission
The four CubeSat spacecraft that make up the Starling swarm have demonstrated success in autonomous operations, completing all key mission objectives. Image credit: NASA After ten months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission’s key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations in low Earth orbit, including distributing and sharing important information and autonomous decision making.
Another Step Forward for BioNutrients
Research scientists Sandra Vu, left, Natalie Ball, center, and Hiromi Kagawa, right, process BioNutrients production packs.Image credit: NASA NASA’s BioNutrients entered its fifth year in its mission to investigate how microorganisms can produce on-demand nutrients for astronauts during long-duration space missions. Keeping astronauts healthy is critical and as the project comes to a close, researchers have processed production packs on Earth on the same day astronauts processed production packs in space on the International Space Station to demonstrate that NASA can produce nutrients after at least five years in space, providing confidence it will be capable of supporting crewed missions to Mars.
Hyperwall Upgrade Helps Scientists Interpret Big Data
The newly upgraded hyperwall visualization system provides four times the resolution of the previous system. Image credit: NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete Ames upgraded its powerful hyperwall system, a 300-square foot wall of LCD screens with over a billion pixels to display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall is just one way researchers can utilize NASA’s high-end computing technology to better understand their data and advance the agency’s missions and research.
Ames Contributions to NASA Artificial Intelligence Efforts
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls Ames contributes to the agency’s artificial intelligence work through ongoing research and development, agencywide collaboration, and communications efforts. This year, NASA announced David Salvagnini as its inaugural chief artificial intelligence officer and held the first agencywide town hall on artificial intelligence sharing how the agency is safely using and developing artificial intelligence to advance missions and research.
Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Successfully Launches, Deploys Sail
Illustration: NASA NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System successfully launched from Māhia, New Zealand, in April, and successfully deployed its sail in August to begin mission operations. The small satellite represents a new future in solar sailing, using lightweight composite booms to support a reflective polymer sail that uses the pressure of sunlight as propulsion.
Understanding Our Planet
Samuel Suleiman, an instructor on NASA’s OCEANOS student training program, gathers loose corals to place around an endangered coral species to help attract fish and other wildlife, giving the endangered coral a better chance of survivalphoto credit: NASA/Milan Loiacono In 2024, Ames researchers studied Earth’s oceans and waterways from multiple angles – from supporting NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, mission to bringing students in Puerto Rico experiences in oceanography and the preservation of coral reefs. Working with multiple partners, our scientists and engineers helped inform ecosystem management by joining satellite measurements of Earth with animal tracking data. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, a NASA team continued testing a specialized instrument package to stay in-the-know about changes in river flow rates.
Revealing the Mysteries of Asteroids in Our Solar System
Image credit: NASA Ames researchers used a series of supercomputer simulations to reveal a potential new explanation for how the moons of Mars may have formed: The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid.
Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, another Ames scientist helped reveal the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt.
Ames Helps Emerging Space Companies ‘Take the Heat’
A heat shield made by NASA is visible on the blunt, upward-facing side of a space capsule after its landing in the Utah desert.Image credit: Varda Space Industries/John Kraus A heat shield material invented and made at Ames helped to safely return a spacecraft containing the first product processed on an autonomous, free-flying, in-space manufacturing platform. February’s re-entry of the spacecraft from Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, in partnership with Rocket Lab USA of Long Beach, California, marked the first time a NASA-manufactured thermal protection material, called C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), ever returned from space.
Team Continues to Move Forward with Mission to Learn More about Our Star
This illustration lays a depiction of the sun’s magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 12, 2016.Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL HelioSwarm’s swarm of nine spacecraft will provide deeper insights into our universe and offer critical information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals such as GPS. The mission team continues to work toward launching in 2029.
CAPSTONE Continues to Chart a New Path Around the Moon
CAPSTONE revealed in lunar Sunrise: CAPSTONE will fly in cislunar space – the orbital space near and around the Moon. The mission will demonstrate an innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation solution at the Moon from a near rectilinear halo orbit slated for Artemis’ Gateway.Illustration credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter The microwave sized CubeSat, CAPSTONE, continues to fly in a cis-lunar near rectilinear halo orbit after launching in 2022. Flying in this unique orbit continues to pave the way for future spacecraft and Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, as the team continues to collect data.
NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality
A drone is shown flying during a test of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) technical capability Level 2 (TCL2) at Reno-Stead Airport, Nevada in 2016. During the test, five drones simultaneously crossed paths, separated by different altitudes. Two drones flew beyond visual line of sight and three flew within line-of-sight of their operators. More UTM research followed, and it continues today. Image credit: NASA Ames/Dominic Hart NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area.
NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area.
NASA Technologies Streamline Air Traffic Management Systems
This image shows an aviation version of a smartphone navigation app that makes suggestions for an aircraft to fly an alternate, more efficient route. The new trajectories are based on information available from NASA’s Digital Information Platform and processed by the Collaborative Departure Digital Rerouting tool.Illustration credit: NASA Managing our busy airspace is a complex and important issue, ensuring reliable and efficient movement of commercial and public air traffic as well as autonomous vehicles. NASA, in partnership with AeroVironment and Aerostar, demonstrated a first-of-its-kind air traffic management concept that could pave the way for aircraft to safely operate at higher altitudes. The agency also saw continued fuel savings and reduction in commercial flight delays at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, thanks to a NASA-developed tool that allows flight coordinators to identify more efficient, alternative takeoff routes.
Small Spacecraft Gathers Big Solar Storm Data from Deep Space
Illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft as it enters a heliocentric orbit.Illustration credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting our Sun. After launching aboard NASA’s Artemis I more than two years ago, BioSentinel continues to collect valuable information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense. In May 2024, the satellite was exposed to a coronal mass ejection without the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and gathered measurements of hazardous solar particles in deep space during a solar storm.
NASA, FAA Partner to Develop New Wildland Fire Technologies
Artist’s rendering of remotely piloted aircraft providing fire suppression, monitoring and communications capabilities during a wildland fire. Illustration credit: NASA NASA researchers continued to develop and test airspace management technologies to enable remotely-piloted aircraft to fight and monitor wildland fires 24 hours a day.
The Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project seeks to use drones and advanced aviation technologies to improve wildland fire coordination and operations.
NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate
The Aerostar Thunderhead balloon carries the STRATO payload into the sky to reach the stratosphere for flight testing. The balloon appears deflated because it will expand as it rises to higher altitudes where pressures are lower.Image credit: Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting/Austin Buttlar The Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology is a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland fires. Providing cellular communication from above can improve firefighter safety and firefighting efficiency.
A Fully Reimagined Visitor Center
The NASA Ames Visitor Center includes exhibits and activities, sharing the work of NASA in Silicon Valley with the public.Image credit: NASA Ames/Don RIchey The NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California includes a fully reimagined 360-degree experience, featuring new exhibits, models, and more. An interactive exhibit puts visitors in the shoes of a NASA Ames scientist, designing and testing rovers, planes, and robots for space exploration.
Ames Collaborations in the Community
Former NASA astronauts Yvonne Cagle and Kenneth Cockrell pose with Eli Toribio and Rhydian Daniels at the University of California, San Francisco Bakar Cancer Hospital. Patients gathered to meet the astronauts and learn more about human spaceflight and NASA’s cancer research effortsImage credit: NASA Ames/Brandon Torres Navarrete NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4. During the visit with patients, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space.
Ames and the University of California, Berkeley, expanded their partnership, organizing workshops to exchange on their areas of technical expertise, including in Advanced Air Mobility, and to develop ideas for the Berkeley Space Center, an innovation hub proposed for development at Ames’ NASA Research Park. Under a new agreement, NASA also will host supercomputing resources for UC Berkeley, supporting the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.
NASA’s Ames Research Center Celebrates 85 Years of Innovation
by Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley pre-dates a lot of things. The center existed before NASA – the very space and aeronautics agency it’s a critical part of today. And of all the marvelous advancements in science and technology that have fundamentally changed our lives over the last 85 years since its founding, one aspect has remained steadfast; an enduring commitment to what’s known by some on-center simply as, “an atmosphere of freedom.”
The NACA Ames laboratory in 1944.Image credit: NASA Years before breaking ground at the site that would one day become home to the world’s preeminent wind tunnels, supercomputers, simulators, and brightest minds solving some of the world’s toughest challenges, Joseph Sweetman Ames, the center’s namesake, described a sentiment that would guide decades of innovation and research:
“My hope is that you have learned or are learning a love of freedom of thought and are convinced that life is worthwhile only in such an atmosphere,” he said in an address to the graduates of Johns Hopkins University in June 1935.
That spirit and the people it attracted and retained are a crucial part of how Ames, along with other N.A.C.A. research centers, ultimately made technological breakthroughs that enabled humanity’s first steps on the Moon, the safe return of spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere, and many other discoveries that benefit our day-to-day lives.
Russell Robinson momentarily looks to the camera while supervising the first excavation at what would become Ames Research Center.Image credit: NACA “In the context of my work, an atmosphere of freedom means the freedom to pursue high-risk, high-reward, innovative ideas that may take time to fully develop and — most importantly — the opportunity to put them into practice for the benefit of all,” said Edward Balaban, a researcher at Ames specializing in artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced mission concepts.
Balaban’s career at Ames has involved a variety of projects at different stages of development – from early concept to flight-ready – including experimenting with different ways to create super-sized space telescopes in space and using artificial intelligence to help guide the path a rover might take to maximize off-world science results. Like many Ames researchers over the years, Balaban shared that his experience has involved deep collaborations across science and engineering disciplines with colleagues all over the center, as well as commercial and academic partners in Silicon Valley where Ames is nestled and beyond. This is a tradition that runs deep at Ames and has helped lead to entirely new fields of study and seeded many companies and spinoffs.
Before NASA, Before Silicon Valley: The 1939 Founding of Ames Aeronautical Laboratory “In the fields of aeronautics and space exploration the cost of entry can be quite high. For commercial enterprises and universities pursuing longer term ideas and putting them into practice often means partnering up with an organization such as NASA that has the scale and multi-disciplinary expertise to mature these ideas for real-world applications,” added Balaban.
“Certainly, the topics of inquiry, the academic freedom, and the benefit to the public good are what has kept me at Ames,” reflected Ross Beyer, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute at Ames. “There’s not a lot of commercial incentive to study other planets, for example, but maybe there will be soon. In the meantime, only with government funding and agencies like NASA can we develop missions to explore the unknown in order to make important fundamental science discoveries and broadly share them.”
For Beyer, his boundary-breaking moment came when he searched – and found – software engineers at Ames capable and passionate about open-source software to generate accurate, high-resolution, texture-mapped, 3D terrain models from stereo image pairs. He and other teams of NASA scientists have since applied that software to study and better understand everything from changes in snow and ice characteristics on Earth, as well as features like craters, mountains, and caves on Mars or the Moon. This capability is part of the Artemis campaign, through which NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon for scientific exploration with commercial and international partners. The mission is to learn how to live and work away from home, promote the peaceful use of space, and prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
“As NASA and private companies send missions to the Moon, they need to plan landing sites and understand the local environment, and our software is freely available for anyone to use,” Beyer said. “Years ago, our management could easily have said ‘No, let’s keep this software to ourselves; it gives us a competitive advantage.’ They didn’t, and I believe that NASA writ large allows you to work on things and share those things and not hold them back.”
When looking forward to what the next 85 years might bring, researchers shared a belief that advancements in technology and opportunities to innovate are as expansive as space itself, but like all living things, they need a healthy atmosphere to thrive. Balaban offered, “This freedom to innovate is precious and cannot be taken for granted. It can easily fall victim if left unprotected. It is absolutely critical to retain it going forward, to ensure our nation’s continuing vitality and the strength of the other freedoms we enjoy.”
Ames Aeronautical Laboratory.Image credit: NACA Today Marks the Retirement of the Astrogram Newsletter
by Astrid Albaugh
For 66 years, the Astrogram has told the story of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Over those six-plus decades, the newsletter has documented hundreds of missions led by Ames, the progression of Hangar One’s reclamation, space shuttle launches with Ames’ payloads aboard them, countless VIP visits, and everything in between.
Ames published the first edition of the Astrogram in October 1958, coinciding with the transition of the center from its original incarnation as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Ames Aeronautical Laboratory to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research center.
The newsletter has evolved over time, alongside the center. From October 1958 through January 2016, the Astrogram was published in print, before a digital edition was developed. In January 2016, the Astrogram transitioned to a digital-only format. Below are examples of some of the Astrogram issues from over the years. More are forthcoming from 1998 and prior once they are retrieved from the archives.
October 2014 Astrogram September 2010 Astrogram I have served as the editor of the Astrogram since February 1998. Over the past quarter century, it has been an interesting, and sometimes quite challenging, task for me to capture the breadth and depth of Ames’s story and ensure that we always published the newsletter on time. I still remember trekking over to the center’s imaging office to review the physical negatives and images that the Ames photographers had taken of events onsite and select the most compelling photos. I used a very early version of visual design software to craft the layout. When the paper was completed, I’d file it onto a CD and then hand it to the courier who would drive from the San Francisco printshop to pick it up from me. Once and awhile, someone would request to have an additional feature added, requiring multiple trips up the 101 and back. Sometimes I’d come in on the weekends to work on the paper, due to late submissions, much to the chagrin of my kids.
July 2007 Astrogram It has been a pleasure serving as the editor over the past quarter century, almost as many years as my kids are old. A person once asked me if I had changed my name to Astrid since it’s so like the word Astrogram. Any relationship between the newsletter and my name is simply serendipity. I have enjoyed being behind the scenes, mostly working diligently at my computer. Many at Ames know my name because of the newsletter but may have never met me in person. It’s been amusing sometimes when I encounter someone who can’t put a finger as to why they knew my name but didn’t recognize me standing in front of them. Their usual response when they realized why they know me was, “Ah, Astrid of the Astrogram.”
March 20, 1998 Astrogram Just as NASA innovates, the content of the Astrogram has to innovate as well. Many of the stories that you used to read in the Astrogram, you can now find on our NASA Ames web page here. If you would like to access past, archived issues of the Astrogram, going back to 1958, please consult the Ames Research Center Archives. I will continue to help tell Ames’s story, just using new platforms.
Whether this is your first issue or you have been an Astrogram supporter for decades, thank you for reading!
– Astrid of the Astrogram officially signing off
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By NASA
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 The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 4 min read
Sols 4398-4401: Holidays Ahead, Rocks Under the Wheels
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Dec. 17, 2024, at 23:24:13 UTC — Sol 4396, or Martian day 4,396, or the Mars Science Laboratory mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024
It’s almost holiday time, and preparations are going ahead on Earth and Mars! For myself that means having a packed suitcase sitting behind me to go on my holiday travels tomorrow morning. For Curiosity that means looking forward to a long semi-rest, as we will not do our usual planning for the geology and mineralogy, but will still be monitoring the atmospheric conditions throughout. Today should have been a normal planning day with lots of contact and remote science. Well, Mars had other ideas.
The regular readers of this blog know that we are driving through quite difficult terrain. The image above gives a good impression on what the rover is dealing with: lots of rocks embedded in sand. I think even hiking would be quite difficult there, let alone driving autonomously. Curiosity, thanks to our excellent rover drivers, makes it successfully most of the time, but here and there Mars just doesn’t play nice. Thus, the rover stopped after 14 meters (about 46 feet) of a planned much longer drive. One of the wheels had caught a low spot between two rocks, and — safety first — the rover stopped and waited for our assessment. The rover drivers found no major problem, as it’s just the middle wheel that hit a bit of a rough patch, and driving can continue in this plan. But better safe than sorry, especially on another planet where there are no tow trucks to get us out of difficulty!
There was, however, quite a bit of discussion before we decided that course of action. Not because of the wheels themselves, but because the rover also stands in a position where it can only communicate directly with Earth in limited ways as the antenna is not facing the expected direction after the sudden stop. Of course, we still have the orbiters to talk to our rover, so we know it’s all fine. And — all things are three — this all happened on the penultimate plan of the year! Friday we’ll be planning a large set of sols that the rover will be executing on its own on Mars, monitoring the atmosphere and taking regular images of its surroundings, while the Earth-based team enjoys the well-deserved break. We really want to make sure to have everything going right on a day like today, so we all can enjoy the holidays without worrying about the rover!
With today being the last day of normal science planning, we had lots of ideas, but had to keep the arm stowed. The drive fault also meant that we had to forego arm movements, as the rover was sitting on a few rocks, and one of the wheels in that little depression that stopped us, all in ways that meant that a shift of rover weight (such as occurs when we move the arm) could make the rover move. Avoiding this situation, the team kept the arm stowed and focused on remote observations today. ChemCam observes a vein target called “Monrovia Peak” and takes remote images on the target “Jawbone Canyon” and up Mount Sharp toward the yardang unit. Mastcam looks at the target “Circle X Ranch” to investigate the material around the rocks embedded in the sand, looks at “Anacapa Island,” which is a vein target, “Channel Islands,” which is an aeolian ripple, and target “Gould Mesa,” which gets the team especially excited as this is the first glimpse of the so-called boxwork structures, which we saw from orbit even before Curiosity landed. Finally, we drive away from the spot that held us up today. Let’s hope Mars has read the script this time!
For the looooong break, we are planning autonomous and remote investigations only, and this starts before Friday’s planning, so that we know all is ok! Thus, the other three sols in today’s planning have Aegis, the automated ChemCam LIBS observation, a Mastcam 360° mosaic, and many, many atmospheric observations. It’s going to be a feast for DAN, REMS, and generally the atmospheric science on Mars, while here on Earth we enjoy the treats of the season. The Curiosity team hopes you do, too. See you in 2025!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 Related Terms
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4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The six SCALPSS cameras mounted around the base of Blue Ghost will collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images to produce a 3D view of the surface. Image courtesy of Firefly. Say cheese again, Moon. We’re coming in for another close-up.
For the second time in less than a year, a NASA technology designed to collect data on the interaction between a Moon lander’s rocket plume and the lunar surface is set to make the long journey to Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor for the benefit of humanity.
Developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) is an array of cameras placed around the base of a lunar lander to collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images from the version of SCALPSS on Firefly’s Blue Ghost — SCALPSS 1.1 — to produce a 3D view of the surface. An earlier version, SCALPSS 1.0, was on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the Moon last February. Due to mission contingencies that arose during the landing, SCALPSS 1.0 was unable to collect imagery of the plume-surface interaction. The team was, however, able to operate the payload in transit and on the lunar surface following landing, which gives them confidence in the hardware for 1.1.
The SCALPSS 1.1 payload has two additional cameras — six total, compared to the four on SCALPSS 1.0 — and will begin taking images at a higher altitude, prior to the expected onset of plume-surface interaction, to provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison.
These images of the Moon’s surface won’t just be a technological novelty. As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to be able to accurately predict the effects of landings.
How much will the surface change? As a lander comes down, what happens to the lunar soil, or regolith, it ejects? With limited data collected during descent and landing to date, SCALPSS will be the first dedicated instrument to measure the effects of plume-surface interaction on the Moon in real time and help to answer these questions.
“If we’re placing things – landers, habitats, etc. – near each other, we could be sand blasting what’s next to us, so that’s going to drive requirements on protecting those other assets on the surface, which could add mass, and that mass ripples through the architecture,” said Michelle Munk, principal investigator for SCALPSS and acting chief architect for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It’s all part of an integrated engineering problem.”
Under the Artemis campaign, the agency’s current lunar exploration approach, NASA is collaborating with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. On this CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative delivery carrying over 200 pounds of NASA science experiments and technology demonstrations, SCALPSS 1.1 will begin capturing imagery from before the time the lander’s plume begins interacting with the surface until after the landing is complete.
The final images will be gathered on a small onboard data storage unit before being sent to the lander for downlink back to Earth. The team will likely need at least a couple of months to
process the images, verify the data, and generate the 3D digital elevation maps of the surface. The expected lander-induced erosion they reveal probably won’t be very deep — not this time, anyway.
One of the SCALPSS cameras is visible here mounted to the Blue Ghost lander.Image courtesy of Firefly. “Even if you look at the old Apollo images — and the Apollo crewed landers were larger than these new robotic landers — you have to look really closely to see where the erosion took place,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager at Langley. “We’re anticipating something on the order of centimeters deep — maybe an inch. It really depends on the landing site and how deep the regolith is and where the bedrock is.”
But this is a chance for researchers to see how well SCALPSS will work as the U.S. advances human landing systems as part of NASA’s plans to explore more of the lunar surface.
“Those are going to be much larger than even Apollo. Those are large engines, and they could conceivably dig some good-sized holes,” said Maddock. “So that’s what we’re doing. We’re collecting data we can use to validate the models that are predicting what will happen.”
The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Through this opportunity, various companies from a select group of vendors bid on delivering payloads for NASA including everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
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Last Updated Dec 19, 2024 EditorAngelique HerringLocationNASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Members of NASA Glenn Research Center’s Office of Communications gather for a photo after the Public Relations Society of America’s Cleveland Rocks Awards ceremony. Credit: Tim Phillis NASA Glenn Research Center’s Office of Communications earned top honors — including Best in Show — during the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)’s Cleveland Rocks Awards on Nov. 19. During the event, the PRSA Greater Cleveland chapter recognized outstanding campaigns and tactics developed in 2024 by leading public relations and communications professionals in the Northeast Ohio community.
The Best in Show award is presented to the top scoring submission across all categories and subcategories. NASA Glenn’s Solar Eclipse Campaign entry scored the highest out of more than 75 entries in the Cleveland/Akron area. The Glenn team took home the prestigious red guitar for their outstanding effort.
WKYC’s Betsy Kling assisted in presenting the following awards to NASA Glenn:
Integrated Communications Campaign (Public Affairs and Government Category)
· 2024 Solar Eclipse – In the Path of Totality Campaign – Gold
· Spaceplane Stacked and Shaken at NASA Glenn Test Facility – Silver
Events (Public Affairs and Government Category)
· Total Solar Eclipse Fest 2024 (NASA Glenn and Great Lakes Science Center) – Gold
Tactic – Best Use of X (Formerly Twitter)
· Congrats, “Passtronaut” Josh Dobbs! – Gold
Best in Show
· 2024 Solar Eclipse – In the Path of Totality Communications Campaign
NASA Glenn Research Center’s Office of Communications Director Kristen Parker, holding a guitar, poses with Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Greater Cleveland Board of Director’s Cleveland Rocks Chair Kristin Pohlig. The guitar symbolizes PRSA’s Cleveland Rocks Best in Show award. Credit: Tim Phillis Return to Newsletter Explore More
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