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By NASA
NASA Stennis representative Dawn Davis, left, interacts with people at the NASA booth during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie NASA reached out to inspire members of the Artemis Generation on Jan. 10-12, joining one of the largest comic con producers in the world to host an outreach booth at the 2025 FAN EXPO in New Orleans.
Thousands of fans celebrating the best in pop culture such as movies, comics, and video gaming learned about NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and its role to power space dreams.
NASA Stennis representatives Patricia White, left, and Robert Smith are visited by a functional mock-up of R5-D4, a droid character from the Star Wars film series, during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie NASA Stennis representative Dawn Davis, left, interacts with people at the NASA booth during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie NASA Stennis representative Troy Frisbie, left, is pictured with Colleen Cooper, daughter of L. Gordon Cooper Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12. Cooper Jr., selected as a Mercury astronaut in 1959, piloted the “Faith 7” spacecraft in 1963, which concluded the operational phase of Project Mercury. NASA/Patricia White NASA Stennis representative Matt Sappington engages with a comic con fan at the NASA booth during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie NASA Stennis representatives Patricia White, left, and Robert Smith have a conversation with NASA booth visitors during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie A comic con attendee experiences being on the International Space Station with the immersive virtual reality headset at the NASA booth during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie Fans of all ages learn about NASA during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie Attendees learn about the ways people come together in various career fields to achieve mission success at NASA during the 2025 FAN EXPO event hosted in New Orleans Jan. 10-12.NASA/Troy Frisbie The south Mississippi NASA center operates as NASA’s primary, and America’s largest, rocket propulsion test site. NASA Stennis serves the nation and commercial aerospace sector with its unique capabilities and expertise. In addition to testing rocket engines and stages to power future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond, NASA Stennis provides a unique location and specialized assets to support the individual missions and work of about 50 federal, state, academic, commercial, and technology-based companies, and organizations.
In addition to testing rocket engines and stages to power future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond, NASA Stennis provides a unique location and specialized assets to support the individual missions and work of about 50 federal, state, academic, commercial, and technology-based companies, and organizations.
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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 2 min read
Sols 4439-4440: A Lunar New Year on Mars
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image, which includes the prominent wedge-shaped block in the foreground, the imaging target dubbed “Vasquez Rocks” — named after a site in Southern California that’s been a popular filming location for movies and television, including several episodes of “Star Trek.” Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on sol 4437 — Martian day 4,437 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Jan. 29, 2025, at 04:25:25 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025
We’re planning sols 4439 and 4440 on the first day of the Lunar New Year here on Earth, and I’m the Geology/Mineralogy Science Theme Lead for today. The new year is a time for all kinds of abundance and good luck, and we are certainly lucky to be celebrating another new year on Mars with the Curiosity rover!
The rover’s current position is on the north side of the “Texoli” butte west of the “Rustic Canyon” crater, and we are on our way southwest through the layered sulfate unit toward a possible boxwork structure that we hope to study later this year. Today’s workspace included a couple of representative bedrock blocks with contrasting textures, so we planned an APXS elemental chemistry measurement on one (“Deer Springs”) and a LIBS elemental measurement on another (“Taco Peak”).
For imaging, there were quite a few targets in view making it possible to advance a variety of science goals. The ChemCam remote imager was used for a mosaic on “Wilkerson Butte” to observe the pattern of resistant and recessive layering. Mastcam mosaics explored some distant landforms (“Sandstone Peak,” “Wella’s Peak”) as well as fractures, block shapes and textures, and aeolian ripples closer to the rover (“Tahquitz Peak,” “Mount Islip,” “Vasquez Rocks,” “Dawson Saddle”). Our regular environmental science measurements were made as well, to track atmospheric opacity and dust activity. So our planning sols include an abundance of targets indeed.
Fun fact: Today’s name “Vasquez Rocks” comes from a site on Earth in Southern California that has been a popular spot for science fiction filming, appearing in several episodes of “Star Trek” going back to the original series!
Written by Lucy Lim, Participating Scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center
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Last Updated Jan 31, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, includes 43 acres of manufacturing space under one roof — a space large enough to contain more than 31 professional football fields. Credit: NASA Media are invited to visit NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans between Tuesday, Feb. 4, and Thursday, Feb. 6, ahead of Super Bowl LIX for an inside look America’s rocket factory, as well as interview agency experts.
During this behind-the-scenes visit, media will tour NASA’s location for the manufacturing and production of large-scale space structures and see hardware that will carry astronauts back to the Moon as part of the Artemis campaign.
Registered members of the media will have the opportunity to:
Capture images and video of hardware NASA Michoud is building for the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, Orion spacecraft, and SLS exploration upper stage for the agency’s Artemis campaign. Tour special locations around NASA Michoud, one of the largest facilities in the world, with 43 acres of manufacturing space under one roof — a space large enough to contain more than 31 professional football fields. Learn about NASA’s state-of-the-art manufacturing and welding equipment — including the world’s largest friction-stir welding tool. Media must RSVP no later than 6 p.m. EST, Thursday, Jan. 30, to Jonathan Deal at: jonathan.deal@nasa.gov and Craig Betbeze at: craig.c.betbeze@nasa.gov. Please indicate a preferred date to visit between Feb. 4 and Feb. 6. This event is open to U.S. media. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Learn more about NASA’s Artemis campaign:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
-end-
Rachel Kraft
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov
Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 27, 2025 LocationMarshall Space Flight Center View the full article
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By European Space Agency
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Estonian Space Office have set out to develop Europe's newest space cyber range that aims to make space technology more secure and accessible for companies across Europe. Last year, Estonian industry was invited to submit proposals for concepts, and today the contract has been signed with a consortium led by Spaceit to begin development.
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By NASA
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used radar data taken by ESA’s Sentinel-1A satellite before and after the 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile to create this inter-ferogram showing land deformation. The color bands west of the volcano indicate land sinking. NISAR will produce similar images.ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech A SAR image — like ones NISAR will produce — shows land cover on Mount Okmok on Alaska’s Umnak Island . Created with data taken in August 2011 by NASA’s UAVSAR instrument, it is an example of polarimetry, which measures return waves’ orientation relative to that of transmitted signals.NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech Set to launch within a few months, NISAR will use a technique called synthetic aperture radar to produce incredibly detailed maps of surface change on our planet.
When NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) new Earth satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) launches in coming months, it will capture images of Earth’s surface so detailed they will show how much small plots of land and ice are moving, down to fractions of an inch. Imaging nearly all of Earth’s solid surfaces twice every 12 days, it will see the flex of Earth’s crust before and after natural disasters such as earthquakes; it will monitor the motion of glaciers and ice sheets; and it will track ecosystem changes, including forest growth and deforestation.
The mission’s extraordinary capabilities come from the technique noted in its name: synthetic aperture radar, or SAR. Pioneered by NASA for use in space, SAR combines multiple measurements, taken as a radar flies overhead, to sharpen the scene below. It works like conventional radar, which uses microwaves to detect distant surfaces and objects, but steps up the data processing to reveal properties and characteristics at high resolution.
To get such detail without SAR, radar satellites would need antennas too enormous to launch, much less operate. At 39 feet (12 meters) wide when deployed, NISAR’s radar antenna reflector is as wide as a city bus is long. Yet it would have to be 12 miles (19 kilometers) in diameter for the mission’s L-band instrument, using traditional radar techniques, to image pixels of Earth down to 30 feet (10 meters) across.
Synthetic aperture radar “allows us to refine things very accurately,” said Charles Elachi, who led NASA spaceborne SAR missions before serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 2001 to 2016. “The NISAR mission will open a whole new realm to learn about our planet as a dynamic system.”
Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech How SAR Works
Elachi arrived at JPL in 1971 after graduating from Caltech, joining a group of engineers developing a radar to study Venus’ surface. Then, as now, radar’s allure was simple: It could collect measurements day and night and see through clouds. The team’s work led to the Magellan mission to Venus in 1989 and several NASA space shuttle radar missions.
An orbiting radar operates on the same principles as one tracking planes at an airport. The spaceborne antenna emits microwave pulses toward Earth. When the pulses hit something — a volcanic cone, for example — they scatter. The antenna receives those signals that echo back to the instrument, which measures their strength, change in frequency, how long they took to return, and if they bounced off of multiple surfaces, such as buildings.
This information can help detect the presence of an object or surface, its distance away, and its speed, but the resolution is too low to generate a clear picture. First conceived at Goodyear Aircraft Corp. in 1952, SAR addresses that issue.
“It’s a technique to create high-resolution images from a low-resolution system,” said Paul Rosen, NISAR’s project scientist at JPL.
As the radar travels, its antenna continuously transmits microwaves and receives echoes from the surface. Because the instrument is moving relative to Earth, there are slight changes in frequency in the return signals. Called the Doppler shift, it’s the same effect that causes a siren’s pitch to rise as a fire engine approaches then fall as it departs.
Computer processing of those signals is like a camera lens redirecting and focusing light to produce a sharp photograph. With SAR, the spacecraft’s path forms the “lens,” and the processing adjusts for the Doppler shifts, allowing the echoes to be aggregated into a single, focused image.
Using SAR
One type of SAR-based visualization is an interferogram, a composite of two images taken at separate times that reveals the differences by measuring the change in the delay of echoes. Though they may look like modern art to the untrained eye, the multicolor concentric bands of interferograms show how far land surfaces have moved: The closer the bands, the greater the motion. Seismologists use these visualizations to measure land deformation from earthquakes.
Another type of SAR analysis, called polarimetry, measures the vertical or horizontal orientation of return waves relative to that of transmitted signals. Waves bouncing off linear structures like buildings tend to return in the same orientation, while those bouncing off irregular features, like tree canopies, return in another orientation. By mapping the differences and the strength of the return signals, researchers can identify an area’s land cover, which is useful for studying deforestation and flooding.
Such analyses are examples of ways NISAR will help researchers better understand processes that affect billions of lives.
“This mission packs in a wide range of science toward a common goal of studying our changing planet and the impacts of natural hazards,” said Deepak Putrevu, co-lead of the ISRO science team at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, India.
Learn more about NISAR at:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 21, 2025 Related Terms
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