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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
5 Min Read NASA’s Ames Research Center Celebrates 85 Years of Innovation
The NACA Ames laboratory in 1944 Credits: NASA 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.”
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
Joseph sweetman ames
Founding member of the N.A.C.A.
“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.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.NACAView the full article
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA/Quincy Eggert NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is preparing today for tomorrow’s mission. Supersonic flight, next generation aircraft, advanced air mobility, climate changes, human exploration of space, and the next innovation are just some of the topics our researchers, engineers, and mission support teams focused on in 2024.
NASA Armstrong began 2024 with the public debut of the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft. Through the unique design of the X-59, NASA aims to reduce the sonic boom to make it much quieter, potentially opening the future to commercial supersonic flight over land. Throughout the first part of the year, NASA and international researchers studied air quality across Asia as part of a global effort to better understand the air we breathe. Later in the year, for the first time, a NASA-funded researcher conducted an experiment aboard a commercial suborbital rocket, studying how changes in gravity during spaceflight affect plant biology.
Here’s a look at more NASA Armstrong accomplishments throughout 2024:
Our simulation team began work on NASA’s X-66 simulator, which will use an MD-90 cockpit and allow pilots and engineers to run real-life scenarios in a safe environment. NASA Armstrong engineers completed and tested a model of a truss-braced wing design, laying the groundwork for improved commercial aircraft aerodynamics. NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission and supporting projects worked with industry partners who are building innovative new aircraft like electric air taxis. We explored how these new designs may help passengers and cargo move between and inside cities efficiently. The team began testing with a custom virtual reality flight simulator to explore the air taxi ride experience. This will help designers create new aircraft with passenger comfort in mind. Researchers also tested a new technology that will help self-flying aircraft avoid hazards. A NASA-developed computer software tool called OVERFLOW helped several air taxi companies predict aircraft noise and aerodynamic performance. This tool allows manufacturers to see how new design elements would perform, saving the aerospace industry time and money. Our engineers designed a camera pod with sensors at NASA Armstrong to help advance computer vision for autonomous aviation and flew this pod at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Quesst mission marked a major milestone with the start of tests on the engine that will power the quiet supersonic X-59 experimental aircraft. In February and March, NASA joined international researchers in Asia to investigate pollution sources. The now retired DC-8 and NASA Langley Gulfstream III aircraft collected air measurements over the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. Combined with ground and satellite observations, these measurements continue to enrich global discussions about pollution origins and solutions. The Gulfstream IV joined NASA Armstrong’s fleet of airborne science platforms. Our teams modified the aircraft to accommodate a next-generation science instrument that will collect terrain information of the Earth in a more capable, versatile, and maintainable way. The ER-2 and the King Air supported the development of spaceborne instruments by testing them in suborbital settings. On the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment mission (PACE-PAX), the ER-2 validated data collected by the PACE satellite about the ocean, atmosphere, and surfaces. Operating over several countries, researchers onboard NASA’s C-20A collected data and images of Earth’s surface to understand global ecosystems, natural hazards, and land surface changes. Following Hurricane Milton, the C-20A flew over affected areas to collect data that could help inform disaster response in the future. We also tested nighttime precision landing technologies that safely deliver spacecraft to hazardous locations with limited visibility. With the goal to improve firefighter safety, NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, and industry tested a cell tower in the sky. The system successfully provided persistent cell coverage, enabling real-time communication between firefighters and command posts. Using a 1960s concept wingless, powered aircraft design, we built and tested an atmospheric probe to better and more economically explore giant planets. NASA Armstrong hosted its first Ideas to Flight workshop, where subject matter experts shared how to accelerate research ideas and technology development through flight. These are just some of NASA Armstrong’s many innovative research efforts that support NASA’s mission to explore the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all.
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 EditorDede DiniusContactSarah Mannsarah.mann@nasa.govLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
Armstrong Flight Research Center Advanced Air Mobility Aeronautics C-20A DC-8 Earth Science ER-2 Flight Opportunities Program Quesst (X-59) Sustainable Flight Demonstrator Explore More
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By NASA
NASA-supported scientists have suggested an updated framework for the role of ferns in environmental recovery from disaster. Instead of competing with other organisms, ferns may act as facilitators that ease the way for other plants and animals to re-establish themselves in a damaged landscape.
The study examines how a biosphere recovers from major upheaval, be it from wildfires or asteroid impacts, using what scientists call a ‘facilitative’ framework (where the actions of organisms help each other) rather than the long-held ‘competition-based’ framework.
NASA supported researchers at a fossil plant quarry near the Old Raton Pass Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary in New Mexico.Ellen Currano Ferns are a common type of vascular plant found in woodlands, gardens, and many a plant pot on apartment shelves. Unlike many other vascular plants, ferns do not flower or seed. Instead, they reproduce via spores. Ferns first appeared on Earth some 360 million years ago during the Devonian period and, prior to the evolution of flowering plants, were the most common vascular plant on Earth.
Ferns are often one of the first plants to re-establish in areas affected by large-scale upheaval events, and it has been suggested that this is because ferns produce spores in great amounts that are widely distributed on the wind. Some scientists, particularly in the fields of geology and paleontology, have used this ‘competitive’ success of ferns as a foundation for ecological theories about how recolonization happens after upheavals.
However, in recent years, growing research has shown that recovery is not only about competition. Positive interactions, known as facilitation, between ferns and other species also play a significant role. The authors of the recent study believe that it is time to re-examine positive interactions within ecosystems, rather than defaulting to a competition framework.
Ferns in History
“I love to imagine ecosystems through time and play a game in my head where I ask myself, ’if I could stand here for 1 million years, would this fossilize?’” said lead author Lauren Azevedo Schmidt of the University of California at Davis. “Because of the mental time gymnastics I do, my research questions follow the same pathway. How do I create synergy between modern and paleo research?”
Early Paleocene fern fossil discovered on the Vermejo Park Ranch, NM. Photo by Ellen Currano.Ellen Currano The team examined ideas that have been developed based on observing modern organisms as well as ancient populations in the fossil record. They propose that, rather than out-competing other species, ferns act as facilitators for ecosystem recovery by stabilizing the ground, enhancing properties of the soil, and mediating competition between other organisms. This repositions ferns as facilitators of ecological recovery within disturbed habitats. This has broad implications for understanding how a community recovers and the importance of positive interactions following disturbance events. Because ferns are among the oldest lineages of plants on Earth and have experienced unimaginable climates and extinction events, they provide critical information to better understand the fossil record and Earth before humans.
Fossil plant excavation in the Cretaceous rocks just below the K-Pg boundary at Old Raton Pass, NM. Photo by Ellen Currano.Ellen Currano “The Cretaceous – Paleogene [K-Pg] extinction event reworked Earth’s biosphere, resulting in approximately 75% of species going extinct, with up to 90% of plants going extinct,” said Azevedo Schmidt. “This magnitude of devastation is something humans (luckily) have never had to deal with, making it hard to even think about. But it is something we must consider when tackling research/issues surrounding exobiology.”
The longevity of ferns on Earth provides a view into the evolution of life on Earth, even through some of the planet’s most devastating disasters. This is of interest to astrobiology and exobiology because exploring how environmental factors can and have impacted the large-scale evolution of life on Earth through mass extinctions and mass radiation events can help us understand the potential for the origin, evolution and distribution for life elsewhere in the Universe.
Ferns in Space
In addition to their relevance to astrobiology, the resilience of ferns and their ability to help heal a damaged environment could also make them important partners for future human missions in space. NASA’s Space Biology program has supported experiments to study how plants adapt to space with the expectation that knowledge gained can lead to ways by which crops can be cultivated for fresh food. Lessons learned from studying resilient plants, such as ferns, could guide efforts to make crops adapt better to harsh space conditions so they can serve as a reliable food source as humans explore destinations beyond our planet. Previous studies have also looked at how plants might keep air clean in enclosed spaces like the International Space Station or in habitats on the Moon or Mars.
NASA supported scientists can be seen prospecting for plant fossils in Berwind Canyon, CO. Photo by Ellen Currano.Ellen Currano “Ferns were able to completely transform Earth’s biosphere following the devastation of the K-Pg [Cretaceous–Paleogene] extinction event. The environment experienced continental-scale fires, acid rain, and nuclear winter, but ferns were able to tolerate unbelievable stress and make their environment better,” says Azevedo Schmidt. “I think we can all learn something from the mighty ferns.”
The study, “Ferns as facilitators of community recovery following biotic upheaval,” was published in the journal BioScience [doi:10.1093/biosci/biae022]
For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology program, visit:
https://www.science.nasa.gov/astrobiology
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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