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By NASA
Several transient luminous events illuminate pockets of Earth’s upper atmosphere. A line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa powers the rare phenomena. NASA/Matthew Dominick NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth’s upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024. The bright red flashes (more easily seen by clicking on the photo to see a larger version) are a less understood phenomena associated with powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere. Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are colorful bursts of energy that appear above storms as a result of lightning activity occurring in and below storms on Earth.
Crew members typically capture TLEs with wide focal lengths during Earth timelapses. Instruments mounted outside station, like Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), can capture a range of data for researchers on Earth using cameras, photometers, X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. Learn more about seeing storms from space.
While space station crew hunt for TLEs from space, you can help right here on Earth: send your photographs of sprites and other TLEs to NASA’s citizen science project, Spritacular, to contribute to a crowdsourced database that professional scientists can use for research.
Image Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick
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By NASA
The inaugural CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) crew is “back on Earth” after walking out of their simulated Martian habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on July 6. The first of three simulated missions, CHAPEA Mission 1 was designed to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners better understand how living on another world could affect human health and performance.
Kelly Haston, commander, Ross Brockwell, flight engineer, Nathan Jones, medical officer, and Anca Selariu, science officer, lived and worked in an isolated 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat to support human health and performance research to prepare for future missions to Mars.
“Congratulations to the crew of CHAPEA Mission 1 on their completion of a year in a Mars-simulated environment,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Through the Artemis missions, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars. The CHAPEA missions are critical to developing the knowledge and tools needed for humans to one day live and work on the Red Planet.”
The crew stepped out of the habitat and back into the arms of family and friends after a 378-day simulated Mars surface mission that began June 25, 2023.
This high-fidelity simulation involved the crew carrying out different types of mission objectives, including simulated “marswalks,” robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise, and crop growth. The crew also faced intentional environmental stressors in their habitat such as resource limitations, isolation, and confinement. For the next two weeks, the volunteers will complete post-mission data collection activities before returning home.
“We planned the last 378 days with many of the challenges crews could face on Mars and this crew dedicated their lives over that time to achieve these unprecedented operational objectives,” said CHAPEA Principal Investigator Grace Douglas. “I am looking forward to diving into the data we have gathered, preparing for CHAPEA Mission 2 and eventually, a human presence on Mars.”
As NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration on the Moon through the Artemis campaign, analog missions like CHAPEA provide scientific data to validate systems and develop technological solutions for future missions to Mars.
Two additional one-year CHAPEA missions are planned, with the next targeted to begin in 2025. The subsequent missions will be nearly identical, allowing researchers to collect data from more participants to expand the dataset and provide a broader perspective on the impacts of Mars-realistic resource limitations, isolation and confinement on human health and performance.
NASA has several other avenues for gathering isolation research, including the Human Exploration Research Analog, Antarctica, and other analogs, as well as human spaceflight missions to the International Space Station to ensure key research goals can be completed to inform future human missions to the Moon and Mars.
The CHAPEA simulated missions are unique because they test the impacts of extended isolation and confinement with the addition of Mars-realistic time delays of communicating to Earth – up to 44-minutes roundtrip – along with resource limitations relevant to Mars, including a more limited food system that can be supported on the space station and in other analogs.
To view the ceremony of crew exiting their habitat, visit here.
Under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon, land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.
Learn more about CHAPEA at:
www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/
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By NASA
4 min read
Mapping the Red Planet with the Power of Open Science
This image of Perseverance’s backshell sitting upright on the surface of Jezero Crater was collected from an altitude of 26 feet (8 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 26th flight at Mars on April 19, 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech Mars rovers can only make exciting new discoveries thanks to human scientists making careful decisions about their next stop. The Mars 2020 mission is aimed at exploring the geology of Jezero Crater and seeking signs of ancient microbial life on Mars using the Perseverance rover. Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California used novel mapping techniques to direct both the rover and the flights of the Ingenuity helicopter, which rode to Mars on Perseverance — and they did it all with open-source tools.
JPL mapping specialists Dr. Fred Calef III and Dr. Nathan Williams used geospatial analysis to help the scientific community and NASA science leadership select Jezero Crater as the landing site for Perseverance and Ingenuity. Before the vehicles arrived on Mars, they helped create maps of the terrain using data from orbiting satellites.
“Maps and images are a common language between different people — scientists, engineers, and management,” Williams said. “They help make sure everyone’s on the same page moving forward, in a united front to achieve the best science that we can.”
Maps and images are a common language between different people.
Nathan Williams
NASA JPL Geologist and Systems Engineer
After the mission touched down on Mars in February 2021, the Ingenuity helicopter opportunistically scouted ahead to take photos. The team then generated more detailed maps from both rover and helicopter image data to help plan the Perseverance rover’s path and science investigations.
To enable this full-scale mapping of Mars, Calef created the Multi-Mission Geographic Information System (MMGIS), an open-source web-based mapping interface. Online demos of the software, pre-loaded with Mars imagery taken from orbit, allow visitors to explore the paths of Perseverance, Ingenuity, and the Curiosity rover, a sister Mars mission that landed in 2012.
This image of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at the rim of Belva Crater was taken by the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during the rotorcraft’s 51st flight on April 22, 2023. The rover is in the upper left of the image, parked at a light-toned rocky outcrop. NASA/JPL-Caltech The open nature of the software was key to the mission’s success. “We have people literally all over the world who are working on the mission, and we need to be able to give them fast and quick access to software and data,” Calef said.
MMGIS aimed to help people understand the full scope of Martian geography. By combining images from orbit and augmenting with images from Perseverance and Ingenuity, the JPL team allows researchers to zoom in to see individual boulders and zoom out to see all of Mars. This variety of viewpoints gives the team a sense of scale and context to properly understand the landscape around the Perseverance rover, and how to optimally achieve their science goals within the available terrain.
This image of an area the Mars Perseverance rover team calls “Faillefeu” was captured by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 13th flight at Mars on Sept. 4, 2021. Images of the geologic feature were taken at the request of the Mars Perseverance rover science team, which was considering visiting the geologic feature during the first science campaign. NASA/JPL-Caltech The impact of the tools developed by the JPL team went beyond the Mars 2020 mission. The team wanted their software to help other researchers easily visualize their data without needing to be data visualization experts themselves. Thanks to this open-source approach, other teams have now used MMGIS to map Earth and other planetary bodies.
In keeping with this open philosophy, the images taken by Perseverance and Ingenuity over the course of the Mars 2020 mission are freely available to the public. By sharing these data with the rest of the world, the results from the mission can be used to educate, inspire, and enable further research.
It’s being able to share data between people … getting a higher order of science.
Fred Calef
NASA JPL Geologist and Data Scientist
As Mars scientists look to the future, with the Perseverance rover team deploying even more advanced tools powered by AI, open science will pave the way for further exploration. JPL is now working on designs for potential future Mars helicopters that are far more capable and complex than Ingenuity. Payload mass, flight range, and affordability are at the forefront of their minds.
Existing open-source tools will help address those concerns. Not only are open-source applications free to use, but the large amount of collaboration in creating and testing them means that they’re often highly reliable.
Ultimately, the JPL team views its work as part of the cycle of open science, using open tools to make its job easier while also developing new features in the tools for others to use in the future. “Every mission is contributing back to the other missions and future missions in terms of new tools and techniques to develop,” Calef said. “It’s not just you working on something. It’s being able to share data between people … getting a higher order of science.”
By Lauren Leese
Web Content Strategist for the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer
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Last Updated Jun 27, 2024 Related Terms
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