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By NASA
NASA SkillBridge Veterans touring Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.Credit: NASA NASA is one of America’s Best Employers for Veterans, according to Forbes and Statista. Statista surveyed more than 24,000 military veterans – having served in the United States Armed Forces – working for companies with a minimum of 1,000 employees. Veterans were asked to share opinions about their employer on factors such as working conditions, salary and pay, and topics of interest to the veteran community.
This is the fourth consecutive year NASA has earned this recognition.
“NASA has a long history of collaboration and commitment to the military community,” said Deborah Sweet, NASA Veterans Employment Program Manager. “In addition to the many military members who have been part of our Astronaut program, many of our civil servants are Veterans who chose to continue serving by supporting NASA’s mission after they hung up the uniform.”
Across the agency, veterans deliver subject matter expertise, years of on-the-job training, and advanced skills in everything from information technology to transportation logistics and from supply-chain management to public relations.
NASA continues to increase efforts to bring veterans into its ranks. The agency recently expanded its SkillBridge Fellowship Program which provides transitioning members a chance to gain valuable work experience while learning about NASA.
Veterans who served on active duty and separated under honorable conditions may also be eligible for special hiring authorities such as veterans’ preference, as well as other veteran specific hiring options when applying for full time roles at NASA.
For more information about the NASA SkillBridge Program, visit : https://www.nasa.gov/careers/skillbridge/
For more information about NASA hiring paths for Veterans and Military Spouses, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/careers/veterans-and-military-spouses/
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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 3 min read
Sols 4355-4356: Weekend Success Brings Monday Best
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the contact science target “Black Bear Lake” from about 7 centimeters away (about 3 inches), using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The MAHLI, located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, used an onboard focusing process to merge multiple images of the same target into a composite image, on Nov. 3, 2024 – sol 4353, or Martian day 4,353 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission – at 21:36:01 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Monday, Nov. 4, 2024
After a spooky week last week, it’s great to see all our weekend plans succeed as planned! We don’t take success for granted as a rover going on 13 years. With all of the science at our fingertips and all the battery power we could need, the team took right advantage of this two-sol touch-and-go Monday plan. We have a bedrock DRT target for APXS and MAHLI named “Epidote Peak” and a MAHLI-only target of a crushed rock we drove over named “Milly’s Foot Path.”
APXS data is better when it’s cold, so we’ve planned the DRT brushing and APXS to start our first sol about 11:14 local Gale time. MAHLI images are usually better in the afternoon lighting, so we’ll leave the arm unstowed and spend some remote science time beforehand, about 12:15 local time. ChemCam starts that off with a LIBS raster over a bedrock block with some interesting light and dark layering, named “Albanita Meadows” and seen here in the the upper-right-ish of this Navcam workspace frame. ChemCam will then take a long-distance RMI mosaic of a portion of the upper Gediz Vallis ridge to the north. Mastcam continues the remote science with an Albanita Meadows documentation image, a 21-frame stereo mosaic of some dark-toned upturned blocks about 5 meters away (about 16 feet), a four-frame stereo mosaic of some polygonal fracture patterns about 20 meters away (about 66 feet), and a mega 44-frame stereo mosaic of Wilkerson butte, upper Gediz Vallis ridge, “Fascination Turret,” and “Pinnacle Ridge” in the distance. That’s a total of 138 Mastcam images! With remote sensing complete, the RSM will stow itself about 14:00 local time to make time for MAHLI imaging.
Between about 14:15 and 14:30 local time, MAHLI will take approximately 64 images of Epidote Peak and Milly’s Foot Path. Most of the images are being acquired in full shadow, so there is uniform lighting and saturation in the images. We’ll stow the arm at about 14:50 and begin our drive! This time we have an approximately 34-meter drive to the northwest (about 112 feet), bringing us almost all the way to the next dark-toned band in the sulfate unit. But no matter what happens with the drive, we’ll still do some remote science on the second sol including a Mastcam tau observation, a ChemCam LIBS in-the-blind (a.k.a AEGIS: Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science), and some Navcam movies of the sky and terrain.
Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 Related Terms
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Bundling the Best of Heliophysics Education: DigiKits for Physics and Astronomy Teachers
For nearly a decade, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) has been working to bring together resources through its DigiKits–multimedia collections of vetted high-quality resources for teachers and their students. These resources are toolkits, allowing teachers to pick and choose interesting content to support their instruction. As a partner with the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (HEAT), this work has directly supported the bundling of digital content around heliophysics lessons created by the AAPT team.
As an example, AAPT’s most recent DigiKit publication, Auroral Currents Science (Figure 1), was developed for educators of advanced high school students and university physics/astronomy majors. DigiKits materials are collected by digital content specialist, Caroline Hall, who searches for high-quality, open digital content and checks it for accuracy and accessibility. The Auroral Currents DigiKit centers around a lecture tutorial that gives students the opportunity to practice and extend their knowledge of magnetic fields produced by current-carrying wires, and relating those understandings to auroral currents – the primary phenomenon underlying the dramatic auroral light shows seen in the sky over the past months.
The corresponding DigiKit includes a collection of relevant simulations, videos/animations, and other teacher resources for background that can help to teach the content in the primary lesson. The DigiKit highlights NASA’s forthcoming Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission, including an animation of the relationship between the Earth and space, an explanation of Earth’s electrojets and a visualization of the spacecraft. It also includes links to NASA’s ongoing Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft video explanation of magnetic reconnection, among many other useful resources that can be shown in the classroom or explored individually by students. Unique to this DigiKit are recent science news articles covering 2024’s spectacular auroral displays.
The light in the aurora comes from atoms in the ionosphere that have been excited by collisions with electrons that were accelerated between 6000 km and 20000 km above Earth’s surface. Those electrons carry electric currents from space along the magnetic field, but the currents flow horizontally some distance through the ionosphere at about 100-150 km in altitude before returning to space. We call those currents the ionospheric electrojets, and we can see the magnetic effects of the electrojets because electric currents are the source of magnetic fields. The AAPT digikit allows students to explore the magnetic signature of the electrojets and determine the size and location of the currents.
As a result of participation in NASA HEAT, AAPT has produced ten DigiKits, all linked below and available alongside the collection of other tutorials/core resources on the AAPT NASA HEAT page. Although the DigiKits are directed toward teachers, and the lessons are intended for standard classroom contexts, the resources can also be a great introduction to NASA-related concepts and modern science ideas for the general public.
Mechanics
Sunspots DigiKit Coronal Mass Ejections DigiKit Solar Energetic Particles DigiKit Light and Optics
Star Spectra DigiKit Exoplanet Atmospheres DigiKit Habitable Zone Planets DigiKit Magnetism
Planetary Magnetism DigiKit Energy of a Magnetic Field and Solar Flares DigiKit Auroral Currents DigiKit Eclipses
Eclipse Science DigiKit Are you an educator curious to learn more? Register for AAPT’s monthly mini webinar series, with the next event on November 9, 2024, featuring the Auroral Currents DigiKit core activity.
NASA HEAT is part of the NASA Science Activation Program portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Figure 1: Cover image of Auroral Currents DigiKit. Caroline Hall/AAPT NASA-HEAT Share
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Last Updated Nov 05, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has successfully completed its fourth of six gravity assist flybys at Mercury, capturing images of two special impact craters as it uses the little planet’s gravity to steer itself on course to enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026.
The closest approach took place at 23:48 CEST (21:48 UTC) on 4 September 2024, with BepiColombo coming down to around 165 km above the planet’s surface. For the first time, the spacecraft had a clear view of Mercury’s south pole.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center: A thrust chamber assembly (TCA) is the critical and central component in a rocket engine that provides thrust to propel a launch vehicle into space. Since the 1960s, while small improvements in TCA performance have been made, little has been done to reduce weight, improve development timelines, and reduce manufacturing cost. This invention makes dramatic improvements in all three areas.
This Thrust Chamber Liner and Fabrication Method technology eliminates complex, bolted joints by using 3D printing and large-scale additive manufacturing (AM) to fabricate a one-piece TCA. This creates a combined combustion chamber and nozzle. A novel composite overwrap provides support with an overall mass reduction of >40%. The TCA is the heaviest component on the rocket engine, so every pound eliminated allows for additional payload. The benefits include significantly better performance of launch vehicles, consolidation of parts, and a simplified fabrication that reduces cost and lead time.
A liquid rocket engine provides thrust through the injection of a fuel and oxidizer into a combustion chamber then expanding the hot gases through a nozzle. The engine’s core component is the TCA, which comprises an injector, a combustion chamber, and a nozzle. To prevent the TCA’s wall material from reaching melting temperatures, a regenerative cooling system is employed. Small internal channels circulate either fuel or oxidizer as a coolant before it’s injected into the combustion chamber for the combustion process.
The TCA must withstand a wide range of challenges, including extreme temperatures (from cryogenic temperatures below -290 °F and up to +6,000°F), high pressures (up to 6,000 psi), demanding duty cycles that impact fatigue life, engine dynamics, and the reactive thrust loads. This necessitates the use of a variety of materials and involves intricate manufacturing and joining processes while maintaining exceptionally tight tolerances. The walls can be as thin as a few sheets of paper, measuring approximately 0.02 inch, increasing the complexity of the technological challenge.
The design and construction of the combined combustion chamber and nozzle has several novel features: (1) A NASA-developed alloy, Copper-Chrome-Niobium (GRCop-42) was matured for the combustion chamber resulting in a 45% increase in wall temperatures. (2) The integral channel design supports effective cooling, manifolds, and a range of features that facilitate an integrated coupled nozzle and composite overwrap. (3) The chamber and its internal structures are produced using a NASA-developed (and later commercialized) process known as laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF). This uses minimal exterior material, allowing the composite overwrap to effectively contain the high pressure and various engine loads. (4) Stock material and integral features build the chamber nozzle onto the aft end using a different alloy, optimizing the overall strength-to-weight ratio. (5) Traditionally, AM requires a build plate onto which parts are fabricated, but this innovation can use the chamber itself as the build plate. (6) A large-scale AM process called laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED) was developed with a new NASA alloy for hydrogen environments, called NASA HR-1 (HR = hydrogen resistant). The AM employed to integrate the chamber and nozzle involves the use of two distinct AM processes and alloys, using GRCop-42 for the chamber and NASA HR-1 for the nozzle.
A composite overwrap significantly reduces weight and provides adequate strength to sustain required pressures and loads. Various filament winding techniques and fiber orientations, guided by modeling simulations effectively counteract the (barrel) static pressure, startup, and shutdown loads, thrust, and gimbal loads. The unique locking features designed into the chamber include turn-around regions (referred to as “humps”) to eliminate complex tooling.
Traditional TCA design incorporates multiple manifolds, adding unnecessary weight and bolted or welded joints. These joints necessitate exceedingly tight tolerances, polished surface finishes, and intricate sealing mechanisms to prevent leakage. Maintaining precise concentricity among the components and ancillary features, such as shear-lips to avoid hot gas circulation and joint separation, is imperative. The risk of potential leakage can lead to the catastrophic failure of the engine or the entire vehicle. The tragic explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger serves as a stark reminder of how joint failure, albeit in a solid rocket motor in that case, can have dire consequences. By contrast, this design eliminates these vulnerabilities by employing integrated AM processes to create a one-piece TCA, dramatically improving safety and efficiency.
Thrust Chamber Liner Team
Paul R. Gradl Christopher Stephen Protz Cory Ryan Medina Justin R. Jackson Omar Roberto Mireles Sandra Elam Greene William C. C. Brandsmeier Share
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Last Updated Jul 31, 2024 EditorBill Keeter Related Terms
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