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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 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 4280-4281: Last Call at Kings Canyon
This image was taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4278 (2024-08-18 16:30:04 UTC). NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Aug. 19, 2024
Curiosity successfully completed the drill sequence at the Kings Canyon site within the Gediz Vallis channel. Today was a smooth planning day as we decided to stay put for sols 4280 and 4281 to obtain APXS data of the drill tailings (the crushed rock removed from the drill hole) before we reposition the rover nearby for our next set of observations. The science team is eagerly plotting the rover’s next move and is looking forward to all the interesting targets along the route ahead!
ChemCam had a very busy day with multiple activities in the plan. ChemCam LIBS will examine the chemistry of rocks at nearby “Cathedral Lake” and “Royce Lakes” to analyze the fresh surfaces that were recently broken by the weight of the rover driving over them. Mastcam will provide their standard documentation images of these locations after the LIBS instrument zaps each target. ChemCam planned two long distance RMI images and one passive RMI image to get a closer view of the diversity of rocks at Milestone Peak and the upper channel and the yardang unit – a white, wind-sculped rock that caps the mound in Gale crater.
In our current workspace, we planned a MAHLI image and will use the dust removal tool (DRT) to characterize the grain size of the light-toned rock near our drill location at “Gabbot Pass.” Mastam has amassed a beautiful collection of mosaics at our current location and therefore included only one small Mastcam mosaic of the nearby Texoli butte that will provide context for a recently acquired ChemCam LD RMI image. The environmental theme group planned surveys to search for dust devils as well as measurements to observe the amount of dust in the atmosphere.
Looking ahead, we will reposition the rover slightly to access “Fourth Recess Lake” to quantify its chemistry for comparison to past and future observations within the Gediz Vallis channel. And after that, it’s McDonald Pass or bust!
Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2024 Related Terms
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The NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) instituted the Entrepreneurs Challenge to identify innovative ideas and technologies from small business start-ups with the potential to advance the agency’s science goals. Geolabe—a prize winner in the latest Entrepreneurs Challenge—has developed a way to use artificial intelligence to identify global methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas that significantly contributes to global warming, and this promising new technology could provide data to help decision makers develop strategies to mitigate climate change.
SMD sponsored Entrepreneurs Challenge events in 2020, 2021, and 2023. Challenge winners were awarded prize money—in 2023 the total Entrepreneurs Challenge prize value was $1M. To help leverage external funding sources for the development of innovative technologies of interest to NASA, SMD involved the venture capital community in Entrepreneurs Challenge events. Numerous challenge winners have subsequently received funding from both NASA and external sources (e.g., other government agencies or the venture capital community) to further develop their technologies.
Each Entrepreneurs Challenge solicited submissions in specific focus areas such as mass spectrometry technology, quantum sensors, metamaterials-based sensor technologies, and more. The focus areas of the latest 2023 challenge included lunar surface payloads and climate science.
A recent Entrepreneurs Challenge success story involves 2023 challenge winner Geolabe—a startup founded by Dr. Claudia Hulbert and Dr. Bertrand Rouet-Leduc in 2020 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Geolabe team developed a method that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically detect methane emissions on a global scale.
This image taken from a NASA visualization shows the complex patterns of methane emissions around the globe in 2018, based on data from satellites, inventories of human activities, and NASA global computer models. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio As global temperatures rise to record highs, the pressure to curb greenhouse gas emissions has intensified. Limiting methane emissions is particularly important since methane is the second largest contributor to global warming, and is estimated to account for approximately a third of global warming to date. Moreover, because methane stays in the atmosphere for a shorter amount of time compared to CO2, curbing methane emissions is widely considered to be one of the fastest ways to slow down the rate of global warming.
However, monitoring methane emissions and determining their quantities has been challenging due to the limitations of existing detection methods. Methane plumes are invisible and odorless, so they are typically detected with specialized equipment such as infrared cameras. The difficulty in finding these leaks from space is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Leaks are distributed around the globe, and most of the methane plumes are relatively small, making them easy to miss in satellite data.
Multispectral satellite imagery has emerged as a viable methane detection tool in recent years, enabling routine measurements of methane plumes at a global scale every few days. However, with respect to methane, these measurements suffer from very poor signal to noise ratio, which has thus far allowed detection of only very large emissions (2-3 tons/hour) using manual methods.
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. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI The Geolabe team has developed a deep learning architecture that automatically identifies methane signatures in existing open-source spectral satellite data and deconvolves the signal from the noise. This AI method enables automatic detection of methane leaks at 200kg/hour and above, which account for over 85% of the methane emissions in well-studied, large oil and gas basins. Information gained using this new technique could help inform efforts to mitigate methane emissions on Earth and automatically validate their effects. This Geolabe project was featured in Nature Communications on May 14, 2024.
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2024 Related Terms
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Credits: NASA NASA and the Hudson Square Business Improvement District are launching an open call to New York-based artists and artist teams to design and install a large-scale, space-themed neighborhood mural. The NASA x Hudson Square partnership was developed to inspire the surrounding Manhattan Hudson Square community by showcasing NASA’s work and missions.
Artists are encouraged to submit proposals for the project and detail how their mural will illustrate the impact of NASA’s priorities, such as the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope, climate science and innovation, and the Artemis campaign exploring the Moon. Applications are due by Friday, June 28.
The selected project will receive a $20,000 award for design fees, materials, labor, and equipment, with a portion of funds provided by NASA and matched by Hudson Square Business Improvement District. The mural installation is expected to be complete by September.
NASA continues to seek opportunities to inspire the next generation of explorers – the Artemis Generation – through collaborations with partners like the Hudson Square Business Improvement District. Details about submitting project proposals are available on the Hudson Square web page. For questions about applying to the NASA x Hudson Square mural project, contact PublicArt@HudsonSquareBID.org.
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Last Updated Jun 25, 2024 Related Terms
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Marcia Rieke, a scientist who worked on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, has received the Gruber Foundation’s 2024 Cosmology Prize. Rieke will receive the award and gold laureate pin at a ceremony August 8, 2024, at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Cape Town, South Africa.
Marcia Rieke is Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona and was the principal investigator for the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the Webb telescope.University of Arizona Rieke was awarded the prize “for her pioneering work on astronomical instrumentation to reveal the breadth and details of the infrared universe. Her contributions to flagship space missions have opened new avenues for understanding the history and mechanisms of star and galaxy formation. She enabled the development and delivery of premier instruments providing groundbreaking sensitivity to near-infrared wavelengths to both the Webb and the Hubble telescopes. Through these substantive contributions along with earlier work, Marcia Rieke has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the universe,” according to the Gruber Foundation’s announcement.
The Cosmology Prize honors a leading cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist, or scientific philosopher for theoretical, analytical, conceptual, or observational discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the universe. Since 2001, the Cosmology Prize has been cosponsored by the International Astronomical Union. Presented annually, the Cosmology Prize acknowledges and encourages further exploration in a field that shapes the way we perceive and comprehend our universe.
Rieke is Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona and was the principal investigator for the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the Webb telescope.
As principal investigator for the NIRCam, Rieke was responsible for ensuring that the instrument was built and delivered on time and on budget. She worked with the engineers at Lockheed Martin who built NIRCam and helped them decipher and meet the instruments’ requirements.
“As principal investigator of the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam instrument, Dr. Rieke’s vision, dedication, and leadership were inspirational to the entire team and a key contribution to the success of the Webb telescope,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb telescope manager and optics lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Rieke’s research interests include infrared observations of the center of the Milky Way and of other galactic nuclei. She has served as the deputy principal investigator on the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer for the Hubble Space Telescope (NICMOS), and the outreach coordinator for NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
“As a leading scientist on a premiere Hubble Space Telescope science camera, NICMOS, Dr. Rieke’s expertise enabled ground-breaking discoveries on everything from star formation to distant galaxies,” said Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, Hubble Space Telescope senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “Subsequent cameras on Hubble, and infrared space telescopes like Spitzer and Webb, have built upon Dr. Rieke’s pioneering work.”
“Dr. Rieke has also poured herself into wide international scientific leadership, leading countless scientific panels that envision and shape the best instruments for future powerful astronomical discovery,” Wiseman said.
“There’s a story beginning to emerge,” Rieke said about the science Webb has returned in the first two years of its mission. “But we still need some more pieces to the story.” For the duration of Webb’s lifetime, many of those pieces will emerge from the instrument that Rieke led.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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NASA astronauts Suni Williams (pictured left) and Butch Wilmore (pictured right) launched at 10:52 a.m. EDT June 5 as the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.Credits: NASA Following their safe arrival at the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will participate in a pair of Earth to space calls Monday, June 10, regarding their historic mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft:
Known as NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, the duo will speak first at 1 p.m. EDT with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Associate Administrator Jim Free, and Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche.
Coverage of the call will stream live on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.
At 2:40 p.m., the astronauts will participate in a Q&A moderated by Chirag Parikh, deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and executive secretary for the White House’s National Space Council.
Coverage of the call will stream live on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website.
Wilmore and Williams launched at 10:52 a.m. June 5, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. They docked to the orbiting laboratory at 1:34 p.m., June 6, and will remain for a week-long stay, testing Starliner and its subsystems as the next step in the spacecraft’s certification for rotational missions as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is delivering on its goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station from the United States through a partnership with American private industry. This partnership is opening access to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station to more people, science, and commercial opportunities. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in space exploration, including future missions to the Moon under Artemis, and ultimately, to Mars.
For more information about the mission, visit:
www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Faith McKie / Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
faith.d.mckie@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov
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