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By European Space Agency
Φsat-2, ESA’s groundbreaking cubesat designed to revolutionise Earth observation with artificial intelligence, has launched.
The cubesat embarked on its journey into space on 16 August at 20:56 CEST (11:56 local time) on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, US, integrated by Exolaunch as part of the Transporter-11 rideshare mission, which also included ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite.
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By NASA
The winners of the 2024 Power to Explore Student Essay content (from left to right) Aadya Karthik, Raine Lin, and Thomas Liu. NASA/Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman WHAT: The three grand prize winners of NASA’s third Power to Explore Challenge, a national essay competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes, visited the NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 8 to learn about the people and technologies that power NASA missions. During their visit, they toured some of the test facilities that NASA uses to research and develop innovative solutions for a sustained return to the moon and then onto Mars!
WHEN: Thursday, August 8 from 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM ET
Greetings at the Research Support Building Zero-Gravity Facility Lunch with NASA Engineers at the Glenn Cafe Slope Lab Electric Propulsion and Nuclear Power Glenn’s Visualization Lab (GVIS) AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW (at Glenn Research Center)
K-4th Grade Winner: Raine Lin of Lexington, KY (media kit / TV interview) 5-8th Grade Winner: Aadya Karthik of Seattle, WA (media kit / TV interview) 9-12th Grade Winner: Thomas Liu of Ridgewood, NJ (media kit) Lauren Clayman, Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer at NASA Carl Sandifer, Radioisotope Power Systems Program Manager IMAGERY + B-ROLL:
RPS launch video (w/out captions here) RPS technology explainer video Official challenge graphics For more info on RPS visit https://rps.nasa.gov/ NASA Press Release WHERE:
NASA Glenn Research Center
21000 Brookpark Road, Building 162
Cleveland, OH 44135
ABOUT THE CHALLENGE:
Power to Explore is a national essay challenge that asks students in grades K-12 to learn about Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), a type of “nuclear battery” that NASA uses to explore some of the most extreme destinations in our solar system and beyond, and then write about, in 250 words or less, an RPS-powered space mission that would energize their space exploration dreams. The next Power to Explore challenge is expected to launch in Fall 2024.
ABOUT FUTURE ENGINEERS:
Future Engineers hosts online contests and challenges for K-12 students. Previous challenges have helped produce historic achievements – from naming NASA’s Perseverance rover to manufacturing the first student-designed 3D print in space. All challenges are offered free for student and classroom participation. For more information, visit futureengineers.org. Follow Future Engineers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Day-of Media Contact:
Kristin Jansen
Public Affairs Specialist
Office of Communications
NASA RPS Program
Phone: 216-296-2203
Email: kristin.m.jansen@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
Atmospheric nitrogen dioxide is a harmful pollutant with significant impacts on air quality, climate and the biosphere. Although satellites have mapped nitrogen dioxide concentrations since the 1990s, their resolution was generally too coarse to pinpoint individual sources like power plants.
In a recent study, researchers used imagery from Copernicus Sentinel-2 to observe nitrogen dioxide plumes from power plants for the first time – marking a significant advancement in air pollution monitoring.
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By Space Force
Space Operations Command completed its first certification exercise, certifying teams as combat ready to enter the first SPAFORGEN’s ‘commit’ phase.
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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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