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By NASA
NASA/Ben Smegelsky & Virgil Cameron In this image from Aug. 26, 2023, participants from the 14th First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition watch NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 launch at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Students and advisors from University of Washington, University of Colorado-Boulder, and an international team from Queens University – the 2023 First Nations Launch grand prize teams – traveled to Kennedy for a VIP tour, culminating in viewing the Crew-7 launch.
Grand prize teams also went on a guided tour of historic Hangar AE, led by James Wood (Osage Nation and Loyal Shawnee), chief engineer of NASA’s Launch Services Program, technical advisor for the Crew-7 launch, and First Nations mentor and judge.
One of NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges, the First Nations Launch competition comprises students from tribal colleges and universities, Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions, and collegiate chapters of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society who design, build, and launch a high-powered rocket from a launch site in Kansasville, Wisconsin.
Explore more Minority University Research and Education Project opportunities and resources here.
Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky & Virgil Cameron
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By NASA
At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of the universe – from our planet to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Supercomputers enable projects across diverse research, such as making discoveries about the Sun’s activity that affects technologies in space and life on Earth, building artificial intelligence-based models for innovative weather and climate science, and helping redesign the launch pad that will send astronauts to space with Artemis II.
These projects are just a sample of the many on display in NASA’s exhibit during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, or SC24. NASA’s Dr. Nicola “Nicky” Fox, associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, will deliver the keynote address, “NASA’s Vision for High Impact Science and Exploration,” on Tuesday, Nov. 19, where she’ll share more about the ways NASA uses supercomputing to explore the universe for the benefit of all. Here’s a little more about the work NASA will share at the conference:
1. Simulations Help in Redesign of the Artemis Launch Environment
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This simulation of the Artemis I launch shows how the Space Launch System rocket's exhaust plumes interact with the air, water, and the launchpad. Colors on surfaces indicate pressure levels—red for high pressure and blue for low pressure. The teal contours illustrate where water is present. NASA/Chris DeGrendele, Timothy Sandstrom Researchers at NASA Ames are helping ensure astronauts launch safely on the Artemis II test flight, the first crewed mission of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, scheduled for 2025. Using the Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics software, they simulated the complex interactions between the rocket plume and the water-based sound suppression system used during the Artemis I launch, which resulted in damage to the mobile launcher platform that supported the rocket before liftoff.
Comparing simulations with and without the water systems activated revealed that the sound suppression system effectively reduces pressure waves, but exhaust gases can redirect water and cause significant pressure increases.
The simulations, run on the Aitken supercomputer at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at Ames, generated about 400 terabytes of data. This data was provided to aerospace engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, who are redesigning the flame deflector and mobile launcher for the Artemis II launch.
2. Airplane Design Optimization for Fuel Efficiency
In this comparison of aircraft designs, the left wing models the aircraft’s initial geometry, while the right wing models an optimized shape. The surface is colored by the air pressure on the aircraft, with orange surfaces representing shock waves in the airflow. The optimized design modeled on the right wing reduces drag by 4% compared to the original, leading to improved fuel efficiency. NASA/Brandon Lowe To help make commercial flight more efficient and sustainable, researchers and engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley are working to refine aircraft designs to reduce air resistance, or drag, by fine-tuning the shape of wings, fuselages, and other aircraft structural components. These changes would lower the energy required for flight and reduce the amount of fuel needed, produce fewer emissions, enhance overall performance of aircraft, and could help reduce noise levels around airports.
Using NASA’s Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics computational modeling software, developed at Ames, researchers are leveraging the power of agency supercomputers to run hundreds of simulations to explore a variety of design possibilities – on existing aircraft and future vehicle concepts. Their work has shown the potential to reduce drag on an existing commercial aircraft design by 4%, translating to significant fuel savings in real-world applications.
3. Applying AI to Weather and Climate
This visualization compares the track of the Category 4 hurricane, Ida, from MERRA-2 reanalysis data (left) with a prediction made without specific training, from NASA and IBM’s Prithvi WxC foundation model (right). Both models were initialized at 00 UTC on 2021-08-27.The University of Alabama in Huntsville/Ankur Kumar; NASA/Sujit Roy Traditional weather and climate models produce global and regional results by solving mathematical equations for millions of small areas (grid boxes) across Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. NASA and partners are now exploring newer approaches using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to train a foundation model.
Foundation models are developed using large, unlabeled datasets so researchers can fine-tune results for different applications, such as creating forecasts or predicting weather patterns or climate changes, independently with minimal additional training.
NASA developed the open source, publicly available Prithvi Weather-Climate foundation model (Prithvi WxC), in collaboration with IBM Research. Prithvi WxC was pretrained using 160 variables from NASA’s Modern-era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA-2) dataset on the newest NVIDIA A100 GPUs at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility.
Armed with 2.3 billion parameters, Prithvi WxC can model a variety of weather and climate phenomena – such as hurricane tracks – at fine resolutions. Applications include targeted weather prediction and climate projection, as well as representing physical processes like gravity waves.
4. Simulations and AI Reveal the Fascinating World of Neutron Stars
3D simulation of pulsar magnetospheres, run on NASA’s Aitken supercomputer using data from the agency‘s Fermi space telescope. The red arrow shows the direction of the star’s magnetic field. Blue lines trace high-energy particles, producing gamma rays, in yellow. Green lines represent light particles hitting the observer’s plane, illustrating how Fermi detects pulsar gamma rays. NASA/Constantinos Kalapotharakos To explore the extreme conditions inside neutron stars, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are using a blend of simulation, observation, and AI to unravel the mysteries of these extraordinary cosmic objects. Neutron stars are the dead cores of stars that have exploded and represent some of the densest objects in the universe.
Cutting-edge simulations, run on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility, help explain phenomena observed by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) observatory. These phenomena include the rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron stars known as pulsars, whose detailed physical mechanisms have remained mysterious since their discovery. By applying AI tools such as deep neural networks, the scientists can infer the stars’ mass, radius, magnetic field structure, and other properties from data obtained by the NICER and Fermi observatories.
The simulations’ unprecedented results will guide similar studies of black holes and other space environments, as well as play a pivotal role in shaping future scientific space missions and mission concepts.
5. Modeling the Sun in Action – From Tiny to Large Scales
Image from a 3D simulation showing the evolution of flows in the upper layers of the Sun, with the most vigorous motions shown in red. These turbulent flows can generate magnetic fields and excite sound waves, shock waves, and eruptions. NASA/Irina Kitiashvili and Timothy A. Sandstrom The Sun’s activity, producing events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, influences the space environment and cause space weather disturbances that can interfere with satellite electronics, radio communications, GPS signals, and power grids on Earth. Scientists at NASA Ames produced highly realistic 3D models that – for the first time – allow them to examine the physics of solar plasma in action, from very small to very large scales. These models help interpret observations from NASA spacecraft like the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
Using NASA’s StellarBox code on supercomputers at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing facility, the scientists improved our understanding of the origins of solar jets and tornadoes – bursts of extremely hot, charged plasma in the solar atmosphere. These models allow the science community to address long-standing questions of solar magnetic activity and how it affects space weather.
6. Scientific Visualization Makes NASA Data Understandable
This global map is a frame from an animation showing how wind patterns and atmospheric circulation moved carbon dioxide through Earth’s atmosphere from January to March 2020. The DYAMOND model’s high resolution shows unique sources of carbon dioxide emissions and how they spread across continents and oceans.NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio NASA simulations and observations can yield petabytes of data that are difficult to comprehend in their original form. The Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS), based at NASA Goddard, turns data into insight by collaborating closely with scientists to create cinematic, high-fidelity visualizations.
Key infrastructure for these SVS creations includes the NASA Center for Climate Simulation’s Discover supercomputer at Goddard, which hosts a variety of simulations and provides data analysis and image-rendering capabilities. Recent data-driven visualizations show a coronal mass ejection from the Sun hitting Earth’s magnetosphere using the Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment (MAGE) model; global carbon dioxide emissions circling the planet in the DYnamics of the Atmospheric general circulation Modeled On Non-hydrostatic Domains (DYAMOND) model; and representations of La Niña and El Niño weather patterns using the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) model.
For more information about NASA’s virtual exhibit at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, being held in Atlanta, Nov. 17-22, 2024, visit:
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC24
For more information about supercomputers run by NASA High-End Computing, visit:
https://hec.nasa.gov
For news media:
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
Authors: Jill Dunbar, Michelle Moyer, and Katie Pitta, NASA’s Ames Research Center; and Jarrett Cohen, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Takes a Look at Tangled… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Takes a Look at Tangled Galaxies
This Hubble image features a pair of interacting spiral galaxies called MCG+05-31-045. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image depicts the cosmic tangle that is MCG+05-31-045, a pair of interacting galaxies located 390 million light-years away and a part of the Coma galaxy cluster.
The Coma Cluster is a particularly rich cluster that contains over a thousand known galaxies. Amateur astronomers can easily spot several of these in a backyard telescope (See Caldwell 35). Most of them are elliptical galaxies, and that’s typical of a dense galaxy cluster like the Coma Cluster: many elliptical galaxies form through close encounters between galaxies that stir them up, or even collisions that rip them apart. While the stars in interacting galaxies can stay together, their gas is twisted and compressed by gravitational forces and rapidly used up to form new stars. When the hot, massive, blue stars die, there is little gas left to form new generations of young stars to replace them. As spiral galaxies interact, gravity disrupts the regular orbits that produce their striking spiral arms. Whether through mergers or simple near misses, the result is a galaxy almost devoid of gas, with aging stars orbiting in uncoordinated circles: an elliptical galaxy.
It’s very likely that a similar fate will befall MCG+05-31-045. As the smaller spiral galaxy is torn up and integrated into the larger galaxy, many new stars will form, and the hot, blue ones will quickly burn out, leaving cooler, redder stars behind in an elliptical galaxy, much like others in the Coma Cluster. But this process won’t be complete for many millions of years.
Explore more Coma Cluster images from Hubble.
Hubble Uncovers Thousands of Globular Star Clusters Scattered Among Galaxies Hubble’s Galaxies With Knots, Bursts Hubble Sees Near and Far Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas Hubble Catches Galaxies Swarmed by Star Clusters Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 14, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
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By NASA
Dr. Annie Meier (second from left) and her team inside the Applied Chemistry Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida began supplementing their normal workload in mid-2023 with efforts to improve the lab’s sustainable practices. In 2024, the laboratory became the first at NASA to receive certification from the non-profit My Green Lab for its efforts in sustainability.NASA/Kim Shiflett NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has a long record of achievements in sustainability and recently added another to the list when the spaceport’s Applied Chemistry Lab became the first in the agency to be certified for its environmentally conscious practices.
The My Green Lab Certification recognizes sustainability best practices in research facilities around the world. The certification program run by My Green Lab, a non-profit dedicated to creating a culture of sustainability through science, is considered a key measure of progress towards a zero-carbon future by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign.
“When I heard our lab achieved certification, I was so happy,” said Dr. Annie Meier, one of the laboratory’s chemical engineers. “It meant we could now make a conscious effort to share these green practices with all who work in our lab. We even added them to our training materials for new and incoming members in the lab.”
The lab performs research and technology development for a wide range of chemistry and engineering-related applications to solve the unique operational needs of NASA and outside partners. The lab primarily focuses on in-situ resource utilization and addressing technology gaps related to lunar and Martian sustainability. The lab’s scientists also provide expertise in the fields of logistics reduction, plasma science, hypergolic fuels, analytical instrumentation, and gas analysis.
While sustainability has long been a focus of the lab, the journey to the certification began when Riley Yager, a doctoral student from University of Alabama at Birmingham – where Meier was a technical monitor – shared her knowledge of the program after pursuing green lab practices at her university.
“I work as a sustainability ambassador at my university, so I knew of this program,” Yager said. “Sustainable practices are something woven into my everyday life, so naturally I wanted to bring those practices into my lab environments.”
After learning about the program from Yager and discovering the many other academic institutions and companies certified globally, Meier submitted a proposal to NASA and obtained funding to pursue certification for the Applied Chemistry Lab.
After a kickoff event hosted by My Green Lab in April 2023, the lab’s path to certification began with a self-assessment survey, in which members of the lab answered a series of questions about their practices in areas such as cold storage, green chemistry, infrastructure energy, resource management, waste reduction, and water. My Green Lab collected and analyzed the answers, providing a baseline assessment and recommendations to improve the lab’s sustainable practices.
“We took their initial survey and learned we had lots of room for improvements as a lab,” Meier said. “Then I worked with a few interns over the summer to spearhead the ‘green team’ to implement changes and get momentum from the entire lab.”
The lab began with minimizing purchases by improving efficiencies during the inventory process. The team also performed a waste audit of all seven of its laboratories. They adopted nitrile glove and pipette tip box recycling, reviewed the “12 principles of green chemistry” with the lab members, and installed stickers and signage about what can and cannot be unplugged to save energy. Additionally, they installed low-flow aerators on the lab tap sinks to reduce flow, and the lab now uses a recycling sink to save on water or solvents for cleaning parts.
As luck would have it, Yager ended up working at the Applied Chemistry Lab on a NASA fellowship and became a member of the green team.
“It was really fun to see that come full circle,” Meier said. “Almost all members of the lab, from our fellows to most senior members, used their self-motivation to get on the sustainability train.”
The green team continued to grow as the lab implemented changes to become more sustainable. Just over six months after the kickoff event, they completed another assessment survey. With possible certification levels of bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and green – the level that adheres closest to My Green Lab’s highest standards – the ACL was certified green, marking the first time any NASA center obtained a My Green Lab Certification.
“Our lab is looking to sustain these green practices and achieve the same status when we are reassessed in the future,” Meier said. “This effort could be a wonderful catalyst to inspire other work groups to lean towards more ‘green’ practices at the frontline in our laboratories.”
The NASA Kennedy lab joined over 2,500 labs in a range of sectors that received the My Green Lab certification. Maintaining the distinction will require recertification every two years.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, firing up its engine for the first time. These engine-run tests start at low power and allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas 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.
These engine-run tests, which began Oct. 30, allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. In previous tests, the X-59 used external sources for power. The engine-run tests set the stage for the next phase of the experimental aircraft’s progress toward flight.
The X-59 team is conducting the engine-run tests in phases. In this first phase, the engine rotated at a relatively low speed without ignition to check for leaks and ensure all systems are communicating properly. The team then fueled the aircraft and began testing the engine at low power, with the goal of verifying that it and other aircraft systems operate without anomalies or leaks while on engine power.
Lockheed Martin test pilot Dan Canin sits in the cockpit of NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft in a run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California prior to its first engine run. These engine-run tests featured the X-59 powered by its own engine, whereas in previous tests, the aircraft depended on external sources for power. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The first phase of the engine tests was really a warmup to make sure that everything looked good prior to running the engine,” said Jay Brandon, NASA’s X-59 chief engineer. “Then we moved to the actual first engine start. That took the engine out of the preservation mode that it had been in since installation on the aircraft. It was the first check to see that it was operating properly and that all the systems it impacted – hydraulics, electrical system, environmental control systems, etc. – seemed to be working.”
The X-59 will generate a quieter thump rather than a loud boom while flying faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which will gather data on how people perceive these thumps, providing regulators with information that could help lift current bans on commercial supersonic flight over land.
The engine, a modified F414-GE-100, packs 22,000 pounds of thrust, which will enable the X-59 to achieve the desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. It sits in a nontraditional spot – atop the aircraft — to aid in making the X-59 quieter.
Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. Because of the challenges involved with reaching this critical phase of testing, the X-59’s first flight is now expected in early 2025. The team will continue progressing through critical ground tests and address any technical issues discovered with this one-of-a-kind, experimental aircraft. The X-59 team will have a more specific first flight date as these tests are successfully completed.
The testing is taking place at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. During later phases, the team will test the aircraft at high power with rapid throttle changes, followed by simulating the conditions of an actual flight.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, prior to its first engine run. Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The success of these runs will be the start of the culmination of the last eight years of my career,” said Paul Dees, NASA’s deputy propulsion lead for the X-59. “This isn’t the end of the excitement but a small steppingstone to the beginning. It’s like the first note of a symphony, where years of teamwork behind the scenes are now being put to the test to prove our efforts have been effective, and the notes will continue to play a harmonious song to flight.”
After the engine runs, the X-59 team will move to aluminum bird testing, where data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. The team will then proceed with a series of taxi tests, where the aircraft will be put in motion on the ground. These tests will be followed by final preparations for first flight.
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 EditorLillian GipsonContactMatt Kamletmatthew.r.kamlet@nasa.gov Related Terms
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