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Integrating Data-Driven and Physics-Based Models for Plume-Surface Interaction Predictions
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By NASA
Freelancer NASA’s Sustainable Business Model Challenge is looking for entrepreneurs, startups, and researchers to leverage the agency’s publicly available Earth system science data to develop commercial solutions for climate challenges.
This opportunity, with a submission deadline of June 13, bridges the gap between vast climate data and actionable solutions by inviting solvers to transform data into sustainable business models that support climate resilience and decision-making.
“Creative, outcome-driven entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our country’s economy, and we’re excited to see the sustainable climate solutions they’re able to come up with when working closely with NASA’s vast resources and data,” said Jason L. Kessler, program executive for the NASA Small Business Innovation Research / Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) program, which is sponsoring the challenge.
Through the Sustainable Business Model Challenge, NASA aims to foster a new set of sustainable enterprises capable of turning climate insights into tangible market-ready services, ultimately contributing to a more resilient future for vulnerable communities, businesses, and ecosystems. NASA is committed to broadening participation in its solicitations and fostering technology advancements.
By engaging new entrepreneurs, the challenge serves as a pathway to NASA’s SBIR/STTR program, helping scale solutions to advance the global response to climate change and encourage a more sustainable future. From its vantage point in space, NASA holds a wealth of data that can inform new approaches to climate adaptation and mitigation.
Participants will submit a 10-page business concept paper that includes details on how they will incorporate NASA climate or Earth system data to deliver a product or service. Up to ten winning teams will receive $10,000 each, along with admission to a 10-week capability development training designed to strengthen any future proposals for potential NASA funding.
NASA’s SBIR/STTR program, managed by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, is part of America’s Seed Fund, the nation’s largest source of early-stage funding for innovative technologies. Through this program, entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses with less than 500 employees can receive funding and non-monetary support to build, mature, and commercialize their technologies, advancing NASA missions and advancing the nations aerospace economy.
Ensemble is hosting the challenge on behalf of NASA. The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate, manages the challenge. The program supports global public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.
The deadline to participate in NASA’s Sustainable Business Model Challenge is June 13, 2025.
For more information about the challenge, visit: https://nasabusinesschallenge.org/
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The six SCALPSS cameras mounted around the base of Blue Ghost will collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images to produce a 3D view of the surface. Image courtesy of Firefly. Say cheese again, Moon. We’re coming in for another close-up.
For the second time in less than a year, a NASA technology designed to collect data on the interaction between a Moon lander’s rocket plume and the lunar surface is set to make the long journey to Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor for the benefit of humanity.
Developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) is an array of cameras placed around the base of a lunar lander to collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images from the version of SCALPSS on Firefly’s Blue Ghost — SCALPSS 1.1 — to produce a 3D view of the surface. An earlier version, SCALPSS 1.0, was on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the Moon last February. Due to mission contingencies that arose during the landing, SCALPSS 1.0 was unable to collect imagery of the plume-surface interaction. The team was, however, able to operate the payload in transit and on the lunar surface following landing, which gives them confidence in the hardware for 1.1.
The SCALPSS 1.1 payload has two additional cameras — six total, compared to the four on SCALPSS 1.0 — and will begin taking images at a higher altitude, prior to the expected onset of plume-surface interaction, to provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison.
These images of the Moon’s surface won’t just be a technological novelty. As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to be able to accurately predict the effects of landings.
How much will the surface change? As a lander comes down, what happens to the lunar soil, or regolith, it ejects? With limited data collected during descent and landing to date, SCALPSS will be the first dedicated instrument to measure the effects of plume-surface interaction on the Moon in real time and help to answer these questions.
“If we’re placing things – landers, habitats, etc. – near each other, we could be sand blasting what’s next to us, so that’s going to drive requirements on protecting those other assets on the surface, which could add mass, and that mass ripples through the architecture,” said Michelle Munk, principal investigator for SCALPSS and acting chief architect for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It’s all part of an integrated engineering problem.”
Under the Artemis campaign, the agency’s current lunar exploration approach, NASA is collaborating with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. On this CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative delivery carrying over 200 pounds of NASA science experiments and technology demonstrations, SCALPSS 1.1 will begin capturing imagery from before the time the lander’s plume begins interacting with the surface until after the landing is complete.
The final images will be gathered on a small onboard data storage unit before being sent to the lander for downlink back to Earth. The team will likely need at least a couple of months to
process the images, verify the data, and generate the 3D digital elevation maps of the surface. The expected lander-induced erosion they reveal probably won’t be very deep — not this time, anyway.
One of the SCALPSS cameras is visible here mounted to the Blue Ghost lander.Image courtesy of Firefly. “Even if you look at the old Apollo images — and the Apollo crewed landers were larger than these new robotic landers — you have to look really closely to see where the erosion took place,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager at Langley. “We’re anticipating something on the order of centimeters deep — maybe an inch. It really depends on the landing site and how deep the regolith is and where the bedrock is.”
But this is a chance for researchers to see how well SCALPSS will work as the U.S. advances human landing systems as part of NASA’s plans to explore more of the lunar surface.
“Those are going to be much larger than even Apollo. Those are large engines, and they could conceivably dig some good-sized holes,” said Maddock. “So that’s what we’re doing. We’re collecting data we can use to validate the models that are predicting what will happen.”
The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Through this opportunity, various companies from a select group of vendors bid on delivering payloads for NASA including everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
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Last Updated Dec 19, 2024 EditorAngelique HerringLocationNASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Download PDF: Contact Dynamics Predictions Utilizing theNESC Parameterless Contact Model
Modeling the capture of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Orbiting Sample (OS) involves understanding complex dynamic behavior, which includes the OS making contact against the interior of the capture enclosure. The MSR Program required numerical verification of the contact dynamics’ predictions produced using their commercial software tools. This commercial software used “free” parameters to set up the contact modeling. Free parameters (also known as free variables) are not based on contact physics. The commercial contact model used by MSR
required seven free parameters including a Hertzian contact stiffness, surface penetration, stiffening exponent, penetration velocity, contact damping, maximum penetration depth for the contact damping value, and a smoothing function. An example of a parameter that is not free is coefficient of friction, which is a physics-based parameter. Consider the free parameter, contact stiffness. Contact stiffness is already present in the finite element model’s (FEM) stiffness matrix where the bodies come into contact, and surface penetration is disallowed in a physically realizable contact model, as FEM meshes should not penetrate one another during contact (i.e., the zero-contact limit penetration constraint condition).
As such, with each set of selected free parameters generating a different contact force signature, additional numerical verification is required to guide setting these parameters. Contact modeling is nonlinear. This means that the stiffness matrices of contacting bodies are continuously updated as the bodies come into contact, potentially recontact (due to vibrations), and disengage. The modal properties of contacting bodies continuously change with state transitions (e.g., stick-to-slip). Some contact models have been proposed and incorporated in commercial finite element analysis solvers, and most involve static loading. A relatively smaller number involve dynamics, which has historically proven challenging.
In 2005, NASA conducted a study testing several commercial contact solvers in predicting contact forces in transient dynamic environments. This was necessitated by the Space Shuttle Program (SSP)—after the February 2003 Columbia accident— deciding to include contact dynamics in the Space Shuttle transient coupled loads analysis (CLA) to capture the impact of contact nonlinearities. This rendered the entire CLA nonlinear. The study found major difficulties executing nonlinear CLAs in commercial software. A nonlinear solver developed by the NESC and Applied Structural Dynamics (ASD) that was able to produce physically realizable results was numerically verified by NASA and later experimentally validated as well. This nonlinear solver was subsequently utilized to execute all NASA SSP CLAs (i.e., crewed space flights) from 2005 to the final flight in 2011, as well as currently supporting the SLS Program.
The objective of the MSR contact verification work was to provide data that could be used by the MSR team to help define the free parameters listed above for the commercial tool contact model. The NESC/ASD solver was used to model contact between simple cantilever and free beams, deriving contact forces and relative displacements. These resulting data can be used to determine parameter values for more complex structures. Two of the modeled configurations, one for axial contact (Figure 1) and the other for stick/friction (Figure 2), and sample results from the NESC nonlinear dynamic analyses are presented in Figures 1 and 2.
For information, contact:
Dr. Dexter Johnson dexter.johnson@nasa.gov
Dr. Arya Majed arya.majed@nasa.gov
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By NASA
Learn Home Integrating Relevant Science… Earth Science Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 3 min read
Integrating Relevant Science Investigations into Migrant Children Education
For three weeks in August, over 100 migrant children (ages 3-15) got to engage in hands-on activities involving blueberries, pollinators, and eDNA as part of their time with The Blueberry Harvest School (BHS). BHS is a summer school program for migrant children whose families work in Washington County, Maine during the wild blueberry harvest season. The program is hosted by Mano en Mano in Milbridge, Maine. This summer, University of Maine 4-H (part of the NASA Science Activation Program’s Learning Ecosystems Northeast team) was invited to deliver enrichment programs during the school day alongside a seasoned BHS employee – an educator from the Mi’kmaq community in what is now known as Nova Scotia.
The goal of BHS is to meet the needs of youth by providing “culturally responsive, project-based learning while preventing summer learning loss and compensating for school disruptions among students” (Mano en Mano). Migrant families come to Downeast from Mi’kmaq First Nation communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, southern states, and from within Maine, including Passamoquoddy communities in eastern Washington County and a Latino community in the western part of the county. Families stay to harvest blueberries anywhere from two to five weeks. With support from 4-H educators, youth surveyed the schoolyard for pollinators, investigated the parts of pollinators and flowers, and learned why blueberries are an important part of Wabanaki culture.
“BHS really becomes a home for the children while they are here. I think one of the reasons is because they are encouraged to be proud of their identity and who they are – they get to be their authentic selves. It’s a neat space where teachers and youth are speaking Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Spanish and English while supporting each other, and learning and experiencing new things.” — Gabrielle Brodek, 4-H Professional
“After completing my second year helping at Blueberry Harvest School, I loved seeing the returning faces of the kids who have been coming year after year – the kids remember you and hug you and are sad when the season is over and BHS ends.” — Jason Palomo, 4-H Professional
Resources and inspiration for these activities came from NASA Climate Kids, Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Bees, Blueberries, and Climate Change learning module, National 4-H and ME Ag in the Classroom. On the last day youth experienced how to make a natural dye out of blueberries, a long-standing tradition in Native American culture. Our organizations continue to work together year-round, building stronger relationships and planning for Summer 2025!
The Learning Ecosystems Northeast project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB94A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation 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
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
A collaboration between IMPACT and IBM has produced INDUS, a comprehensive suite of large language models (LLMs) tailored for the domains of Earth science, biological and physical sciences, heliophysics, planetary sciences, and astrophysics and trained using curated scientific corpora drawn from diverse data sources. Kaylin Bugbee (ST11), team lead of NASA’s Science Discovery Engine (SDE), spoke to the benefit INDUS offers to existing applications: “Large language models are rapidly changing the search experience. The Science Discovery Engine, a unified, insightful search interface for all of NASA’s open science data and information, has prototyped integrating INDUS into its search engine. Initial results have shown that INDUS improved the accuracy and relevancy of the returned results.”
The INDUS models are openly available on Hugging Face. For the benefit of the scientific community, the team has released the developed models and will release the benchmark datasets that span named entity recognition for climate change, extractive QA for Earth science, and information retrieval for multiple domains. A paper on INDUS, “INDUS: Effective and Efficient Language Models for Scientific Applications,” is available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.10725.
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