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By NASA
On Sept. 18, 2024, five Congressional Gold Medals were awarded to women who contributed to the space race, including the NASA mathematicians who helped land the first astronauts on the Moon under the agency’s Apollo Program.Credit: NASA NASA Administrator Bill Nelson released his remarks as prepared for Wednesday’s Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in Washington. The awards recognized the women who contributed to the space race, including the NASA mathematicians who helped land the first astronauts on the Moon under the agency’s Apollo Program.
“Good afternoon.
“The remarkable things that NASA achieves…and that America achieves…build on the pioneers who came before us.
“People like the women of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
“People like Mary Jackson. Dr. Christine Darden. Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine Johnson.
“Thanks to all the Members of Congress who made today possible. The late Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who we miss, and who led the effort in 2019 alongside Senator Chris Coons to bring these medals to life. Thanks to the champions for the legislation, then-Senator Kamala Harris, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito, and Congressman Frank Lucas.
“The women we honor today made it possible for Earthlings to lift beyond the bounds of Earth, and for generations of trailblazers to follow.
“We did not come this far only to come this far.
“We continue this legacy, as one member of the audience here with us does every single day – the remarkable Andrea Mosie.
“Andrea, who has worked at NASA for nearly 50 years, is the lead processor for the Apollo sample program. She oversees the Moon rocks and lunar samples NASA brought back from Apollo, 842 pounds of celestial science! These samples are national treasures. So is Andrea.
“The pioneers we honor today, these Hidden Figures – their courage and imagination brought us to the Moon. And their lessons, their legacy, will send us back to the Moon… and then…imagine – just imagine – when we leave our footprints on the red sands of Mars.
“Thanks to these people who are part of our NASA family, we will continue to sail on the cosmic sea to far off cosmic shores.”
For more information about NASA missions, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
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Meira Bernstein / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 18, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
As part of an asteroid sample exchange, NASA has transferred to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) a portion of the asteroid Bennu sample collected by the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The sample was officially handed over by NASA officials during a ceremony on Aug. 22 at JAXA’s Sagamihara, Japan, campus.
The signature exchange for the Bennu sample transfer took place on Aug. 22, 2024, at JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara Campus.JAXA This asteroid sample transfer follows the November 2021 exchange where JAXA transferred to NASA a portion of the sample retrieved from asteroid Ryugu by its Hayabusa2 spacecraft. This agreement allows NASA and JAXA to share achievements and promote scientific and technological cooperation on asteroid sample return missions. The scientific goals of the two missions are to understand the origins and histories of primitive, organic-rich asteroids and what role they may have played in the formation of the planets.
“We value our continued collaboration with JAXA on asteroid sample return missions to both increase our science return and reduce risk on these and other missions,” said Kathleen Vander Kaaden, chief scientist for astromaterials curation in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “JAXA has extensive curation capabilities, and we look forward to what we will learn from the shared analysis of the OSIRIS-REx samples.”
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft delivered 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams) of material from Bennu, more than double the mission’s mass requirement, as well as 24 steel Velcro® pads containing dust from the contact with Bennu. As part of the agreement, the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston transferred to JAXA 0.023 ounces (0.66 grams) of the Bennu sample, equaling 0.55% of the total sample mass, and one of the 24 contact pads.
Hayabusa2 collected 0.19 ounces (5.4 grams) of Ryugu between two samples and, in 2021, JAXA provided NASA with 23 millimeter-sized grains plus aggregate sample material from Ryugu, enabling both countries to get the most out of the samples and share the responsibility of sample curation.
JAXA’s portion of the Bennu samples will be housed in the newly expanded clean rooms in the extraterrestrial sample curation center on the JAXA Sagamihara campus. The JAXA team received the samples enclosed in non-reactive nitrogen gas and will open them in similarly nitrogen-filled clean chambers, accessed with air-tight gloves. JAXA will now work to create an initial description of the sample, including weight measurements, imaging with both visible light and infrared light microscopes, and infrared spectroscopy. The sample will then be distributed through a competitively selected process for detailed analysis at other research institutes to study the differences and similarities between asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.
JAXA “Thank you for safely bringing the precious asteroid samples from Bennu to Earth and then to Japan,” said Tomohiro Usui, Astromaterials Science Research Group Manager, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA. “As fellow curators, we understand the tension and responsibility that accompany these tasks. Now, it is our turn at JAXA. We will go ahead with our plans to derive significant scientific outcomes from these valuable samples.”
Asteroids are debris left over from the dawn of the solar system. The Sun and its planets formed from a cloud of dust and gas about 4.6 billion years ago, and asteroids are thought to date back to the first few million years of our solar system’s history. Sample return missions like OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 help provide new data on how the solar system’s evolution unfolded.
Initial analysis of the Bennu samples has revealed dust rich in carbon and nitrogen. Members of the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team have also found evidence of organic molecules and minerals bearing phosphorous and water, which together could indicate the building blocks essential for life.
Both the Bennu sample and the asteroid Ryugu sample delivered by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission appear to have come from an ancient parent object formed beyond the current orbit of Saturn that was broken up and transported into the inner solar system. The differences between these asteroids are emerging as the detailed chemistry is analyzed.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA Johnson. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Find more information about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex
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News Media Contacts
Wynn Scott
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-910-6835
wynn.b.scott@nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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By NASA
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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By NASA
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 members (pictured from left to right) NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA astronaut Anne McClain, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya OnishiCredit: NASA As part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission, four crew members are preparing to launch for a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Commander Anne McClain and Pilot Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov will join astronauts at the orbiting laboratory no earlier than February 2025.
The flight is the 10th crew rotation with SpaceX to the station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. While aboard, the international crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future missions and benefit people on Earth.
Selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2013, this will be McClain’s second spaceflight. A colonel in the U.S. Army, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and holds master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering, International Security, and Strategic Studies. The Spokane, Washington, native was an instructor pilot in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. McClain has more than 2,300 flight hours in 24 rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, including more than 800 in combat, and was a member of the U.S. Women’s National Rugby Team. On her first spaceflight, McClain spent 204 days as a flight engineer during Expeditions 58 and 59 and was the lead on two spacewalks, totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. Since then, she has served in various roles, including branch chief and space station assistant to the chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office.
Ayers is a major in the U.S. Air Force and the first member of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class named to a crew. The Colorado native graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a minor in Russian, where she was a member of the academy’s varsity volleyball team. She later earned a master’s in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University in Houston. Ayers served as an instructor pilot and mission commander in the T-38 ADAIR and F-22 Raptor, leading multinational and multiservice missions worldwide. She has more than 1,400 total flight hours, including more than 200 in combat.
With 113 days in space, this mission also will mark Onishi’s second trip to the space station. After being selected by JAXA in 2009, he flew as a flight engineer for Expeditions 48 and 49 became the first Japanese astronaut to robotically capture the Cygnus spacecraft. He also constructed a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, the station’s Japanese experiment module. Since his spaceflight, Onishi became certified as a JAXA flight director, leading the team responsible for operating Kibo from JAXA Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo and was a pilot for All Nippon Airways, flying more than 3,700 flight hours in the Boeing 767.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission also will be Peskov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he earned a degree in Engineering from the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation School and was a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft for airlines Nordwind and Ikar. Assigned as a test-cosmonaut in 2020, he has additional experience in skydiving, zero-gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.
For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA’s Artemis campaign is underway at the Moon, where the agency is preparing for future human exploration of Mars.
Find more information on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Joshua Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Raegan Scharfetter
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-910-4989
raegan.r.scharfetter@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 01, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Commercial Crew Anne C. McClain Astronauts Humans in Space International Space Station (ISS) ISS Research Nichole Ayers View the full article
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By NASA
NASA astronaut Mike Barratt processes brain organoid samples inside the life science glovebox for a neurodegenerative disorder study. NASA plans to use future commercial low Earth orbit destinations for the continuation of scientific research.NASA NASA hosted a meeting to share knowledge with companies developing future commercial destinations at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The discussion could aid in developing safe, reliable, innovative, and cost-effective space stations. Industry representatives from more than 20 companies attended.
The program focused on NASA’s planned use of commercial destinations, draft utilization requirements, and the payload life cycle. A primary interest for the use of commercial stations includes the continuation of scientific research in low Earth orbit, such as human research, technology demonstrations, biological and physical science, and Earth observation.
David Caponio from Vast Space presents a five-minute lightning talk on the company’s capabilities during the program NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Vast is working with NASA under the second Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities initiative for technologies and operations required for its microgravity and artificial gravity stations, including the Haven-1 commercial destination.NASA/Josh Valcarcel “NASA has benefited from the unique microgravity environment of low Earth orbit to conduct important science investigations and technology demonstrations for more than two decades,” said Dr. Kirt Costello, utilization manager for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program. “As commercial companies make progress in the design and development of their own space stations, it is important that we share NASA’s needs and requirements as well as foster an open dialogue between government and private industry.”
The program builds on a request for information released last year, seeking feedback from industry as the agency refines its requirements for new commercial space destinations.
Vergel Romero of Sierra Space speaks with representatives from other commercial companies during a networking opportunity. Sierra Space is working with Blue Origin on the development of Orbital Reef, and also holds an unfunded Space Act Agreement with NASA for the development of its commercial low Earth orbit ecosystem.NASA/Josh Valcarcel Since then, the feedback has helped develop and refine a utilization requirements strategy, including a concept of operations, basic laboratory capabilities, and common payload standards for heritage hardware. NASA will continue to refine its future requirements and incorporate future low Earth orbit needs of other U.S. government agencies and international partners.
NASA uses a two-phase strategy to support the development of commercial destinations and enable the agency to purchase services as one of many customers. Phase 1 efforts extend through 2025, before NASA plans to transition to Phase 2, which will be to certify commercial destinations and purchase services.
Eleasa Kim, payload operations lead for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program, presents on NASA’s planned utilization activities for commercial destinations and expectations for provider support.NASA/Josh Valcarcel The agency’s commercial strategy for low Earth orbit will provide the government with reliable and safe services at a lower cost and enable the agency to focus on Artemis missions to the Moon in preparation for Mars while also continuing to use low Earth orbit as a training and proving ground for those deep space missions.
Learn more about NASA’s commercial space strategy at:
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space/
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