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By NASA
Twelve-year-old, Aadya Karthik of Seattle, Washington; nine-year-old, Rainie Lin of Lexington, Kentucky; and eighteen-year-old, Thomas Lui, winners of the 2023-2024 Power to Explore Student Writing Challenge observe testing at a NASA Glenn cleanroom during their prize trip to Cleveland. Credit: NASA NASA’s fourth annual Power to Explore Student Challenge kicked off November 7, 2024. The science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) writing challenge invites kindergarten through 12th grade students in the United States to learn about radioisotope power systems, a type of nuclear battery integral to many of NASA’s far-reaching space missions.
Students are invited to write an essay about a new nuclear-powered mission to any moon in the solar system they choose. Submissions are due Jan. 31, 2025.
With freezing temperatures, long nights, and deep craters that never see sunlight on many of these moons, including our own, missions to them could use a special kind of power: radioisotope power systems. These power systems have helped NASA explore the harshest, darkest, and dustiest parts of our solar system and enabled spacecraft to study its many moons.
“Sending spacecraft into space is hard, and it’s even harder sending them to the extreme environments surrounding the diverse moons in our solar system,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “NASA’s Power to Explore Student Challenge provides the incredible opportunity for our next generation – our future explorers – to design their own daring missions using science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to explore space and discover new science for the benefit of all, while also revealing incredible creative power within themselves. We cannot wait to see what the students dream up!”
Entries should detail where students would go, what they would explore, and how they would use radioisotope power systems to achieve mission success in a dusty, dark, or far away moon destination.
Judges will review entries in three grade-level categories: K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Student entries are limited to 275 words and should address the mission destination, mission goals, and describe one of the student’s unique powers that will help the mission.
One grand prize winner from each grade category will receive a trip for two to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland to learn about the people and technologies that enable NASA missions. Every student who submits an entry will receive a digital certificate and an invitation to a virtual event with NASA experts where they’ll learn about what powers the NASA workforce to dream big and explore.
Judges Needed
NASA and Future Engineers are seeking volunteers to help judge the thousands of contest entries anticipated submitted from around the country. Interested U.S. residents older than 18 can offer to volunteer approximately three hours to review submissions should register to judge at the Future Engineers website.
The Power to Explore Student Challenge is funded by the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program Office and managed and administered by Future Engineers under the direction of the NASA Tournament Lab, a part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
To learn more about the challenge, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/power-to-explore
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Kristin Jansen
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-296-2203
kristin.m.jansen@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 07, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Opportunities For Students to Get Involved Science Mission Directorate STEM Engagement at NASA View the full article
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By NASA
Phil Kaaret (ST12) is lead author on the paper which describes Chandra X-ray Observatory observations of the galaxy NGC 2366. Escape of Lyman continuum (LyC) emission from galaxies found in the early universe was essential for the reionization of the universe when the intergalactic medium (IGM) changed from being neutral gas to the ionized IGM that we observe today. Compact emission-line galaxies (LCGs) are the most abundant class of confirmed Lyman continuum (LyC) emitters and provide (relatively) nearby analogs of the galaxies found in the early universe. An optical integral field study of NGC 2366 revealed an outflow originating at a star cluster known as “knot B” that is thought to clear a channel via mechanical feedback that enables LyC escape. We observed NGC 2366 with the Chandra and detected X-ray emission from a point source coincident with the apex of the outflow at knot B. The pointlike nature and variability of the X-ray emission suggests accretion onto a compact object in an X-ray binary. The accretion could produce sufficient kinetic energy to power the outflow. Thus, outflows from X-ray binaries may be important in enabling LyC emission from galaxies.
Read more at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13192.
Illustration of ChandraView the full article
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By NASA
Alphonse Sterling (ST13) is co-author on a paper describing CMEs that appear to be initiated by a series of recurrent coronal jets. The paper is entitled: “Source Region and Launch Characteristics of Magnetic-arch-blowout Solar Coronal Mass Ejections Driven by Homologous Compact-flare Blowout Jets.” It is led by Binal Patel, a graduate student of Sterling’s colleague in India, Bhuwan Joshi; Ronald Moore of UAH is also a co-author. The paper will appear in ApJ shortly, and a preprint is available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.03292.
Pre-eruptive coronal magnetic field configurations of the source region obtained from the NLFFF extrapolations using HMI vector magnetograms before events I–IV. We show the flux rope in blue color in each panel. The source region consists of closed bipolar field lines (green), which constrain the underlying flux rope. The flux rope is formed between emerging negative flux (NE ) and positive polarity flux (P2) in the leading part of the AR. The red circles mark the southeastern footpoint location of the flux rope in each panel, which is rooted in the rapidly changing NE region. (a2)–(d2) The flux ropes are shown from side views before events I–IV. (a3)–(d3) An AIA 304 Å image before the respective event is plotted in the background of the flux ropes.View the full article
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By NASA
On 3/7/24, Astrophysical Journal published online “X-ray Polarimetry of the Dipping Accreting Neutron Star 4U 1624–49” by M. Lynne Saade (Astrophysics Branch) et al. This is the 51st discovery paper published by the IXPE Science Team. The first author, Lynnie Saade, is a new postdoc working on IXPE and this is her first IXPE paper, which was submitted only a few months after arriving at MSFC.
Illustration of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry ExplorerView the full article
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By NASA
As part of his NASA SERVIR research project, Pontus Olofsson (ST11) co-authored a paper for publication in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. The paper, titled Applications of Remote Sensing for Land Use Planning Scenarios With Suitability Analysis, presents results from a suitability analysis model using time series of Landsat data for land use planning in West Africa in light of a growing population and management of natural resources. The research was carried out by SERVIR-funded research groups at NASA MSFC, University of Florida, and Boston University. The paper is available here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10449341.
Results from the land use suitability analyses for (a) agriculture, (b) forest, and (c) urban land uses.View the full article
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