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By NASA
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30 Years On, NASA’s Wind Is a Windfall for Studying our Neighborhood in Space
An artist’s concept of NASA’s Wind spacecraft outside of Earth’s magnetosphere. NASA Picture it: 1994. The first World Wide Web conference took place in Geneva, the first Chunnel train traveled under the English Channel, and just three years after the end of the Cold War, the first Russian instrument on a U.S. spacecraft launched into deep space from Cape Canaveral. The mission to study the solar wind, aptly named Wind, held promise for heliophysicists and astrophysicists around the world to investigate basic plasma processes in the solar wind barreling toward Earth —key information for helping us understand and potentially mitigate the space weather environment surrounding our home planet.
Thirty years later, Wind continues to deliver on that promise from about a million miles away at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange Point (L1). This location is gravitationally balanced between Earth and the Sun, providing excellent fuel economy that requires mere puffs of thrust to stay in place.
According to Lynn Wilson, who is the Wind project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, fuel is only one indicator of Wind’s life expectancy, however. “Based on fuel alone, Wind can continue flying until 2074,” he said. “On the other hand, its ability to return data hinges on the last surviving digital tape recorder onboard.”
An artist’s concept shows a closeup of the Wind spacecraft. NASA Wind launched with two digital tape recorders to record data from all the instruments on the spacecraft and provide reports on the spacecraft’s thermal conditions, orientation, and overall health. Each recorder has two tape decks, A and B, which Wilson affectionately refers to as “fancy eight-tracks.”
After six years of service, the first digital tape recorder failed in 2000 along with its two tape decks, forcing mission operators to switch to the second one. Tape Deck A on that one started showing signs of wear in 2016, so the mission operators now use Tape Deck B as the primary deck, with A as a backup.
“They built redundancy into the digital tape recorder system by building two of them, but you can never predict how technology will perform when it’s a million miles away, bathing in ionizing radiation,” said Wilson. “We’re fortunate that after 30 years, we still have two functioning tape decks.”
Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, on a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Bonus Science
When Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, nobody could have possibly predicted that exactly 30 years later, NASA would be kicking off “Bonus Science” month in the Heliophysics Big Year. Beyond the mission’s incredible track record of mesmerizing discoveries about the solar wind — some detailed on its 25th anniversary — Wind continues to deliver with bonus science abound.
Opportunity and Collaborative Discovery
Along its circuitous journey to L1, Wind dipped in and out of Earth’s magnetosphere more than 65 times, capturing the largest whistler wave — a low-frequency radio wave racing across Earth’s magnetic field — ever recorded in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts. Wind also traveled ahead of and behind Earth — about 150 times our planet’s diameter in both directions, informing potential future missions that would operate in those areas with extreme exposure to the solar wind. It even took a side quest to the Moon, cruising through the lunar wake, a shadow devoid of solar wind on the far side of the Moon.
Later, from its permanent home at L1, Wind was among several corroborating spacecraft that helped confirm what scientists believe is the brightest gamma-ray burst to occur since the dawn of human civilization. The burst, GRB 221009A, was first detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022. Although not in its primary science objectives, Wind carries two bonus instruments designed to observe gamma-ray bursts that helped scientists confirm the burst’s origin in the Sagitta constellation.
Academic Inspiration
More than 7,200 research papers have been published using Wind data, and the mission has supported more than 100 graduate and post-graduate degrees.
Wilson was one of those degree candidates. When Wind launched, Wilson was in sixth grade, on the football, baseball, and wrestling teams, with spare time spent playing video games and reading science fiction. He had a knack for science and considered becoming a medical doctor or an engineer before committing to his love of physics, which ultimately led to his current position as Wind’s project scientist. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked with Adam Szabo who was the Wind project scientist at NASA Goddard at the time and used Wind data to study interplanetary collisionless shock waves. Szabo eventually hired Wilson to work on the Wind mission team at Goddard.
Also in sixth grade at the time, Joe Westlake, NASA Heliophysics division director,was into soccer and music, and was a voracious reader consumed with Tolkein’s stories about Middle Earth. Now he leads the NASA office that manages Wind.
“It’s amazing to think that Lynn Wilson and I were in middle school, and the original mission designers and scientists have long since retired,” said Westlake. “When a mission makes it to 30 years, you can’t help but be inspired by the role it has played not only in scientific discovery, but in the careers of multiple generations of scientists.”
By Erin Mahoney
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Last Updated Nov 01, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA logo Chile will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 3 p.m. EDT on Friday, Oct. 25, at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will host Aisén Etcheverry, Chile’s minister of science, technology, knowledge and innovation, and Juan Gabriel Valdés, ambassador of Chile to the United States, along with other officials from Chile and the U.S. Department of State.
This event is in-person only. U.S. media and U.S. citizens representing international media organizations interested in attending must RSVP no later than 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24, to hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
The signing ceremony will take place at the agency’s Glennan Assembly Room inside NASA Headquarters located at 300 E St. SW Washington.
NASA, in coordination with the U.S. Department of State and seven other initial signatory nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020. With many countries and private companies conducting missions and operations around the Moon, the Artemis Accords provide a common set of principles to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space.
The Artemis Accords reinforce the commitment by signatory nations to the Outer Space Treaty, the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior for civil space exploration and use.
Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords
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Meira Bernstein / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 21, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4325-4326: (Not Quite) Dipping Our Toes in the Sand
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4323 — Martian day 4,323 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 4, 2024, at 00:29:40 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Oct. 4, 2024
If you read this blog very often, you know that nearly every time the rover stops for science, MAHLI and APXS focus on interesting (and accessible!) rocks as targets. The rover science team is, after all, built with a lot of geologists. But geology is not all rocks, all the time — sand is former rock that if buried and pressurized long enough will become rock again. Today was time for sand to shine, as the workspace was cut by troughs of sand of different colors and brightnesses, and it had been nearly 500 sols since we acquired our last dedicated sand measurement with APXS and MAHLI. The “Pumice Flat” target was one of the brighter sand patches while “Kidney Lake” was one of the darker sand patches. APXS uses a special placement mode over sand targets so the instrument gets close, but not too close, to the loose material which could foul up the instrument. Not-rock was also the purview of our environmental observations. Navcam is scheduled for imaging seeking out clouds and dust devils, and changes in the sand and dust on top of the rover deck. Both Navcam and Mastcam will make observations to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere. REMS will keep track of our weather with regular measurements, RAD will monitor our radiation environment, and DAN will look through rock for signs of water beneath our drive path.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the rover could not ignore bedrock. We managed to squeeze in DRT cleaning of a nice bedrock slab, “Ribbon Fall,” for MAHLI-only imaging. In places, the bedrock slabs were cut by thin veins of darker gray material, similar to dark gray materials we saw in the bedrock on the other side of Gediz Vallis. ChemCam targeted one of these dark gray examples at “Black Divide,” and also rastered across some of the prominent layers visible in the vertical faces in the workspace at the aptly named “Profile View.”
Our imaging efforts could be roughly divided between looking back at our path through Gediz Vallis from our new and higher perspective, and looking ahead to what awaits us. ChemCam planned RMI mosaics back toward a field of the white stones we spent time studying in Gediz Vallis and toward a part of the edge of Gediz Vallis that we did not explore previously. Mastcam looked back at the part of the edge of Gediz Vallis we just traversed, “Pilot Peak,” for clues as to why it sits higher than the bedrock farther from the channel edge. They also targeted “Clyde Spires,” which was a gravel ridge in Gediz Vallis of interest as we drove by it initially. Looking ahead, Mastcam imaged a puzzling gray rock sitting atop the bedrock slabs south of us at target “Buena Vista Grove,” and further south still, they planned a large mosaic covering a very big rock — the spectacular “Texoli” butte that has loomed and will continue to loom over our path for months to come.
Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
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Last Updated Oct 07, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and Kirk Johnson, Sant director, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, preview NASA’s new Earth Information Center at the museum in Washington on Oct. 7, 2024. The exhibit includes a video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, an interpretive panel showing Earth’s connected systems, information on our changing world, and an overview of how NASA and the Smithsonian study our home planet.Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA Administrator Bill Nelson joined the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and agency leadership to unveil the new Earth Information Center exhibit during an early preview on Monday.
“NASA has studied Earth and our changing climate for more than 60 years. The Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History will expand access to NASA’s data and our decades of Earth observation to even more people,” said Nelson. “Together with the Smithsonian, we are providing detailed, usable, and scalable information to enable the public to better understand the climate crisis and take action in their community.”
The exhibit includes a 32-foot-long, 12-foot-high video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, interpretive panels showing Earth’s connected systems, information on our changing world, and an overview of how NASA and the Smithsonian study our home planet. It opens to the public Tuesday, Oct. 8.
“The new Earth Information Center at the National Museum of Natural History will bring Smithsonian and NASA data on the Earth’s environment and climate to thousands of museum visitors every year,” said Kirk Johnson, the museum’s Sant director. “It is an honor to partner with NASA to bring this dynamic view of Earth to museumgoers and connect people more deeply with their home planet.”
Visitors also can explore Earth observing missions, changes in Earth’s landscape over time, and how climate is expected to change regionally through multiple interactive experiences. The exhibit will remain on display through 2028.
“The Earth Information Center allows people to see our planet as we at NASA see it – an awe-inspiring and complex system of oceans, land, ice, atmosphere, and the life they support,” said Karen St. Germain, division director, Earth Sciences Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are thrilled that this collaboration puts NASA’s Earth science at the fingertips of Smithsonian visitors for the benefit of all.”
With more than two dozen missions in orbit, NASA observes our planet’s oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere, and measure how a change in one drives change in others. NASA develops new ways to build long-term data records of how our planet evolves. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world.
As part of NASA’s ongoing mission to better understand our home planet, NASA created the Earth Information Center which draws insights from across all NASA centers and its federal partners – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Agency for International Development, Environmental Protection Agency, and Federal Emergency Management Administration. It allows viewers to see how our home planet is changing and gives decision makers information to develop the tools they need to mitigate, adapt, and respond to those changes.
NASA’s Earth Information Center is a virtual and physical space designed to aid people to make informed decisions on Earth’s environment and climate. It provides easily accessible Earth information, enabling global understanding of our changing planet.
The expansion of the physical Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History makes it the second location in the Washington area. The first is located at NASA Headquarters in Washington at 300 E St., SW.
To learn more about the Earth Information Center, visit:
https://earth.gov
-end-
Meira Bernstein / Elizabeth Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 07, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Sols 4323-4324: Surfin’ Our Way out of the Channel
An image from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, looking back at the western edge of the Gediz Vallis deposit (top left) and the channel wall in the sulfate unit with unconsolidated sand/soil deposits in the foreground. This image was taken by Curiosity’s Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4321 — Martian day 4,321 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 2, 2024, at 02:13:27 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024
As a member of the group tasked with organizing our campaign to investigate the Gediz Vallis channel and deposit (informally known as the Channel Surfers), I was a little sad this morning to see that our drive had successfully taken us out of the channel, back onto the magnesium sulfate-bearing unit, into which the channel is incised. Our long-anticipated investigation of the channel has proven fruitful: Curiosity made the first definitive detection of elemental sulfur on Mars, and we have examined a variety of intriguing lithologies and relationships within the deposit over the last 4.5 months. It has been an exciting time, and I have particularly enjoyed riding this wave with my fellow Channel Surfers — a great team! Now to make sense of all the fantastic data we have collected.
We are not completely done looking at the channel and deposits though. We will be driving parallel to the western margin for a while to facilitate comparisons with what we observed from the east. Tosol we will image two areas of interest within the Gediz Vallis channel from our current vantage point with Mastcam and ChemCam long-distance RMI. But back to the sulfate unit — the team planned a number of activities to document the return to the sulfate unit. These include APXS and MAHLI of the nodular bedrock immediately in front of the rover (“Sub Dome”), ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam of another bedrock block (“Vert Lost Grove”), and Mastcam of the resistant bedrock ridge immediately adjacent to the Gediz Vallis channel (“Muah Mountain”).
Once the drive of about 25 meters (about 82 feet) hopefully executes successfully, Curiosity will look down and image the terrain between her front wheels with MARDI, acquire ChemCam LIBS on an autonomously selected target in the workspace, and then perform a series of atmospheric and environmental observations. These include a Mastcam tau to measure dust in the atmosphere, Navcam dust devil and suprahorizon movies, and a Navcam line-of-sight observation. The plan is rounded out with DAN, RAD, and REMS activities.
Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Oct 03, 2024 Related Terms
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