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By NASA
Illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft as it enters a heliocentric orbit. BioSentinel collected data during the May 2024 geomagnetic storm that hit Earth to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.NASA/Daniel Rutter In May 2024, a geomagnetic storm hit Earth, sending auroras across the planet’s skies in a once-in-a-generation light display. These dazzling sights are possible because of the interaction of coronal mass ejections – explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun – with Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from the radiation the Sun spits out during turbulent storms.
But what might happen to humans beyond the safety of Earth’s protection? This question is essential as NASA plans to send humans to the Moon and on to Mars. During the May storm, the small spacecraft BioSentinel was collecting data to learn more about the impacts of radiation in deep space.
“We wanted to take advantage of the unique stage of the solar cycle we’re in – the solar maximum, when the Sun is at its most active – so that we can continue to monitor the space radiation environment,” said Sergio Santa Maria, principal investigator for BioSentinel’s spaceflight mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “These data are relevant not just to the heliophysics community but also to understand the radiation environment for future crewed missions into deep space.”
BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently over 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting the Sun, where it weathered May’s coronal mass ejection without protection from a planetary magnetic field. Preliminary analysis of the data collected indicates that even though this was an extreme geomagnetic storm, that is, a storm that disturbs Earth’s magnetic field, it was considered just a moderate solar radiation storm, meaning it did not produce a great increase in hazardous solar particles. Therefore, such a storm did not pose any major issue to terrestrial lifeforms, even if they were unprotected as BioSentinel was. These measurements provide useful information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare on May 11, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares.NASA/SDO The original mission of BioSentinel was to study samples of yeast in deep space. Though these yeast samples are no longer alive, BioSentinel has adapted and continues to be a novel platform for studying the potential impacts of deep space conditions on life beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. The spacecraft’s biosensor instrument collects data about the radiation in deep space. Over a year and a half after its launch in Nov. 2022, BioSentinel retreats farther away from Earth, providing data of increasing value to scientists.
“Even though the biological part of the BioSentinel mission was completed a few months after launch, we believe that there is significant scientific value in continuing with the mission,” said Santa Maria. “The fact that the CubeSat continues to operate and that we can communicate with it, highlights the potential use of the spacecraft and many of its subsystems and components for future long-term missions beyond low Earth orbit.”
When we see auroras in the sky, they can serve as a stunning reminder of all the forces we cannot see that govern our cosmic neighborhood. As NASA and its partners seek to understand more about space environments, platforms like BioSentinel are essential to learn more about the risks of surviving beyond Earth’s sphere of protection.
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Last Updated Sep 26, 2024 Related Terms
General Ames Research Center Ames Research Center's Science Directorate Ames Space Biosciences CubeSats NASA Centers & Facilities Science & Research Small Satellite Missions View the full article
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By NASA
The crew of the Human Exploration Research Analog’s Campaign 7 Mission 1 clasp hands above their simulated space habitat’s elevator shaft.Credit: NASA NASA is funding 11 new studies to better understand how to best support the health and performance of crew members during long-duration spaceflight missions. The awardees will complete the studies on Earth without the need for samples and data from astronauts.
Together, the studies will help measure physiological and psychological responses to physical and mental challenges that astronauts may encounter during spaceflight. The projects will address numerous spaceflight risks related to team performance, communication, living environment, decision-making, blood flow, and brain health. With this information, NASA will better mitigate risks and protect astronaut health and performance during future long-duration missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
The 11 finalists were selected from 123 proposals in response to the 2024 Human Exploration Research Opportunities available through the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System. Selected proposals originate from 10 institutions, and the cumulative award totals about $14.6 million. The durations of the projects range from one to five years.
The following investigators and teams were selected:
Katya Arquilla, University Of Colorado, Boulder, “Investigating Countermeasures for Communication Delays through the Laboratory-based Exploration Mission Analog” Tripp Driskell, Florida Maxima Corporation, “CADMUS (Crew Adaptive Decision Making Under Stress) and Crew Decision Support System: Development, Validation, and Proof-of-Concept” Christopher Jones, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, “Predicting Operationally Meaningful Performance with Multivariate Biomarkers Using Advanced Algorithms” Jessica Marquez, NASA Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, California, “Enhancing Performance and Communication for Distributed Teams During Lunar Spacewalks” Shu-Chieh Wu, San Jose State University Research Foundation, California, “Lessening the Impact of Interface Inconsistency Through Goal-Directed Crew Operations” Erika Rashka, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, “Local Psychiatric Digital Phenotyping for Isolated, Constrained, and Extreme (ICE) Environments via Multimodal Sensing” Ana Diaz Artiles, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station, “Dose-response Curves of Cardiovascular and Ocular Variables During Graded Lower Body Negative Pressure in Microgravity Conditions Using Parabolic Flight” Theodora Chaspari, University Of Colorado, Boulder, “A Speech-Based Artificial Intelligence System for Predicting Team Functioning Degradation in HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) Missions” Ute Fischer, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, “Supporting Collaboration and Connectedness between Space and Ground at Lunar Latencies” Xiaohong Lu, Louisiana State University, Shreveport, “Space Exposome Converges on Genotoxic Stress to Accelerate Brain Aging and Countermeasures to Mitigate Acute and Late Central Nervous System Risks” Catherine Davis, Henry M. Jackson Foundation For The Advancement of Military Medicine, North Bethesda, Maryland, “NeuroSTAR (Neurobehavioral Changes Following Stressors and Radiation): Predicting Mission Impacts from Analogous Human and Rodent Endpoints” Proposals were independently reviewed by subject matter experts in academia, industry, and government using a dual anonymous peer-review process to assess scientific merit. NASA assessed the top scoring proposals for relevance to the agency’s human research roadmap before final selections were made.
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NASA’s Human Research Program pursues the best methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, and the International Space Station, the program scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research continues to drive NASA’s mission to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy as space exploration expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
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By NASA
Artists’ rendering of an imagined lunar architecture. Not intended to represent any elements under consideration by NASA. NASA Solicitation Number: NNH16ZCQ001K-Appendix-R
August 16, 2024 – Draft Solicitation Released
Solicitation Overview
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) intends to release a solicitation under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (Next STEP-2) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to seek industry-led concept definition and maturation studies that address lunar surface logistics and uncrewed surface mobility capabilities.
NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture defines the elements needed for long-term, human-led scientific discovery in deep space. NASA’s architecture approach distills agency-developed objectives into operational capabilities and elements that support science and exploration goals. Working with experts across the agency, industry, academia, and the international community, NASA continuously evolves that blueprint for crewed exploration, setting humanity on a path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
NASA has identified two gaps in its lunar architecture: an integrated surface logistics architecture and uncrewed surface mobility systems for lunar surface assets. The objective of these studies is to seek proposals from industry for the conduct of studies specifically focused on the envisioned logistics and mobility capabilities as stated in NASA’s 2024 Architecture Concept Review White Papers (Lunar Surface Cargo, Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs) and 2023 Architecture Concept Review White Paper (Lunar Logistics Drivers and Needs).
The Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) Strategy and Architecture Office (SAO) Lunar Logistics and Mobility Studies BAA (NextSTEP-2 Appendix R) is structured to meet the following goals:
Identify innovative strategies and concepts for logistics and mobility solutions. This could include a variety of topics, including but not limited to: synergies between logistics- and mobility-specific capabilities. identification of logistics- and mobility-specific needs that may be beyond current and/or planned commercial capabilities. innovative ideas for partnership business models, including intellectual property, asset ownership, and timing of asset delivery, and/or services to the government. the use of advanced robotic and/or autonomous capabilities. Evaluate and understand driving technology maturity, cost, and schedule drivers for meeting reference technical requirements, and/or drivers for validating a concept of operations. Obtain data that supports NASA’s ability to define, derive, and validate logistics and mobility requirements. Said data could inform a baseline mission concept that identifies options for and approaches to meeting logistics- and mobility-specific capabilities. This data could also contribute to the verification/validation of logistics and mobility approaches that could support NASA’s lunar architecture. To support lunar surface operations, NASA is seeking state-of-the-art industry studies that provide an approach for technology investigation/maturation and concept development for the following:
Logistics carriers – Logistics carriers of various sizes, volumes, and configurations and the environmental control of the cargo compartment. Logistics Handling and Offloading – Handling and offloading unpressurized cargo, carriers, fluids, and gases. Logistics Transfer – The transfer of cargo from the lunar surface to a pressurized volume, Staging, Storage and Tracking – Managing surface logistics inventory prior to, during, and after delivery to the final point of use. Trash Management – Trash management that contributes to mission sustainability and maximizes crew efficiency, Surface Cargo Transportation and Mobility Systems – The movement of cargo containers on the lunar surface after delivery by a lander. Integrated Strategy – An approach for an integrated assessment of the lunar surface logistics strategy and the transportation of the logistics to the pressurized habitation elements. This can also include the incorporation of the launch vehicle and cargo lander as part of the transportation. The resulting studies will ensure advancement of NASA’s development of lunar surface logistics and mobility technologies, capabilities, and concepts.
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By NASA
NASA and its international partners are sending scientific investigations to the International Space Station on Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply services mission. Flying aboard the company’s Cygnus spacecraft are tests of water recovery technology and a process to produce stem cells in microgravity, studies of the effects of spaceflight on microorganism DNA and liver tissue growth, and live science demonstrations for students. The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida by early August.
Read more about some of the research making the journey to the orbiting laboratory:
Testing materials for packed systems
Packed bed reactors are systems that use materials such as pellets or beads “packed” inside a structure to increase contact between different phases of fluids, such as liquid and gas. These reactors are used for various applications including water recovery, thermal management, and fuel cells. Scientists previously tested the performance in space of glass beads, Teflon beads, a platinum catalyst, and other packing materials. Packed Bed Reactor Experiment: Water Recovery Series evaluates gravity’s effects on eight additional test articles.
Results could help optimize the design and operation of packed bed reactors for water filtration and other systems in microgravity and on the Moon and Mars. Insights from the investigation also could lead to improvements in this technology for applications on Earth such as water purification and heating and cooling systems.
Hardware for the packed bed water recovery reactor experiment. The packing media is visible in the long clear tube.NASA Giving science a whirl
STEMonstrations Screaming Balloon uses a balloon, a penny, and a hexagonal nut (the kind used to secure a bolt) for a NASA STEMonstration performed and recorded by astronauts on the space station. The penny and the nut are whirled separately inside an inflated balloon to compare the sounds they make. Each STEMonstration illustrates a different scientific concept, such as centripetal force, and includes resources to help teachers further explore the topics with their students.
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps prepare for a STEMonstration on the International Space Station.NASA More, better stem cells
In-Space Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Clinical Application (InSPA-StemCellEX-H1) continues testing a technology to produce human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in space. HSCs give rise to blood and immune cells and are used in therapies for patients with certain blood diseases, autoimmune disorders, and cancers.
The investigation uses a system called BioServe In-space Cell Expansion Platform, or BICEP, which is designed to expand HSCs three hundredfold without the need to change or add new growth media, according to Louis Stodieck, principal investigator at the University of Colorado Boulder. “BICEP affords a streamlined operation to harvest and cryopreserve cells for return to Earth and delivery to a designated medical provider and patient,” said Stodieck.
Someone in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer such as leukemia about every three minutes. Treating these patients with transplanted stem cells requires a donor-recipient match and long-term repopulation of transplanted stem cells. This investigation demonstrates whether expanding stem cells in microgravity could generate far more continuously renewing stem cells.
“Our work eventually could lead to large-scale production facilities, with donor cells launched into orbit and cellular therapies returned to Earth,” said Stodieck.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio works on the first test of methods for expanding stem cells in space, StemCellEX-H Pathfinder. The InSPA-StemCellEX-H1 investigation continues this work.NASA DNA repair in space
Rotifer-B2, an ESA (European Space Agency) investigation, explores how spaceflight affects DNA repair mechanisms in a microscopic bdelloid rotifer, Adineta vaga. These tiny but complex organisms are known for their ability to withstand harsh conditions, including radiation doses 100 times higher than human cells can survive. The organisms are dried, exposed to high radiation levels on Earth, and rehydrated and cultured in an incubator on the station.
“Previous research indicates that rotifers repair their DNA in space with the same efficiency as on Earth, but that research provided only genetic data,” said Boris Hespeels, co-investigator, of Belgium’s Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics and Ecology. “This experiment will provide the first visual proof of survival and reproduction during spaceflight,” said Hespeels
Results could provide insights into how spaceflight affects the rotifer’s ability to repair sections of damaged DNA in a microgravity environment, and could improve the general understanding of DNA damage and repair mechanisms for applications on Earth.
A culture chamber for the Rotifer-B2 investigation aboard the International Space Station.NASA Growing liver tissue
Maturation of Vascularized Liver Tissue Construct studies the development in space of bioprinted liver tissue constructs that contain blood vessels. Constructs are tissue samples grown outside the body using bioengineering techniques. Scientists expect the microgravity environment to allow improved cellular distribution throughout tissue constructs.
“We are especially keen on accelerating the development of vascular networks,” said James Yoo, principal investigator, at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine. “The experimental data from microgravity will provide valuable insights that could enhance the biomanufacturing of vascularized tissues to serve as building blocks to engineer functional organs for transplantation.”
Image A shows a vascularized tissue construct with interconnected channels, and image B shows a bioprinted human liver tissue construct fabricated with a digital light projection printer. Image C shows the tissue construct connected to a perfusion system, a pump that moves fluid through it.Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. This mission also delivers plants for the APEX-09 investigation, which examines plant responses to stressful environments and could inform the design of bio-regenerative support systems on future space missions.
Melissa Gaskill
International Space Station Research Communications Team
NASA’s Johnson Space Center
Download high-resolution photos and videos of the research mentioned in this article.
Search this database of scientific experiments to learn more about those mentioned in this article.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Arctic is captured in this 2010 visualization using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite. A new study quantifies how climate-related processes, including the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, are driving polar motion. Another study looks at how polar meltwater is speeding the lengthening of Earth’s day.NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Researchers used more than 120 years of data to decipher how melting ice, dwindling groundwater, and rising seas are nudging the planet’s spin axis and lengthening days.
Days on Earth are growing slightly longer, and that change is accelerating. The reason is connected to the same mechanisms that also have caused the planet’s axis to meander by about 30 feet (10 meters) in the past 120 years. The findings come from two recent NASA-funded studies focused on how the climate-related redistribution of ice and water has affected Earth’s rotation.
This redistribution occurs when ice sheets and glaciers melt more than they grow from snowfall and when aquifers lose more groundwater than precipitation replenishes. These resulting shifts in mass cause the planet to wobble as it spins and its axis to shift location — a phenomenon called polar motion. They also cause Earth’s rotation to slow, measured by the lengthening of the day. Both have been recorded since 1900.
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The animation, exaggerated for clarity, illustrates how Earth’s rotation wobbles as the location of its spin axis, shown in orange, moves away from its geographic axis, which is shown in blue and represents the imaginary line between the planet’s geographic North and South poles.NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Analyzing polar motion across 12 decades, scientists attributed nearly all of the periodic oscillations in the axis’ position to changes in groundwater, ice sheets, glaciers, and sea levels. According to a paper published recently in Nature Geoscience, the mass variations during the 20th century mostly resulted from natural climate cycles.
The same researchers teamed on a subsequent study that focused on day length. They found that, since 2000, days have been getting longer by about 1.33 milliseconds per 100 years, a faster pace than at any point in the prior century. The cause: the accelerated melting of glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets due to human-caused greenhouse emissions. Their results were published July 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The common thread between the two papers is that climate-related changes on Earth’s surface, whether human-caused or not, are strong drivers of the changes we’re seeing in the planet’s rotation,” said Surendra Adhikari, a co-author of both papers and a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
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The location of Earth’s spin axis moved about 30 feet (10 meters) between 1900 and 2023, as shown in this animation. A recent study found that about 90% of the periodic oscillations in polar motion could be explained by melting ice sheets and glaciers, diminishing groundwater, and sea level rise.NASA/JPL-Caltech Decades of Polar Motion
In the earliest days, scientists tracked polar motion by measuring the apparent movement of stars. They later switched to very long baseline interferometry, which analyzes radio signals from quasars, or satellite laser ranging, which points lasers at satellites.
Researchers have long surmised that polar motion results from a combination of processes in Earth’s interior and at the surface. Less clear was how much each process shifts the axis and what kind of effect each exerts — whether cyclical movements that repeat in periods from weeks to decades, or sustained drift over the course of centuries or millennia.
For their paper, researchers used machine-learning algorithms to dissect the 120-year record. They found that 90% of recurring fluctuations between 1900 and 2018 could be explained by changes in groundwater, ice sheets, glaciers, and sea level. The remainder mostly resulted from Earth’s interior dynamics, like the wobble from the tilt of the inner core with respect to the bulk of the planet.
The patterns of polar motion linked to surface mass shifts repeated a few times about every 25 years during the 20th century, suggesting to the researchers that they were largely due to natural climate variations. Past papers have drawn connections between more recent polar motion and human activities, including one authored by Adhikari that attributed a sudden eastward drift of the axis (starting around 2000) to faster melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and groundwater depletion in Eurasia.
That research focused on the past two decades, during which groundwater and ice mass loss as well as sea level rise — all measured via satellites — have had strong connections to human-caused climate change.
“It’s true to a certain degree” that human activities factor into polar motion, said Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi, lead author of both papers and a doctoral student at the Swiss university ETH Zurich. “But there are natural modes in the climate system that have the main effect on polar motion oscillations.”
Longer Days
For the second paper, the authors used satellite observations of mass change from the GRACE mission (short for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and its follow-on GRACE-FO, as well as previous mass-balance studies that analyzed the contributions of changes in groundwater, ice sheets, and glaciers to sea level rise in the 20th century to reconstruct changes in the length of days due to those factors from 1900 to 2018.
Scientists have known through historical eclipse records that length of day has been growing for millennia. While almost imperceptible to humans, the lag must be accounted for because many modern technologies, including GPS, rely on precise timekeeping.
In recent decades, the faster melting of ice sheets has shifted mass from the poles toward the equatorial ocean. This flattening causes Earth to decelerate and the day to lengthen, similar to when an ice skater lowers and spreads their arms to slow a spin.
The authors noticed an uptick just after 2000 in how fast the day was lengthening, a change closely correlated with independent observations of the flattening. For the period from 2000 to 2018, the rate of length-of-day increase due to movement of ice and groundwater was 1.33 milliseconds per century — faster than at any period in the prior 100 years, when it varied from 0.3 to 1.0 milliseconds per century.
The lengthening due to ice and groundwater changes could decelerate by 2100 under a climate scenario of severely reduced emissions, the researchers note. (Even if emissions were to stop today, previously released gases — particularly carbon dioxide — would linger for decades longer.)
If emissions continue to rise, lengthening of day from climate change could reach as high as 2.62 milliseconds per century, overtaking the effect of the Moon’s pull on tides, which has been increasing Earth’s length of day by 2.4 milliseconds per century, on average. Called lunar tidal friction, the effect has been the primary cause of Earth’s day-length increase for billions for years.
“In barely 100 years, human beings have altered the climate system to such a degree that we’re seeing the impact on the very way the planet spins,” Adhikari said.
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Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 19, 2024 Related Terms
Earth Science Earth Earth Science Division Earth's Moon GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Explore More
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