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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s X-59 lights up the night sky with its unique Mach diamonds, also known as shock diamonds, during maximum afterburner testing at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. The test demonstrated the engine’s ability to generate the thrust required for supersonic flight, advancing NASA’s Quesst mission.Credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft took another successful step toward flight with the conclusion of a series of engine performance tests.
In preparation for the X-59’s planned first flight this year, NASA and Lockheed Martin successfully completed the aircraft’s engine run tests in January. The engine, a modified F414-GE-100 that powers the aircraft’s flight and integrated subsystems, performed to expectations during three increasingly complicated tests that ran from October through January at contractor Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
“We have successfully progressed through our engine ground tests as we planned,” said Raymond Castner, X-59 propulsion lead at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “We had no major showstoppers. We were getting smooth and steady airflow as predicted from wind tunnel testing. We didn’t have any structural or excessive vibration issues. And parts of the engine and aircraft that needed cooling were getting it.”
The tests began with seeing how the aircraft’s hydraulics, electrical, and environmental control systems performed when the engine was powered up but idling. The team then performed throttle checks, bringing the aircraft up to full power and firing its afterburner – an engine component that generates additional thrust – to maximum.
In preparation for the X-59’s planned first flight this year, NASA and Lockheed Martin successfully completed the aircraft’s engine run tests in January. Testing included electrical, hydraulics, and environmental control systems.
Credit: NASA/Lillianne Hammel A third test, throttle snaps, involved moving the throttle swiftly back and forth to validate that the engine responds instantly. The engine produces as much as 22,000 pounds of thrust to achieve a desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet.
The X-59’s engine, similar to those aboard the U.S. Navy’s F-18 Super Hornet, is mounted on top of the aircraft to reduce the level of noise reaching the ground. Many features of the X-59, including its 38-foot-long nose, are designed to lower the noise of a sonic boom to that of a mere “thump,” similar to the sound of a car door slamming nearby.
Next steps before first flight will include evaluating the X-59 for potential electromagnetic interference effects, as well as “aluminum bird” testing, during which data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. A series of taxi tests and other preparations will also take place before the first flight.
The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to commercial supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A painter applies a fresh coat of paint to the NASA “meatball” logo on the north façade of Glenn Research Center’s Flight Research Building, or hangar, in 2006.Credit: NASA/Marvin Smith On July 15, 2024, NASA’s logo is turning 65. The iconic symbol, known affectionately as “the meatball,” was developed at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (now called NASA Glenn). Employee James Modarelli, who started his career at the center as an artist and technical illustrator, was its chief designer.
The red, white, and blue design, which includes elements representing NASA’s space and aeronautics missions, became the official logo of the United States’ new space agency in 1959. A simplified version of NASA’s formal seal, the symbol has launched on rockets, flown to the Moon and beyond, and even adorns the International Space Station.
Along with its importance as a timeless symbol of exploration and discovery, the logo is also one of the world’s most recognized brand symbols. It gained its nickname in 1975 to differentiate it from NASA’s “worm” logotype. The “meatball” and these other NASA designs have made waves in pop culture.
"NASA's brand elements are wildly popular.”
Aimee crane
Merchandising and Branding Clearance Manager
“NASA’s brand elements are wildly popular,” said Aimee Crane, merchandising and branding clearance manager for the agency. “Every year, the agency receives requests to merchandise more than 10,000 NASA-inspired items.”
To mark the “meatball” logo’s birthday and highlight the center’s contributions to its design, NASA Glenn will host a free admission day at Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET on July 15. A birthday celebration and cake-cutting ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. and feature remarks from center leadership, a visit from the Modarelli family, and special presentations from the city and state.
Workers install the NASA “meatball” logo on the front of the Flight Research Building, or hangar, at Lewis Research Center (now NASA Glenn) in 1962. Credit: NASA A host of additional activities will celebrate the intersection of science and art. Visitors can meet NASA Glenn’s award-winning photographers and videographers, show off their artistic skills by participating in a coloring contest, hear more about the history and symbolism behind the logo, and learn about creative careers within the agency.
“It’s not just rocket scientists here at NASA."
KRISTEN PARKER
NASA Glenn Communications Director
“It’s not just rocket scientists here at NASA,” said Kristen Parker, NASA Glenn’s communications director. “As we celebrate the legacy of this iconic logo, we acknowledge the essential contributions of all the career fields involved in making the agency’s missions possible. We hope this inspires the next generation of students in every discipline to explore opportunities with NASA.”
NASA’s logo is everywhere. If you’re not in the Northeast Ohio area, join the logo’s birthday celebration online by engaging with NASA Glenn on social media and sharing photos of where you’ve seen the logo in your own life.
NASA Glenn designs and develops innovative technology that’s revolutionizing air travel, advancing space exploration, and improving life on Earth. Beyond designing the logo, the center has played a part in nearly every NASA mission since the agency’s inception and continues to have a crucial role in advancing the Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Meredith Patterson, front row, center right, poses with her teammates in the High-Powered Rocketry Club at North Carolina State University on the day they launched the rocket they built for NASA’s 2023 Student Launch. The experience and knowledge Patterson gained from her years participating in the annual competition helped pave the way for a career at NASA after graduation. High-Powered Rocketry Club at NC State By Jessica Barnett
Sometimes, all it takes is a few years and the right people to completely change a person’s career trajectory. One such example is Meredith Patterson, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who went from knowing little to nothing about rockets to being part of the team that is working to put humans back on the Moon.
She credits her success in large part to NASA’s Student Launch, which not only helped her uncover her passion for aerospace engineering but gave her the knowledge and experience she needed to get where she is today.
The annual Student Launch competition invites student teams from across the U.S. to spend nine months designing, building, and testing a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload. The hands-on, research-based engineering activity culminates each year in a final launch in Huntsville. This year’s challenge conclusion is set for April 10-14, with the final launch date set for April 13 at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama.
While Student Launch is open to students as young as sixth grade, Patterson was in her junior year of high school when she learned about the competition during a tour of North Carolina State University.
“When I walked into the rocketry lab there, I knew then, however many years it was going to take, I wanted to be the person who was able to run that and help put together everything for us to be successful in Student Launch,” Patterson said.
Meredith Patterson, then-freshman at North Carolina State University, assembles the competition vehicle used by the school’s high-powered rocketry club in this photo from the NASA’s 2019 Student Launch. Patterson was a member of the club and a regular participant in Student Launch for five years before graduating and turning her experience into a full-time career as an aerospace engineer at NASA. High-Powered Rocketry Club at NC State She attended North Carolina State for five years, participating in each year’s Student Launch competition and leading the team to a fourth-place win during her final year. She received her Level I and Level II certifications from Tripoli Rocketry Association through Student Launch, and she was able to connect with mentors from Tripoli and the National Rocketry Association that helped her get the hands-on experience and technical know-how she believes are key to success in the aerospace industry.
“My leadership skills grew, my system engineering skills grew, and my technical writing skills grew,” Patterson said. “Having mentors through the competition allowed me to ask questions and learn on the technical side of things, too. I think I use more information from Student Launch day to day than from almost any of my classes in college.”
She said attending an engineering camp at 16 years old first unlocked her interest in spaceflight and rocketry, but it was through Student Launch that she got to really dive in and deepen her passion.
“It’s crazy to think that less than 10 years ago, I had never even built a rocket, and now I can build Level II-sized rockets on my own and I’m actively working on the biggest solid rocket boosters in the world,” Patterson said. “Just in the past year, I’ve gone from the L-class motor that we used for Student Launch to casting 11-inch motors to now actively watching the casting of the SLS (Space Launch System) boosters.”
Meredith Patterson, a former competitor in NASA’s Student Launch Challenge, now works as an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.NASA Student Launch is part of NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges. Seventy teams representing 24 states and Puerto Rico were selected to compete in the 2024 Student Launch Challenge.
Marshall hosts the Student Launch challenge with management support provided by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement – Southeast Region. Funding is provided, in part, by NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate and NASA’s Next Gen STEM project.
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Last Updated Feb 27, 2024 Related Terms
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NASA Student Launch Challenge
Middle/high school and college-level student teams design, build, test, and launch a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload.
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By NASA
The radio antennas of the NASA’s Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex are located near the Australian capital. It’s one of three Deep Space Network complexes around the world that keep the agency in contact with over 40 space missions. The DSN marks its 60th anniversary in December 2023.NASA/JPL-Caltech A single radio antenna dish stands alone at the Deep Space Network’s Canberra complex in this photo from 1969, six years after the DSN was founded. Canberra now consists of three 34-meter (112-foot) antennas and one 70-meter (230-foot) antenna.NASA/JPL-Caltech The agency’s DSN provides critical communications and navigation services to dozens of space missions, and it’s being modernized to support dozens more.
NASA’s Deep Space Network marks its 60th year on Dec. 24. In continuous operations since 1963, the DSN is what makes it possible for NASA to communicate with spacecraft at or beyond the Moon. The dazzling galactic images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the cutting-edge science data being sent back from Mars by the Perseverance rover, and the historic images sent from the far side of the Moon by Artemis I – they all reached Earth via the network’s giant radio dish antennas.
During 2024, these and other historic contributions from the past 60 years will be celebrated by NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, which manages and directs the ground-based facilities and services that the DSN provides.
More than 40 missions depend on the network, which is expected to support twice that number in the coming years. That’s why NASA is looking to the future by expanding and modernizing this critical global infrastructure with new dishes, new technologies, and new approaches.
“The DSN is the heart of NASA – it has the vital job of keeping the data flowing between Earth and space,” said Philip Baldwin, acting director of the network services division for SCaN at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “But to support our growing portfolio of robotic missions, and now the human Artemis missions to the Moon, we need to push forward with the next phase of DSN modernization.”
Meeting Added Demands
Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for SCaN, the DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. To ensure those spacecraft can always connect with Earth, the DSN’s 14 antennas are divided between three complexes spaced equally around the world – in Goldstone, California; Canberra, Australia; and Madrid, Spain.
The Deep Space Network is much more than a deep space messaging service. Learn more about how the DSN carries out radio and gravity science experiments throughout the solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech To make sure the network can maximize coverage between so many missions, schedulers work with DSN team members to secure network support for critical operations. For more efficiency, NASA has also changed how the network is operated: With a protocol called “Follow the Sun,” each complex takes turns running the entire network during their day shift and then hands off control to the next complex at the end of the day in that region – essentially, a global relay race that takes place every 24 hours. The cost savings, in turn, help fund DSN enhancements.
At the same time, NASA has been busy making improvements to increase capacity, from upgrading and adding dishes to developing new technologies that will help support more spacecraft and dramatically increase the amount of data that can be delivered.
One such technology is laser, or optical, communications, which could enable more data to be packed into transmissions. “Laser communications could transform how NASA communicates with faraway space missions,” said Amy Smith, deputy project manager for the DSN at JPL.
After successfully testing the technique in Earth orbit and out to the Moon, NASA is currently using the DSOC (Deep Space Optical Communications) technology demonstration to test laser communications from ever-greater distances. Riding aboard the agency’s Psyche mission, DSOC has already sent video via laser to Earth from 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away and aims to prove that high-bandwidth data can be sent from as far away as Mars.
“NASA is proving that laser communication is viable, so now we are looking at ways to build optical terminals inside the existing radio antennas,” said Smith. “These hybrid antennas will be able to still transmit and receive radio frequencies but will also support optical frequencies.”
See the missions the DSN is communicating with now Technological Heritage
New technology is something that NASA and the DSN have embraced from their inception. The network’s roots extend to 1958, when JPL was contracted by the U.S. Army to deploy portable radio tracking stations to receive telemetry of the first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, which JPL built. A few days after Explorer 1’s launch, but before the creation of NASA later that year, JPL was tasked with figuring out what would be needed to create an unprecedented telecommunications network to support future deep space missions, beginning with the early Pioneer missions.
After NASA formed in 1958, JPL’s ground stations were named Deep Space Information Facilities, and they operated largely independently from one another until 1963. That’s when the DSN was officially founded and the ground stations were connected to JPL’s new network control center, which was nearing completion. Called the Space Flight Operations Facility, that building remains the “Center of the Universe” through which data from the DSN’s three global complexes flows.
“We have six decades driving technological innovation, supporting hundreds of missions that have made countless discoveries about our planet and the universe it inhabits,” said Bradford Arnold, deputy director for the Interplanetary Network at JPL. “Our amazing workforce that continues to drive that innovation today forms a steadfast foundation upon which we can build the next 60 years of space exploration and scientific advancement.”
For more information about the DSN, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/
News Media Contact
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
2023-187
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Last Updated Dec 22, 2023 Related Terms
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By USH
A ball of light turns into black sphere over Seattle, Washington and a black unknown object flying past planes over Dana Point, California.
But first a remarkable image captured by the Mars Perseverance Rover on July 7, 2021 (SOL135) showing an unknown metallic box between the rocks. If the metallic box is not from NASA then who left it?
Sources: Mars Perseverance Rover Sol 135 https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/NRF_0135_0678933980_477ECM_N0051388NCAM02135_04_195J www.mufon.com
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