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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Science Activation GLOBE Mission Earth Supports… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
GLOBE Mission Earth Supports Career Technical Education
The NASA Science Activation program’s GLOBE Mission EARTH (GME) project is forging powerful connections between career technical education (CTE) programs and real-world science, inspiring students across the United States to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
GME is a collaborative effort between NASA scientists, educators, and schools that brings NASA Earth science and the GLOBE Program into classrooms to support hands-on, inquiry-based learning. GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) is an international science and education program that provides students and the public with the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process, contributing meaningfully to our understanding of the Earth system.
By connecting students directly to environmental research and NASA data, GME helps make science more relevant, engaging, and applicable to students’ futures. In CTE programs—where project-based and work-based learning are key instructional strategies—GME’s integration of GLOBE protocols offers students the chance to develop not only technical skills, but also essential data literacy and professional competencies like collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. These cross-cutting skills are valuable across a wide range of industries, from agriculture and advanced manufacturing to natural resources and public safety.
The real-world, hands-on approach of CTE makes it an ideal setting for implementing GLOBE to support STEM learning across industries. At Skyline High School in Oakland, California, for example, GLOBE has been embedded in multiple courses within the school’s Green Energy Pathway, originally launched by GLOBE partner Tracy Ostrom. Over the past decade, nearly 1,000 students have participated in GLOBE activities at Skyline. Many of these students describe their experiences with environmental data collection and interactions with NASA scientists as inspiring and transformative. Similarly, at Toledo Technology Academy, GME is connecting students with NASA science and renewable energy projects—allowing them to study how solar panels impact their local environment and how weather conditions affect wind energy generation.
To expand awareness of how GLOBE can enhance CTE learning and career preparation, WestEd staff Svetlana Darche and Nico Janik presented at the Educating for Careers Conference on March 3, 2025, in Sacramento, California. This event, sponsored by the California chapter of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), brought together over 2,600 educators dedicated to equipping students with the tools they need to succeed in an evolving job market. Darche and Janik’s session, titled “Developing STEM Skills While Contributing to Science,” showcased GLOBE’s role in work-based learning and introduced new federal definitions from the Carl D. Perkins Act (Perkins V) that emphasize:
Interactions with industry professionals A direct link to curriculum and instruction First-hand engagement with real-world tasks in a given career field GLOBE’s approach to scientific data collection aligns perfectly with these criteria. Janik led 40 educators through a hands-on experience using the GLOBE Surface Temperature Protocol, demonstrating how students investigate the Urban Heat Island Effect while learning critical technical and analytical skills. By collecting and analyzing real-world data, students gain firsthand experience with the tools and methods used by scientists, bridging the gap between classroom learning and future career opportunities.
Through GME’s work with CTE programs, students are not only learning science—they are doing science. These authentic experiences inspire, empower, and prepare students for careers where data literacy, scientific inquiry, and problem-solving are essential. With ongoing collaborations between GLOBE, NASA, and educators nationwide, the next generation of STEM professionals is already taking shape—one real-world investigation at a time.
GME is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC54A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
GreenEnergyPathway presenting the Green Energy Pathway CTE program. Share
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Last Updated Apr 11, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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3 Min Read NASA’s IMAP Arrives at NASA Marshall For Testing in XRCF
On March 18, NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) arrived at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for thermal vacuum testing at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, which simulates the harsh conditions of space.
The IMAP mission is a modern-day celestial cartographer that will map the solar system by studying the heliosphere, a giant bubble created by the Sun’s solar wind that surrounds our solar system and protects it from harmful interstellar radiation.
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NASA’s IMAP mission being loaded into the thermal vacuum chamber of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s X-Ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) in Huntsville, Alabama. IMAP arrived at Marshall March 18 and was loaded into the chamber March 19.Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton/Ed Whitman Testing performed in the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility will help to assess the spacecraft before its journey toward the Sun. The IMAP mission will orbit the Sun at a location called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), which is about one million miles from Earth towards the Sun. From this location, IMAP can measure the local solar wind and scan the distant heliosphere without background from planets and their magnetic fields. The mission will use its suite of ten instruments to map the boundary of the heliosphere, analyze the composition of interstellar particles that make it through, and investigate how particles change as they move through the solar system.
Furthermore, IMAP will maintain a continuous broadcast of near real-time space weather data from five instruments aboard IMAP that will be used to test new space weather prediction models and improve our understanding of effects impacting our human exploration of space.
Team members from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, install IMAP into the XRCF’s chamber dome before the start of the thermal vacuum test. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton/Ed Whitman While inside the Marshall facility, the spacecraft will undergo dramatic temperature changes to simulate the environment during launch, on the journey toward the Sun, and at its final orbiting point. The testing facility has multiple capabilities including a large thermal vacuum chamber which simulates the harsh conditions of space such as extreme temperatures and the near-total absence of an atmosphere. Simulating these conditions before launch allow scientists and engineers to identify successes and potential failures in the design of the spacecraft.
Team members from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama work to close the chamber door of the XRCF for IMAP testing. The chamber is 20 feet in diameter and 60 feet long making it one of the largest across NASA. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton/Ed Whitman “The X-ray and Cryogenic Facility was an ideal testing location for IMAP given the chamber’s size, availability, and ability to meet or exceed the required test parameters including strict contamination control, shroud temperature, and vacuum level,” said Jeff Kegley, chief of Marshall’s Science Test Branch.
The facility’s main chamber is 20 feet in diameter and 60 feet long, making it the 5th largest thermal vacuum chamber at NASA. It’s the only chamber that is adjoined to an ISO 6 cleanroom — a controlled environment that limits the number and size of airborne particles to minimize contamination.
The IMAP mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than September.
NASA’s IMAP mission was loaded into NASA Marshall’s XRCF thermal vacuum chamber where the spacecraft will undergo testing such as dramatic temperature changes to simulate the harsh environment of space. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton/Ed Whitman Learn More about IMAP Media Contact:
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville, Alabama
256.544.0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 11, 2025 Related Terms
Marshall Space Flight Center Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Marshall Heliophysics & Planetary Science Marshall Science Research & Projects Marshall X-Ray & Cryogenic Facility The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Explore More
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By NASA
The airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance (air-LUSI) instrument is moved across the hangar floor by robotic engineer Alexander McCafferty-Leroux ,from right to left, co-investigator Dr. John Woodward, NIST astronomer Dr. Susana Deustua, air-LUSI chief system engineer Dr. Kathleen “Kat” Scanlon, and members of the ER-2 ground crew at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in March 2025.NASA/Genaro Vavuris Flying high above the clouds and moon-gazing may sound like a scene from a timeless romance, but NASA did just that in the name of Earth science research. In March 2025 pilots took the agency’s ER-2 science aircraft on a series of night flights over NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, as the Moon increased in visible size. For those few nights, the high-flying plane was converted into a one-of-a-kind airborne lunar observatory.
The Airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, mission observed the Moon at different phases and measured the sunlight reflected by the lunar surface. Specifically, the instrument tracks the amount of light reflected at different wavelengths. This information enables scientists to use the Moon as a calibration tool for Earth-observing sensors.
As an “absolute reference, the Moon also becomes the perfect benchmark for satellites to consistently and accurately measure processes on Earth,” said Kevin Turpie, air-LUSI’s principal investigator and a researcher based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This helps scientists to improve the precision of many different measurements, including data on weather patterns, vegetation growth, and ocean conditions.
As the highest-flying platform for airborne science, the ER-2 can fly the air-LUSI instrument in the stratosphere, above 95% of the atmosphere. Data collected at an altitude nearing 70,000 feet are highly accurate because the air is predominantly clear of the gases and particles found in the lower atmosphere that can interfere with measurements.
The ER-2 aircraft is parked in a hangar at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, in March 2025. The plane is prepared for takeoff to support the airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, mission.NASA/Genaro Vavuris “To date, air-LUSI measurements of the Moon are the most accurate ever made,” said Kelsey Bisson, the NASA program scientist supporting the mission. “Air-LUSI data can advance our ability to understand the Earth and our weather, and they provide a new way to calibrate satellites that can result in cost savings.”
The quality of these data has transformative implications for satellite and Earth observing systems. The improved accuracy and enhanced ability provided by air-LUSI data flown on the ER-2 reduces the need for onboard reference devices, effectually cutting satellite costs.
The air-LUSI project is a collaboration between scientists and engineers from NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and McMaster University in Ontario.
The ER-2 ground crew Wissam Habbal, left, and Dr. Kevin Turpie, airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance (air-LUSI) principal investigator, guide delicate fiber optic and electric cabling into place while uploading the air-LUSI instrument onto the ER-2 aircraft in March 2025 at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.NASA/Genaro Vavuris “The collective effort of the American and Canadian team members offers an opportunity for truly exciting engineering and science collaboration,” said Andrew Gadsden, associate professor and associate chair for graduate studies in mechanical engineering at McMaster University, and co-investigator on the air-LUSI project. The McMaster team developed the Autonomous Robotic Telescope Mount Instrument System and High-Altitude Aircraft Mounted Robotic (HAAMR) telescope mount, which support the air-LUSI system.
Dr. John Woodward, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and co-investigator on the airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance (air-LUSI) mission, prepares the instrument for upload onto the ER-2 aircraft in March 2025 at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.NASA/Genaro Vavuris The HAAMR telescope mount was integrated onto the ER-2 and flown for the first time during the science flights in March. This new lunar tracking system is contributing to what John Woodward IV, co-investigator for air-LUSI, called the “highest accuracy measurements” of moonlight. To improve Earth observation technology, air-LUSI represents an important evolutionary step.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This mosaic showing the Martian surface outside of Jezero Crater was taken by NASA’s Perseverance on Dec. 25, 2024, at the site where the rover cored a sample dubbed “Silver Mountain” from a rock likely formed during Mars’ earliest geologic period.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS The diversity of rock types along the rim of Jezero Crater offers a wide glimpse of Martian history.
Scientists with NASA’s Perseverance rover are exploring what they consider a veritable Martian cornucopia full of intriguing rocky outcrops on the rim of Jezero Crater. Studying rocks, boulders, and outcrops helps scientists understand the planet’s history, evolution, and potential for past or present habitability. Since January, the rover has cored five rocks on the rim, sealing samples from three of them in sample tubes. It’s also performed up-close analysis of seven rocks and analyzed another 83 from afar by zapping them with a laser. This is the mission’s fastest science-collection tempo since the rover landed on the Red Planet more than four years ago.
Perseverance climbed the western wall of Jezero Crater for 3½ months, reaching the rim on Dec. 12, 2024, and is currently exploring a roughly 445-foot-tall (135-meter-tall) slope the science team calls “Witch Hazel Hill.” The diversity of rocks they have found there has gone beyond their expectations.
“During previous science campaigns in Jezero, it could take several months to find a rock that was significantly different from the last rock we sampled and scientifically unique enough for sampling,” said Perseverance’s project scientist, Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But up here on the crater rim, there are new and intriguing rocks everywhere the rover turns. It has been all we had hoped for and more.”
One of Perseverance’s hazard cameras captured the rover’s coring drill collecting the “Main River” rock sample on “Witch Hazel Hill” on March 10, 2025, the 1,441st Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech That’s because Jezero Crater’s western rim contains tons of fragmented once-molten rocks that were knocked out of their subterranean home billions of years ago by one or more meteor impacts, including possibly the one that produced Jezero Crater. Perseverance is finding these formerly underground boulders juxtaposed with well-preserved layered rocks that were “born” billions of years ago on what would become the crater’s rim. And just a short drive away is a boulder showing signs that it was modified by water nestled beside one that saw little water in its past.
Oldest Sample Yet?
Perseverance collected its first crater-rim rock sample, named “Silver Mountain,” on Jan. 28. (NASA scientists informally nickname Martian features, including rocks and, separately, rock samples, to help keep track of them.) The rock it came from, called “Shallow Bay,” most likely formed at least 3.9 billion years ago during Mars’ earliest geologic period, the Noachian, and it may have been broken up and recrystallized during an ancient meteor impact.
About 360 feet (110 meters) away from that sampling site is an outcrop that caught the science team’s eye because it contains igneous minerals crystallized from magma deep in the Martian crust. (Igneous rocks can form deep underground from magma or from volcanic activity at the surface, and they are excellent record-keepers — particularly because mineral crystals within them preserve details about the precise moment they formed.) But after two coring attempts (on Feb. 4 and Feb. 8) fizzled due to the rock being so crumbly, the rover drove about 520 feet (160 meters) northwest to another scientifically intriguing rock, dubbed “Tablelands.”
Data from the rover’s instruments indicates that Tablelands is made almost entirely of serpentine minerals, which form when large amounts of water react with iron- and magnesium-bearing minerals in igneous rock. During this process, called serpentinization, the rock’s original structure and mineralogy change, often causing it to expand and fracture. Byproducts of the process sometimes include hydrogen gas, which can lead to the generation of methane in the presence of carbon dioxide. On Earth, such rocks can support microbial communities.
Coring Tablelands went smoothly. But sealing it became an engineering challenge.
Sealing the “Green Gardens” sample — collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from a rock dubbed “Tablelands” along the rim of Jezero Crater on Feb. 16, 2025 — pre-sented an engineering challenge. The sample was finally sealed on March 2.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Flick Maneuver
“This happened once before, when there was enough powdered rock at the top of the tube that it interfered with getting a perfect seal,” said Kyle Kaplan, a robotics engineer at JPL. “For Tablelands, we pulled out all the stops. Over 13 sols,” or Martian days, “we used a tool to brush out the top of the tube 33 times and made eight sealing attempts. We even flicked it a second time.”
During a flick maneuver, the sample handling arm — a little robotic arm in the rover’s belly — presses the tube against a wall inside the rover, then pulls the tube away, causing it to vibrate. On March 2, the combination of flicks and brushings cleaned the tube’s top opening enough for Perseverance to seal and store the serpentine-laden rock sample.
Eight days later, the rover had no issues sealing its third rim sample, from a rock called “Main River.” The alternating bright and dark bands on the rock were like nothing the science team had seen before.
Up Next
Following the collection of the Main River sample, the rover has continued exploring Witch Hazel Hill, analyzing three more rocky outcrops (“Sally’s Cove,” “Dennis Pond,” and “Mount Pearl”). And the team isn’t done yet.
“The last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team, and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us,” said Stack. “We’ll use all the rover data gathered recently to decide if and where to collect the next sample from the crater rim. Crater rims — you gotta love ’em.”
More About Perseverance
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio and the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-051
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Last Updated Apr 10, 2025 Related Terms
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