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By NASA
In the unforgiving lunar environment, the possibility of an astronaut crewmember becoming incapacitated due to unforeseen circumstances (injury, medical emergency, or a mission-related accident) is a critical concern, starting with the upcoming Artemis III mission, where two astronaut crewmembers will explore the Lunar South Pole. The Moon’s surface is littered with rocks ranging from 0.15 to 20 meters in diameter and craters spanning 1 to 30 meters wide, making navigation challenging even under optimal conditions. The low gravity, unique lighting conditions, extreme temperatures, and availability of only one person to perform the rescue, further complicate any rescue efforts. Among the critical concerns is the safety of astronauts during Extravehicular Activities (EVAs). If an astronaut crewmember becomes incapacitated during a mission, the ability to return them safely and promptly to the human landing system is essential. A single crew member should be able to transport an incapacitated crew member distances up to 2 km and a slope of up to 20 degrees on the lunar terrain without the assistance of a lunar rover. This pressing issue opens the door for innovative solutions. We are looking for a cutting-edge design that is low in mass and easy to deploy, enabling one astronaut crewmember to safely transport their suited (343 kg (~755lb)) and fully incapacitated partner back to the human landing system. The solution must perform effectively in the Moon’s extreme South Pole environment and operate independently of a lunar rover. Your creativity and expertise could bridge this critical gap, enhancing the safety measures for future lunar explorers. By addressing this challenge, you have the opportunity to contribute to the next “giant leap” in human space exploration.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Note: The following article is part of a series highlighting propulsion testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. To access the entire series, please visit: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/propulsion-powering-space-dreams/.
Crews at NASA’s Stennis Space Center work Jan. 21-22, 2020, to install the first flight core stage of NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on the B-2 side of the Thad Cochran Test Stand for a Green Run test series. Operations required crews to lift the massive core stage from a horizontal position into a vertical orientation, a procedure known as “break over.” Once the stage was oriented in a horizontal position on the night of Jan. 21, crews tied it in place to await favorable wind conditions. The following morning, crews began the process of raising, positioning, and securing the stage on the stand. NASA/Stennis The future is now at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi – at least when it comes to helping power the next great era of human space exploration.
NASA Stennis is contributing directly to the agency’s effort to land the first woman, the first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon – for the benefit of all humanity. Work at the nation’s largest – and premier – propulsion test site will help power SLS (Space Launch System) rockets on future Artemis missions to enable long-term lunar exploration and prepare for the next giant leap of sending the first astronauts to Mars.
“We play a critical role to ensure the safety of astronauts on future Artemis missions,” NASA Stennis Space Center Director John Bailey said. “Our dedicated workforce is excited and proud to be part of NASA’s return to the Moon.”
NASA Stennis achieved an RS-25 testing milestone in April at the Fred Haise Test Stand. Completion of the successful RS-25 certification series provided critical data for L3Harris (formerly known as Aerojet Rocketdyne) to produce new RS-25 engines, using modern processes and manufacturing techniques. The engines will help power SLS rockets beginning with Artemis V.
The first four Artemis missions are using modified space shuttle main engines also tested at NASA Stennis. For each Artemis mission, four RS-25 engines, along with a pair of solid rocket boosters, power the SLS rocket to produce more than 8.8 million pounds of total combined thrust at liftoff.
NASA’s powerful SLS rocket is the only rocket that can send the Orion spacecraft, astronauts, and cargo to the Moon on a single mission.
Following key test infrastructure upgrades near the Fred Haise Test Stand, NASA Stennis will be ready for more RS-25 engine testing. NASA has awarded L3Harris contracts to provide 24 new engines, supporting SLS launches for Artemis V through Artemis IX.
“Every RS-25 engine that launches Artemis to space will be tested at NASA Stennis,” said Joe Schuyler, director of the NASA Stennis Engineering and Test Directorate. “We take pride in helping to power this nation’s human space exploration program. We also take great care in testing these engines because they are launching astronauts to space. We always have safety in mind.”
NASA’s Stennis Space Center conducts a successful hot fire of the first flight core stage of NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on the B-2 side of the Thad Cochran Test Stand on March 18, 2021. NASA employees, as well as NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Zena Cardman, watched the milestone moment. The hot fire of more than eight minutes marked the culmination of a Green Run series of tests on the stage and its integrated systems. NASA/Stennis In addition to RS-25 testing, preparations are ongoing at the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-2) for future testing of the agency’s new exploration upper stage. The more powerful SLS second stage, which will send astronauts and cargo to deep space aboard the Orion spacecraft, is being built at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
Before its first flight, the NASA Stennis test team will conduct a series of Green Run tests on the new stage’s integrated systems to demonstrate it is ready to fly. Crews completed installation of a key component for testing the upper stage in October. The lift and installation of the 103-ton interstage simulator component, measuring 31 feet in diameter and 33 feet tall, provided crews best practices for moving and handling the actual flight hardware when it arrives to NASA Stennis.
The exploration upper stage Green Run test series will culminate with a hot fire of the stage’s four RL10 engines, made by L3Harris, the lead SLS engines contractor.
“All of Mississippi shares in our return to the Moon with the next great era of human space exploration going through NASA Stennis,” Bailey said. “Together, we can be proud of the state’s contributions to NASA’s great mission.”
For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
Stennis Space Center – NASA
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Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 EditorNASA Stennis CommunicationsContactC. Lacy Thompsoncalvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov / (228) 688-3333LocationStennis Space Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Teams with NASA and Lockheed Martin prepare to conduct testing on NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, in the altitude chamber inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Lockheed Martin/David Wellendorf Teams lifted NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II test flight out of the Final Assembly and System Testing cell and moved it to the altitude chamber to complete further testing on Nov. 6 inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Engineers returned the spacecraft to the altitude chamber, which simulates deep space vacuum conditions, to complete the remaining test requirements and provide additional data to augment data gained during testing earlier this summer.
The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman, as well as CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back.
Image credit: Lockheed Martin/David Wellendorf
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By NASA
NASA/Carla Thomas NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, in this image from Oct. 30, 2024.
The engine-run tests, which began Oct. 30, allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. In previous tests, the X-59 used external sources for power. The engine-run tests set the stage for the next phase of the experimental aircraft’s progress toward flight.
After the engine runs, the X-59 team will move to aluminum bird testing, where data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. The team will then proceed with a series of taxi tests, where the aircraft will be put in motion on the ground. These tests will be followed by final preparations for first flight.
Image credit: NASA/Carla Thomas
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By NASA
Bone cellsNASA Malcolm O’Malley and his mom sat nervously in the doctor’s office awaiting the results of his bloodwork. This was no ordinary check-up. In fact, this appointment was more urgent and important than the SATs the seventeen-year-old, college hopeful had spent months preparing for and was now missing in order to understand his symptoms.
But when the doctor shared the results – he had off-the-charts levels of antibodies making him deathly allergic to shellfish – O’Malley realized he had more questions than answers. Like: Why is my immune system doing this? How is it working? Why is it reacting so severely and so suddenly (he’d enjoyed shrimp less than a year ago)? And why does the only treatment – an injection of epinephrine – have nothing to do with the immune system, when allergies appear to be an immune system problem? Years later, O’Malley would look to answer some of these questions while interning in the Space Biosciences Research Branch at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
“Anaphylaxis is super deadly and the only treatment for it is epinephrine; and I remember thinking, ‘how is this the best we have?’ because epinephrine does not actually treat the immune system at all – it’s just adrenaline,” said O’Malley, who recently returned to his studies as a Ph.D. student of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville. “And there’s a thousand side effects, like heart attacks and stroke – I remember thinking ‘these are worse than the allergy!’”
O’Malley’s curiosity and desire to better understand the mechanisms and connections between what triggers different immune system reactions combined with his interest in integrating datasets into biological insights inspired him to shift his major from computer science to biomedical engineering as an undergraduate student. With his recent allergy diagnosis and a lifelong connection to his aunt who worked at the UVA Heart and Vascular Center, O’Malley began to build a bridge between the immune system and heart health. By the time he was a senior in college, he had joined the Cardiac Systems Biology Lab, and had chosen to focus his capstone project on better understanding the role of neutrophils, a specific type of immune cell making up 50 to 70% of the immune system, that are involved in cardiac inflammation in high blood pressure and after heart attacks.
jsc2022e083018 (10/26/2022) — A preflight image of beating cardiac spheroid composed of iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs), endothelial cells (ECs), and cardiac fibroblasts (CFs). These cells are incubated and put under the microscope in space as part of the Effect of Microgravity on Drug Responses Using Heart Organoids (Cardinal Heart 2.0) investigation. Image courtesy of Drs. Joseph Wu, Dilip Thomas and Xu Cao, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute “The immune system is involved in everything,” O’Malley says. “Anytime there’s an injury – a paper cut, a heart attack, you’re sick – the immune system is going to be the first to respond; and neutrophils are the first responders.”
O’Malley’s work to determine what regulates the immune system’s interrelated responses – like how one cell could affect other cells or immune processes downstream – provided a unique opportunity for him to support multiple interdisciplinary NASA biological and physical sciences research projects during his 10-week internship at NASA Ames over the summer of 2024. O’Malley applied machine learning techniques to the large datasets the researchers were using from experiments and specimens collected over many years to help identify possible causes of inflammation seen in the heart, brain, and blood, as well as changes seen in bones, metabolism, the immune system, and more when humans or other model organisms are exposed to decreased gravity, social isolation, and increased radiation. These areas are of keen interest to NASA due to the risks to human health inherent in space exploration and the agency’s plans to send humans on long-duration missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
“It’s exciting that we just never know what’s going to happen, how the immune system is going to react until it’s already been activated or challenged in some way,” said O’Malley. “I’m particularly interested in the adaptive immune system because it’s always evolving to meet new challenges; whether it’s a pandemic-level virus, bacteria or something on a mission to Mars, our bodies are going to have some kind of adaptive immune response.”
During his NASA internship, O’Malley applied a statistical analysis techniques to plot and make more sense of the massive amounts of life sciences data. From there, researchers could find out which proteins, out of hundreds, or attributes – like differences in sex – are related to which behaviors or outcomes. For example, through O’Malley’s analysis, researchers were able to better pinpoint the proteins involved in inflammation of the brain that may play a protective role in spatial memory and motor control during and after exposure to radiation – and how we might be able to prevent or mitigate those impacts during future space missions and even here on Earth.
As someone who’s both black and white, representation is important to me. It’s inspiring to think there will be people like me on the Moon – and that I’m playing a role in making this happen
Malcolm o'malley
Former NASA Intern
“I had this moment where I realized that since my internship supports NASA’s Human Research Program that means the work I’m doing directly applies to Artemis, which is sending the first woman and person of color to the Moon,” reflected O’Malley. “As someone who’s both black and white, representation is important to me. It’s inspiring to think there will be people like me on the Moon – and that I’m playing a role in making this happen.”
Artist conception of a future Artemis Base Camp on the lunar surface NASA When O’Malley wasn’t exploring the mysteries of the immune system for the benefit of all at NASA Ames, he taught himself how to ride a bike and started to surf in the nearby waters of the Pacific Ocean. O’Malley considers Palmyra, Virginia, his hometown and he enjoys playing sports – especially volleyball, water polo, and tennis – reading science fiction and giving guest lectures to local high school students hoping to spark their curiosity.
O’Malley’s vision for the future of biomedical engineering reflects his passion for innovation. “I believe that by harnessing the unique immune properties of other species, we can achieve groundbreaking advancements in limb regeneration, revolutionize cancer therapy, and develop potent antimicrobials that are considered science fiction today,” he said.
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