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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter captured this single image of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system, on March 11, 2024. Besides providing an unprecedented view of the volcano, the image helps scientists study different layers of material in the atmosphere, including clouds and dust.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The 23-year-old orbiter is taking images that offer horizon-wide views of the Red Planet similar to what astronauts aboard the International Space Station see over Earth.
NASA’s longest-lived Mars robot is about to mark a new milestone on June 30: 100,000 trips around the Red Planet since launching 23 years ago. During that time, the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has been mapping minerals and ice across the Martian surface, identifying landing sites for future missions, and relaying data to Earth from NASA’s rovers and landers.
Scientists recently used the orbiter’s camera to take a stunning new image of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system. The image is part of a continuing effort by the Odyssey team to provide high-altitude views of the planet’s horizon. (The first of these views was published in late 2023.) Similar to the perspective of Earth astronauts get aboard the International Space Station, the view enables scientists to learn more about clouds and airborne dust at Mars.
Taken on March 11, the most recent horizon image captures Olympus Mons in all its glory. With a base that sprawls across 373 miles (600 kilometers), the shield volcano rises to a height of 17 miles (27 kilometers).
“Normally we see Olympus Mons in narrow strips from above, but by turning the spacecraft toward the horizon we can see in a single image how large it looms over the landscape,” said Odyssey’s project scientist, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “Not only is the image spectacular, it also provides us with unique science data.”
In addition to offering a freeze frame of clouds and dust, such images, when taken across many seasons, can give scientists a more detailed understanding of the Martian atmosphere.
This infographic highlights just how much data and how many images NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has collected in its 23 years of operation around the Red Planet.NASA/JPL-Caltech A bluish-white band at the bottom of the atmosphere hints at how much dust was present at this location during early fall, a period when dust storms typically start kicking up. The purplish layer above that was likely due to a mixture of the planet’s red dust with some bluish water-ice clouds. Finally, toward the top of the image, a blue-green layer can be seen where water-ice clouds reach up about 31 miles (50 kilometers) into the sky.
How They Took the Picture
Named after Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science-fiction novel “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the orbiter captured the scene with a heat-sensitive camera called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which Arizona State University in Tempe built and operates. But because the camera is meant to look down at the surface, getting a horizon shot takes extra planning.
By firing thrusters located around the spacecraft, Odyssey can point THEMIS at different parts of the surface or even slowly roll over to view Mars’ tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos.
The recent horizon imaging was conceived as an experiment many years ago during the landings of NASA’s Phoenix mission in 2008 and Curiosity rover in 2012. As with other Mars landings before and after those missions touched down, Odyssey played an important role relaying data as the spacecraft barreled toward the surface.
Laura Kerber, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, explains how and why the spacecraft in May 2023 captured a view of the Red Planet similar to the International Space Station’s view of Earth.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech To relay their vital engineering data to Earth, Odyssey’s antenna had to be aimed toward the newly arriving spacecraft and their landing ellipses. Scientists were intrigued when they noticed that positioning Odyssey’s antenna for the task meant that THEMIS would be pointed at the planet’s horizon.
“We just decided to turn the camera on and see how it looked,” said Odyssey’s mission operations spacecraft engineer, Steve Sanders of Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Lockheed Martin built Odyssey and helps conduct day-to-day operations alongside the mission leads at JPL. “Based on those experiments, we designed a sequence that keeps THEMIS’ field-of-view centered on the horizon as we go around the planet.”
The Secret to a Long Space Odyssey
What’s Odyssey secret to being the longest continually active mission in orbit around a planet other than Earth?
“Physics does a lot of the hard work for us,” Sanders said. “But it’s the subtleties we have to manage again and again.”
These variables include fuel, solar power, and temperature. To ensure Odyssey uses its fuel (hydrazine gas) sparingly, engineers have to calculate how much is left since the spacecraft doesn’t have a fuel gauge. Odyssey relies on solar power to operate its instruments and electronics. This power varies when the spacecraft disappears behind Mars for about 15 minutes per orbit. And temperatures need to stay balanced for all of Odyssey’s instruments to work properly.
“It takes careful monitoring to keep a mission going this long while maintaining a historical timeline of scientific planning and execution — and innovative engineering practices,” said Odyssey’s project manager, Joseph Hunt of JPL. “We’re looking forward to collecting more great science in the years ahead.”
More about Odyssey:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/odyssey/
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
2024-092
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Last Updated Jun 27, 2024 Related Terms
Mars Odyssey Deimos Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Moons Phobos Explore More
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By NASA
1 min read
Mountain Rain or Snow Volunteers Broke Records This Winter
The Mountain Rain or Snow project asks volunteers to track rain, snow, and mixed precipitation all winter long—and this was a winter like no other! This season, 1,684 people submitted precipitation observations—that’s about a third more than last season. These volunteers submitted over 32,110 observations, breaking last year’s record by over 10,000.
Some observers excelled by sending in hundreds of observations—Patrick Thorson submitted 676! Nayoung Hur’s observations spanned the largest elevational range, and Lauren H’s came from the highest peak at 11, 993 feet.
Congratulations to Patrick Thorson, Chris Gotschalk, SV, Karen O, Marley Jennings, Mariah Blackhorse, Robert R., Randall Bursk, Bill Locke, Erin Grogan, Lauren H., Craig Hall, and Nayoung Hur for their remarkable contributions. Thank you to all Mountain Rain or Snow observers for keeping your eyes on the sky with us this winter!
The Mountain Rain or Snow project still needs more data to improve weather and water sources forecasting.If you are in the U.S.A. and you are on or near a mountain, visit www.rainorsnow.org/signup on your phone and select your region to join the project!
Mountain Rain or Snow’s 2023-2024 winter season at a glance. Image Credit: Sonia Tonino
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Last Updated Jun 05, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Composites Consortium team members gathered during May 2024 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia for a technical review of all tasks in progress for the Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing project. NASA and its partners in the Advanced Composites Consortium gathered at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, May 7-9.
Team members from 20 organizations across the country recently discussed progress on all technology development tasks underway in NASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project. The project is competing manufacturing approaches that reduce labor, equipment, and tooling costs without compromising strength or safety.
Results will help determine which technologies will have the greatest impact on the manufacturing rate and allow downselect for the demonstration phase of the project beginning this fall.
The HiCAM project addresses an aviation industry need for more rapid production of composite aircraft to meet increasing global demand for lightweight transport aircraft.
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Last Updated May 24, 2024 EditorJim BankeContactJim Bankejim.banke@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
The Sun erupted over the weekend, flinging electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, even illuminating skies with spectacular aurora borealis. For the first time, ESA’s unlikely space weather duo of SMOS and Swarm tracked the severe solar storm — which warped Earth’s magnetic field.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This image shows SWOT satellite data for water surface height in part of Mendocino County, Northern California, on Jan. 15, before several atmospheric rivers arrived, and on Feb. 4, after the first storms. Light blue and green indicate the highest water levels relative to mean sea level. (Inland water heights include the underlying ground elevation.)NASA/JPL-Caltech Operated by NASA and the French space agency, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission provides a new view of water on land, at the coast, and in the ocean.
A series of atmospheric rivers drenched California in February, with record amounts of rainfall and hurricane-force winds sweeping across parts of the state. At one point, weather agencies posted flood watches for nearly the entirety of California’s coast. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission captured data on some of the flooding near the community of Manchester, roughly 105 miles (169 kilometers) north of San Francisco. The satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales).
The image above shows the area on Jan. 15, before the rain and snow from atmospheric rivers, and then again on Feb. 4, after the first in a series of storms soaked California. Water heights are shown in shades of green and blue, with lighter hues indicating the highest levels relative to mean sea level. (Data for inland areas includes the height of the floodwaters plus the ground elevation beneath it.) Some coastal areas were flooded by both ocean tides and heavy rain, while others were likely flooded only by precipitation. Each pixel in the image represents an area that is 330 feet by 330 feet (100 meters by 100 meters).
Since December 2022, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface, developing one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s oceans and freshwater lakes and rivers. Not only can the satellite detect the extent of the water on Earth’s surface, as other satellites can, but SWOT can also provide water level data. Combined with other types of information, SWOT measurements can yield water depth data in features like lakes and rivers.
“SWOT gives us information about flooding that we’ve never had before,” said Ben Hamlington, lead researcher for NASA’s sea level change team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Satellites can provide pictures showing how much of an area is flooded, but unless instruments are already installed on a river or at the coast, it’s difficult to know how conditions evolve during and after a flood. “Data from the SWOT satellite, combined with other information, is filling in this picture,” said Hamlington.
The SWOT science team made the measurements using the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument. With two antennas spread 33 feet (10 meters) apart on a boom, KaRIn produces a pair of data swaths as it circles the globe, bouncing radar pulses off water surfaces to collect surface-height measurements.
More About the Mission
Launched in December 2022, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, SWOT is now in its operations phase, collecting data that will be used for research and other purposes.
SWOT was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES provided the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations. CSA provided the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the agency’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, managed the associated launch services.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/
See SWOT Mission’s Unprecedented View of Global Sea Levels News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-021
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Last Updated Mar 05, 2024 Related Terms
SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) Earth Extreme Weather Events Jet Propulsion Laboratory Oceans Water on Earth Explore More
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