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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Astronaut Jeanette Epps extracts DNA samples from bacteria colonies for genomic analysis aboard the International Space Station’s Harmony module.NASA In an effort to learn more about astronaut health and the effects of space on the human body, NASA is conducting a new experiment aboard the International Space Station to speed up the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus improving the health safety not only of astronauts but patients back on Earth.
Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be difficult or impossible to treat, making antibiotic resistance a leading cause of death worldwide and a global health concern.
Future astronauts visiting the Moon or Mars will need to rely on a pre-determined supply of antibiotics in case of illness. Ensuring those antibiotics remain effective is an important safety measure for future missions.
The Genomic Enumeration of Antibiotic Resistance in Space (GEARS) experiment, which is managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, involves astronauts swabbing interior surfaces across the space station and testing those samples for evidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and in particular Enterococcus faecalis, a type of bacteria commonly found in the human body. The experiment is the first step in a series of work that seeks to better understand how organisms grow in a space environment, and how those similarities and differences might help improve research back on Earth.
“Enterococcus is a type of organism that’s been with us since our ancestors crawled out of the ocean, and is a core member of the human gut,” said Christopher Carr, assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-principal investigator of GEARS. “It’s able to survive inside and outside of its host, which has allowed it to become the second highest leading cause of hospital-acquired infections. We want to understand how this type of organism is adapting to the space environment.”
The GEARS experiment seeks to improve the detection and identification of these bacteria, building on existing efforts to understand what organisms grow on the station’s surfaces.
“We’ve been monitoring the surfaces of the space station since 2000, but this experiment will give us insight beyond the identities of present organisms, which is currently all that is used for risk assessment,” said Sarah Wallace, a microbiologist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and co-principal investigator of GEARS. “With the station orbiting close to Earth, it’s a low-risk space to evaluate and learn more about the frequency of this bacteria and how it responds to the space environment so we can apply this understanding to missions to the Moon and Mars, where resupplies are more complex.”
Over the next year, astronauts will swab parts of the station and analyze samples by adding an antibiotic to the medium in which the samples will grow. The results will reveal where this and other resistant bacteria are growing and whether they can persist or spread across the station.
I hope we can shine a light on rapidly analyzing bacteria: if we can do this in space, we can do it on Earth, too.
Sarah WAllace
NASA Microbiologist
The experiment was originally launched to the ISS on the 30th SpaceX commercial resupply services (CRS) mission in March 2024, and the first round of GEARS testing turned up surprising results: very few resistant bacteria colonies, none of which were E. faecalis. This bodes well for the threat of antibiotic resistance in space.
“There was some cleaning done before swabbing the station, which may have removed some bacteria,” said Carr. To better understand how and where risky bacteria may live, the astronauts paused some cleaning before the second round of swabbing.
“We want the astronauts to have a clean environment, but we also want to test those high-touch areas, so they intentionally and briefly avoided cleaning some areas so we can understand how bacteria may grow or spread on the station.”
This experiment is the first study to perform metagenomic sequencing in space, a method that analyzes all the genetic material in a sample to identify and characterize all organisms that are present, an important research and medical diagnostic capability for future deep space missions.
The GEARS team hopes to create a rapid workflow to analyze bacteria samples, reducing the time between swabbing and test results from days to hours. That workflow could be applied in hospitals and make a huge impact when treating hospital-acquired infections from antibiotic-resistant microbes.
The result could save lives – more than 35,000 people die each year as a result of antibiotic-resistant infections. The issue is personal to Wallace, who lost a family member to a hospital-acquired infection.
“It’s not that uncommon: so many people have experienced this kind of loss,” said Wallace. “A method to give an answer in a matter of hours is huge and profound. It’s my job to keep the crew healthy, but we’re also passionate about bringing that work back down to Earth. I hope we can shine a light on rapidly analyzing bacteria: if we can do this in space, we can do it on Earth, too.”
Genomic Enumeration of Antibiotic Resistance in Space (GEARS) was funded by the Biological and Physical Sciences Space Biology Program, with pioneering funding and support from the Mars Campaign office.
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Last Updated Feb 19, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Cliffs slope into the ocean in San Simeon, California. All along the state’s dynamic coastline, land is inching down and up due to natural and human-caused factors. A bet-ter understanding of this motion can help communities prepare for rising seas.NASA/JPL-Caltech The elevation changes may seem small — amounting to fractions of inches per year — but they can increase or decrease local flood risk, wave exposure, and saltwater intrusion.
Tracking and predicting sea level rise involves more than measuring the height of our oceans: Land along coastlines also inches up and down in elevation. Using California as a case study, a NASA-led team has shown how seemingly modest vertical land motion could significantly impact local sea levels in coming decades.
By 2050, sea levels in California are expected to increase between 6 and 14.5 feet (15 and 37 centimeters) higher than year 2000 levels. Melting glaciers and ice sheets, as well as warming ocean water, are primarily driving the rise. As coastal communities develop adaptation strategies, they can also benefit from a better understanding of the land’s role, the team said. The findings are being used in updated guidance for the state.
“In many parts of the world, like the reclaimed ground beneath San Francisco, the land is moving down faster than the sea itself is going up,” said lead author Marin Govorcin, a remote sensing scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The new study illustrates how vertical land motion can be unpredictable in scale and speed; it results from both human-caused factors such as groundwater pumping and wastewater injection, as well as from natural ones like tectonic activity. The researchers showed how direct satellite observations can improve estimates of vertical land motion and relative sea level rise. Current models, which are based on tide gauge measurements, cannot cover every location and all the dynamic land motion at work within a given region.
Local Changes
Researchers from JPL and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used satellite radar to track more than a thousand miles of California coast rising and sinking in new detail. They pinpointed hot spots — including cities, beaches, and aquifers — at greater exposure to rising seas now and in coming decades.
To capture localized motion inch by inch from space, the team analyzed radar measurements made by ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Sentinel-1 satellites, as well as motion velocity data from ground-based receiving stations in the Global Navigation Satellite System. Researchers compared multiple observations of the same locations made between 2015 to 2023 using a processing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR).
Scientists mapped land sinking (indicated in blue) in coastal California cities and in parts of the Central Valley due to factors like soil compaction, erosion, and groundwater withdrawal. They also tracked uplift hot spots (shown in red), including in Long Beach, a site of oil and gas production. NASA Earth Observatory Homing in on the San Francisco Bay Area — specifically, San Rafael, Corte Madera, Foster City, and Bay Farm Island — the team found the land subsiding at a steady rate of more than 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) per year due largely to sediment compaction. Accounting for this subsidence in the lowest-lying parts of these areas, local sea levels could rise more than 17 inches (45 centimeters) by 2050. That’s more than double the regional estimate of 7.4 inches (19 centimeters) based solely on tide gauge projections.
Not all coastal locations in California are sinking. The researchers mapped uplift hot spots of several millimeters per year in the Santa Barbara groundwater basin, which has been steadily replenishing since 2018. They also observed uplift in Long Beach, where fluid extraction and injection occur with oil and gas production.
The scientists further calculated how human-induced drivers of local land motion increase uncertainties in the sea level projections by up to 15 inches (40 centimeters) in parts of Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Reliable projections in these areas are challenging because the unpredictable nature of human activities, such as hydrocarbon production and groundwater extraction, necessitating ongoing monitoring of land motion.
Fluctuating Aquifers, Slow-Moving Landslides
In the middle of California, in the fast-sinking parts of the Central Valley (subsiding as much as 8 inches, or 20 centimeters, per year), land motion is influenced by groundwater withdrawal. Periods of drought and precipitation can alternately draw down or inflate underground aquifers. Such fluctuations were also observed over aquifers in Santa Clara in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Ana in Orange County, and Chula Vista in San Diego County.
Along rugged coastal terrain like the Big Sur mountains below San Francisco and Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, the team pinpointed local zones of downward motion associated with slow-moving landslides. In Northern California they also found sinking trends at marshlands and lagoons around San Francisco and Monterey bays, and in Sonoma County’s Russian River estuary. Erosion in these areas likely played a key factor.
Scientists, decision-makers, and the public can monitor these and other changes occurring via the JPL-led OPERA (Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis) project. The OPERA project details land surface elevational changes across North America, shedding light on dynamic processes including subsidence, tectonics, and landslides.
The OPERA project will leverage additional state-of-the-art InSAR data from the upcoming NISAR (NASA-Indian Space Research Organization Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, expected to launch within the coming months.
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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
Written by Sally Younger
2025-015
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Last Updated Feb 10, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
February’s Night Sky Notes: How Can You Help Curb Light Pollution?
Light pollution has long troubled astronomers, who generally shy away from deep sky observing under full Moon skies. The natural light from a bright Moon floods the sky and hides views of the Milky Way, dim galaxies and nebula, and shooting stars. In recent years, human-made light pollution has dramatically surpassed the interference of even a bright full Moon, and its effects are now noticeable to a great many people outside of the astronomical community. Harsh, bright white LED streetlights, while often more efficient and long-lasting, often create unexpected problems for communities replacing their old street lamps. Some notable concerns are increased glare and light trespass, less restful sleep, and disturbed nocturnal wildlife patterns. There is increasing awareness of just how much light is too much light at night. You don’t need to give in to despair over encroaching light pollution; you can join efforts to measure it, educate others, and even help stop or reduce the effects of light pollution in your community.
Before and after pictures of replacement lighting at the 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River. The second picture shows improvements in some aspects of light pollution, as light is not directed to the sides and upwards from the upgraded fixtures, reducing skyglow. However, it also shows the use of brighter, whiter LEDs, which is not generally ideal, along with increased light bounce back from the road. City of Los Angeles Amateur astronomers and potential citizen scientists around the globe are invited to participate in the Globe at Night (GaN) program to measure light pollution. Measurements are taken by volunteers on a few scheduled days every month and submitted to their database to help create a comprehensive map of light pollution and its change over time. GaN volunteers can take and submit measurements using multiple methods ranging from low-tech naked-eye observations to high-tech sensors and smartphone apps.
Globe at Night citizen scientists can use the following methods to measure light pollution and submit their results:
Their own smartphone camera and dedicated app Manually measure light pollution using their own eyes and detailed charts of the constellations A dedicated light pollution measurement device called a Sky Quality Meter (SQM). The free GaN web app from any internet-connected device (which can also be used to submit their measurements from an SQM or printed-out star charts) Night Sky Network members joined a telecon with Connie Walker of Globe at Night in 2014 and had a lively discussion about the program’s history and how they can participate. The audio of the telecon, transcript, and links to additional resources can be found on their dedicated resource page.
Light pollution has been visible from space for a long time, but new LED lights are bright enough that they stand out from older street lights, even from orbit. The above photo was taken by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from the ISS cupola in 2015. The newly installed white LED lights in the center of the city of Milan are noticeably brighter than the lights in the surrounding neighborhoods. NASA/ESA DarkSky International has long been a champion in the fight against light pollution and a proponent of smart lighting design and policy. Their website (at darksky.org) provides many resources for amateur astronomers and other like-minded people to help communities understand the negative impacts of light pollution and how smart lighting policies can not only help bring the stars back to their night skies but make their streets safer by using smarter lighting with less glare. Communities and individuals find that their nighttime lighting choices can help save considerable sums of money when they decide to light their streets and homes “smarter, not brighter” with shielded, directional lighting, motion detectors, timers, and even choosing the proper “temperature” of new LED light replacements to avoid the harsh “pure white” glare that many new streetlamps possess. Their pages on community advocacy and on how to choose dark-sky-friendly lighting are extremely helpful and full of great information. There are even local chapters of the IDA in many communities made up of passionate advocates of dark skies.
DarkSky International has notably helped usher in “Dark Sky Places“, areas around the world that are protected from light pollution. “Dark Sky Parks“, in particular, provide visitors with incredible views of the Milky Way and are perfect places to spot the wonders of a meteor shower. These parks also perform a very important function, showing the public the wonders of a truly dark sky to many people who may have never before even seen a handful of stars in the sky, let alone the full, glorious spread of the Milky Way.
More research into the negative effects of light pollution on the health of humans and the environment is being conducted than ever before. Watching the nighttime light slowly increase in your neighborhood, combined with reading so much bad news, can indeed be disheartening! However, as awareness of light pollution and its negative effects increases, more people are becoming aware of the problem and want to be part of the solution. There is even an episode of PBS Kid’s SciGirls where the main characters help mitigate light pollution in their neighborhood!
Astronomy clubs are uniquely situated to help spread awareness of good lighting practices in their local communities in order to help mitigate light pollution. Take inspiration from Tucson, Arizona, and other dark sky-friendly communities that have adopted good lighting practices. Tucson even reduced its skyglow by 7% after its own citywide lighting conversion, proof that communities can bring the stars back with smart lighting choices.
Originally posted by Dave Prosper: November 2018
Last Updated by Kat Troche: January 2025
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA’s Cloud-based Confluence Software Helps Hydrologists Study Rivers on a Global Scale
The Paraná River in northern Argentina. Confluence, which is open-source and free to use, allows researchers to estimate river discharge and suspended sediment levels in Earth’s rivers at a global scale. NASA/ISS Rivers and streams wrap around Earth in complex networks millions of miles long, driving trade, nurturing ecosystems, and stocking critical reserves of freshwater.
But the hydrologists who dedicate their professional lives to studying this immense web of waterways do so with a relatively limited set of tools. Around the world, a patchwork of just 3,000 or so river gauge stations supply regular, reliable data, making it difficult for hydrologists to detect global trends.
“The best way to study a river,” said Colin Gleason, Armstrong Professional Development Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “is to get your feet wet and visit it yourself. The second best way to study a river is to use a river gauge.”
Now, thanks to Gleason and a team of more than 30 researchers, there’s another option: ‘Confluence,’ an analytic collaborative framework that leverages data from NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 archive (HLS) to estimate river discharge and suspended sediment levels in every river on Earth wider than 50 meters. NASA’s Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) hosts the software, making it open-source and free for users around the world.
By incorporating both altimetry data from SWOT which informs discharge estimates, and optical data from HLS, which informs estimates of suspended sediment data, Confluence marks the first time hydrologists can create timely models of river size and water quality at a global scale. Compared to existing workflows for estimating suspended sediment using HLS data, Confluence is faster by a factor of 30.
I can’t do global satellite hydrology without this system. Or, I could, but it would be extremely time consuming and expensive.
Colin Gleason
Nikki Tebaldi, a Cloud Adoption Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Co-Investigator for Confluence, was the lead developer on this project. She said that while the individual components of Confluence have been around for decades, bringing them together within a single, cloud-based processing pipeline was a significant challenge.
“I’m really proud that we’ve pieced together all of these different algorithms, got them into the cloud, and we have them all executing commands and working,” said Tebaldi.
Suresh Vannan, former manager of PO.DAAC and a Co-Investigator for Confluence, said this new ability to produce timely, global estimates of river discharge and quality will have a huge impact on hydrological models assessing everything from the health of river ecosystems to snowmelt.
“There are a bunch of science applications that river discharge can be used for, because it’s pretty much taking a snapshot of what the river looks like, how it behaves. Producing that snapshot on a global scale is a game changer,” said Vannan.
While the Confluence team is still working with PO.DAAC to complete their software package, users can currently access the Confluence source code here. For tutorials, manuals, and other user guides, visit the PO.DAAC webpage here.
All of these improvements to the original Confluence algorithms developed for SWOT were made possible by NASA’s Advanced Intelligent Systems Technology (AIST) program, a part of the agency’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), in collaboration with SWOT and PO.DAAC.
To learn more about opportunities to develop next-generation technologies for studying Earth from outer space, visit ESTO’s solicitation page here.
Project Lead: Colin Gleason / University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Sponsoring Organization: Advanced Intelligent Systems Technology program, within NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office
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Last Updated Feb 04, 2025 Related Terms
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NASA’s UAVSAR airborne radar instrument captured data in fall 2024 showing the mo-tion of landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and another heavy-precipitation winter in 2024. Darker red indicates faster motion.NASA Earth Observatory Analysis of data from NASA radar aboard an airplane shows that the decades-old active landslide area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula has expanded.
Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used data from an airborne radar to measure the movement of the slow-moving landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County. The analysis determined that, during a four-week period in the fall of 2024, land in the residential area slid toward the ocean by as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) per week.
Portions of the peninsula, which juts into the Pacific Ocean just south of the city of Los Angeles, are part of an ancient complex of landslides and has been moving for at least the past six decades, affecting hundreds of buildings in local communities. The motion accelerated, and the active area expanded following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and heavy precipitation in early 2024.
To create this visualization, the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team used data from four flights of NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) that took place between Sept. 18 and Oct. 17. The UAVSAR instrument was mounted to a Gulfstream III jet flown out of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and the four flights were planned to estimate the speed and direction of the landslides in three dimensions.
In the image above, colors indicate how fast parts of the landslide complex were moving in late September and October, with the darkest reds indicating the highest speeds. The arrows represent the direction of horizontal motion. The white solid lines are the boundaries of the active landslide area as defined in 2007 by the California Geological Survey.
“In effect, we’re seeing that the footprint of land experiencing significant impacts has expanded, and the speed is more than enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk,” said Alexander Handwerger, the JPL landslide scientist who performed the analysis.
The insights from the UAVSAR flights were part of a package of analyses by the ARIA team that also used data from ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Copernicus Sentinel-1A/B satellites. The analyses were provided to California officials to support the state’s response to the landslides and made available to the public at NASA’s Disaster Mapping Portal.
Handwerger is also the principal investigator for NASA’s upcoming Landslide Climate Change Experiment, which will use airborne radar to study how extreme wet or dry precipitation patterns influence landslides. The investigation will include flights over coastal slopes spanning the California coastline.
More About ARIA, UAVSAR
The ARIA mission is a collaboration between JPL and Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA, to leverage radar and optical remote-sensing, GPS, and seismic observations for science as well as to aid in disaster response. The project investigates the processes and impacts of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, fires, subsurface fluid movement, and other natural hazards.
UAVSAR has flown thousands of radar missions around the world since 2007, studying phenomena such as glaciers and ice sheets, vegetation in ecosystems, and natural hazards like earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides.
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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 Jan 31, 2025 Related Terms
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