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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Data from the SWOT satellite was used to calculate average water levels for lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin from July 2023 to November 2024. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters) above sea level; dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Data from the U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission gives researchers a detailed look at lakes and reservoirs in a U.S. watershed.
The Ohio River Basin stretches from Pennsylvania to Illinois and contains a system of reservoirs, lakes, and rivers that drains an area almost as large as France. Researchers with the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission, a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), now have a new tool for measuring water levels not only in this area, which is home to more than 25 million people, but in other watersheds around the world as well.
Since early 2023, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface — including oceans, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers — covering nearly the entire globe at least once every 21 days. The SWOT satellite also measures the horizontal extent of water in freshwater bodies. Earlier this year, the mission started making validated data publicly available.
“Having these two perspectives — water extent and levels — at the same time, along with detailed, frequent coverage over large areas, is unprecedented,” said Jida Wang, a hydrologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a member of the SWOT science team. “This is a groundbreaking, exciting aspect of SWOT.”
Researchers can use the mission’s data on water level and extent to calculate how the amount of water stored in a lake or reservoir changes over time. This, in turn, can give hydrologists a more precise picture of river discharge — how much water moves through a particular stretch of river.
The visualization above uses SWOT data from July 2023 to November 2024 to show the average water level above sea level in lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin, which drains into the Mississippi River. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters), and dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Comparing how such levels change can help hydrologists measure water availability over time in a local area or across a watershed.
Complementing a Patchwork of Data
Historically, estimating freshwater availability for communities within a river basin has been challenging. Researchers gather information from gauges installed at certain lakes and reservoirs, from airborne surveys, and from other satellites that look at either water level or extent. But for ground-based and airborne instruments, the coverage can be limited in space and time. Hydrologists can piece together some of what they need from different satellites, but the data may or may not have been taken at the same time, or the researchers might still need to augment the information with measurements from ground-based sensors.
Even then, calculating freshwater availability can be complicated. Much of the work relies on computer models. “Traditional water models often don’t work very well in highly regulated basins like the Ohio because they have trouble representing the unpredictable behavior of dam operations,” said George Allen, a freshwater researcher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and a member of the SWOT science team.
Many river basins in the United States include dams and reservoirs managed by a patchwork of entities. While the people who manage a reservoir may know how their section of water behaves, planning for water availability down the entire length of a river can be a challenge. Since SWOT looks at both rivers and lakes, its data can help provide a more unified view.
“The data lets water managers really know what other people in these freshwater systems are doing,” said SWOT science team member Colin Gleason, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
While SWOT researchers are excited about the possibilities that the data is opening up, there is still much to be done. The satellite’s high-resolution view of water levels and extent means there is a vast ocean of data that researchers must wade through, and it will take some time to process and analyze the measurements.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite 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, 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 Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite 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 were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
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
2024-176
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Last Updated Dec 17, 2024 Related Terms
SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Water on Earth Explore More
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By Space Force
The mission successfully achieved a complex effort across multiple Space Force organizations to pull an existing GPS III satellite from storage, accelerate integration and launch vehicle readiness, and rapidly process for launch.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Current brake system technology cool disc brakes with air pulled from inside the vehicle’s body to prevent overheating. The channels cut into the exterior of the disc brakes developed by Orbis Brakes draw in external air, which is cooler, ensure the brakes work more efficiently.Credit: Orbis Brakes Inc Just as NASA needs to reduce mass on a spacecraft so it can escape Earth’s gravity, automotive manufacturers work to reduce weight to improve vehicle performance. In the case of brake rotors, lighter is better for a vehicle’s acceleration, reliable stopping, and even gas mileage. Orbis Brakes Inc. licensed a NASA-patented technology to accomplish that and more. This revolutionary brake disc design is at least 42% lighter than conventional cast iron rotors, with performance comparable to carbon-ceramic brakes.
Jonathan Lee, structural materials engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, uses his skills as a mechanical designer backed with material science training on multiple projects including the Space Launch System and the International Space Station. Interested in supporting NASA’s other mission to advance technology to improve life on Earth, he was looking for an innovative way to design a better automobile disc brake.
He started with a single disc with a series of small fins around the central hub. As they spin, these draw in air and push it across the surface of the disc, where the brake pads make contact. This cools the rotor, as well as the brake pads and calipers. He then added several long, curved depressions around the braking surfaces, radiating from the center to create the regular, periodic pattern that gives the new technology, known as Orbis, its PeriodicWave brand name.
The spinning fins and the centrifugal force of the wheel push air into trenches, causing a turbulent airflow that draws away heat. These trenches in the braking surfaces also increase the available surface for air cooling by more than 30% and further reduce the weight of the disc. They also increase friction in the same way that scoring concrete makes steps safer to walk on – the brake pads are less likely to slip, which makes braking more reliable.
The troughs draw away more than just heat, too. Water and road debris getting between the pad and rotor are equally problematic, so the grooves provide a place for the air vortex to push any substance out of the way. A small hole machined at the end of each one creates an opening through which unwanted material can escape.
The expertise developed while solving problems in space has proven useful on Earth, too. Orbis’s brakes are sold as aftermarket modifications for high performance cars like the Ford Mustang, as well as some Tesla models.
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Last Updated Dec 12, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, right, stands near the apex of a sand ripple in an image taken by Perseverance on Feb. 24, 2024, about five weeks after the rotorcraft’s final flight. Part of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades lies on the surface about 49 feet (15 meters) west of helicopter (at left in image).NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS The review takes a close look the final flight of the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which was the first aircraft to fly on another world.
Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and AeroVironment are completing a detailed assessment of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s final flight on Jan. 18, 2024, which will be published in the next few weeks as a NASA technical report. Designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, Ingenuity was the first aircraft on another world. It operated for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 30 times farther than planned while accumulating over two hours of flight time.
The investigation concludes that the inability of Ingenuity’s navigation system to provide accurate data during the flight likely caused a chain of events that ended the mission. The report’s findings are expected to benefit future Mars helicopters, as well as other aircraft destined to operate on other worlds.
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter used its black-and-white navigation camera to capture this video on Feb. 11, 2024, showing the shadow of its rotor blades. The imagery confirmed damage had occurred during Flight 72. NASA/JPL-Caltech Final Ascent
Flight 72 was planned as a brief vertical hop to assess Ingenuity’s flight systems and photograph the area. Data from the flight shows Ingenuity climbing to 40 feet (12 meters), hovering, and capturing images. It initiated its descent at 19 seconds, and by 32 seconds the helicopter was back on the surface and had halted communications. The following day, the mission reestablished communications, and images that came down six days after the flight revealed Ingenuity had sustained severe damage to its rotor blades.
What Happened
“When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses,” said Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of JPL. “While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with.”
The helicopter’s vision navigation system was designed to track visual features on the surface using a downward-looking camera over well-textured (pebbly) but flat terrain. This limited tracking capability was more than sufficient for carrying out Ingenuity’s first five flights, but by Flight 72 the helicopter was in a region of Jezero Crater filled with steep, relatively featureless sand ripples.
This short animation depicts a NASA concept for a proposed follow-on to the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter called Mars Chopper, which remains in early conceptual and design stages. In addition to scouting, such a helicopter could carry science instruments to study terrain rovers can’t reach. One of the navigation system’s main requirements was to provide velocity estimates that would enable the helicopter to land within a small envelope of vertical and horizontal velocities. Data sent down during Flight 72 shows that, around 20 seconds after takeoff, the navigation system couldn’t find enough surface features to track.
Photographs taken after the flight indicate the navigation errors created high horizontal velocities at touchdown. In the most likely scenario, the hard impact on the sand ripple’s slope caused Ingenuity to pitch and roll. The rapid attitude change resulted in loads on the fast-rotating rotor blades beyond their design limits, snapping all four of them off at their weakest point — about a third of the way from the tip. The damaged blades caused excessive vibration in the rotor system, ripping the remainder of one blade from its root and generating an excessive power demand that resulted in loss of communications.
This graphic depicts the most likely scenario for the hard landing of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 72nd and final flight on Jan. 18, 2024. High horizontal velocities at touchdown resulted in a hard impact on a sand ripple, which caused Ingenuity to pitch and roll, damaging its rotor blades. NASA/JPL-Caltech Down but Not Out
Although Flight 72 permanently grounded Ingenuity, the helicopter still beams weather and avionics test data to the Perseverance rover about once a week. The weather information could benefit future explorers of the Red Planet. The avionics data is already proving useful to engineers working on future designs of aircraft and other vehicles for the Red Planet.
“Because Ingenuity was designed to be affordable while demanding huge amounts of computer power, we became the first mission to fly commercial off-the-shelf cellphone processors in deep space,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s project manager. “We’re now approaching four years of continuous operations, suggesting that not everything needs to be bigger, heavier, and radiation-hardened to work in the harsh Martian environment.”
Inspired by Ingenuity’s longevity, NASA engineers have been testing smaller, lighter avionics that could be used in vehicle designs for the Mars Sample Return campaign. The data is also helping engineers as they research what a future Mars helicopter could look like — and do.
During a Wednesday, Dec. 11, briefing at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in Washington, Tzanetos shared details on the Mars Chopper rotorcraft, a concept that he and other Ingenuity alumni are researching. As designed, Chopper is approximately 20 times heavier than Ingenuity, could fly several pounds of science equipment, and autonomously explore remote Martian locations while traveling up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) in a day. (Ingenuity’s longest flight was 2,310 feet, or 704 meters.)
“Ingenuity has given us the confidence and data to envision the future of flight at Mars,” said Tzanetos.
More About Ingenuity
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages the project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development. AeroVironment, Qualcomm, and SolAero also provided design assistance and major vehicle components. Lockheed Space designed and manufactured the Mars Helicopter Delivery System. At NASA Headquarters, Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
For more information about Ingenuity:
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter
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
2024-171
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Last Updated Dec 11, 2024 Related Terms
Ingenuity (Helicopter) Astrobiology Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars 2020 Perseverance (Rover) Explore More
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By NASA
3 Min Read Matt Dominick’s X Account: A Visual Journey from Space
We are lucky to have had the opportunity to fly in space and feel a responsibility to share with humanity the incredible views of the Earth and the cosmos.
Matt dominick
NASA Astronaut
NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Matthew Dominick launched to the International Space Station on March 3, 2024 as the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission. As a flight engineer aboard the orbiting laboratory, Dominick conducted scientific research while capturing breathtaking views of Earth and beyond from the ultimate vantage point—250 miles above the planet.
Dominick’s X account (@dominickmatthew) has become a visual diary, showcasing the beauty of our planet captured from low Earth orbit during his 235 days in space. From the ethereal glow of auroras dancing across the atmosphere to comets rising up over the horizon during an orbital sunrise, each meticulously captured image reflects his dedication to sharing the wonders of space exploration through social media. He goes beyond simply posting pictures; he reveals the techniques behind his astrophotography, including camera settings and insights into his creative process, inviting followers to appreciate the artistry involved.
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Matt Dominick shared this timelapse video to his X account in August 2024, showing the Moon setting into streams of red and green aurora.Matt Dominick See the full X post here.
Amid his daily astronaut duties, Dominick dedicated personal time to this endeavor, amassing nearly 500,000 captivating photos of Earth and snapshots of life aboard the International Space Station, while having traveled 99,708,603 total statue miles around our home planet. Through his lens(es), he invited us to experience the awe of space while highlighting the realities of life in orbit, fostering an authentic connection with those who engage with his work.
Building on this commitment to connect, Dominick participated in the first-ever live X Spaces event from space, marking a new way for NASA astronauts to connect personally with followers. He shared insider tips on astrophotography from orbit and discussed the challenges and joys of capturing stunning images in microgravity. Concluding the event, he vividly narrated his live experience floating into the Cupola at sunset while orbiting over Paris just days before the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
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A screen recording of the first X Spaces event from space featuring NASA astronaut Matt Dominick.NASA Dominick’s journey as an astronaut unfolds in real-time on his X account. He has captured the arrivals and departures of various spacecraft, documented dynamic weather events, and even participated in Olympic festivities. His stunning timelapses and behind-the-scenes videos offer an intimate look at life aboard the space station, beautifully illustrating the intricate interplay between science and wonder.
What sets Dominick’s account apart is his playful perspective. He invites his audience into lighthearted moments—whether he’s cleaning his retainer in microgravity, relishing the arrival of fresh fruit, or sharing insights from the ISS toolbox. By documenting and sharing these experiences, he demystifies the complexities of space travel, making it an accessible and relatable journey for all. Through his engaging posts, Dominick cultivates a deeper connection with his followers, encouraging them to share in the beauty and reality of life beyond our planet.
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Matt Dominick shared this video video to his X account in August 2024 after receiving fresh fruit aboard the International Space Station.Matt Dominick See the full X post here.
Visit Dominick’s X account (@dominickmatthew) to experience the wonders of space through his eyes, enriched by his remarkable journey of orbiting the Earth 3,760 times.
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Related Terms
International Space Station (ISS) Astronauts Expedition 72 Humans in Space View the full article
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