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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test required extreme precision in mission planning to achieve its mission of impacting an asteroid. The founders of Continuum Space worked on astrodynamics relating to this mission, which they used to inform their product.NASA Planning space missions is a very involved process, ensuring orbits are lined up and spacecraft have enough fuel is imperative to the long-term survival of orbital assets. Continuum Space Systems Inc. of Pasadena, California, produces a cloud-based platform that gives mission planners everything they need to certify that their space resources can accomplish their goals.
Continuum’s story begins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Loic Chappaz, the company’s co-founder, started at JPL as an intern working on astrodynamics related to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test. There he met Leon Alkalai, a JPL technical fellow who spent his 30-year career at the center planning deep space missions. After Alkalai retired from NASA, he founded Mandala Space Ventures, a startup that explored several avenues of commercial space development. Chappaz soon became Mandala’s first employee, but to plan their future, Mandala’s leadership began thinking about the act of planning itself.
Because the staff had decades of combined experience at JPL, they knew the center had the building blocks for the software they needed. After licensing several pieces of software from JPL, the company began building planning systems that were highly adaptable to any space mission they could come up with. Mandala eventually evolved into a venture firm that incubated space-related startups. However, because Mandala had invested considerably in developing mission-planning tools, further development could be performed by a new company, and Continuum was fully spun off from Mandala in 2021.
Continuum’s platform includes several features for mission planners, such as plotting orbital maneuvers and risk management evaluations. Some of these are built upon software licensed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.Continuum Space Systems Inc. Continuum’s tools are designed to take a space mission from concept to completion. There are three different components to their “mission in a box” — design, build and test, and mission operations. The base of these tools are several pieces of software developed at NASA. As of 2024, several space startups have begun planning missions with Continuum’s NASA-inspired software, as well as established operators of satellite constellations. From Continuum to several startups, NASA technologies continue to prove a valuable foundation for the nation’s space economy.
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Last Updated Mar 25, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Test flights help airplane and drone manufacturers identify which parts of the aircraft are creating the most noise. Using hundreds of wired microphones makes it an expensive and time-consuming process to improve the design to meet noise requirements. Credit: NASA Airplane manufacturers running noise tests on new aircraft now have a much cheaper option than traditional wired microphone arrays. It’s also sensitive enough to help farmers with pest problems. A commercial wireless microphone array recently created with help from NASA can locate crop-threatening insects by listening for the sounds they make in fields.
Since releasing its first commercial product in 2017, a sensor for wind tunnel testing developed with extensive help from NASA (Spinoff 2020), Interdisciplinary Consulting Corporation (IC2) has doubled its staff and moved to a larger lab and office space to produce its new WirelessArray product. Interested in making its own flight tests more affordable, NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, supported this project with Small Business Innovation Research contracts and expert consulting.
Airplanes go through noise testing and require certification that they don’t exceed the noise level set for their body type by the Federal Aviation Administration. When an airplane flies directly overhead, the array collects noise data to build a two-dimensional map of the sound pressure and its source. A custom software package translates that information for the end user.
For previous NASA noise testing, multiple semi-trucks hauled all the sensors, wires, power generators, racks of servers, and other equipment required for one flight test. The setup and teardown took six people three days. By contrast, two people can pack the WirelessArray into a minivan and set it up in a day.
IC2 is working with an entomologist to use acoustic data to listen for high-frequency insect sounds in agricultural settings. Discovering where insects feed on crops will make it possible for farmers to intervene before they do too much damage while limiting pesticide use to those areas. Whether it’s helping planes in the sky meet noise requirements or keeping harmful insects away from crops, NASA technology is finding sound-based solutions for the benefit of all.
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Last Updated Mar 14, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
NICER (left) is shown mounted to the International Space Station, and LEXI (right) is shown attached to the top of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost in an artist’s rendering.NASA/Firefly Aerospace The International Space Station supports a wide range of scientific activities from looking out at our universe to breakthroughs in medical research, and is an active proving ground for technology for future Moon exploration missions and beyond. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 landed on the Moon on March 2, 2025, kicking off science and technology operations on the surface, including three experiments either tested on or enabled by space station research. These projects are helping scientists study space weather, navigation, and computer performance in space— knowledge crucial for future Moon missions.
One of the experiments, the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), is a small telescope designed to study the Earth’s magnetic environment and its interaction with the solar wind. Like the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope mounted outside of the space station, LEXI observes X-ray sources. LEXI and NICER observed the same X-ray star to calibrate LEXI’s instrument and better analyze the X-rays emitted from Earth’s upper atmosphere, which is LEXI’s primary target. LEXI’s study of the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s protective magnetosphere could help researchers develop methods to safeguard future space infrastructure and understand how this boundary responds to space weather.
Other researchers sent the Radiation Tolerant Computer System (RadPC) to the Moon to test how computers can recover from radiation-related faults. Before RadPC flew on Blue Ghost, researchers tested a radiation tolerant computer on the space station and developed an algorithm to detect potential hardware faults and prevent critical failures. RadPC aims to demonstrate computer resilience in the Moon’s radiation environment. The computer can gauge its own health in real time, and RadPC can identify a faulty location and repair it in the background as needed. Insights from this investigation could improve computer hardware for future deep-space missions.
In addition, the Lunar Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) located on the lunar surface has officially received a GNSS signal at the farthest distance from Earth, the same signals that on Earth are used for navigation on everything from smartphones to airplanes. Aboard the International Space Station, Navigation and Communication Testbed (NAVCOM) has been testing a backup system to Earth’s GNSS using ground stations as an alternative method for lunar navigation where GNSS signals may have limitations. Bridging existing systems with emerging lunar-specific navigation solutions could help shape how spacecraft navigate the Moon on future missions.
The International Space Station serves as an important testbed for research conducted on missions like Blue Ghost and continues to lay the foundation for technologies of the future.
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By NASA
Earth (ESD) Earth Explore Explore Earth Science Climate Change Air Quality Science in Action Multimedia Image Collections Videos Data For Researchers About Us 8 Min Read NASA Researchers Study Coastal Wetlands, Champions of Carbon Capture
Florida’s coastal wetlands are a complex patchwork of ecosystem — consisting of sawgrass marshland, hardwood hammocks, freshwater swamps, and mangrove forests. Credits:
NASA/ Nathan Marder Across the street from the Flamingo Visitor’s Center at the foot of Florida’s Everglades National Park, there was once a thriving mangrove population — part of the largest stand of mangroves in the Western Hemisphere. Now, the skeletal remains of the trees form one of the Everglades’ largest ghost forests.
When Hurricane Irma made landfall in September 2017 as a category 4 storm, violent winds battered the shore and a storm surge swept across the coast, decimating large swaths of mangrove forest. Seven years later, most of the mangroves here haven’t seen any new growth. “At this point, I doubt they’ll recover,” said David Lagomasino, a professor of coastal studies at East Carolina University.
Lagomasino was in the Everglades conducting fieldwork as part of NASA’s BlueFlux Campaign, a three-year project that aims to study how sub-tropical wetlands influence atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. Both gases absorb solar radiation and have a warming effect on Earth’s atmosphere.
A mangrove “ghost forest” near Florida’s southernmost coast houses the remains of a once-thriving mangrove stand. NASA/Nathan Marder The campaign is led by Ben Poulter, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who studies the way human activity and climate change affect the carbon cycle. As wetland vegetation responds to increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and severe weather, Poulter’s team is trying to determine how much carbon dioxide wetland vegetation removes from the atmosphere and how much methane it produces. Ultimately this research will help scientists develop models to estimate and monitor greenhouse gas concentrations in coastal areas around the globe.
Although coastal wetlands account for less than 2% of the planet’s land-surface area, they remove a significant amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Florida’s coastal wetlands alone remove an estimated 31.8 million metric tons each year. A commercial aircraft would have to circle the globe more than 26,000 times to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide. Coastal wetlands also store carbon in marine sediments, keeping it underground — and out of the atmosphere — for thousands of years. This carbon storage capacity of oceans and wetlands is so robust that it has its own name: blue carbon.
“We’re worried about losing that stored carbon,” Poulter said. “But blue carbon also offers tremendous opportunities for climate mitigation if conservation and restoration are properly supported by science.”
The one-meter core samples collected by Lagomasino will be used to identify historic rates of blue carbon development in mangrove forests and to evaluate how rates of carbon storage respond to specific environmental pressures, like sea level rise or the increasing frequency of tropical cyclones.
Early findings from space-based flux data confirm that, in addition to acting as a sink of carbon dioxide, tropical wetlands are a significant source of methane — a greenhouse gas that traps heat roughly 80 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. In fact, researchers estimate that Florida’s entire wetland expanse produces enough methane to offset the benefits of wetland carbon removal by about 5%.
Everglades peat contains history of captured carbon
During his most recent fieldwork deployment, Lagomasino used a small skiff to taxi from one research site to the next; many parts of the Everglades are virtually unreachable on foot. At each site, he opened a broad, black case and removed a metallic peat auger, which resembles a giant letter opener. The instrument is designed to extract core samples from soft soils. Everglades peat — which is composed almost entirely of the carbon-rich, partially decomposed roots, stems, and leaves of mangroves — offers a perfect study subject.
Lagomasino plunged the auger into the soil, using his body weight to push the instrument into the ground. Once the sample was secured, he freed the tool from the Earth, presenting a half-cylinder of soil. Each sample was sealed and shipped back to the lab — where they are sliced horizontally into flat discs and analyzed for their age and carbon content.
East Carolina University professor of coastal studies David Lagomasino (right) and his doctoral student Daystar Babanawo explore the Everglades by boat. The plant life here consists almost entirely of mangroves, which can withstand the saltwater tides that characterize coastal wetlands. Scientific studies of Florida’s coastal ecosystems have historically been limited by the relative inaccessibility of the region. NASA/Nathan Marder Everglades peat forms quickly. In Florida’s mangrove forests, around 2 to 10 millimeters of soil are added to the forest floor each year, building up over time like sand filling an hourglass. Much like an ice core, sediment cores offer a window into Earth’s past. The deeper the core, the further into the past one can see. By looking closely at the contents of the soil, researchers can uncover information about the climate conditions from the time the soil formed.
In some parts of the Everglades, soil deposits can reach depths of up to 3 meters (10 feet), where one meter might represent close to 100 years of peat accumulation, Lagomasino said. Deep in the Amazon rainforest, by comparison, a similarly sized, one-meter deposit could take more than 1,000 years to develop. This is important in the context of restoration efforts: in coastal wetlands, peat losses can be restored up to 10 times faster than they might be in other forest types.
Lagomasino holds a sample of peat soil collected from the forest floor. The source of the soil’s elevated carbon content — evident from its coarse, fibrous texture — is primarily the thread-like root hairs routinely recycled by the surrounding mangroves. The presence of water slows the decomposition of this organic material, which is why wetlands can lock carbon away and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere for thousands of years. NASA/Nathan Marder “There are also significant differences in fluxes between healthy mangroves and degraded ones,” said Lola Fatoyinbo, a research scientist in the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In areas where mangrove forests are suffering, for example, after a major hurricane, “you end up with more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” she said. As wetland ecology responds to intensifying natural and human pressures, the data product will help researchers precisely monitor the impact of ecological changes on global carbon dioxide and methane levels.
Wetland methane: A naturally occurring but potent greenhouse gas
Methane is naturally produced by microbes that live in wetland soils. But as wetland conditions change, the growth rate of methane-producing microbes can spike, releasing the gas into the atmosphere at prodigious rates.
Since methane is a significantly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, possessing a warming potential 84 times greater over a 25-year period, methane emissions undermine some of the beneficial services that blue carbon ecosystems provide as natural sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide.
While Lagomasino studied the soil to understand long-term storage of greenhouse gases, Lola Fatoyinbo, a research scientist in NASA’s Biospheric Sciences Lab, and Peter Raymond, an ecologist at Yale University’s School of the Environment, measured the rate at which these gases are exchanged between wetland vegetation and the atmosphere. This metric is known as gaseous flux.
Lagomasino holds a sample of peat soil collected from the forest floor. The presence of water slows the decomposition of this organic material, which is why wetlands can lock carbon away and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere for thousands of years. NASA/Nathan Marder NASA/Nathan Marder The scientists measure flux using chambers designed to adhere neatly to points where significant rates of gas exchange occur. They secure box-like chambers to above-ground roots and branches while domed chambers measure gas escaping from the forest floor. The concentration of gases trapped in each chamber is measured over time.
In general, as the health of wetland ecology declines, less carbon dioxide is removed, and more methane is released. But the exact nature of the relationship between wetland health and gaseous flux is not well understood. What does flux look like in ghost forests, for example? And how do more subtle changes in variables like canopy coverage or species distribution influence levels of carbon dioxide sequestration or methane production?
“We’re especially interested in the methane part,” Fatoyinbo said. “It’s the least understood, and there’s a lot more of it than we previously thought.”
Based on data collected during BlueFlux fieldwork, “we’re finding that coastal wetlands remove massive amounts of carbon dioxide and produce substantial amounts of methane,” Poulter said. “But overall, these ecosystems appear to provide a net climate benefit, removing more greenhouse gases than they produce.” That could change as Florida’s wetlands respond to continued climate disturbances.
The future of South Florida’s ecology
Florida’s wetlands are roughly 5,000 years old. But in just the past century, more than half of the state’s original wetland coverage has been lost as vegetation was cleared and water was drained to accommodate the growing population. The Everglades system now contains 65% less peat and 77% less stored carbon than it did prior to drainage. The future of the ecosystem — which is not only an important reservoir for atmospheric carbon, but a source of drinking water for more than 7 million Floridians and a home to flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth — is uncertain.
Scientists who have dedicated their careers to understanding and restoring South Florida’s ecology are hopeful. “Nature and people can coexist,” said Meenakshi Chabba, an ecologist and resilience scientist at the Everglades Foundation in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. “But we need good science and good management to reach that goal.”
The next step for NASA’s BlueFlux campaign is the development of a satellite-based data product that can help regional stakeholders evaluate in real-time how Florida’s wetlands are responding to restoration efforts designed to protect one of the state’s most precious natural resources — and all those who depend on it.
By Nathan Marder
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
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Last Updated Mar 13, 2025 Editor Jenny Marder Contact Nathan Marder Related Terms
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