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By NASA
Jeremy Johnson, a research pilot and aviation safety officer, poses in front of a PC-12 aircraft inside the hangar at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Johnson flies NASA planes to support important scientific research and testing.Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna Jeremy Johnson laces his black, steel-toed boots and zips up his dark blue flight suit. Having just finished a pre-flight mission briefing with his team, the only thing on his mind is heading to the aircraft hangar and getting a plane in the air.
As he eases a small white-and-blue propeller aircraft down the hangar’s ramp and onto the runway, he hears five essential words crackle through his headset: “NASA 606, cleared for takeoff.”
This is a typical morning for Johnson, a research pilot and aviation safety officer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Johnson flies NASA planes to support important scientific research and testing, working with researchers to plan and carry out flights that will get them the data they need while ensuring safety.
Johnson hasn’t always flown in NASA planes. He comes to the agency from the U.S. Air Force, where he flew missions all over the world in C-17 cargo aircraft, piloted unmanned reconnaissance operations out of California, and trained young aviators in Oklahoma on the fundamentals of flying combat missions.
Jeremy Johnson stands beside a C-17 aircraft before a night training flight in Altus, Oklahoma, in 2020. Before supporting vital flight research at NASA through a SkillBridge fellowship, which gives transitioning service members the opportunity to gain civilian work experience, Johnson served in the U.S. Air Force and flew C-17 airlift missions all over the world.Credit: Courtesy of Jeremy Johnson He’s at Glenn for a four-month Department of Defense SkillBridge fellowship. The program gives transitioning service members an opportunity to gain civilian work experience through training, apprenticeships, or internships during their last 180 days of service before separating from the military.
“I think SkillBridge has been an amazing tool to help me transition into what it’s like working somewhere that isn’t the military,” Johnson said. “In the Air Force, flying the mission was the mission. At NASA Glenn, the science—the research—is the mission.”
By flying aircraft outfitted with research hardware or carrying test equipment, Johnson has contributed to two vital projects at NASA so far. One is focused on testing how well laser systems can transmit signals for communication and navigation. The other, part of NASA’s research under Air Mobility Pathfinders, explores how 5G telecommunications infrastructure can help electric air taxis of the future be safely incorporated into the national airspace. This work, and the data that scientists can collect through flights, supports NASA’s research to advance technology and innovate for the benefit of all.
Jeremy Johnson pilots NASA Glenn Research Center’s PC-12 aircraft during a research flight on Thursday, April 17, 2025.Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna “It’s really exciting to see research hardware come fresh from the lab, and then be strapped onto an aircraft and taken into flight to see if it actually performs in a relevant environment,” Johnson said. “Every flight you do is more than just that flight—it’s one little part of a much bigger, much more ambitious project that’s going on. You remember, this is a small little piece of something that is maybe going to change the frontier of science, the frontier of discovery.”
Johnson has always had a passion for aviation. In college, he worked as a valet to pay for flying lessons. To hone his skills before Air Force training, one summer he flew across the country in a Cessna with his aunt, a commercial pilot. They flew down the Hudson River as they watched the skyscrapers of New York City whizz by and later to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright brothers made their historic first flight. Johnson even flew skydivers part-time while he was stationed in California.
Jeremy Johnson in the cockpit of a PC-12 aircraft as it exits the hangar at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland before a research flight on Thursday, April 17, 2025.Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna Although he’s spent countless hours flying, he still takes the window seat on commercial flights whenever he can so he can look out the window and marvel at the world below.
Despite his successes, Johnson’s journey to becoming a pilot wasn’t always smooth. He recalls that as he was about to land after his first solo flight, violent crosswinds blew his plane off the runway and sent him bouncing into the grass. Though he eventually got back behind the stick for another flight, he said that in that moment he wondered whether he had the strength and skills to overcome his self-doubt.
“I don’t know anyone who flies for a living that had a completely easy path into it,” Johnson said. “To people who are thinking about getting into flying, just forge forward with it. Make people close doors on you, don’t close them on yourself, when it comes to flying or whatever you see yourself doing in the future. I just kept knocking on the door until there was a crack in it.”
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The C-20A aircraft, based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, flies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California for the Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission on Feb. 28, 2025. The DUST mission collected airborne data about snow water to help improve water management and reservoir systems on the ground.NASA/Starr Ginn As part of a science mission tracking one of Earth’s most precious resources – water – NASA’s C-20A aircraft conducted a series of seven research flights in March that can help researchers track the process and timeline as snow melts and transforms into a freshwater resource. The agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) installed on the aircraft collected measurements of seasonal snow cover and estimate the freshwater contained in it.
“Seasonal snow is a critical resource for drinking water, power generation, supporting multi-billion dollar agricultural and recreation industries,” said Starr Ginn, C-20A project manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. “Consequently, understanding the distribution of seasonal snow storage and subsequent runoff is essential.”
The Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission mapped snow accumulation over the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and the Rocky Mountains in Idaho. Mission scientists can use these observations to estimate the amount of water stored in that snow.
Peter Wu, radar operator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, observes data collected during the Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission onboard NASA’s C-20A aircraft on Feb. 28, 2025. The C-20A flew from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to collect data about snow water.NASA/Starr Ginn “Until recently, defining the best method for accurately measuring snow water equivalent (SWE) – or how much and when fresh water is converted from snow – has been a challenge,” said Shadi Oveisgharan, principal investigator of DUST and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The UAVSAR has been shown to be a good instrument to retrieve SWE data.”
Recent research has shown that snow properties, weather patterns, and seasonal conditions in the American West have been shifting in recent decades. These changes have fundamentally altered previous expectations about snowpack monitoring and forecasts of snow runoff. The DUST mission aims to better track and understand those changes to develop more accurate estimates of snow-to-water conversions and their timelines.
“We are trying to find the optimum window during which to retrieve snow data,” Oveisgharan said. “This estimation will help us better estimate available fresh snow and manage our reservoirs better.”
The Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission team assembles next to the C-20A aircraft at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Feb. 28, 2025. From left, radar operator Adam Vaccaro, avionics lead Kelly Jellison, C-20A project manager Starr Ginn, pilot Carrie Worth, pilot Troy Asher, aircraft mechanic Eric Apikian, and operations engineer Ian Elkin.NASA/Starr Ginn The DUST mission achieved a new level of snow data accuracy, which is partly due to the specialized flight paths flown by the C-20A. The aircraft’s Platform Precision Autopilot (PPA) enables the team to fly very specific routes at exact altitudes, speeds, and angles so the UAVSAR can more precisely measure terrain changes.
“Imagine the rows made on grass by a lawn mower,” said Joe Piotrowski Jr., operations engineer for NASA Armstrong’s airborne science program. “The PPA system enables the C-20A to make those paths while measuring terrain changes down to the diameter of a centimeter.”
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Last Updated Apr 24, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactErica HeimLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
Armstrong Flight Research Center Airborne Science C-20A Earth Science Earth's Atmosphere Jet Propulsion Laboratory Science Mission Directorate Explore More
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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Marshall Fires Up Hybrid Rocket Motor to Prep for Moon Landings
NASA’s Artemis campaign will use human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, to safely transport crew to and from the surface of the Moon, in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. As the landers touch down and lift off from the Moon, rocket exhaust plumes will affect the top layer of lunar “soil,” called regolith, on the Moon. When the lander’s engines ignite to decelerate prior to touchdown, they could create craters and instability in the area under the lander and send regolith particles flying at high speeds in various directions.
To better understand the physics behind the interaction of exhaust from the commercial human landing systems and the Moon’s surface, engineers and scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently test-fired a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor more than 30 times. The 3D-printed hybrid rocket motor, developed at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, ignites both solid fuel and a stream of gaseous oxygen to create a powerful stream of rocket exhaust.
“Artemis builds on what we learned from the Apollo missions to the Moon. NASA still has more to learn more about how the regolith and surface will be affected when a spacecraft much larger than the Apollo lunar excursion module lands, whether it’s on the Moon for Artemis or Mars for future missions,” said Manish Mehta, Human Landing System Plume & Aero Environments discipline lead engineer. “Firing a hybrid rocket motor into a simulated lunar regolith field in a vacuum chamber hasn’t been achieved in decades. NASA will be able to take the data from the test and scale it up to correspond to flight conditions to help us better understand the physics, and anchor our data models, and ultimately make landing on the Moon safer for Artemis astronauts.”
Fast Facts
Over billions of years, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts have ground up the surface of the Moon into fragments ranging from huge boulders to powder, called regolith. Regolith can be made of different minerals based on its location on the Moon. The varying mineral compositions mean regolith in certain locations could be denser and better able to support structures like landers. Of the 30 test fires performed in NASA Marshall’s Component Development Area, 28 were conducted under vacuum conditions and two were conducted under ambient pressure. The testing at Marshall ensures the motor will reliably ignite during plume-surface interaction testing in the 60-ft. vacuum sphere at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, later this year.
Once the testing at NASA Marshall is complete, the motor will be shipped to NASA Langley. Test teams at NASA Langley will fire the hybrid motor again but this time into simulated lunar regolith, called Black Point-1, in the 60-foot vacuum sphere. Firing the motor from various heights, engineers will measure the size and shape of craters the rocket exhaust creates as well as the speed and direction the simulated lunar regolith particles travel when the rocket motor exhaust hits them.
“We’re bringing back the capability to characterize the effects of rocket engines interacting with the lunar surface through ground testing in a large vacuum chamber — last done in this facility for the Apollo and Viking programs. The landers going to the Moon through Artemis are much larger and more powerful, so we need new data to understand the complex physics of landing and ascent,” said Ashley Korzun, principal investigator for the plume-surface interaction tests at NASA Langley. “We’ll use the hybrid motor in the second phase of testing to capture data with conditions closely simulating those from a real rocket engine. Our research will reduce risk to the crew, lander, payloads, and surface assets.”
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Credit: NASA Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
News Media Contact
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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By NASA
The New York Stock Exchange welcomed team members from NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission to celebrate the launch of the agency’s newest astrophysics observatory to understand the origins and structure of the universe. Image courtesy of NYSE Group Members of NASA’s recently launched SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission team participated in the New York Stock Exchange’s closing bell ceremony in New York City on April 22.
Michael Thelen, SPHEREx flight system manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, is seen here ringing the closing bell. Additional SPHEREx team members from NASA JPL, which manages the mission, and BAE Systems Inc., Space & Mission Systems, which built the telescope and spacecraft bus for NASA, participated.
The SPHEREx observatory, which launched March 11 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will soon begin mapping the universe like none before it. Using 102 color filters to scan the entire sky quickly, SPHEREx will gather data on hundreds of millions of galaxies that will complement the work of more targeted telescopes, like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. Its surveys will help answer some of the biggest questions in astrophysics: what happened in the first second after the big bang, how galaxies form and evolve, and the origins and abundance of water and other key ingredients for life in our galaxy.
Michael P. Thelen, SPHEREx Observatory Flight System Manager, rings the bell alongside NASA SPHEREx team members at the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, April 25, 2025. Image courtesy of NYSE Group More About SPHEREx
SPHEREx is managed by JPL for NASA’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions across the U.S. and in South Korea. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available.
For more information on SPHEREx, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/spherex
News Media Contacts
Alise Fisher
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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By NASA
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team shared Thursday the designs for the three core surveys the mission will conduct after launch. These observation programs are designed to investigate some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics while enabling expansive cosmic exploration that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
“Roman’s setting out to do wide, deep surveys of the universe in a way that will help us answer questions about how dark energy and dark matter govern cosmic evolution, and the demographics of worlds beyond our solar system,” said Gail Zasowski, an associate professor at the University of Utah and co-chair of the ROTAC (Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee). “But the overarching goal is that the surveys have broad appeal and numerous science applications. They were designed by and for the astronomical community to maximize the science they’ll enable.”
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s three main observing programs, highlighted in this infographic, can enable astronomers to view the universe as never before, revealing billions of cosmic objects strewn across enormous swaths of space-time.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Roman’s crisp, panoramic view of space and fast survey speeds provide the opportunity for astronomers to study the universe as never before. The Roman team asked the science community to detail the topics they’d like to study through each of Roman’s surveys and selected committees of scientists across many organizations to evaluate the range of possibilities and formulate three compelling options for each.
In April, the Roman team received the recommendations and has now determined the survey designs. These observations account for no more than 75 percent of Roman’s surveys during its five-year primary mission, with the remainder allocated to additional observations that will be proposed and developed by the science community in later opportunities.
“These survey designs are the culmination of two years of input from more than 1,000 scientists from over 350 institutions across the globe,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to hear from so many of the people who’ll use the data after launch to investigate everything from objects in our outer solar system, planets across our galaxy, dark matter and dark energy, to exploding stars, growing black holes, galaxies by the billions, and so much more.”
With all major hardware now delivered, Roman has entered its final phase of preparation for launch, undergoing integration and key environmental testing at NASA Goddard. Roman is targeted to launch by May 2027, with the team working toward a potential launch window that opens in October 2026.
This infographic describes the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observation program has three components, covering more than 5,000 square degrees (about 12 percent of the sky) altogether in just under a year and a half. The main part covers about 2,500 square degrees, doing both spectroscopy (splitting light into individual colors to study patterns that reveal detailed information) and imaging in multiple filters (which allow astronomers to select specific wavelengths of light) to provide the rich dataset needed for precise studies of our universe. A wider component spans more than twice the area using a single filter, specifically covering a large area that can be viewed by ground-based telescopes located in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The final component focuses on a smaller region to provide a deeper view that will help astronomers study faint, distant galaxies.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey
Roman’s largest survey, the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, combines the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of cosmic time. Roman can look far from the dusty plane of our Milky Way galaxy (that’s what the “high-latitude” part of the survey name means), looking up and out of the galaxy rather than through it to get the clearest view of the distant cosmos.
The distribution and shapes of galaxies in Roman’s enormous, deep images can help us understand the nature of dark energy — a pressure that seems to be speeding up the universe’s expansion — and how invisible dark matter, which Roman will detect by its gravitational effects, influences the evolution of structure in our universe.
For the last two years, researchers have been discussing ways to expand the range of scientific topics that can be studied using the same dataset. That includes studying galaxy evolution, star formation, cosmic voids, the matter between galaxies, and much more.
This infographic describes the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The survey’s main component covers over 18 square degrees — a region of sky as large as 90 full moons — and sees supernovae that occurred up to about 8 billion years ago. Smaller areas within the survey can pierce even farther, potentially back to when the universe was around a billion years old. The survey is split between the northern and southern hemispheres, located in regions of the sky that will be continuously visible to Roman. The bulk of the survey consists of 30-hour observations every five days for two years in the middle of Roman’s five-year primary mission.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey
Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey can probe our dynamic universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly. Stitching these observations together to create movies can allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years.
This survey can probe dark energy by finding and studying many thousands of a special type of exploding star called type Ia supernovae. These stellar cataclysms allow scientists to measure cosmic distances and trace the universe’s expansion.
“Staring at a large volume of the sky for so long will also reveal black holes being born as neutron stars merge, and tidal disruption events –– flares released by stars falling into black holes,” said Saurabh Jha, a professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and ROTAC co-chair. “It will also allow astronomers to explore variable objects, like active galaxies and binary systems. And it enables more open-ended cosmic exploration than most other space telescopes can do, offering a chance to answer questions we haven’t yet thought to ask.”
This infographic describes the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The smallest of Roman’s core surveys, this observation program consists of repeat visits to six fields covering 1.7 square degrees total. One field pierces the very center of the galaxy, and the others are nearby — all in a region of the sky that will be visible to Roman for two 72-day stretches each spring and fall. The survey mainly consists of six seasons (three early on, and three toward the end of Roman’s primary mission), during which Roman views each field every 12 minutes. Roman also views the six fields with less intensity at other times throughout the mission, allowing astronomers to detect microlensing events that can last for years, signaling the presence of isolated, stellar-mass black holes.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey
Unlike the high-latitude surveys, Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Roman’s crisp resolution and infrared view can allow astronomers to watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals — gravitational boosts of a background star’s light that occur when an intervening object passes nearly in front of it. While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including analogs of every planet in our solar system except Mercury.
The same set of observations can reveal “rogue” planets that drift through the galaxy unbound to any star, brown dwarfs (“failed stars” too lightweight to power themselves by fusion the way stars do), and stellar corpses like neutron stars and white dwarfs. And scientists could discover 100,000 new worlds by seeing stars periodically get dimmer as an orbiting planet passes in front of them, events called transits. Scientists can also study the stars themselves, detecting “starquakes” on a million giant stars, the result of sound waves reverberating through their interiors that can reveal information about their structures, ages, and other properties.
Data from all of Roman’s surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access.
“Roman’s unprecedented data will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics,” McEnery said. “We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after the mission launches.”
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940
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Last Updated Apr 24, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Black Holes Dark Energy Dark Matter Earth-like Exoplanets Exoplanets Galaxies Gas Giant Exoplanets Neptune-Like Exoplanets Neutron Stars Stars Stellar-mass Black Holes Super-Earth Exoplanets Supernovae Terrestrial Exoplanets The Milky Way The Solar System The Universe Explore More
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