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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA Marshall will hold a candle-lighting ceremony and wreath placement at 9:30 a.m. CST. The ceremony will include remarks from Larry Leopard, associate director, and Bill Hill, director of Marshall’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. NASA/ Krisdon Manecke NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, invites media to attend its observance of the agency’s Day of Remembrance at 9:30 a.m. CST Thursday, Jan. 23, in the lobby of Building 4221.
Day of Remembrance honors the members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery.
The event will include brief remarks from NASA Marshall leaders, followed by a candle lighting and moment of silence for the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Speakers will include:
Larry Leopard, associate director, technical. Bill Hill, director, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. Media interested in attending the event must confirm by 12 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22, with Molly Porter at: molly.a.porter@nasa.gov.
The agency will also pay tribute to its fallen astronauts with special online content, updated on NASA’s Day of Remembrance, at:
https://www.nasa.gov/dor/
Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 21, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactMolly Portermolly.a.porter@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used radar data taken by ESA’s Sentinel-1A satellite before and after the 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile to create this inter-ferogram showing land deformation. The color bands west of the volcano indicate land sinking. NISAR will produce similar images.ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech A SAR image — like ones NISAR will produce — shows land cover on Mount Okmok on Alaska’s Umnak Island . Created with data taken in August 2011 by NASA’s UAVSAR instrument, it is an example of polarimetry, which measures return waves’ orientation relative to that of transmitted signals.NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech Set to launch within a few months, NISAR will use a technique called synthetic aperture radar to produce incredibly detailed maps of surface change on our planet.
When NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) new Earth satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) launches in coming months, it will capture images of Earth’s surface so detailed they will show how much small plots of land and ice are moving, down to fractions of an inch. Imaging nearly all of Earth’s solid surfaces twice every 12 days, it will see the flex of Earth’s crust before and after natural disasters such as earthquakes; it will monitor the motion of glaciers and ice sheets; and it will track ecosystem changes, including forest growth and deforestation.
The mission’s extraordinary capabilities come from the technique noted in its name: synthetic aperture radar, or SAR. Pioneered by NASA for use in space, SAR combines multiple measurements, taken as a radar flies overhead, to sharpen the scene below. It works like conventional radar, which uses microwaves to detect distant surfaces and objects, but steps up the data processing to reveal properties and characteristics at high resolution.
To get such detail without SAR, radar satellites would need antennas too enormous to launch, much less operate. At 39 feet (12 meters) wide when deployed, NISAR’s radar antenna reflector is as wide as a city bus is long. Yet it would have to be 12 miles (19 kilometers) in diameter for the mission’s L-band instrument, using traditional radar techniques, to image pixels of Earth down to 30 feet (10 meters) across.
Synthetic aperture radar “allows us to refine things very accurately,” said Charles Elachi, who led NASA spaceborne SAR missions before serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 2001 to 2016. “The NISAR mission will open a whole new realm to learn about our planet as a dynamic system.”
Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech How SAR Works
Elachi arrived at JPL in 1971 after graduating from Caltech, joining a group of engineers developing a radar to study Venus’ surface. Then, as now, radar’s allure was simple: It could collect measurements day and night and see through clouds. The team’s work led to the Magellan mission to Venus in 1989 and several NASA space shuttle radar missions.
An orbiting radar operates on the same principles as one tracking planes at an airport. The spaceborne antenna emits microwave pulses toward Earth. When the pulses hit something — a volcanic cone, for example — they scatter. The antenna receives those signals that echo back to the instrument, which measures their strength, change in frequency, how long they took to return, and if they bounced off of multiple surfaces, such as buildings.
This information can help detect the presence of an object or surface, its distance away, and its speed, but the resolution is too low to generate a clear picture. First conceived at Goodyear Aircraft Corp. in 1952, SAR addresses that issue.
“It’s a technique to create high-resolution images from a low-resolution system,” said Paul Rosen, NISAR’s project scientist at JPL.
As the radar travels, its antenna continuously transmits microwaves and receives echoes from the surface. Because the instrument is moving relative to Earth, there are slight changes in frequency in the return signals. Called the Doppler shift, it’s the same effect that causes a siren’s pitch to rise as a fire engine approaches then fall as it departs.
Computer processing of those signals is like a camera lens redirecting and focusing light to produce a sharp photograph. With SAR, the spacecraft’s path forms the “lens,” and the processing adjusts for the Doppler shifts, allowing the echoes to be aggregated into a single, focused image.
Using SAR
One type of SAR-based visualization is an interferogram, a composite of two images taken at separate times that reveals the differences by measuring the change in the delay of echoes. Though they may look like modern art to the untrained eye, the multicolor concentric bands of interferograms show how far land surfaces have moved: The closer the bands, the greater the motion. Seismologists use these visualizations to measure land deformation from earthquakes.
Another type of SAR analysis, called polarimetry, measures the vertical or horizontal orientation of return waves relative to that of transmitted signals. Waves bouncing off linear structures like buildings tend to return in the same orientation, while those bouncing off irregular features, like tree canopies, return in another orientation. By mapping the differences and the strength of the return signals, researchers can identify an area’s land cover, which is useful for studying deforestation and flooding.
Such analyses are examples of ways NISAR will help researchers better understand processes that affect billions of lives.
“This mission packs in a wide range of science toward a common goal of studying our changing planet and the impacts of natural hazards,” said Deepak Putrevu, co-lead of the ISRO science team at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, India.
Learn more about NISAR at:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
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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 21, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Credit: NASA With Finland’s signing of the Artemis Accords on Tuesday, NASA celebrates the 53rd nation committing to the safe and responsible exploration of space that benefits humanity. The signing ceremony took place on the margins of the Aalto University’s Winter Satellite Workshop 2025 in Espoo, Finland.
“Today, Finland is joining a community of nations that want to share scientific data freely, operate safely, and preserve the space environment for the Artemis Generation,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, who provided pre-recorded virtual remarks for the ceremony. “By signing the Artemis Accords, Finland builds on its rich history in space, excelling in science, navigation, and Earth observation. Forging strong partnerships between our nations and among the international community is critical for advancing our shared space exploration goals.”
Wille Rydman, Finland’s minister of economic affairs, signed the Artemis Accords in front of an audience of Finnish space officials and workshop attendees.
“Finland has been part of the space exploration community for decades with innovations and technology produced by Finnish companies and research institutions,” said Rydman. “The signing of the Artemis Accords is in line with Finland’s newly updated space strategy that highlights the importance of international cooperation and of strengthening partnerships with the Unites States and other allies. We aim for this cooperation to open great opportunities for the Finnish space sector in the new era of space exploration and in the Artemis program.”
NASA and Finland have a long history of collaboration, and most recently, Finland is contributing to the upcoming Intuitive Machines-2 delivery to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis campaign and CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. Intuitive Machines will deliver a lunar LTE/4G communications system developed by Finnish company, Nokia. Its U.S. subsidiary, Nokia of America, was selected as part of NASA’s Tipping Point opportunity through the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, to advance a lunar surface communications system that could help humans and robots explore more of the Moon than ever before.
The Finnish Meteorological Institute also provided the pressure and humidity measurement instruments for the Environmental Monitoring Station instrument suite aboard the Curiosity Rover, operating on Mars now.
In 2020, the United States, led by NASA and the U.S. Department of State, and seven other initial signatory nations established the Artemis Accords, a set of principles promoting the beneficial use of space for humanity.
The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices for responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.
Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords
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Kathryn Hambleton / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
kathryn.a.hambleton@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 21, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A test rover with shape memory alloy spring tires traverses rocky, Martian-simulated terrain.Credit: NASA The mystique of Mars has been studied for centuries. The fourth planet from the Sun is reminiscent of a rich, red desert and features a rugged surface challenging to traverse. While several robotic missions have landed on Mars, NASA has only explored 1% of its surface. Ahead of future human and robotic missions to the Red Planet, NASA recently completed rigorous rover testing on Martian-simulated terrain, featuring revolutionary shape memory alloy spring tire technology developed at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland in partnership with Goodyear Tire & Rubber.
Rovers — mobile robots that explore lunar or planetary surfaces — must be equipped with adequate tires for the environments they’re exploring. As Mars has an uneven, rocky surface, durable tires are essential for mobility. Shape memory alloy (SMA) spring tires help make that possible.
Shape memory alloys are metals that can return to their original shape after being bent, stretched, heated, and cooled. NASA has used them for decades, but applying this technology to tires is a fairly new concept.
“We at Glenn are one of the world leaders in bringing the science and understanding of how you change the alloy compositions, how you change the processing of the material, and how you model these systems in a way that we can control and stabilize the behaviors so that they can actually be utilized in real applications,” said Dr. Santo Padula II, materials research engineer at NASA Glenn.
Researchers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Airbus Defence & Space pose with a test rover on Martian-simulated terrain.Credit: NASA Padula and his team have tested several applications for SMAs, but his epiphany of the possibilities for tires came about because of a chance encounter.
While leaving a meeting, Padula encountered Colin Creager, a mechanical engineer at NASA Glenn whom he hadn’t seen in years. Creager used the opportunity to tell him about the work he was doing in the NASA Glenn Simulated Lunar Operations (SLOPE) Laboratory, which can simulate the surfaces of the Moon and Mars to help scientists test rover performance. He brought Padula to the lab, where Padula immediately took note of the spring tires. At the time, they were made of steel.
Padula remarked, “The minute I saw the tire, I said, aren’t you having problems with those plasticizing?” Plasticizing refers to a metal undergoing deformation that isn’t reversible and can lead to damage or failure of the component.
“Colin told me, ‘That’s the only problem we can’t solve.’” Padula continued, “I said, I have your solution. I’m developing a new alloy that will solve that. And that’s how SMA tires started.”
From there, Padula, Creager, and their teams joined forces to improve NASA’s existing spring tires with a game-changing material: nickel-titanium SMAs. The metal can accommodate deformation despite extreme stress, permitting the tires to return to their original shape even with rigorous impact, which is not possible for spring tires made with conventional metal.
Credit: NASA Since then, research has been abundant, and in the fall of 2024, teams from NASA Glenn traveled to Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, United Kingdom, to test NASA’s innovative SMA spring tires. Testing took place at the Airbus Mars Yard — an enclosed facility created to simulate the harsh conditions of Martian terrain.
“We went out there with the team, we brought our motion tracking system and did different tests uphill and back downhill,” Creager said. “We conducted a lot of cross slope tests over rocks and sand where the focus was on understanding stability because this was something we had never tested before.”
During the tests, researchers monitored rovers as the wheels went over rocks, paying close attention to how much the crowns of the tires shifted, any damage, and downhill sliding. The team expected sliding and shifting, but it was very minimal, and testing met all expectations. Researchers also gathered insights about the tires’ stability, maneuverability, and rock traversal capabilities.
As NASA continues to advance systems for deep space exploration, the agency’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility program enlisted Padula to research additional ways to improve the properties of SMAs for future rover tires and other potential uses, including lunar environments.
“My goal is to extend the operating temperature capability of SMAs for applications like tires, and to look at applying these materials for habitat protection,” Padula said. “We need new materials for extreme environments that can provide energy absorption for micrometeorite strikes that happen on the Moon to enable things like habitat structures for large numbers of astronauts and scientists to do work on the Moon and Mars.”
Researchers say shape memory alloy spring tires are just the beginning.
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By NASA
With the historic first international space docking mission only six months away, preparations on the ground for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) intensified. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, workers in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) stacked the rocket for the mission, the final Saturn rocket assembled for flight. In the nearby Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (MSOB), the Apollo prime crew of Commander Thomas Stafford, Command Module Pilot Vance Brand, and Docking Module Pilot Donald “Deke” Slayton, and their backups Alan Bean, Ronald Evans, and Jack Lousma conducted vacuum chamber tests of the Command Module (CM), the final Apollo spacecraft prepared for flight.
Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers attach fins to the Saturn IB’s first stage. In the VAB, workers secure the first stage of the Saturn IB rocket onto the milk stool, perched on Mobile Launcher-1. Workers lift the second stage of the Saturn IB rocket prior to mating with the first stage. Workers lower a boilerplate Apollo spacecraft onto the Saturn IB rocket. The Saturn IB rocket, serial number SA-210, used for ASTP had a lengthy history. Contractors originally built its two stages in 1967, at a time when NASA planned many more Saturn IB flights to test Apollo spacecraft components in Earth orbit in preparation for the Moon landing. By 1968, however, after four uncrewed Saturn IB launches, only one launched a crew, Apollo 7. Four more Saturn IBs remained on reserve to launch crews as part of the Apollo Applications Program, renamed Skylab in 1970. Without an immediate mission, the two stages of SA-210 entered long-term storage in 1967. Workers later modified and refurbished the stages for ASTP before shipping them to KSC. The first stage arrived in April 1974 and the second stage in November 1972.
On Jan. 13, 1975, inside the cavernous VAB, workers stacked the Saturn IB rocket’s first stage onto Mobile Launcher-1 (ML-1), modified from its use to launch Saturn V rockets during the Apollo program with the addition of the milk stool pedestal. The milk stool, a 128-foot tall platform, allowed the Saturn IB to use the same Launch Umbilical Tower as the much larger Saturn V rocket at Launch Complex 39. The next day, workers lowered the second stage onto the first, followed by the Instrument Unit two days later. Finally, on Jan. 17 workers topped off the rocket with a boilerplate Apollo spacecraft while engineers continued testing the flight article in the MSOB.
The ASTP Apollo Command and Service Modules arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The ASTP Command Module arrives in KSC’s Manned Spacecraft Operations Building. The Command and Service Modules – CSM-111 – arrived at KSC from the Rockwell International plant in Downey, California, on Sept. 8, 1974, by C-5A Galaxy cargo plane. Rockwell had finished building the spacecraft in March 1970 and placed it in storage until July 1972. Modifications for ASTP took place between August 1972 and August 1974, following which Rockwell shipped the spacecraft to KSC. The sign on the shipping container bore the legend “From A to Soyuz – Apollo/Soyuz – Last and the Best.” Workers at KSC towed the modules to the MSOB for inspection and checkout, joined the two modules, and placed the combined spacecraft into a vacuum chamber.
The prime Apollo crew of Thomas Stafford, left, Vance Brand, and Donald “Deke” Slayton suit up in preparation for an altitude chamber test in the Command Module (CM). The astronauts inside the CM in the altitude chamber. In the MSOB, the prime and backup ASTP crews conducted tests of their spacecraft in an altitude chamber. After both crews completed simulated runs in December 1974, the prime crew of Stafford, Brand, and Slayton suited up, entered the CM inside the chamber, closed the hatch, and conducted an actual test on Jan. 14, with the chamber simulating altitudes of up to 220,000 feet. Two days later, the backup crew of Bean, Evans, and Lousma completed a similar test.
he backup Apollo crew of Alan Bean, left, Ronald Evans, and Jack Lousma suit up in preparation for an altitude chamber test in the Command Module (CM). Workers assist backup crewmember Lousma into the CM. To solve the problem of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft operating at different atmospheric pressures and compositions and using incompatible docking mechanisms, engineers designed a Docking Module (DM) that acted as both an airlock and a transfer tunnel and a Docking System (DS) that allowed the two nations’ spacecraft to physically join in space. NASA contracted with Rockwell International to build the DM. Engineers equipped one end of the DM with the standard Apollo probe-and-drogue docking mechanism and the other end with the androgynous system that linked up with its opposite half installed on the modified Soyuz spacecraft. During launch, the DM rested inside the Spacecraft Lunar Module (LM) Adaptor (SLA) atop the rocket’s upper stage, much like the LM during Apollo flights. Once in orbit, the astronauts separated the CSM from the upper stage, turned the spacecraft around, docked with the DM and pulled it free.
Workers lower the DM into Chamber B in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Workers lower the DM into Chamber B in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. After extensive vacuum testing in Chamber B of the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the flight DM arrived at KSC on Oct. 29, 1974, and workers prepared it for more testing in a vacuum chamber in the MSOB. The flight DS arrived at KSC on Jan. 3, 1975, and two weeks later workers installed it on the DM. On Jan. 27, engineers lowered the DM onto the CM in the altitude chamber to conduct a mechanical docking test. Engineers conducted 10 days of joint tests of television and audio equipment to ensure systems compatibility.
Workers conduct a docking test of the Docking Module with the Command Module at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA support astronaut Robert Overmyer, right, works with engineers during compatibility testing. To be continued…
Major events around the world in January 1975:
January 5 – Musical The Wiz opens on Broadway, runs for 1,672 performances.
January 6 – The game show Wheel of Fortune debuts on NBC.
January 8 – Ella Grasso of Connecticut becomes the first elected female governor in the U.S.
January 11 – The S-II second stage of the Saturn V rocket that launched Skylab reenters the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
January 12 – The Pittsburg Steelers beat the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IX, played in Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
January 15 – Space Mountain opens at Disney World in Orlando.
January 18 – The Jeffersons premieres on CBS.
January 22 – Launch of the Landsat-2 Earth resources monitoring satellite.
January 30 – Ernő Rubik applies for a patent in Hungary for his Magic Cube, later known as Rubik’s Cube.
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