Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Mysterious blue light spotted during avalanche on Mount Xiannairi, China
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Cameras on Blue Ghost Capture First-of-its-Kind Moon Landing Footage
This compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence of the Blue Ghost final descent and landing that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second. Altitude data is approximate. Credits: NASA/Olivia Tyrrell A team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has captured first-of-its-kind imagery of a lunar lander’s engine plumes interacting with the Moon’s surface, a key piece of data as trips to the Moon increase in the coming years under the agency’s Artemis campaign.
The Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1 instrument took the images during the descent and successful soft landing of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon’s Mare Crisium region on March 2, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
This compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence of the Blue Ghost final descent and landing that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second. Altitude data is approximate.NASA/Olivia Tyrrell The compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second during the descent and landing.
The sequence, using approximate altitude data, begins roughly 91 feet (28 meters) above the surface. The descent images show evidence that the onset of the interaction between Blue Ghost’s reaction control thruster plumes and the surface begins at roughly 49 feet (15 meters). As the descent continues, the interaction becomes increasingly complex, with the plumes vigorously kicking up the lunar dust, soil and rocks — collectively known as regolith. After touchdown, the thrusters shut off and the dust settles. The lander levels a bit and the lunar terrain beneath and immediately around it becomes visible.
Although the data is still preliminary, the 3000-plus images we captured appear to contain exactly the type of information we were hoping for…
Rob Maddock
SCALPSS project manager
“Although the data is still preliminary, the 3000-plus images we captured appear to contain exactly the type of information we were hoping for in order to better understand plume-surface interaction and learn how to accurately model the phenomenon based on the number, size, thrust and configuration of the engines,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager. “The data is vital to reducing risk in the design and operation of future lunar landers as well as surface infrastructure that may be in the vicinity. We have an absolutely amazing team of scientists and engineers, and I couldn’t be prouder of each and every one of them.”
As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to accurately predict the effects of landings. Data from SCALPSS will better inform future robotic and crewed Moon landings.
The SCALPSS 1.1 technology includes six cameras in all, four short focal length and two long focal length. The long-focal-length cameras allowed the instrument to begin taking images at a higher altitude, prior to the onset of the plume-surface interaction, to provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison of the surface. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, the team will later combine the overlapping images – one set from the long-focal-length cameras, another from the short focal length – to create 3D digital elevation maps of the surface.
This animation shows the arrangement of the six SCALPSS 1.1 cameras and the instrument’s data storage unit. The cameras are integrated around the base of the Blue Ghost lander. Credit: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab The instrument is still operating on the Moon and as the light and shadows move during the long lunar day, it will see more surface details under and immediately around the lander. The team also hopes to capture images during the transition to lunar night to observe how the dust responds to the change.
“The successful SCALPSS operation is a key step in gathering fundamental knowledge about landing and operating on the Moon, and this technology is already providing data that could inform future missions,” said Michelle Munk, SCALPSS principal investigator.
The successful SCALPSS operation is a key step in gathering fundamental knowledge about landing and operating on the Moon, and this technology is already providing data that could inform future missions
Michelle Munk
SCALPSS principal investigator
It will take the team several months to fully process the data from the Blue Ghost landing. They plan to issue raw images from SCALPSS 1.1 publicly through NASA’s Planetary Data System within six months.
The team is already preparing for its next flight on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, scheduled to launch later this year. The next version of SCALPSS is undergoing thermal vacuum testing at NASA Langley ahead of a late-March delivery to Blue Origin.
The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Through this opportunity, various companies from a select group of vendors bid on delivering payloads for NASA including everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
About the Author
Joe Atkinson
Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 13, 2025 Related Terms
General Explore More
4 min read Five Facts About NASA’s Moon Bound Technology
Article 2 weeks ago 6 min read Ten NASA Science, Tech Instruments Flying to Moon on Firefly Lander
Article 2 months ago 3 min read Electrodynamic Dust Shield Heading to Moon on Firefly Lander
Article 2 months ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
-
By NASA
3 Min Read NASA, Partners to Conduct Space Station Research During Expedition 73
NASA NASA astronauts are gearing up for a scientific mission aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 73 NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will launch in March as part of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will join the crew when he launches aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in April alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.
Read more about some of the microgravity research planned by NASA and its partners:
Subjects for human research
NASA Astronauts often serve as test subjects, submitting blood and other samples for research. NASA astronaut Anne McClain is pictured submitting a sample on a previous mission with assistance from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut David Saint-Jacques. McClain will participate in NASA’s Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research investigation, or CIPHER, a suite of integrated studies on physiological and psychological changes seen in space. Results could provide valuable insights for future deep space missions.
Testing lunar navigation
NASA When Expedition 73 astronauts engage with students worldwide via the ISS Ham Radio program, researchers will use the ham radio hardware to test software for the Navigation and Communication Testbed (NAVCOM) that could help shape future lunar navigation. Researchers from the investigation recently launched a related study to the Moon aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost to help bridge existing Earth navigation with emerging lunar-specific solutions.
Advancing fire safety
NASA Expedition 73 is scheduled to conduct a Material Ignition and Suppression Test (SoFIE-MIST), testing material flammability in microgravity. This research could improve fire safety on future missions, contributing to models used to select materials for space facilities and helping to determine the best ways to extinguish fires in space.
Keeping blood flowing
Angelo Taibi/ASI Expedition 73 crew members will participate in Drain Brain 2.0, which examines how blood flows from the brain to the heart in microgravity using this plethysmograph, a device that can record the volume of blood drainage from the skull. Results could identify which processes in the body compensate for the lack of gravity, helping to ensure proper blood flow for astronauts on future missions and people with cardiovascular issues on Earth.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology, and human innovation that enables research not possible on Earth. For more than 24 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, through which astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for developing a low Earth economy and NASA’s next great leaps in exploration, including missions to the Moon under Artemis and, ultimately, human exploration of Mars.
Learn more about the International Space Station, its research, and its crew, at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Space Station Research and Technology
Humans In Space
Space Station Research Results
Human Research Program
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 10, 2025 Related Terms
ISS Research International Space Station (ISS) View the full article
-
By Space Force
U.S. military general officers and senior enlisted advisors headlined a senior leader panel during the 32nd annual National Character and Leadership Symposium at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado, Feb. 21.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 6 Min Read NASA’s Webb Peers Deeper into Mysterious Flame Nebula
This collage of images from the Flame Nebula shows a near-infrared light view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the left, while the two insets at the right show the near-infrared view taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Meyer (University of Michigan), A. Pagan (STScI) The Flame Nebula, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the Flame Nebula, there are objects so small that their cores will never be able to fuse hydrogen like full-fledged stars—brown dwarfs.
Brown dwarfs, often called “failed stars,” over time become very dim and much cooler than stars. These factors make observing brown dwarfs with most telescopes difficult, if not impossible, even at cosmically short distances from the Sun. When they are very young, however, they are still relatively warmer and brighter and therefore easier to observe despite the obscuring, dense dust and gas that comprises the Flame Nebula in this case.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can pierce this dense, dusty region and see the faint infrared glow from young brown dwarfs. A team of astronomers used this capability to explore the lowest mass limit of brown dwarfs within the Flame Nebula. The result, they found, were free-floating objects roughly two to three times the mass of Jupiter, although they were sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter.
“The goal of this project was to explore the fundamental low-mass limit of the star and brown dwarf formation process. With Webb, we’re able to probe the faintest and lowest mass objects,” said lead study author Matthew De Furio of the University of Texas at Austin.
Image A: Flame Nebula: Hubble and Webb Observations
This collage of images from the Flame Nebula shows a near-infrared light view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the left, while the two insets at the right show the near-infrared view taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Much of the dark, dense gas and dust, as well as the surrounding white clouds within the Hubble image, have been cleared in the Webb images, giving us a view into a more translucent cloud pierced by the infrared-producing objects within that are young stars and brown dwarfs. Astronomers used Webb to take a census of the lowest-mass objects within this star-forming region.
The Hubble image on the left represents light at wavelengths of 1.05 microns (filter F105W) as blue, 1.3 microns (F130N) as green, and 1.39 microns (F129M) as red. The two Webb images on the right represent light at wavelengths of 1.15 microns and 1.4 microns (filters F115W and F140M) as blue, 1.82 microns (F182M) as green, 3.6 microns (F360M) as orange, and 4.3 microns (F430M) as red. NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Meyer (University of Michigan), A. Pagan (STScI) Smaller Fragments
The low-mass limit the team sought is set by a process called fragmentation. In this process large molecular clouds, from which both stars and brown dwarfs are born, break apart into smaller and smaller units, or fragments.
Fragmentation is highly dependent on several factors with the balance between temperature, thermal pressure, and gravity being among the most important. More specifically, as fragments contract under the force of gravity, their cores heat up. If a core is massive enough, it will begin to fuse hydrogen. The outward pressure created by that fusion counteracts gravity, stopping collapse and stabilizing the object (then known as a star). However, fragments whose cores are not compact and hot enough to burn hydrogen continue to contract as long as they radiate away their internal heat.
“The cooling of these clouds is important because if you have enough internal energy, it will fight that gravity,” says Michael Meyer of the University of Michigan. “If the clouds cool efficiently, they collapse and break apart.”
Fragmentation stops when a fragment becomes opaque enough to reabsorb its own radiation, thereby stopping the cooling and preventing further collapse. Theories placed the lower limit of these fragments anywhere between one and ten Jupiter masses. This study significantly shrinks that range as Webb’s census counted up fragments of different masses within the nebula.
“As found in many previous studies, as you go to lower masses, you actually get more objects up to about ten times the mass of Jupiter. In our study with the James Webb Space Telescope, we are sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and we are finding significantly fewer and fewer things as you go below ten times the mass of Jupiter,” De Furio explained. “We find fewer five-Jupiter-mass objects than ten-Jupiter-mass objects, and we find way fewer three-Jupiter-mass objects than five-Jupiter-mass objects. We don’t really find any objects below two or three Jupiter masses, and we expect to see them if they are there, so we are hypothesizing that this could be the limit itself.”
Meyer added, “Webb, for the first time, has been able to probe up to and beyond that limit. If that limit is real, there really shouldn’t be any one-Jupiter-mass objects free-floating out in our Milky Way galaxy, unless they were formed as planets and then ejected out of a planetary system.”
Image B: Low Mass Objects within the Flame Nebula in Infrared Light
This near-infrared image of a portion of the Flame Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope highlights three low-mass objects, seen in the insets to the right. These objects, which are much colder than protostars, require the sensitivity of Webb’s instruments to detect them. These objects were studied as part of an effort to explore the lowest mass limit of brown dwarfs within the Flame Nebula.
The Webb images represent light at wavelengths of 1.15 microns and 1.4 microns (filters F115W and F140M) as blue, 1.82 microns (F182M) as green, 3.6 microns (F360M) as orange, and 4.3 microns (F430M) as red. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Meyer (University of Michigan) Building on Hubble’s Legacy
Brown dwarfs, given the difficulty of finding them, have a wealth of information to provide, particularly in star formation and planetary research given their similarities to both stars and planets. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been on the hunt for these brown dwarfs for decades.
Even though Hubble can’t observe the brown dwarfs in the Flame Nebula to as low a mass as Webb can, it was crucial in identifying candidates for further study. This study is an example of how Webb took the baton—decades of Hubble data from the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex—and enabled in-depth research.
“It’s really difficult to do this work, looking at brown dwarfs down to even ten Jupiter masses, from the ground, especially in regions like this. And having existing Hubble data over the last 30 years or so allowed us to know that this is a really useful star-forming region to target. We needed to have Webb to be able to study this particular science topic,” said De Furio.
“It’s a quantum leap in our capabilities between understanding what was going on from Hubble. Webb is really opening an entirely new realm of possibilities, understanding these objects,” explained astronomer Massimo Robberto of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
This team is continuing to study the Flame Nebula, using Webb’s spectroscopic tools to further characterize the different objects within its dusty cocoon.
“There’s a big overlap between the things that could be planets and the things that are very, very low mass brown dwarfs,” Meyer stated. “And that’s our job in the next five years: to figure out which is which and why.”
These results are accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Image C (Animated): Flame Nebula (Hubble and Webb Comparison)
This animated image alternates between a Hubble Space Telescope and a James Webb Space Telescope observation of the Flame Nebula, a nearby star-forming nebula less than 1 million years old. In this comparison, three low-mass objects are highlighted. In Hubble’s observation, the low-mass objects are hidden by the region’s dense dust and gas. However, the objects are brought out in the Webb observation due to Webb’s sensitivity to faint infrared light. NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI) The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Downloads
Click any image to open a larger version.
View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Matthew Brown – mabrown@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Science Themes
Webb Mission Page
Learn more about brown dwarf discoveries
Related For Kids
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
Ciencia de la NASA
NASA en español
Space Place para niños
Keep Exploring Related Topics
James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Universe
Universe Stories
Stars Stories
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 10, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Astrophysics Brown Dwarfs Goddard Space Flight Center Science & Research Star-forming Nebulae The Universe View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.