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Learn Home NASA HEAT Student Activity… Heliophysics Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 3 min read
NASA HEAT Student Activity Featured in TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2024
On April 8, 2024, tens of millions experienced a solar eclipse from Mexico through the United States and into Canada. Astronomers, educators, and organizations had been preparing the public for this grand celestial event. Learning from engagement experiences in 2017, the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) promoted an activity called “Eclipse Essentials: Safe and Stylish Solar Viewing Glasses.” The activity was first tested in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the Balloon Fiesta around the October 2023 annular eclipse. Using solar viewing glasses, a paper plate, some drawing and decoration supplies, visitors – minors and adults alike – crowded around the heliophysics tables in the NASA tent. That positive experience led NASA HEAT to modify and perfect the design of their “face shield” activity before offering trainings to numerous educators and outreach personnel in the weeks leading up to the April 2024 engagement events.
Note: The glasses and the art activity are not only useful for solar eclipses. They can be used anytime to safely observe the Sun. While it is never safe to look directly at the sun with unprotected eyes, eclipse glasses are perfect for observing sunspots!
One proof of positive impact can be found at the Myers Elementary School in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Students from two kindergarten classes, escorted outside by their teachers Amy Johnston and Wendy Sheridan, stared toward the sky with their solar viewing glasses using paper plates to watch the solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. The paper plates, which helped provide additional safety measures to protect their eyes, were attached to solar eclipse glasses and decorated by each student in their classrooms as a project leading up to the big day. A photo of the students was so captivating that multiple media outlets shared it on or shortly after the day of the eclipse.
The global media brand, TIME, selected a photo of these kindergarten students wearing their NASA HEAT-designed solar eclipse-viewing “face shields” during the April 8th solar eclipse as one of “TIME’s Top 100 Photos of 2024”. When sharing about the top 100 photos on Instagram, TIME had this to say:
“Every year the TIME photo department sits down to curate the strongest images that crossed our path over the previous 12 months. And every year, sitting with the images, we find ourselves mulling the ways this collection feels heavier than the last, how the year produced images unlike what we’ve seen before.
But this year something else, a tautness, runs through the collection – the tension of conflict, the anxiety over outcome, anticipation of excitement or in possibility. Somehow, these photographers are able to capture that coiled feeling and hold it within the four walls of a frame. Be it by impeccable timing or intentional framing, they have created a time capsule that feels as if it’s about to be opened.”
NASA HEAT is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
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Kindergarten students at Myers Elementary School in Grand Blanc, Michigan watched the solar eclipse with special solar viewing glasses on Monday, April 8, 2024. The paper plates, which helped provide additional safety for their eyes, were added on and decorated by each student prior to the big day. Jake May/MLive.com/The Flint Journal Share
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Last Updated Jan 13, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, right, present Bob Cabana, who served as a NASA associate administrator, astronaut, and a colonel in the United States Marine Corps, the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, recognizing his exceptional achievements and public service to the nation, Jan. 10, 2025, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters in Washington. The award, signed by President Biden, is the highest honor the federal government can grant to a federal civilian employee.Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls Robert Cabana, who served as a NASA associate administrator, astronaut, and a colonel in the United States Marine Corps, received the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, recognizing his exceptional achievements and public service to the nation. The award, signed by President Biden, is the highest honor the federal government can grant to a federal civilian employee.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy presented Cabana with the award during a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington on Jan. 10. Cabana most recently served as NASA’s associate administrator, which is the agency’s highest ranking civil servant, from 2021 until he retired from the agency at the end of 2023.
“A true public servant, Bob has spent his entire career in service to his country. I can think of no one more deserving of this rare honor than Bob,” said Nelson. “From his time as a naval aviator to his role as associate administrator of NASA, Bob has dedicated his life to improving his country. I join with President Biden in thanking Bob for his dedication and commitment.”
The award recognized Cabana for his roles as a Marine aviator, test pilot, astronaut and becoming the first American to enter the International Space Station. He was further recognized for continuing to push for the bounds of the possible, launching the James Webb Space Telescope, the Artemis I mission and the Orion spacecraft which will send humans back to the Moon for the first time in decades.
As a NASA astronaut, Cabana flew in space four times, including twice as commander. His final space shuttle flight in 1998 was the first International Space Station assembly mission. Cabana also was the director of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for more than a decade. There he led its transition from retirement of the space shuttle to a multi-user spaceport once again launching NASA astronauts to low Earth orbit, and for the first time, doing so with commercial partners.
As NASA associate administrator, Cabana led the agency’s 10 center directors, as well as the mission directorate associate administrators at NASA Headquarters. He was the agency’s chief operating officer for more than 18,000 employees and oversaw an annual budget of more than $25 billion.
Cabana was selected as an astronaut candidate in June 1985 and completed training in July 1986. He logged 38 days in space during four shuttle missions. Cabana was a pilot aboard space shuttle Discovery on both the STS-41 mission in October 1990 that deployed the Ulysses spacecraft and the STS-53 mission in December 1992. He was the mission commander aboard space shuttle Columbia for the STS-65 mission in July 1994 that conducted experiments as part of the second International Microgravity Laboratory mission. He commanded space shuttle Endeavour for the STS-88 mission in December 1998.
Cabana was appointed a member of the Federal Senior Executive Service in 2000 and served in numerous senior management positions at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, ultimately becoming deputy director. He was named director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in October 2007 and a year later was selected as NASA Kennedy director.
Born in Minneapolis, Cabana graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He became a naval aviator and graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1981. In his career, Cabana logged over 7,000 hours in more than 50 different kinds of aircraft. He retired as a colonel from the U.S. Marine Corps in September 2000.
In addition to receiving the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Service, Cabana’s accomplishments have been recognized with induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame and being named an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He has received numerous personal awards and decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award. He also is a recipient of the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement’s National Space Trophy.
For Cabana’s full bio, visit:
https://go.nasa.gov/3u9hGB2
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Meira Bernstein / Jennifer Dooren
Headquarters, Washington
202-615-1747 / 202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / jennifer.m.dooren@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 13, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Robert D. Cabana Bill Nelson Johnson Space Center Kennedy Space Center NASA Headquarters Pamela A. Melroy Space Shuttle Stennis Space Center View the full article
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By NASA
Measurements from space support wildfire risk predictions
Researchers demonstrated that data from the International Space Station’s ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument played a significant role in the ability of machine learning algorithms to predict wildfire susceptibility. This result could help support development of effective strategies for predicting, preventing, monitoring, and managing wildfires.
As the frequency and severity of wildfires increases worldwide, experts need reliable models of fire susceptibility to protect public safety and support natural resource planning and risk management. ECOSTRESS measures evapotranspiration, water use efficiency, and other plant-water dynamics on Earth. Researchers report that its water use efficiency data consistently emerged as the leading factor in predicting wildfires, with evaporative stress and topographic slope data also significant.
This ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station evapotranspiration image of California’s Central Valley in May 2022 shows high water use (blue) and dry conditions (brown). NASA Combining instruments provides better emissions data
Scientists found that averaging data from the International Space Station’s OCO‐3 and EMIT external instruments can accurately measure the rate of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. This work could improve emissions monitoring and help communities respond to climate change.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion make up nearly a third of human-caused emissions and are a major contributor to climate change. In many places, though, scientists do not know exactly how much carbon dioxide these sources emit. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 or OCO-3 can quantify emissions over large areas and Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation data can help determine emissions from individual facilities. The researchers suggest future work continue to investigate the effect of wind conditions on measurements.
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The The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 data showing carbon dioxide concentrations in Los Angeles. NASA Thunderstorm phenomena observed from space
Observations by the International Space Station’s Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument during a tropical cyclone in 2019 provide insight into the formation and nature of blue corona discharges often observed at the tops of thunderclouds. A better understanding of such processes in Earth’s upper atmosphere could improve atmospheric models and weather and climate predictions.
Scientists do not fully understand the conditions that lead to formation of blue corona discharges, bursts of electrical streamers, which are precursors to lightning. Observations from the ground are affected by scattering and absorption in the clouds. ASIM, a facility from ESA (European Space Agency), provides a unique opportunity for observing these high-atmosphere events from space.
View of Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, the white and blue box on the end of the International Space Station’s Columbus External Payload Facility. NASAView the full article
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By European Space Agency
On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, successfully completing the final ‘gravity assist manoeuvre’ needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometres above the planet's north pole. Close-up images expose possibly icy craters whose floors are in permanent shadow, and the vast sunlit northern plains.
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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
A Rover Retrospective: Turning Trials to Triumphs in 2024
A look back at a few Mars 2020 mission highlights of 2024
Perseverance’s past year operating on the surface of Mars was filled with some of the mission’s highest highs, but also some of its greatest challenges. True to its name and its reputation as a mission that overcomes challenges, Perseverance and its team of scientists and engineers turned trials to triumphs in yet another outstanding year for the mission. There’s a lot to celebrate about Perseverance’s past year on Mars, but here are three of my top mission moments this year, in the order in which they happened.
1. SHERLOC’s cover opens
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover captured this image of its SHERLOC instrument (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), showing the cover mechanism of SHERLOC’s Autofocus and Context Imager camera (ACI) in a nearly open configuration. The rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera — one of a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast — on March 3, 2024 (sol 1079, or Martian day 1,079 of the Mars 2020 mission), at the local mean solar time of 12:18:41. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU In early January the SHERLOC instrument’s cover mechanism stopped responding during a routine attempt to acquire data on a rock outcrop in the Margin unit. After six weeks of team diagnostics, the SHERLOC instrument was declared offline and many of us feared that the instrument had met its end. In early March, the team made significant progress in driving the cover to a more open position. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the SHERLOC cover moved unexpectedly to a nearly completely open position during a movement of the arm on sol 1077. I remember staring in wonder at the image of the cover (taken on sol 1079), feeling real optimism for the first time that SHERLOC could be recovered. The team spent the next few months developing a new plan for operating SHERLOC with its cover open, and the instrument was declared back online at the end of June.
2. A potential biosignature at Cheyava Falls
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this image of “leopard spots” on a rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” on July 18, 2024 — sol 1212. or the 1,212th Martian day of the mission. Running the length of the rock are large white calcium sulfate veins. Between those veins are bands of material whose reddish color suggests the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue. Scientists are particularly interested in the millimeter-size, irregularly shaped light patches on the central reddish band (from lower left to upper right of the image) that resemble leopard spots. Perseverance captured the image using a camera called WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), part of the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument suite located on the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS No top list would be complete without Perseverance’s discovery in July 2024 of a potential biosignature in the form of sub-millimeter-scale “leopard spots” at an outcrop called Cheyava Falls. These features, which formed during chemical reactions within the rock, have dark rims and light cores and occur together with organic carbon. On Earth, these chemical reactions are often driven by or associated with microbes. Although we can’t say for sure that microbes were involved in the formation of the leopard spots at Cheyava Falls, this question can be answered when Perseverance’s samples are returned to Earth. In the meantime, this rock remains one of the most compelling rocks discovered on Mars.
3. Arrival at Witch Hazel Hill
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image at the top of Witch Hazel Hill, of the South Arm and Minnie Hill outcrops. Perseverance used its Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) — which also aids in driving — located high on the rover’s mast. The rover captured the image on Dec. 16, 2024 (sol 1359, or Martian day 1,359 of the Mars 2020 mission), at the local mean solar time of 13:26:38. NASA/JPL-Caltech Closing out 2024 on a high note, in mid-December Perseverance arrived at the top of a sequence of rock exposed on the western edge of the Jezero crater rim called Witch Hazel Hill. These rocks pre-date the formation of Jezero crater and could be amongst the oldest rocks exposed on the surface of Mars. These rocks have the potential to tell us about a period of solar system history not well-preserved on our own planet Earth, and they may record important clues about the early history and habitability of Mars. Witch Hazel Hill first caught my attention during landing site selection several years ago, when we were debating the merits of landing Perseverance in Jezero versus sites outside the crater. At the time, this area seemed just out of reach for a Jezero-focused mission, so I’m thrilled that the rover is now exploring this site!
The Mars 2020 mission had its ups and downs and a fair share of surprises during 2024, but we are looking ahead to 2025 with excitement, as Perseverance continues to explore and sample the Jezero crater rim.
Written by Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist
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Last Updated Jan 08, 2025 Related Terms
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