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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming its smaller friend in this short video made of images taken at the rim of Jezero Crater by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Jan. 25, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI The six-wheeled explorer recently captured several Red Planet mini-twisters spinning on the rim of Jezero Crater.
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming a smaller one in this short video made of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. These swirling, sometimes towering columns of air and dust are common on Mars. The smaller dust devil’s demise was captured during an imaging experiment conducted by Perseverance’s science team to better understand the forces at play in the Martian atmosphere.
When the rover snapped these images from about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) away, the larger dust devil was approximately 210 feet (65 meters) wide, while the smaller, trailing dust devil was roughly 16 feet (5 meters) wide. Two other dust devils can also be seen in the background at left and center. Perseverance recorded the scene Jan. 25 as it explored the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater at a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.”
“Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish,” said Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area. If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker.”
While exploring the rim of Jezero Crater on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover captured new images of multiple dust devils in January 2025. These captivating phenomena have been documented for decades by the agency’s Red Planet robotic explorers. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/INTA-CSIC/Space Science Institute/ISAE-Supaero/University of Arizona Science of Whirlwinds
Dust devils are formed by rising and rotating columns of warm air. Air near the planet’s surface becomes heated by contact with the warmer ground and rises through the denser, cooler air above. As other air moves along the surface to take the place of the rising warmer air, it begins to rotate. When the incoming air rises into the column, it picks up speed like a spinning ice skater bringing their arms closer to their body. The air rushing in also picks up dust, and a dust devil is born.
“Dust devils play a significant role in Martian weather patterns,” said Katie Stack Morgan, project scientist for the Perseverance rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Dust devil study is important because these phenomena indicate atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing wind directions and speed, and are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere.”
NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter captured this Martian dust devil casting a shadow on Aug. 1, 1978. During the 15-second interval between the two images, the dust devil moved toward the northeast (toward the upper right) at a rate of about 59 feet (18 meters) per second. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Since landing in 2021, Perseverance has imaged whirlwinds on many occasions, including one on Sept. 27, 2021, where a swarm of dust devils danced across the floor of Jezero Crater and the rover used its SuperCam microphone to record the first sounds of a Martian dust devil.
NASA’s Viking orbiters, in the 1970s, were the first spacecraft to photograph Martian dust devils. Two decades later, the agency’s Pathfinder mission was the first to image one from the surface and even detected a dust devil passing over the lander. Twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity managed to capture their fair share of dusty whirlwinds. Curiosity, which is exploring a location called Mount Sharp in Gale Crater on the opposite side of the Red Planet as Perseverance, sees them as well.
Capturing a dust devil image or video with a spacecraft takes some luck. Scientists can’t predict when they’ll appear, so Perseverance routinely monitors in all directions for them. When scientists see them occur more frequently at a specific time of day or approach from a certain direction, they use that information to focus their monitoring to try to catch additional whirlwinds.
“If you feel bad for the little devil in our latest video, it may give you some solace to know the larger perpetrator most likely met its own end a few minutes later,” said Lemmon. “Dust devils on Mars only last about 10 minutes.”
More About Perseverance
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and as the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio and the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
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Last Updated Apr 03, 2025 Related Terms
Perseverance (Rover) Curiosity (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars 2020 Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Mars Pathfinder Viking Explore More
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A NASA researcher and innovation architect from the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions project Discovery team collaborating at a whiteboard during a visit to Chapel Hill, N.C. on Aug. 13, 2024.NASA / Ariella Knight Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) Discovery identifies problems worth solving for the benefit of all.
We formulate “convergent” problems—across multiple disciplines and sectors—and build footholds toward potentially transformative opportunities in aeronautics. As aeronautics rapidly advances, it is increasingly intersecting with other sectors like energy, healthcare, emergency response, economic resilience, the space economy, and more.
CAS Discovery builds new innovation tools and methods, a workforce adept at innovation methods, and transdisciplinary teams of researchers within and beyond NASA that conduct regular “Discovery sprints”—expeditions into cross-sector topic areas that could beneficially transform aeronautics and humanity.
WHAT is Discovery?
Participatory
It is difficult to understand and effectively address stakeholders’ needs & capabilities without engaging them. Discovery, in consultation with key NASA offices and other government agencies, has honed mechanisms to lawfully and respectfully engage and invite participation from stakeholders, communities, industry, NGOs and government to collaboratively formulate complex societal challenges tied to aviation.
Convergent
Typical organizational structures limit convergence across knowledge boundaries. CAS Discovery is intentionally cross-sector and transdisciplinary because the most impactful ideas often lie at the intersection of boundaries, the borderlands where multiple disciplines and communities come together. We work to emerge multi-sector, system-of-systems challenges that integrate political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and ethical trends, needs, and capabilities.
Future-Focused
Organizations have a tendency of being driven by short-term thinking and relatively short time horizons. CAS Discovery uses strategic foresight methods to examine 20 to 50-year time horizons, systematically ingesting and synthesizing signals and trends from aero and non-aero sources to envision a variety of scenarios to uncover opportunities for the future of aeronautics.
Ecosystemic
We study the ecosystems that are part of aeronautics and aerospace. This helps in broadening consideration of impacts while practicing foresight. It enhances our awareness of the environment and gives stakeholders the ability to see ripple effects across technologies, economies, communities, etc. We seek to benefit the wellness of the entire ecosystem while also benefiting the constituents.
A group of NASA researchers and leaders from the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions project Discovery team at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, on April 30, 2024.NASA / Ricaurte Chock WHO is Discovery?
NASA Researchers
They are the engine that propels CAS Discovery. Our cross-center Discovery sprint and foresight teams are composed of researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Researchers from Outside of NASA
They collaborate with us as subject matter experts or Discovery sprint team members to contribute their backgrounds in fields less common within NASA, such as energy, economics, anthropology, and other areas. This collaboration happens through many mechanisms, such as freelancing, crowdsourcing, interviews, webinars, and podcasts.
Stakeholders
They are engaged in various ways and to different degrees, often co-envisioning potential futures, co-formulating problems, and co-designing solutions.
Innovation Architects
They are the glue that holds CAS Discovery together and the anti-glue that keeps our teams from getting stuck. They come from a wide range of experience, each bringing deep expertise in leading transdisciplinary teams and stakeholders through processes and methods from strategic foresight, complex systems design, human-centered design, and more.
CAS Center Integration Leads (CILs)
They work with NASA line management at each Aeronautics center to bring NASA researchers and potential new PIs into CAS. CILs also host annual Wicked Wild idea pitch events to bring new problem areas and solution ideas into CAS Discovery and early Execution phases.
Ames Research Center CIL: Ty Huang Armstrong Flight Research Center CIL: Matt Kearns Glenn Research Center CIL: Jeffrey Chin Langley Research Center CIL: Devin Pugh-Thomas CAS Discovery Leads
They oversee Discovery sprint and strategic foresight teams, topics, and processes; new tools and continuous improvement experiments; and the overall health of the CAS innovation front-end pipeline and related strategic outputs.
Discovery Lead: Eric Reynolds Brubaker, Langley Research Center Foresight Lead: Vikram Shyam, Glenn Research Center Sample Discovery Publications
COMING SOON: Links to Technical Memorandums and conference papers.
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Last Updated Mar 21, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactDiana Fitzgeralddiana.r.fitzgerald@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
Artist’s rendering of a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a star called HD 20794. Illustration credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC) The Discovery
A possible “super-Earth” orbits a relatively close, Sun-like star, and could be a habitable world – but one of extreme temperature swings, from scorching heat to deep freeze.
Key Facts
The newly confirmed planet is the outermost of three detected so far around a star called HD 20794, just 20 light-years from Earth. Its 647-day orbit is comparable to Mars in our solar system. But this planet’s orbit is highly eccentric, stretched into an oval shape. That brings the planet close enough to the star to experience runaway heating for part of its year, then carries it far enough away to freeze any potential water on its surface. The planet has been bouncing between these extremes roughly every 300 days – perhaps for billions of years.
Details
The planet spends a good chunk of its year in the “habitable zone” around its star, the orbital distance that would allow liquid water to form on the surface under the right atmospheric conditions. But because of its eccentric orbit, it moves to a distance interior to the inner edge of the habitable zone when closest to the star, and outside the outer edge when farthest away. At its closest, the planet’s distance from the star is comparable to Venus’s distance from the Sun; at its farthest point, it is nearly twice the distance from Earth to the Sun. The planet is possibly rocky, like Earth, but could be a heftier version – about six times as massive as our home planet.
Star HD 20794 and its posse of possible planets have been extensively studied, but the international team of astronomers that confirmed the outer planet, led by Nicola Nari of Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, examined more than 20 years worth of data to pin down all three planets’ orbits and likely masses.
The scientists relied on data from two ground-based, precision instruments: HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher in La Silla, Chile, and ESPRESSO, the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations in Paranal, Chile. Both instruments, connected to powerful telescopes, measure tiny shifts in the light spectrum of stars, caused by the gravity of planets tugging the star back and forth as they orbit.
But such tiny shifts in the star’s spectrum also can be caused by imposters – spots, flares, or other activity on the star’s surface, carried along as the star rotates and masquerading as orbiting planets. The science team spent years painstakingly analyzing the spectrum shifts, or “radial velocity” data, for any sign of background noise or even jitters from the instruments themselves. They confirmed the reputation of HD 20794 as a fairly quiet star, not prone to outbursts that might be confused for signs of orbiting planets.
Fun Facts
The elliptically orbiting super-Earth appears to be an ideal target for future space-based telescopes designed to search for habitable worlds, seeking possible signs of life. High on the list is NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will someday examine the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars. When launched in the decades ahead, the observatory would spread the light from such planets into a spectrum to determine which gases are present – including those that might reveal some form of life. The relative closeness of HD 20974, only 20 light-years away, its brightness, and its low level of surface activity – not to mention the third planet’s wild temperature swings – could make this system a prime candidate for scrutiny by HWO.
The Discoverers
The international science team that confirmed the eccentric super-Earth was led by researcher Nicola Nari of the Light Bridges S.L. and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and included Dr. Michael Cretignier of the University of Oxford, who first picked up the potential planet’s signal in 2022. Their paper, “Revisiting the multi-planet system of the nearby star HD 20794,” was published online by the journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, in January 2025.
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By NASA
James Gentile always wanted to fly. As he prepared for an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy to become a pilot, life threw him an unexpected curve: a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes. His appointment was rescinded.
With his dream grounded, Gentile had two choices—give up or chart a new course. He chose the latter, pivoting to aerospace engineering. If he could not be a pilot, he would design the flight simulations that trained those who could.
Official portrait of James Gentile. NASA/Robert Markowitz As a human space vehicle simulation architect at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Gentile leads the Integrated Simulation team, which supports the Crew Compartment Office within the Simulation and Graphics Branch. He oversees high-fidelity graphical simulations that support both engineering analysis and flight crew training for the Artemis campaign.
His team provides critical insight into human landing system vendor designs, ensuring compliance with NASA’s standards. They also develop human-in-the-loop simulations to familiarize teams with the challenges of returning humans to the lunar surface, optimizing design and safety for future space missions.
“I take great pride in what I have helped to build, knowing that some of the simulations I developed have influenced decisions for the Artemis campaign,” Gentile said.
One of the projects he is most proud of is the Human Landing System CrewCo Lander Simulation, which helps engineers and astronauts tackle the complexities of lunar descent, ascent, and rendezvous. He worked his way up from a developer to managing and leading the project, transforming a basic lunar lander simulation into a critical tool for the Artemis campaign.
What began as a simple model in 2020 is now a key training asset used in multiple facilities at Johnson. The simulation evaluates guidance systems and provides hands-on piloting experience for lunar landers.
James Gentile in the Simulation Exploration and Analysis Lab during a visit with Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot Charlie Duke. From left to right: Katie Tooher, Charlie Duke, Steve Carothers, Mark Updegrove, and James Gentile. NASA/James Blair Before joining Johnson as a contractor in 2018, Gentile worked in the aviation industry developing flight simulations for pilot training. Transitioning to the space sector was challenging at first, particularly working alongside seasoned professionals who had been part of the space program for years.
“I believe my experience in the private sector has benefited my career,” he said. “I’ve been able to bring a different perspective and approach to problem-solving that has helped me advance at Johnson.”
Gentile attributes his success to never being afraid to speak up and ask questions. “You don’t always have to be the smartest person in the room to make an impact,” he said. “I’ve been able to show my value through my work and by continuously teaching myself new skills.”
As he helps train the Artemis Generation, Gentile hopes to pass on his passion for aerospace and simulation development, inspiring others to persevere through obstacles and embrace unexpected opportunities.
“The most important lessons I’ve learned in my career are to build and maintain relationships with your coworkers and not to be afraid to step out of your comfort zone,” he said.
James Gentile with his son at NASA’s Johnson Space Center during the 2024 Bring Youth to Work Day. His journey did not go as planned, but in the end, it led him exactly where he was meant to be—helping humanity take its next giant leap.
“I’ve learned that the path to your goals may not always be clear-cut, but you should never give up on your dreams,” Gentile said.
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By European Space Agency
At the European Space Agency’s technical heart in the Netherlands, engineers have spent the last five months unboxing and testing elements of Europe’s next space science mission. With the two main parts now joined together, Smile is well on its way to being ready to launch by the end of 2025.
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