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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
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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
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Calla Cofield
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Boeing-built X-66 full-span model underwent testing in the 11-Foot Transonic Unitary Plan Facility at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley between January and March 2025.NASA / Brandon Torres NASA and Boeing are currently evaluating an updated approach to the agency’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project that would focus on demonstrating thin-wing technology with broad applications for multiple aircraft configurations.
Boeing’s proposed focus centers on a ground-based testbed to demonstrate the potential for long, thin-wing technology. Work on the X-66 flight demonstrator – which currently incorporates a more complex transonic truss braced wing concept that uses the same thin wing technology as well as aerodynamic, structural braces — would pause for later consideration based on the thin-wing testbed results and further truss-braced configuration studies.
Under this proposal, all aspects of the X-66 flight demonstrator’s design, as well as hardware acquired or modified for it, would be retained while the long, thin-wing technology is being investigated with more focus. NASA and Boeing would also continue to collaborate on research into the transonic truss-braced wing concept.
The proposal is based on knowledge gained through research conducted under the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project so far.
Since NASA issued the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator award in 2023, the project has made significant progress toward its goal of informing future generations of more sustainable commercial airliners. Boeing and NASA have collaborated on wind tunnel tests, computational fluid dynamics modeling, and structural design and analysis aimed at exploring how best to approach fuel-efficient, sustainable designs.
This research has built confidence in the substantial potential energy-savings benefits that technologies investigated through the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project and other NASA research can make possible. The Boeing proposal identifies the thin-wing concept as having broad applications for potential incorporation into aircraft with and without truss braces.
NASA and Boeing are discussing potential options for advancing these sustainable flight technologies. NASA’s ultimate goal for this sustainable aircraft research is to achieve substantial improvements for next-generation airliner efficiency, lower costs for travelers, reduced fuel costs and consumption, and increase U.S. aviation’s technological leadership.
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Last Updated Apr 24, 2025 EditorLillian GipsonContactRobert Margettarobert.j.margetta@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An astronaut glove designed for International Space Station spacewalks is prepped for testing in a chamber called CITADEL at NASA JPL. Conducted at temperatures as frigid as those Artemis III astronauts will see on the lunar South Pole, the testing supports next-generation spacesuit development.NASA/JPL-Caltech Engineers with NASA Johnson and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center ready an astronaut glove for insertion into the main CITADEL chamber at JPL. The team tested the glove in vacuum at minus 352 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 213 degrees Celsius).NASA/JPL-Caltech A JPL facility built to support potential robotic spacecraft missions to frozen ocean worlds helps engineers develop safety tests for next-generation spacesuits.
When NASA astronauts return to the Moon under the Artemis campaign and eventually venture farther into the solar system, they will encounter conditions harsher than any humans have experienced before. Ensuring next-generation spacesuits protect astronauts requires new varieties of tests, and a one-of-a-kind chamber called CITADEL (Cryogenic Ice Testing, Acquisition Development, and Excavation Laboratory) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California is helping.
Built to prepare potential robotic explorers for the frosty, low-pressure conditions on ocean worlds like Jupiter’s frozen moon Europa, CITADEL also can evaluate how spacesuit gloves and boots hold up in extraordinary cold. Spearheaded by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, a glove testing campaign in CITADEL ran from October 2023 to March 2024. Boot testing, initiated by the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, took place from October 2024 to January 2025.
An astronaut boot — part of a NASA lunar spacesuit prototype, the xEMU — is readied for testing in JPL’s CITADEL. A thick aluminum plate stands in for the cold surface of the lunar South Pole, where Artemis III astronauts will confront conditions more extreme than any humans have yet experienced.NASA/JPL-Caltech In coming months, the team will adapt CITADEL to test spacesuit elbow joints to evaluate suit fabrics for longevity on the Moon. They’ll incorporate abrasion testing and introduce a simulant for lunar regolith, the loose material that makes up the Moon’s surface, into the chamber for the first time.
“We’ve built space robots at JPL that have gone across the solar system and beyond,” said Danny Green, a mechanical engineer who led the boot testing for JPL. “It’s pretty special to also use our facilities in support of returning astronauts to the Moon.”
Astronauts on the Artemis III mission will explore the Moon’s South Pole, a region of much greater extremes than the equatorial landing sites visited by Apollo-era missions. They’ll spend up to two hours at a time inside craters that may contain ice deposits potentially important to sustaining long-term human presence on the Moon. Called permanently shadowed regions, these intriguing features rank among the coldest locations in the solar system, reaching as low as minus 414 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 248 degrees Celsius). The CITADEL chamber gets close to those temperatures.
Engineers from JPL and NASA Johnson set up a test of the xEMU boot inside CITADEL. Built to prepare potential robotic explorers for conditions on ocean worlds like Jupiter’s moon Europa, the chamber offers unique capabilities that have made it useful for testing spacesuit parts.NASA/JPL-Caltech “We want to understand what the risk is to astronauts going into permanently shadowed regions, and gloves and boots are key because they make prolonged contact with cold surfaces and tools,” said Zach Fester, an engineer with the Advanced Suit Team at NASA Johnson and the technical lead for the boot testing.
Keeping Cool
Housed in the same building as JPL’s historic 10-Foot Space Simulator, the CITADEL chamber uses compressed helium to get as low as minus 370 F (minus 223 C) — lower than most cryogenic facilities, which largely rely on liquid nitrogen. At 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter, the chamber is big enough for a person to climb inside.
An engineer collects simulated lunar samples while wearing the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit during testing at NASA Johnson in late 2023. Recent testing of existing NASA spacesuit designs in JPL’s CITADEL chamber will ultimately support de-velopment of next-generation suits being built by Axiom Space.Axiom Space More important, it features four load locks, drawer-like chambers through which test materials are inserted into the main chamber while maintaining a chilled vacuum state. The chamber can take several days to reach test conditions, and opening it to insert new test materials starts the process all over again. The load locks allowed engineers to make quick adjustments during boot and glove tests.
Cryocoolers chill the chamber, and aluminum blocks inside can simulate tools astronauts might grab or the cold lunar surface on which they’d walk. The chamber also features a robotic arm to interact with test materials, plus multiple visible-light and infrared cameras to record operations.
Testing Extremities
The gloves tested in the chamber are the sixth version of a glove NASA began using in the 1980s, part of a spacesuit design called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit. Optimized for spacewalks at the International Space Station, the suit is so intricate it’s essentially a personal spacecraft. Testing in CITADEL at minus 352 F (minus 213 C) showed the legacy glove would not meet thermal requirements in the more challenging environment of the lunar South Pole. Results haven’t yet been fully analyzed from boot testing, which used a lunar surface suit prototype called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit. NASA’s reference design of an advanced suit architecture, this spacesuit features enhanced fit, mobility, and safety.
In addition to spotting vulnerabilities with existing suits, the CITADEL experiments will help NASA prepare criteria for standardized, repeatable, and inexpensive test methods for the next-generation lunar suit being built by Axiom Space — the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, which NASA astronauts will wear during the Artemis III mission.
“This test is looking to identify what the limits are: How long can that glove or boot be in that lunar environment?” said Shane McFarland, technology development lead for the Advanced Suit Team at NASA Johnson. “We want to quantify what our capability gap is for the current hardware so we can give that information to the Artemis suit vendor, and we also want to develop this unique test capability to assess future hardware designs.”
In the past, astronauts themselves have been part of thermal testing. For gloves, an astronaut inserted a gloved hand into a chilled “glove box,” grabbed a frigid object, and held it until their skin temperature dropped as low as 50 F (10 C). McFarland stressed that such human-in-the-loop testing remains essential to ensuring future spacesuit safety but doesn’t produce the consistent data the team is looking for with the CITADEL testing.
To obtain objective feedback, the CITADEL testing team used a custom-built manikin hand and foot. A system of fluid loops mimicked the flow of warm blood through the appendages, while dozens of temperature and heat flux sensors provided data from inside gloves and boots.
“By using CITADEL and modern manikin technology, we can test design iterations faster and at much lower cost than traditional human-in-the-loop testing,” said Morgan Abney, NASA technical fellow for Environmental Control and Life Support, who conceived the glove testing effort. “Now we can really push the envelope on next-generation suit designs and have confidence we understand the risks. We’re one step closer to landing astronauts back on the Moon.”
Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Houston, We Have a Podcast: next-generation spacesuits Why NASA’s Perseverance rover carries spacesuit materials News Media Contact
Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-060
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Last Updated Apr 24, 2025 Related Terms
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