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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, firing up its engine for the first time. These engine-run tests start at low power and allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas NASA’s Quesst mission marked a major milestone with the start of tests on the engine that will power the quiet supersonic X-59 experimental aircraft.
These engine-run tests, which began Oct. 30, allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. In previous tests, the X-59 used external sources for power. The engine-run tests set the stage for the next phase of the experimental aircraft’s progress toward flight.
The X-59 team is conducting the engine-run tests in phases. In this first phase, the engine rotated at a relatively low speed without ignition to check for leaks and ensure all systems are communicating properly. The team then fueled the aircraft and began testing the engine at low power, with the goal of verifying that it and other aircraft systems operate without anomalies or leaks while on engine power.
Lockheed Martin test pilot Dan Canin sits in the cockpit of NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft in a run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California prior to its first engine run. These engine-run tests featured the X-59 powered by its own engine, whereas in previous tests, the aircraft depended on external sources for power. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The first phase of the engine tests was really a warmup to make sure that everything looked good prior to running the engine,” said Jay Brandon, NASA’s X-59 chief engineer. “Then we moved to the actual first engine start. That took the engine out of the preservation mode that it had been in since installation on the aircraft. It was the first check to see that it was operating properly and that all the systems it impacted – hydraulics, electrical system, environmental control systems, etc. – seemed to be working.”
The X-59 will generate a quieter thump rather than a loud boom while flying faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which will gather data on how people perceive these thumps, providing regulators with information that could help lift current bans on commercial supersonic flight over land.
The engine, a modified F414-GE-100, packs 22,000 pounds of thrust, which will enable the X-59 to achieve the desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. It sits in a nontraditional spot – atop the aircraft — to aid in making the X-59 quieter.
Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. Because of the challenges involved with reaching this critical phase of testing, the X-59’s first flight is now expected in early 2025. The team will continue progressing through critical ground tests and address any technical issues discovered with this one-of-a-kind, experimental aircraft. The X-59 team will have a more specific first flight date as these tests are successfully completed.
The testing is taking place at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. During later phases, the team will test the aircraft at high power with rapid throttle changes, followed by simulating the conditions of an actual flight.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, prior to its first engine run. Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The success of these runs will be the start of the culmination of the last eight years of my career,” said Paul Dees, NASA’s deputy propulsion lead for the X-59. “This isn’t the end of the excitement but a small steppingstone to the beginning. It’s like the first note of a symphony, where years of teamwork behind the scenes are now being put to the test to prove our efforts have been effective, and the notes will continue to play a harmonious song to flight.”
After the engine runs, the X-59 team will move to aluminum bird testing, where data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. The team will then proceed with a series of taxi tests, where the aircraft will be put in motion on the ground. These tests will be followed by final preparations for first flight.
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 EditorLillian GipsonContactMatt Kamletmatthew.r.kamlet@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbits 259 miles above Oregon.Credit: NASA In preparation for the arrival of NASA’s SpaceX 31st commercial resupply services mission, four crew members aboard the International Space Station will relocate the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon spacecraft to a different docking port Sunday, Nov. 3.
Live coverage begins at 6:15 a.m. EDT on NASA+ and will end shortly after docking. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, will undock the spacecraft from the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 6:35 a.m., and redock to the module’s space-facing port at 7:18 a.m.
The relocation, supported by flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Mission Control team at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, will free Harmony’s forward-facing port for a Dragon cargo spacecraft mission scheduled to launch no earlier than Monday, Nov. 4.
This will be the fifth port relocation of a Dragon spacecraft with crew aboard following previous moves during the Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-6, and Crew-8 missions.
Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook, ISS Instagram, and the space station blog.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission launched Sept. 28 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and docked to the space station Sept. 29. Crew-9, targeted to return February 2025, is the company’s ninth rotational crew mission as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
Find NASA’s commercial crew blog and more information about the Crew-9 mission at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Jimi Russell / Claire O’Shea
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Last Updated Oct 29, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Permafrost Tunnel north of Fairbanks, Alaska, was dug in the 1960s and is run by the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. It is the site of much research into permafrost — ground that stays frozen throughout the year, for multiple years.NASA/Kate Ramsayer Earth’s far northern reaches have locked carbon underground for millennia. New research paints a picture of a landscape in change.
A new study, co-authored by NASA scientists, details where and how greenhouse gases are escaping from the Earth’s vast northern permafrost region as the Arctic warms. The frozen soils encircling the Arctic from Alaska to Canada to Siberia store twice as much carbon as currently resides in the atmosphere — hundreds of billions of tons — and most of it has been buried for centuries.
An international team, led by researchers at Stockholm University, found that from 2000 to 2020, carbon dioxide uptake by the land was largely offset by emissions from it. Overall, they concluded that the region has been a net contributor to global warming in recent decades in large part because of another greenhouse gas, methane, that is shorter-lived but traps significantly more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide.
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Greenhouse gases shroud the globe in this animation showing data from 2021. Carbon dioxide is shown in orange; methane is shown in purple. Methane traps heat 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timescale. Wetlands are a significant source of such emissions.NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio The findings reveal a landscape in flux, said Abhishek Chatterjee, a co-author and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We know that the permafrost region has captured and stored carbon for tens of thousands of years,” he said. “But what we are finding now is that climate-driven changes are tipping the balance toward permafrost being a net source of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Carbon Stockpile
Permafrost is ground that has been permanently frozen for anywhere from two years to hundreds of thousands of years. A core of it reveals thick layers of icy soils enriched with dead plant and animal matter that can be dated using radiocarbon and other techniques. When permafrost thaws and decomposes, microbes feed on this organic carbon, releasing some of it as greenhouse gases.
Unlocking a fraction of the carbon stored in permafrost could further fuel climate change. Temperatures in the Arctic are already warming two to four times faster than the global average, and scientists are learning how thawing permafrost is shifting the region from being a net sink for greenhouse gases to becoming a net source of warming.
They’ve tracked emissions using ground-based instruments, aircraft, and satellites. One such campaign, NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), is focused on Alaska and western Canada. Yet locating and measuring emissions across the far northern fringes of Earth remains challenging. One obstacle is the vast scale and diversity of the environment, composed of evergreen forests, sprawling tundra, and waterways.
This map, based on data provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, shows the extent of Arctic permafrost. The amount of permafrost underlying the surface ranges from continuous — in the coldest areas — to more isolated and sporadic patches.NASA Earth Observatory Cracks in the Sink
The new study was undertaken as part of the Global Carbon Project’s RECCAP-2 effort, which brings together different science teams, tools, and datasets to assess regional carbon balances every few years. The authors followed the trail of three greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — across 7 million square miles (18 million square kilometers) of permafrost terrain from 2000 to 2020.
Researchers found the region, especially the forests, took up a fraction more carbon dioxide than it released. This uptake was largely offset by carbon dioxide emitted from lakes and rivers, as well as from fires that burned both forest and tundra.
They also found that the region’s lakes and wetlands were strong sources of methane during those two decades. Their waterlogged soils are low in oxygen while containing large volumes of dead vegetation and animal matter — ripe conditions for hungry microbes. Compared to carbon dioxide, methane can drive significant climate warming in short timescales before breaking down relatively quickly. Methane’s lifespan in the atmosphere is about 10 years, whereas carbon dioxide can last hundreds of years.
The findings suggest the net change in greenhouse gases helped warm the planet over the 20-year period. But over a 100-year period, emissions and absorptions would mostly cancel each other out. In other words, the region teeters from carbon source to weak sink. The authors noted that events such as extreme wildfires and heat waves are major sources of uncertainty when projecting into the future.
Bottom Up, Top Down
The scientists used two main strategies to tally greenhouse gas emissions from the region. “Bottom-up” methods estimate emissions from ground- and air-based measurements and ecosystem models. Top-down methods use atmospheric measurements taken directly from satellite sensors, including those on NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) and JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.
Regarding near-term, 20-year, global warming potential, both scientific approaches aligned on the big picture but differed in magnitude: The bottom-up calculations indicated significantly more warming.
“This study is one of the first where we are able to integrate different methods and datasets to put together this very comprehensive greenhouse gas budget into one report,” Chatterjee said. “It reveals a very complex picture.”
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Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
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Last Updated Oct 29, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s work, including its Moon to Mars exploration approach, is advancing science and technology for the Artemis Generation, while also driving significant economic growth across the United States, the agency announced Thursday.
In its third agencywide economic impact report, NASA highlighted how its Moon to Mars activities, climate change research and technology development, and other projects generated more than $75.6 billion in economic output across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in fiscal year 2023.
“To invest in NASA is to invest in American workers, American innovation, the American economy, and American economic competitiveness,” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Our work doesn’t just expand our understanding of the universe — it fuels economic growth, inspires future generations, and improves our quality of life. As we embark on the next great chapter of exploration, we are proud to help power economic strength, job creation, scientific progress, and American leadership on Earth, in the skies, and in the stars.”
Combined, NASA’s missions supported 304,803 jobs nationwide, and generated an estimated $9.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes throughout the United States.
The study found NASA’s Moon to Mars activities generated more than $23.8 billion in total economic output and supported an estimated 96,479 jobs nationwide. For investments in climate research and technology, the agency’s activities generated more than $7.9 billion in total economic output and supported an estimated 32,900 jobs in the U.S.
Additional key findings of the study include:
Every state in the country benefits economically through NASA activities. Forty-five states have an economic impact of more than $10 million. Of those 45 states, eight have an economic impact of $1 billion or more. The agency’s Moon to Mars initiative, which includes the Artemis missions, generated nearly $2.9 billion in tax revenue. These activities provided about 32% of NASA’s economic impact. The agency’s investments in climate change research and technology generated more than $1 billion in tax revenue. Approximately 11% of NASA’s economic impacts are attributable to its investments in climate change research and technology. NASA had more than 644 active international agreements for various scientific research and technology development activities in the 2023 fiscal year. The International Space Station, representing 15 countries and five space agencies, has a predominant role in the agency’s international partnerships. In fiscal year 2023, NASA oversaw 2,628 active domestic and international non-procurement partnership agreements, which included 629 new domestic and 109 new international agreements, active partnerships with 587 different non-federal partners across the U.S., and partnerships in 47 of 50 states. NASA Spinoffs, which are public products and processes that are developed with NASA technology, funding, or expertise, provide a benefit to American lives beyond dollars and jobs. As of result of NASA missions, our fiscal year 2023 tech transfer activities produced 1,564 new technology reports, 40 new patent applications, 69 patents issued, and established 5,277 software usage agreements. Scientific research and development, which fuels advancements in science and technology that can help improve daily life on Earth and for humanity, is the largest single-sector benefitting from NASA’s work, accounting for 19% of NASA’s total economic impact. The study was conducted by the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
To review the full report, visit:
https://go.nasa.gov/3NEtUIq
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Meira Bernstein / Melissa Howell
Headquarters, Washington
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meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / melissa.e.howell@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 24, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters View the full article
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Skydweller Aero solar-powered, autonomous aircraft flies above the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1/B-2) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center during a September 2024 test operation. Skydweller Aero has an ongoing airspace agreement with NASA Stennis to conduct test flights of its aircraft in the area.Skydweller Aero NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, has entered into an agreement with Skydweller Aero Inc. for the company to operate its solar-powered autonomous aircraft in the site’s restricted airspace, a key step towards achieving a strategic center goal.
The Reimbursable Space Act agreement marks the first between NASA Stennis and a commercial company to utilize the south Mississippi center’s unique capabilities to support testing and operation of uncrewed systems.
“There are few locations like NASA Stennis that offer a secure location, restricted airspace and the infrastructure to support testing and operation of various uncrewed systems,” said NASA Stennis Director John Bailey. “Range operations is a critical area of focus as we adapt to the changing aerospace and technology landscape to grow into the future.”
NASA Stennis and Skydweller Aero finalized the agreement in late August, paving the way for the company to begin area test flights of its autonomous, uncrewed solar-powered aircraft, which features a wingspan greater than a 747 jetliner and is designed for long-duration flights. The company announced Oct. 1 it had completed an initial test flight campaign of the aircraft, including two test excursions totaling 16 and 22.5 hours.
NASA Stennis and Skydweller Aero began talks in the summer of 2023 when the company expressed interest in utilizing NASA Stennis airspace for its all-carbon fiber aircraft. The NASA Stennis area fits the company’s needs well since it provides ready access from Stennis International Airport to the Gulf of Mexico area. NASA Stennis airspace also provides a level of privacy for aircraft testing and operation.
“Access to the restricted airspace above NASA Stennis has been tremendously helpful to our uncrewed, autonomous flight operations,” said Barry Matsumori, president and chief operating officer of Skydweller Aero. “The opportunity to use the controlled environment above Stennis helps accelerate our efforts, allowing us to transition the aircraft in and out of civil airspace, while demonstrating its reliability and unblemished safety record to the FAA.”
Companies must be conducting public aircraft operations to use any restricted airspace. In this instance, Skydweller Aero is flying its aircraft in association with the U.S. Department of Defense, allowing for the Reimbursable Space Act agreement with NASA Stennis.
The agreement provides the company Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization for future test flights in designated areas of the NASA Stennis buffer zone. It also represents a key step in the center’s effort to grow its range operations presence.
“This really opens the door for others to come here,” said Jason Peterson, NASA Stennis range officer. “There are requirements that must be met, but for those who meet them, NASA Stennis is an ideal location for test and flight operations.”
The FAA established restricted airspace at NASA Stennis in 1966 and approved its expansion in 2016. The expansion was necessary to conduct propulsion testing safely, accommodate U.S. Department of Defense missions, and support unmanned aerial systems activities.
Restricted airspace at NASA Stennis allows qualifying organizations to conduct various uncrewed flight activities. NASA Stennis personnel provide scheduling and range operation support, including reviews and evaluations to ensure safe flight operations. Processes are in place to ensure communication between aircraft operators, FAA air traffic controllers, and range safety personnel.
Peterson said he hopes the agreement with Skydweller Aero will clear the way for future collaborations as NASA Stennis continues to expand its customer-based operations. For instance, although Skydweller Aero is not located onsite, NASA Stennis is able to support ground operations for a variety of unmanned aircraft system takeoffs and landings.
Beyond that, the center also hopes to expand its operational capabilities to include marine and ground activities. In addition to a large geographic footprint, the center features a secure 7.5-mile waterway canal system for testing unmanned underwater or surface vehicles.
For information about range operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
Range and Airspace Operations – NASA
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Last Updated Oct 23, 2024 EditorNASA Stennis CommunicationsContactC. Lacy Thompsoncalvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov / (228) 688-3333LocationStennis Space Center Related Terms
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