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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory pilot controls a drone during NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System test series in collaboration with a George Washington University team July 17-18, 2024, at the U.S. Army’s Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts. MIT Lincoln Laboratory/Jay Couturier From agriculture and law enforcement to entertainment and disaster response, industries are increasingly turning to drones for help, but the growing volume of these aircraft will require trusted safety management systems to maintain safe operations.
NASA is testing a new software system to create an improved warning system – one that can predict hazards to drones before they occur. The In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) will monitor, assess, and mitigate airborne risks in real time. But making sure that it can do all that requires extensive experimentation to see how its elements work together, including simulations and drone flight tests.
“If everything is going as planned with your flight, you won’t notice your in-time aviation safety management system working,” said Michael Vincent, NASA acting deputy project manager with the System-Wide Safety project at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “It’s before you encounter an unusual situation, like loss of navigation or communications, that the IASMS provides an alert to the drone operator.”
The team completed a simulation in the Human-Autonomy Teaming Laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on March 5 aimed at finding out how critical elements of the IASMS could be used in operational hurricane relief and recovery.
During this simulation, 12 drone pilots completed three 30-minute sessions where they managed up to six drones flying beyond visual line of sight to perform supply drops to residents stranded after a severe hurricane. Additional drones flew scripted search and rescue operations and levee inspections in the background. Researchers collected data on pilot performance, mission success, workload, and perceptions of the experiences, as well as the system’s usability.
This simulation is part of a longer-term strategy by NASA to advance this technology. The lessons learned from this study will help prepare for the project’s hurricane relief and recovery flight tests, planned for 2027.
As an example of this work, in the summer of 2024 NASA tested its IASMS during a series of drone flights in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Transportation in Columbus, Ohio, and in a separate effort, with three university-led teams.
For the Ohio Department of Transportation tests, a drone flew with the NASA-developed IASMS software aboard, which communicated back to computers at NASA Langley. Those transmissions gave NASA researchers input on the system’s performance.
Students from the Ohio State University participate in drone flights during NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System test series in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Transportation from March to July 2024 at the Columbus Aero Club in Ohio. NASA/Russell Gilabert NASA also conducted studies with The George Washington University (GWU), the University of Notre Dame, and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). These occurred at the U.S. Army’s Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts with GWU; near South Bend, Indiana with Notre Dame; and in Richmond, Virginia with VCU. Each test included a variety of types of drones, flight scenarios, and operators.
Students from Virginia Commonwealth University walk toward a drone after a flight as part of NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) test series July 16, 2024, in Richmond, Virginia. NASA/Dave Bowman Each drone testing series involved a different mission for the drone to perform and different hazards for the system to avoid. Scenarios included, for example, how the drone would fly during a wildfire or how it would deliver a package in a city. A different version of the NASA IASMS was used to fit the scenario depending on the mission, or depending on the flight area.
Students from the University of Notre Dame prepare a small drone for takeoff as part of NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) university test series, which occurred on August 21, 2024 in Notre Dame, Indiana.University of Notre Dame/Wes Evard When used in conjunction with other systems such as NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management, IASMS may allow for routine drone flights in the U.S. to become a reality. The IASMS adds an additional layer of safety for drones, assuring the reliability and trust if the drone is flying over a town on a routine basis that it remains on course while avoiding hazards along the way.
“There are multiple entities who contribute to safety assurance when flying a drone,” Vincent said. “There is the person who’s flying the drone, the company who designs and manufactures the drone, the company operating the drone, and the Federal Aviation Administration, who has oversight over the entire National Airspace System. Being able to monitor, assess and mitigate risks in real time would make the risks in these situations much more secure.”
All of this work is led by NASA’s System-Wide Safety project under the Airspace Operations and Safety program in support of the agency’s Advanced Air Mobility mission, which seeks to deliver data to guide the industry’s development of electric air taxis and drones.
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Last Updated Apr 02, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactTeresa Whitingteresa.whiting@nasa.gov Related Terms
Advanced Air Mobility Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Airspace Operations and Safety Program Ames Research Center Armstrong Flight Research Center Drones & You Flight Innovation Langley Research Center System-Wide Safety Explore More
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By USH
On March 26, 2020, a French astronomer Mark Carlotto used a telescope to capture a video showing the moon at night. Dr. M. Carlotto is a specialist in digital video analysis of space objects. The video shows three objects rising above the Moon’s limb, flying across the lunar surface and disappearing in the Moon’s shadow.
The fact that some of these objects are so clearly visible and close enough to the moon to be able to cast noticeable shadows immediately suggests that they are quite large. Using the large Endymion crater as a benchmark, the sizes of the objects were determined.
The size of the object flying over Endymion is about 5 miles long and about 1 to 3 miles wide. The other two objects appear to be comparable in size.
By measuring the displacement of the object it appears that the object is traveling at about 31 mps. It is traveling more than 30 times faster than if it were in lunar orbit.
A paper was recently published that attempts to prove that the original video is a fake. Arxiv.org analyzed the video (not included in the analysis) but extracted and provided three images of the recorded objects for examination, as seen above, and they then conducted calculations to verify its authenticity.
Despite government and space agency denials of UFO existence, photographic evidence and subsequent analysis suggest the presence of large extraterrestrial craft near the Moon and elsewhere in space.View the full article
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By USH
EBANI stands for "Unidentified Anomalous Biological Entity," referring to a mysterious class of airborne phenomena that may be biological rather than mechanical in nature. These entities are often described as elongated, flexible, and tubular, moving through the sky in a serpentine or twisting manner.
They exhibit advanced flight capabilities, including high-speed travel, precise control, and even self-illumination. Some have been observed rendering themselves invisible, raising questions about their energy sources and possible technological origins.
Recent observations have revealed formations of translucent spheres in red, white, and blue, challenging conventional classifications of both biology and aerodynamics.
Some of these entities have a massive structure composed of thousands of clustered spheres. These entities appear to function as an aircraft carrier, releasing these smaller spheres into Earth's atmosphere for an unknown purpose.
While some researchers propose that EBANIs are natural organisms evolving in Earth's upper atmosphere under unfamiliar physical laws, others speculate they may be advanced artificial (eventually biological) constructs, potentially extraterrestrial probes or surveillance devices, given the presence of large structures expelling numerous smaller spheres.
Are they living UFOs, advanced biological organisms that function autonomously within the spheres, without the need for pilots?
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By European Space Agency
Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:40 Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind.
The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the Sun's surface. In reality they last around one minute and fling out charged particles at about 100 km/s.
The surprising result is published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, highlighting how Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of instruments can unveil the mysteries of the star at the centre of our Solar System.
The solar wind is the never-ending rain of electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. It pervades the Solar System and its effects can be felt on Earth. Yet despite decades of study, its origin remained poorly understood. Until now.
The solar wind comes in two main forms: fast and slow. We have known for decades that the fast solar wind comes from the direction of dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal holes – regions where the Sun’s magnetic field does not turn back down into the Sun but rather stretches deep into the Solar System.
Charged particles can flow along these ‘open’ magnetic field lines, heading away from the Sun, and creating the solar wind. But a big question remained: how do these particles get launched from the Sun in the first place?
Building upon their previous discovery, the research team (led by Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) used Solar Orbiter’s onboard ‘cameras’ to spot more tiny jets within coronal holes close to the Sun’s equator.
By combining these high-resolution images with direct measurements of solar wind particles and the Sun’s magnetic field around Solar Orbiter, the researchers could directly connect the solar wind measured at the spacecraft back to those exact same jets.
What’s more, the team was surprised to find not just fast solar wind coming from these jets, but also slow solar wind. This is the first time that we can say for sure that at least some of the slow solar wind also comes from tiny jets in coronal holes – until now, the origin of the solar wind had been elusive.
The fact that the same underlying process drives both fast and slow solar wind comes as a surprise. The discovery is only possible thanks to Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of advanced imaging systems, as well as its instruments that can directly detect particles and magnetic fields.
The measurements were taken when Solar Orbiter made close approaches to the Sun in October 2022 and April 2023. These close approaches happen roughly twice a year; during the next ones, the researchers hope to collect more data to better understand how these tiny jets ‘launch’ the solar wind.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This research used data from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA) and Magnetometer (MAG). Find out more about the instruments Solar Orbiter is using to reveal more about the Sun.
Read our news story from 2023 about how Solar Orbiter discovered tiny jets that could power the solar wind
Read more about how Solar Orbiter can trace the solar wind back to its source region on the Sun
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