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New Video Of Zhurong Rover Driving On Mars! Also new Mars Sounds and Images!
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By Space Force
Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, Defense Logistics Agency Director and Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, Space Force Chief Operations Officer signed an agreement to optimize logistics support Sept 18. at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity 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
Sols 4309–4310: Leaning Back, Driving Back
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of a large fractured slab of bedrock, taken by Right Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4307 — Martian day 4,307 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission — on Sept. 17, 2024 at 15:50:36 UTC. Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024
The lengthy drive planned on Monday executed as expected, and we came in today to find our rover parked at a jaunty angle on a sloped ridge. There were some worries that the slope might limit our ability to use the arm for contact science in this plan (we don’t want to do anything that might cause the rover to slide down the slope!), but after some careful consideration, we received the good news that all six of our wheels are holding on firmly to the ground, so there was no risk of slipping.
On Monday, two different options for today’s plan were laid out. The first option, a “full contact science” plan where we don’t drive, was to be executed if Monday’s drive put us exactly where we hoped. The second, a “touch-and-go” plan where we do some light contact science before driving away, was to be executed if the drive didn’t put us where we wanted to be. As it happened, the rover was a little too enthusiastic about driving, and actually put our desired workspace under its body rather than in front where the arm could reach it. There’s always a little uncertainty in the final position after such a long drive! So, we decided to stick with a touch-and-go plan that includes a tiny backwards drive of less than a metre to reposition our desired target in front of the rover.
Although we need to re-position, we aren’t slowing down on science for even a second. We are parked in front of a large fractured slab of bedrock, which can be seen in the above image. This slab became the contact science target for this plan with DRT and APXS activities on “The Minster.” Mastcam is getting a workout today as well, with large mosaics of “North Channel,” “Buckeye Ridge,” “Quinn,” and “Island Pass.” These mosaics are all documenting various aspects of the ridge we’re sat on and the edge of the Gediz Vallis Channel, including sedimentary rocks, white sulphate materials, and gravels and fine-grained materials. ChemCam is also taking a turn on the bedrock slab with a LIBS activity on “Grand Sentinel” and a mosaic of some exposed white stones off in the distance.
The second sol of the plan, after our short drive, is largely taken over by environmental science activities, though there is our usual post-drive ChemCam AEGIS. These activities include a Mastcam tau and Navcam line-of-sight to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere around and above us, as well as a dust devil movie, suprahorizon cloud movie, and some Navcam deck monitoring to see if our driving or the wind is moving around any of the sand and dust on the rover deck. The team is also taking the usual set of REMS, RAD, and DAN observations.
Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
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Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 Min Read Reinventing the Clock: NASA’s New Tech for Space Timekeeping
The Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock is a higher-precision atomic clock that is small enough to fit on a spacecraft. Credits: NASA/Matthew Kaufman Here on Earth, it might not matter if your wristwatch runs a few seconds slow. But crucial spacecraft functions need accuracy down to one billionth of a second or less. Navigating with GPS, for example, relies on precise timing signals from satellites to pinpoint locations. Three teams at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are at work to push timekeeping for space exploration to new levels of precision.
One team develops highly precise quantum clock synchronization techniques to aid essential spacecraft communication and navigation. Another Goddard team is working to employ the technique of clock synchronization in space-based platforms to enable telescopes to function as one enormous observatory. The third team is developing an atomic clock for spacecraft based on strontium, a metallic chemical element, to enable scientific observations not possible with current technology. The need for increasingly accurate timekeeping is why these teams at NASA Goddard, supported by the center’s Internal Research and Development program, hone clock precision and synchronization with innovative technologies like quantum and optical communications.
Syncing Up Across the Solar System
“Society requires clock synchronization for many crucial functions like power grid management, stock market openings, financial transactions, and much more,” said Alejandro Rodriguez Perez, a NASA Goddard researcher. “NASA uses clock synchronization to determine the position of spacecraft and set navigation parameters.”
If you line up two clocks and sync them together, you might expect that they will tick at the same rate forever. In reality, the more time passes, the more out of sync the clocks become, especially if those clocks are on spacecraft traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Rodriguez Perez seeks to develop a new way of precisely synchronizing such clocks and keeping them synced using quantum technology.
Work on the quantum clock synchronization protocol takes place in this lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.NASA/Matthew Kaufman In quantum physics, two particles are entangled when they behave like a single object and occupy two states at once. For clocks, applying quantum protocols to entangled photons could allow for a precise and secure way to sync clocks across long distances.
The heart of the synchronization protocol is called spontaneous parametric down conversion, which is when one photon breaks apart and two new photons form. Two detectors will each analyze when the new photons appear, and the devices will apply mathematical functions to determine the offset in time between the two photons, thus synchronizing the clocks.
While clock synchronization is currently done using GPS, this protocol could make it possible to precisely synchronize clocks in places where GPS access is limited, like the Moon or deep space.
Syncing Clocks, Linking Telescopes to See More than Ever Before
When it comes to astronomy, the usual rule of thumb is the bigger the telescope, the better its imagery.
“If we could hypothetically have a telescope as big as Earth, we would have incredibly high-resolution images of space, but that’s obviously not practical,” said Guan Yang, an optical physicist at NASA Goddard. “What we can do, however, is have multiple telescopes in various locations and have each telescope record the signal with high time precision. Then we can stich their observations together and produce an ultra-high-res image.”
The idea of linking together the observations of a network of smaller telescopes to affect the power of a larger one is called very long baseline interferometry, or VLBI.
For VLBI to produce a whole greater than the sum of its parts, the telescopes need high-precision clocks. The telescopes record data alongside timestamps of when the data was recorded. High-powered computers assemble all the data together into one complete observation with greater detail than any one of the telescopes could achieve on its own. This technique is what allowed the Event Horizon Telescope’s network of observatories to produce the first image of a black hole at the center of our galaxy.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks.EHT Collaboration Yang’s team is developing a clock technology that could be useful for missions looking to take the technique from Earth into space which could unlock many more discoveries.
An Optical Atomic Clock Built for Space Travel
Spacecraft navigation systems currently rely on onboard atomic clocks to obtain the most accurate time possible. Holly Leopardi, a physicist at NASA Goddard, is researching optical atomic clocks, a more precise type of atomic clock.
While optical atomic clocks exist in laboratory settings, Leopardi and her team seek to develop a spacecraft-ready version that will provide more precision.
The team works on OASIC, which stands for Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock. While current spacecraft utilize microwave frequencies, OASIC uses optical frequencies.
The Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock is a higher-precision atomic clock that is small enough to fit on a spacecraft.NASA/Matthew Kaufman “Optical frequencies oscillate much faster than microwave frequencies, so we can have a much finer resolution of counts and more precise timekeeping,” Leopardi said.
The OASIC technology is about 100 times more precise than the previous state-of-the-art in spacecraft atomic clocks. The enhanced accuracy could enable new types of science that were not previously possible.
“When you use these ultra-high precision clocks, you can start looking at the fundamental physics changes that occur in space,” Leopardi said, “and that can help us better understand the mechanisms of our universe.”
The timekeeping technologies unlocked by these teams, could enable new discoveries in our solar system and beyond.
More on cutting-edge technology development at NASA Goddard By Matthew Kaufman, with additional contributions from Avery Truman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 18, 2024 EditorRob GarnerContactRob Garnerrob.garner@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Podcast art for Universo curioso de la NASA, the agency’s first podcast in Spanish, which returns for a second season in September 2024. Credits: NASA / Krystofer Kim Lee este comunicado de prensa en español aquí.
In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, NASA is releasing new content for Universo curioso de la NASA, the agency’s first Spanish-language podcast, now in its second season. A five-week season starts Tuesday with new episodes released weekly.
Listen to the preview of the second season of Universo curioso de la NASA.
In each episode, Universo curioso highlights the contributions of NASA’s Hispanic and Latino workforce to the agency’s work in Earth and space exploration for the benefit of all.
“Through the Universo curioso de la NASA podcast, we are thrilled to tell the story of NASA’s efforts to open space to more people from across the world,” said Tonya McNair, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington. “In the second season, you’ll hear from NASA’s Hispanic and Latino workforce, like flight director Diana Trujillo and astronaut Marcos Berríos, helping lead some of the agency’s most vital space exploration missions and inspiring the world through discovery.”
Episodes focus on some of NASA’s top missions, bringing the wonder of exploration, space technology, and scientific discoveries to Spanish-speaking audiences around the world.
“This podcast highlights NASA’s dedication to making knowledge available to all, regardless of their native language,” said Shahra Lambert, NASA senior advisor for engagement. “By sharing the excitement of NASA’s missions in the second most spoken language in the U.S. and around the world, we are amplifying our outreach and possibly paving the way for a more diverse STEM workforce in the future.”
The first episode of Universo curioso ran in 2021, as part of the agency’s Spanish coverage of the launch of its James Webb Space Telescope. In 2023, the show was selected as a “Podcast We Love” by Apple Podcasts Latin America.
Hosted by Noelia González, communications specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, listeners are invited to go on a journey to one of Jupiter’s icy moons, hear about the first two years of discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as learn about an astronaut from Puerto Rico’s and a Colombian flight director’s path to NASA.
Episodes will cover the upcoming launch of Europa Clipper in October 2024, a mission that aims to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life.
A complete list of the new episodes, as well as their release dates, is as follows:
Tuesday, Sept. 17: Introducing the Second Season Tuesday, Sept. 24 Diana Trujillo: From Cali to the Moon and Mars Tuesday, Oct. 1 Europa Clipper: A Poetic Journey to Jupiter’s Moon Tuesday, Oct. 8 Marcos Berríos: How to Become a NASA Astronaut Tuesday, Oct. 15: Exploring Cosmos with Webb Universo curioso de la NASA is a joint initiative of the agency’s Spanish-language communications and audio programs. The new season, as well as previous episodes, are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and NASA’s website.
Listen to the podcast at:
https://www.nasa.gov/universo-curioso-de-la-nasa
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María José Viñas / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
240-458-0248 / 202-358-1600
maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov
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