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By NASA
Earlier this month, nine small businesses received 2023 NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Ignite Phase II awards to further develop technologies that may be used in the agency’s missions and in the commercial space industry.
The SBIR Ignite Phase II awardees, who will receive up to $850,000 to fund their projects, are developing technology capabilities in the detection of wildfires, support for water management in agriculture, in-space debris detection, mineral mining from lunar regolith, in-space production, and more. These capabilities are vital to supporting deep space exploration, low Earth orbit missions, and preserving life on our home planet for the benefit of all. The businesses initially were selected for Phase I awards in 2023 and provided six months and up to $150,000 to prove their concepts before competing for Phase II.
“We want to support innovators across the aerospace industry because their technologies have the potential to make a big impact in the commercial market. A rich and diverse marketplace creates more opportunity for us all. These Phase II awards illuminate a clear path for a unique range of technologies that we believe will positively influence the lives of all Americans.”
Jason L. Kessler
NASA SBIR/STTR Program Executive
The SBIR Ignite pilot initiative supports product-driven small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs that have commercialization at the forefront of their innovation strategies and processes but that are not targeting NASA as a primary customer. The pilot initiative provides funding and other support to mitigate risk in technologies that have strong commercial potential by offering lower barriers to entry, a streamlined review and selection process, and accelerated technology development and awards as compared to the NASA SBIR program’s main solicitation. It also focuses on helping make participating companies more appealing to investors, customers, and partners, while fulfilling SBIR’s mission of increasing commercialization of innovations derived from federal research and development.
While the agency’s main Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer solicitations focus on technologies with potential for infusion in both NASA missions and commercialization in the marketplace, the SBIR Ignite opportunity is less prescriptive and focuses on topics that are relevant to emerging commercial markets in aerospace, such as accelerating in-space production applications in low Earth orbit.
The awarded companies are:
Astral Forge, LLC, Palo Alto, California Astrobotic Technology Inc., Pittsburgh Benchmark Space Systems, Burlington, Vermont Brayton Energy, LLC, Hampton, New Hampshire Channel-Logistics LLC dba Space-Eyes, Miami GeoVisual Analytics, Westminster, Colorado Space Lab Technologies, LLC, Boulder, Colorado Space Tango, Lexington, Kentucky VerdeGo Aero, De Leon Springs, Florida
The third year of NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Ignite is underway, as the 2024 SBIR Ignite Phase I solicitation closed on July 30, 2024. Those selections are expected to be announced Fall 2024.
NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program is part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and is managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
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By NASA
NASA’s VIPER – short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – sits assembled inside the cleanroom at the agency’s Johnson Space Center.Credit: NASA Following a comprehensive internal review, NASA announced Wednesday its intent to discontinue development of its VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) project.
NASA stated cost increases, delays to the launch date, and the risks of future cost growth as the reasons to stand down on the mission. The rover was originally planned to launch in late 2023, but in 2022, NASA requested a launch delay to late 2024 to provide more time for preflight testing of the Astrobotic lander. Since that time, additional schedule and supply chain delays pushed VIPER’s readiness date to September 2025, and independently its CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) launch aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander also has been delayed to a similar time. Continuation of VIPER would result in an increased cost that threatens cancellation or disruption to other CLPS missions. NASA has notified Congress of the agency’s intent.
“We are committed to studying and exploring the Moon for the benefit of humanity through the CLPS program,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years. Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.”
Moving forward, NASA is planning to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future Moon missions. Prior to disassembly, NASA will consider expressions of interest from U.S. industry and international partners by Thursday, Aug. 1, for use of the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the government. Interested parties should contact HQ-CLPS-Payload@mail.nasa.gov after 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 18. The project will conduct an orderly close out through spring 2025.
Astrobotic will continue its Griffin Mission One within its contract with NASA, working toward a launch scheduled for no earlier than fall 2025. The landing without VIPER will provide a flight demonstration of the Griffin lander and its engines.
NASA will pursue alternative methods to accomplish many of VIPER’s goals and verify the presence of ice at the lunar South Pole. A future CLPS delivery – the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) — scheduled to land at the South Pole during the fourth quarter of 2024, will search for water ice and carry out a resource utilization demonstration using a drill and mass spectrometer to measure the volatile content of subsurface materials.
Additionally, future instruments as part of NASA’s crewed missions – for example, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle — will allow for mobile observations of volatiles across the south polar region, as well as provide access for astronauts to the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions for dedicated sample return campaigns. The agency will also use copies of three of VIPER’s four instruments for future Moon landings on separate flights.
The VIPER rover was designed to search Earth’s Moon for ice and other potential resources – in support of NASA’s commitment to study the Moon and help unravel some of the greatest mysteries of our solar system. Through NASA’s lunar initiatives, including Artemis human missions and CLPS, NASA is exploring more of the Moon than ever before using highly trained astronauts, advanced robotics, U.S. commercial providers, and international partners.
For more information about VIPER, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/viper
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Karen Fox / Erin Morton
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-805-9393
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / erin.morton@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Earth's Moon Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By European Space Agency
As climate change drives more frequent and severe weather events, the need for accurate and timely forecasting has never been more critical. And now, the next Meteosat Third Generation weather satellite has passed its environmental test campaign with flying colours, taking it a significant step closer to launch.
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By NASA
5 Min Read Antarctic Sea Ice Near Historic Lows; Arctic Ice Continues Decline
On Feb. 20, 2024, Antarctic sea ice officially reached its minimum extent for the year. This cycle of growth and melting occurs every year, with the ice reaching its smallest size during the Southern Hemisphere's summer. Credits: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Trent L. Schindler Sea ice at both the top and bottom of the planet continued its decline in 2024. In the waters around Antarctica, ice coverage shrank to near-historic lows for the third year in a row. The recurring loss hints at a long-term shift in conditions in the Southern Ocean, likely resulting from global climate change, according to scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Meanwhile, the 46-year trend of shrinking and thinning ice in the Arctic Ocean shows no sign of reversing.
“Sea ice acts like a buffer between the ocean and the atmosphere,” said ice scientist Linette Boisvert of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Sea ice prevents much of the exchange of heat and moisture from the relatively warm ocean to the atmosphere above it.”
Less ice coverage allows the ocean to warm the atmosphere over the poles, leading to more ice melting in a vicious cycle of rising temperatures.
Historically, the area of sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent has fluctuated dramatically from year to year while averages over decades have been relatively stable. In recent years, though, sea ice cover around Antarctica has plummeted.
On Feb. 20, 2024, Antarctic sea ice officially reached its minimum extent for the year. This cycle of growth and melting occurs every year, with the ice reaching its smallest size during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this marks the second-lowest sea ice extent recorded by satellites, reflecting a trend of declining coverage over time.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio
Download this video in HD formats from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14538.
“In 2016, we saw what some people are calling a regime shift,” said sea ice scientist Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “The Antarctic sea ice coverage dropped and has largely remained lower than normal. Over the past seven years, we’ve had three record lows.”
This year, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest annual extent on Feb. 20 with a total of 768,000 square miles (1.99 million square kilometers). That’s 30% below the 1981 to 2010 end-of-summer average. The difference in ice cover spans an area about the size of Texas. Sea ice extent is defined as the total area of the ocean in which the ice cover fraction is at least 15%.
This year’s minimum is tied with February 2022 for the second lowest ice coverage around the Antarctic and close to the 2023 all-time low of 691,000 square miles (1.79 million square kilometers). With the latest ice retreat, this year marks the lowest three-year average for ice coverage observed around the Antarctic continent across more than four decades.
The changes were observed in data collected with microwave sensors aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite, jointly operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), along with satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
NASA’s Earth Observatory: Antarctic Sea Ice at Near-Historic Lows Meanwhile, at the other end of the planet, the maximum winter ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean is consistent with an ongoing 46-year decline. Satellite images reveal that the total area of the Arctic Ocean covered in sea ice reached 6 million square miles (15.65 million square kilometers) on March 14. That’s 247,000 square miles (640,000 square kilometers) less ice than the average between 1981 and 2010. Overall, the maximum winter ice coverage in the Arctic has shrunk by an area equivalent to the size of Alaska since 1979.
This year’s Arctic ice maximum is the 14th lowest on record. Complex weather patterns make it difficult to predict what will happen in any given year.
The Arctic Ocean sea ice reached its annual maximum on March 14, continuing the long-term decline in ice at the poles.Chart by Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory, using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Shrinking ice makes Earth more susceptible to solar heating. “The sea ice and the snow on top of it are very reflective,” Boisvert said. “In the summer, if we have more sea ice, it reflects the Sun’s radiation and helps keep the planet cooler.”
On the other hand, the exposed ocean is darker and readily absorbs solar radiation, capturing and retaining that energy and ultimately contributing to warming in the planet’s oceans and atmosphere.
Sea ice around the poles is more susceptible to the weather than it was a dozen years ago. Ice thickness measurements collected with laser altimeters aboard NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite show that less ice has managed to stick around through the warmer months. This means new ice must form from scratch each year, rather than building on old ice to make thicker layers. Thinner ice, in turn, is more prone to melting than multi-year accumulations.
“The thought is that in a couple of decades, we’re going to have these essentially ice-free summers,” Boisvert said, with ice coverage reduced below 400,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) and most of the Arctic Ocean exposed to the Sun’s warming glare.
It’s too soon to know whether recent sea ice lows at the South Pole point to a long-term change rather than a statistical fluctuation, but Meier believes long term declines are inevitable.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said. “After six, seven, eight years, it’s starting to look like maybe it’s happening. It’s just a question of whether there’s enough data to say for sure.”
Reference: NSIDC Sea Ice Index Daily and Monthly Image Viewer By James Riordon
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters
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Last Updated Mar 25, 2024 EditorGoddard Digital TeamLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Earth Climate Change Goddard Space Flight Center Ice & Glaciers Sea Ice Explore More
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By NASA
Full-duration RS-25 Engine Hot FireNASA/Danny Nowlin Full-duration RS-25 Engine Hot FireNASA/Danny Nowlin Full-duration RS-25 Engine Hot FireNASA/Danny Nowlin Full-duration RS-25 Engine Hot FireNASA/Danny Nowlin NASA conducted a full-duration RS-25 engine hot fire March 6, continuing a final round of certification testing for production of new engines to help power the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond. The full-duration test on the Fred Haise Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, marked the ninth in a scheduled 12-test series. Engineers are collecting test data to certify an updated engine production process, using innovative manufacturing techniques, for lead engines contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company. During the March 6 test, Operators fired the certification engine for 10 minutes (600 seconds), longer than the amount of time needed to help launch the SLS rocket and send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft into orbit. The test team also fired the engine at power levels between 80% and 113% to test performance in multiple scenarios. Four RS-25 engines, along with a pair of solid rocket boosters, launch NASA’s powerful SLS rocket, producing more than 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff for Artemis missions. Through Artemis, NASA will establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon, land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all. RS-25 tests at NASA Stennis are conducted by a diverse team of operators from NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Syncom Space Services, prime contractor for site facilities and operations.
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