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By NASA
A rendering of Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander and a rover developed for the company’s third mission to the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative.Credit: Firefly Aerospace NASA continues to advance its campaign to explore more of the Moon than ever before, awarding Firefly Aerospace $179 million to deliver six experiments to the lunar surface. This fourth task order for Firefly will target landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028.
As part of the agency’s broader Artemis campaign, Firefly will deliver a group of science experiments and technology demonstrations under NASA’s CLPS initiative, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services, to these lunar domes, an area of ancient lava flows, to better understand planetary processes and evolution. Through CLPS, NASA is furthering our understanding of the Moon’s environment and helping prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach.
“The CLPS initiative carries out U.S. scientific and technical studies on the surface of the Moon by robot explorers. As NASA prepares for future human exploration of the Moon, the CLPS initiative continues to support a growing lunar economy with American companies,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Understanding the formation of the Gruithuisen Domes, as well as the ancient lava flows surrounding the landing site, will help the U.S. answer important questions about the lunar surface.”
Firefly’s first lunar delivery is scheduled to launch no earlier than mid-January 2025 and will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, on the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side. Firefly’s second lunar mission includes two task orders: a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side and a delivery of a lunar orbital calibration source, scheduled in 2026.
This new delivery in 2028 will send payloads to the Gruithuisen Domes and the nearby Sinus Viscositatus. The Gruithuisen Domes have long been suspected to be formed by a magma rich in silica, similar in composition to granite. Granitic rocks form easily on Earth due to plate tectonics and oceans of water. The Moon lacks these key ingredients, so lunar scientists have been left to wonder how these domes formed and evolved over time. For the first time, as part of this task order, NASA also has contracted to provide “mobility,” or roving, for some of the scientific instruments on the lunar surface after landing. This will enable new types of U.S. scientific investigations from CLPS.
“Firefly will deliver six instruments to understand the landing site and surrounding vicinity,” said Chris Culbert, manager of the CLPS initiative at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “These instruments will study geologic processes and lunar regolith, test solar cells, and characterize the neutron radiation environment, supplying invaluable information as NASA works to establish a long-term presence on the Moon.”
The instruments, collectively expected to be about 215 pounds (97 kilograms) in mass, include:
Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer, which consists of two stationary and three mobile instruments, will study rocks and regoliths on the summit of one of the domes to determine their origin and better understand geologic processes of early planetary bodies. The principal investigator is Dr. Kerri Donaldson Hanna of the University of Central Florida, Orlando. Heimdall is a flexible camera system that will be used to take pictures of the landing site from above the horizon to the ground directly below the lander. The principal investigator is Dr. R. Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona. Sample Acquisition, Morphology Filtering, and Probing of Lunar Regolith is a robotic arm that will collect samples of lunar regolith and use a robotic scoop to filter and isolate particles of different sizes. The sampling technology will use a flight spare from the Mars Exploration Rover project. The principal investigator is Sean Dougherty of Maxar Technologies, Westminster, Colorado. Low-frequency Radio Observations from the Near Side Lunar Surface is designed to observe the Moon’s surface environment in radio frequencies, to determine whether natural and human-generated activity near the surface interferes with science. The project is headed up by Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Photovoltaic Investigation on the Lunar Surface will carry a set of the latest solar cells for a technology demonstration of light-to-electricity power conversion for future missions. The experiment will also collect data on the electrical charging environment of the lunar surface using a small array of solar cells. The principal investigator is Jeremiah McNatt from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Neutron Measurements at the Lunar Surface is a neutron spectrometer that will characterize the surface neutron radiation environment, monitor hydrogen, and provide constraints on elemental composition. The principal investigator is Dr. Heidi Haviland of NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Through the CLPS initiative, NASA purchases lunar landing and surface operations services from American companies. The agency uses CLPS to send scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to advance capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the Moon. By supporting a robust cadence of lunar deliveries, NASA will continue to enable a growing lunar economy while leveraging the entrepreneurial innovation of the commercial space industry. Two upcoming CLPS flights scheduled to launch in early 2025 will deliver NASA payloads to the Moon’s near side and south polar region, respectively.
Learn more about CLPS and Artemis at:
https://www.nasa.gov/clps
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Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Natalia Riusech / Nilufar Ramji
Johnson Space Center, Houston
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natalia.s.riusech@nasa.gov / nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Dec 18, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
Earth (ESD) Earth Explore Climate Change Science in Action Multimedia Data For Researchers About Us 4 min read
NASA Study: Crops, Forests Responding to Changing Rainfall Patterns
Earth’s rainy days are changing and plant life is responding. This visualization shows average precipitation for the entire globe based on more than 20 years of data from 2000 to 2023. Cooler colors indicate areas that receive less rain. Warm colors receive more rain. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio A new NASA-led study has found that how rain falls in a given year is nearly as important to the world’s vegetation as how much. Reporting Dec. 11 in Nature, the researchers showed that even in years with similar rainfall totals, plants fared differently when that water came in fewer, bigger bursts.
In years with less frequent but more concentrated rainfall, plants in drier environments like the U.S. Southwest were more likely to thrive. In humid ecosystems like the Central American rainforest, vegetation tended to fare worse, possibly because it could not tolerate the longer dry spells.
Scientists have previously estimated that almost half of the world’s vegetation is driven primarily by how much rain falls in a year. Less well understood is the role of day-to-day variability, said lead author Andrew Feldman, a hydrologist and ecosystem scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Shifting precipitation patterns are producing stronger rainstorms — with longer dry spells in between — compared to a century ago.
“You can think of it like this: if you have a house plant, what happens if you give it a full pitcher of water on Sunday versus a third of a pitcher on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?” said Feldman. Scale that to the size of the U.S. Corn Belt or a rainforest and the answer could have implications for crop yields and ultimately how much carbon dioxide plants remove from the atmosphere.
Blooms in Desert
The team, including researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and multiple universities, analyzed two decades of field and satellite observations, spanning millions of square miles. Their study area encompassed diverse landscapes from Siberia to the southern tip of Patagonia.
Yellow wildflowers and orange poppies carpet the desert following a wet winter for the Antelope Valley in California. NASA/Jim Ross They found that plants across 42% of Earth’s vegetated land surface were sensitive to daily rainfall variability. Of those, a little over half fared better — often showing increased growth — in years with fewer but more intense wet days. These include croplands as well as drier landscapes like grasslands and deserts.
In contrast, broadleaf (e.g., oak, maple, and beech) forests and rainforests in lower and middle latitudes tended to fare worse under those conditions. The effect was especially pronounced in Indo-Pacific rainforests, including in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Statistically, daily rainfall variability was nearly as important as annual rainfall totals in driving growth worldwide.
Red Light, Green Light
The new study relied primarily on a suite of NASA missions and datasets, including the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) algorithm, which provides rain and snowfall rates for most of the planet every 30 minutes using a network of international satellites.
To gauge plant response day to day, the researchers calculated how green an area appeared in satellite imagery. “Greenness”, also known asthe Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, is commonly used to estimate vegetation density and health. They also tracked a faint reddish light that plants emit during photosynthesis, when a plant absorbs sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into food, its chlorophyll “leaks” unused photons. This faint light is called solar-induced fluorescence, and it’s a telltale sign of flourishing vegetation.
Growing plants emit a form of light detectable by NASA satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth. Parts of North America appear to glimmer in this visualization, depicting an average year. Gray indicates regions with little or no fluorescence; red, pink, and white indicate high fluorescence. NASA Scientific Visualization Studio Not visible bythe naked eye, plant fluorescence can be detected by instruments aboard satellites such as NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2). Launched in 2014, OCO-2 has observed the U.S. Midwest fluorescing strongly during the growing season.
Feldman said the findings highlight the vital role that plants play in moving carbon around Earth — a process called the carbon cycle. Vegetation, including crops, forests, and grasslands, forms a vast carbon “sink,” absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“A finer understanding of how plants thrive or decline day to day, storm by storm, could help us better understand their role in that critical cycle,” Feldman said.
The study also included researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Stanford University, Columbia University, Indiana University, and the University of Arizona.
By Sally Younger
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
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Sally Younger
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Last Updated Dec 11, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
This artist’s concept shows interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) after its discovery in 2017. While itself not a dark comet, ‘Oumuamua’s motion through the solar system has helped researchers better understand the nature of the 14 dark comets discovered so far.European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser These celestial objects look like asteroids but act like comets now come in two flavors.
The first dark comet — a celestial object that looks like an asteroid but moves through space like a comet — was reported less than two years ago. Soon after, another six were found. In a new paper, researchers announce the discovery of seven more, doubling the number of known dark comets, and find that they fall into two distinct populations: larger ones that reside in the outer solar system and smaller ones in the inner solar system, with various other traits that set them apart.
The findings were published on Monday, Dec. 9, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists got their first inkling that dark comets exist when they noted in a March 2016 study that the trajectory of “asteroid” 2003 RM had moved ever so slightly from its expected orbit. That deviation couldn’t be explained by the typical accelerations of asteroids, like the small acceleration known as the Yarkovsky effect.
“When you see that kind of perturbation on a celestial object, it usually means it’s a comet, with volatile material outgassing from its surface giving it a little thrust,” said study coauthor Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But try as we might, we couldn’t find any signs of a comet’s tail. It looked like any other asteroid — just a pinpoint of light. So, for a short while, we had this one weird celestial object that we couldn’t fully figure out.”
Weird Celestial Objects
Farnocchia and the astronomical community didn’t have to wait long for another piece of the puzzle. The next year, in 2017, a NASA-sponsored telescope discovered history’s first documented celestial object that originated outside our solar system. Not only did 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) appear as a single point of light, like an asteroid, its trajectory changed as if it were outgassing volatile material from its surface, like a comet.
“‘Oumuamua was surprising in several ways,” said Farnocchia. “The fact that the first object we discovered from interstellar space exhibited similar behaviors to 2003 RM made 2003 RM even more intriguing.”
By 2023, researchers had identified seven solar system objects that looked like asteroids but acted like comets. That was enough for the astronomical community to bestow upon them their own celestial object category: “dark comets.” Now, with the finding of seven more of these objects, researchers could start on a new set of questions.
“We had a big enough number of dark comets that we could begin asking if there was anything that would differentiate them,” said Darryl Seligman, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Physics at Michigan State University, East Lansing, and lead author of the new paper. “By analyzing the reflectivity,” or albedo, “and the orbits, we found that our solar system contains two different types of dark comets.”
Two Kinds of Dark Comets
The study’s authors found that one kind, which they call outer dark comets, have similar characteristics to Jupiter-family comets: They have highly eccentric (or elliptical) orbits and are on the larger side (hundreds of meters or more across).
The second group, inner dark comets, reside in the inner solar system (which includes Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), travel in nearly circular orbits, and are on the smaller side (tens of meters or less).
Like so many astronomical discoveries, Seligman and Farnocchia’s research not only expands on our knowledge of dark comets, but it also raises several additional questions: Where did dark comets originate? What causes their anomalous acceleration? Could they contain ice?
“Dark comets are a new potential source for having delivered the materials to Earth that were necessary for the development of life,” said Seligman. “The more we can learn about them, the better we can understand their role in our planet’s origin.”
For more information about asteroids and comets, visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/topics/asteroids/
Small Body Research at JPL NASA Learns More About Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua Lesson: Comet on a Stick News Media Contacts
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Bethany Mauger
Michigan State University, East Lansing
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Last Updated Dec 09, 2024 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
What’s harder than flying a single satellite in Earth orbit? Flying two – right beside each other, at proximities that would normally trigger collision avoidance manoeuvres.
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By European Space Agency
A new European Space Agency-backed study shows that the extreme heatwaves of 2023, which fuelled huge wildfires and severe droughts, also undermined the land’s capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon. This diminished carbon uptake drove atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to new highs, intensifying concerns about accelerating climate change.
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