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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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A 3D simulation showing the evolution of turbulent flows in the upper layers of the Sun. The more saturated and bright reds represent the most vigorous upward or downward twisting motions. Clear areas represent areas where there is only relatively slow up-flows, with very little twisting.NASA/Irina Kitiashvili and Timothy A. Sandstrom NASA supercomputers are shedding light on what causes some of the Sun’s most complex behaviors. Using data from the suite of active Sun-watching spacecraft currently observing the star at the heart of our solar system, researchers can explore solar dynamics like never before.
The animation shows the strength of the turbulent motions of the Sun’s inner layers as materials twist into its atmosphere, resembling a roiling pot of boiling water or a flurry of schooling fish sending material bubbling up to the surface or diving it further down below.
“Our simulations use what we call a realistic approach, which means we include as much as we know to-date about solar plasma to reproduce different phenomena observed with NASA space missions,” said Irina Kitiashvili, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley who helped lead the study.
Using modern computational capabilities, the team was able, for the first time to reproduce the fine structures of the subsurface layer observed with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
“Right now, we don’t have the computational capabilities to create realistic global models of the entire Sun due to the complexity,” said Kitiashvili. “Therefore, we create models of smaller areas or layers, which can show us structures of the solar surface and atmosphere – like shock waves or tornado-like features measuring only a few miles in size; that’s much finer detail than any one spacecraft can resolve.”
Scientists seek to better understand the Sun and what phenomena drive the patterns of its activity. The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts, auroras and many other phenomena. Space weather predictions are critical for exploration of space, supporting the spacecraft and astronauts of NASA’s Artemis campaign. Surveying this space environment is a vital part of understanding and mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation and keeping our spacecraft and instruments safe.
This has been a big year for our special star, studded with events like the annular eclipse, a total eclipse, and the Sun reaching its solar maximum period. In December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission – which is helping researchers to understand space weather right at the source – will make its closest-ever approach to the Sun and beat its own record of being the closest human-made object to reach the Sun.
The Sun keeps surprising us. We are looking forward to seeing what kind of exciting events will be organized by the Sun."
Irina Kitiashvili
NASA Scientist
“The Sun keeps surprising us,” said Kitiashvili. “We are looking forward to seeing what kind of exciting events will be organized by the Sun.”
These simulations were run on the Pleaides supercomputer at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at NASA Ames over several weeks of runtime, generating terabytes of data.
NASA is showcasing 29 of the agency’s computational achievements at SC24, the international supercomputing conference, Nov. 17-22, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. For more technical information, visit:
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/sc24
For news media: Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
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Last Updated Nov 21, 2024 Related Terms
General Ames Research Center Heliophysics Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Sunspots The Sun Explore More
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Parker Solar Probe
On a mission to “touch the Sun,” NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona…
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A prototype of a robot designed to explore subsurface oceans of icy moons is reflected in the water’s surface during a pool test at Caltech in September. Conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the testing showed the feasibility of a mission concept for a swarm of mini swimming robots.NASA/JPL-Caltech In a competition swimming pool, engineers tested prototypes for a futuristic mission concept: a swarm of underwater robots that could look for signs of life on ocean worlds.
When NASA’s Europa Clipper reaches its destination in 2030, the spacecraft will prepare to aim an array of powerful science instruments toward Jupiter’s moon Europa during 49 flybys, looking for signs that the ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust could sustain life. While the spacecraft, which launched Oct. 14, carries the most advanced science hardware NASA has ever sent to the outer solar system, teams are already developing the next generation of robotic concepts that could potentially plunge into the watery depths of Europa and other ocean worlds, taking the science even further.
This is where an ocean-exploration mission concept called SWIM comes in. Short for Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers, the project envisions a swarm of dozens of self-propelled, cellphone-size swimming robots that, once delivered to a subsurface ocean by an ice-melting cryobot, would zoom off, looking for chemical and temperature signals that could indicate life.
Dive into underwater robotics testing with NASA’s futuristic SWIM (Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers) concept for a swarm of miniature robots to explore subsurface oceans on icy worlds, and see a JPL team testing a prototype at a pool at Caltech in Pasadena, California, in September 2024. NASA/JPL-Caltech “People might ask, why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration? It’s because there are places we want to go in the solar system to look for life, and we think life needs water. So we need robots that can explore those environments — autonomously, hundreds of millions of miles from home,” said Ethan Schaler, principal investigator for SWIM at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Under development at JPL, a series of prototypes for the SWIM concept recently braved the waters of a 25-yard (23-meter) competition swimming pool at Caltech in Pasadena for testing. The results were encouraging.
SWIM Practice
The SWIM team’s latest iteration is a 3D-printed plastic prototype that relies on low-cost, commercially made motors and electronics. Pushed along by two propellers, with four flaps for steering, the prototype demonstrated controlled maneuvering, the ability to stay on and correct its course, and a back-and-forth “lawnmower” exploration pattern. It managed all of this autonomously, without the team’s direct intervention. The robot even spelled out “J-P-L.”
Just in case the robot needed rescuing, it was attached to a fishing line, and an engineer toting a fishing rod trotted alongside the pool during each test. Nearby, a colleague reviewed the robot’s actions and sensor data on a laptop. The team completed more than 20 rounds of testing various prototypes at the pool and in a pair of tanks at JPL.
“It’s awesome to build a robot from scratch and see it successfully operate in a relevant environment,” Schaler said. “Underwater robots in general are very hard, and this is just the first in a series of designs we’d have to work through to prepare for a trip to an ocean world. But it’s proof that we can build these robots with the necessary capabilities and begin to understand what challenges they would face on a subsurface mission.”
Swarm Science
A model of the final envisioned SWIM robot, right, sits beside a capsule holding an ocean-composition sensor. The sensor was tested on an Alaskan glacier in July 2023 through a JPL-led project called ORCAA (Ocean Worlds Reconnaissance and Characterization of Astrobiological Analogs). The wedge-shaped prototype used in most of the pool tests was about 16.5 inches (42 centimeters) long, weighing 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms). As conceived for spaceflight, the robots would have dimensions about three times smaller — tiny compared to existing remotely operated and autonomous underwater scientific vehicles. The palm-size swimmers would feature miniaturized, purpose-built parts and employ a novel wireless underwater acoustic communication system for transmitting data and triangulating their positions.
Digital versions of these little robots got their own test, not in a pool but in a computer simulation. In an environment with the same pressure and gravity they would likely encounter on Europa, a virtual swarm of 5-inch-long (12-centimeter-long) robots repeatedly went looking for potential signs of life. The computer simulations helped determine the limits of the robots’ abilities to collect science data in an unknown environment, and they led to the development of algorithms that would enable the swarm to explore more efficiently.
The simulations also helped the team better understand how to maximize science return while accounting for tradeoffs between battery life (up to two hours), the volume of water the swimmers could explore (about 3 million cubic feet, or 86,000 cubic meters), and the number of robots in a single swarm (a dozen, sent in four to five waves).
In addition, a team of collaborators at Georgia Tech in Atlanta fabricated and tested an ocean composition sensor that would enable each robot to simultaneously measure temperature, pressure, acidity or alkalinity, conductivity, and chemical makeup. Just a few millimeters square, the chip is the first to combine all those sensors in one tiny package.
Of course, such an advanced concept would require several more years of work, among other things, to be ready for a possible future flight mission to an icy moon. In the meantime, Schaler imagines SWIM robots potentially being further developed to do science work right here at home: supporting oceanographic research or taking critical measurements underneath polar ice.
More About SWIM
Caltech manages JPL for NASA. JPL’s SWIM project was supported by Phase I and II funding from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program under the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program nurtures visionary ideas for space exploration and aerospace by funding early-stage studies to evaluate technologies that could transform future NASA missions. Researchers across U.S. government, industry, and academia can submit proposals.
How the SWIM concept was developed Learn about underwater robots for Antarctic climate science See NASA’s network of ready-to-roll mini-Moon rovers News Media Contact
Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-162
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Last Updated Nov 20, 2024 Related Terms
Europa Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program Ocean Worlds Robotics Space Technology Mission Directorate Technology Explore More
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:04:30 Explore the immense power of water as ESA’s Mars Express takes us on a flight over curving channels, streamlined islands and muddled ‘chaotic terrain’ on Mars, soaking up rover landing sites along the way.
This beautiful flight around the Oxia Palus region of Mars covers a total area of approximately 890 000 km2, more than twice the size of Germany. Central to the tour is one of Mars’s largest outflow channels, Ares Vallis. It stretches for more than 1700 km2 and cascades down from the planet’s southern highlands to enter the lower-lying plains of Chryse Planitia.
Billions of years ago, water surged through Ares Vallis, neighbouring Tiu Vallis, and numerous other smaller channels, creating many of the features observed in this region today.
Enjoy the flight!
After enjoying a spectacular global view of Mars we focus in on the area marked by the white rectangle. Our flight starts over the landing site of NASA’s Pathfinder mission, whose Sojourner rover explored the floodplains of Ares Vallis for 12 weeks in 1997.
Continuing to the south, we pass over two large craters named Masursky and Sagan. The partially eroded crater rim of Masursky in particular suggests that water once flowed through it, from nearby Tiu Vallis.
The Masurky Crater is filled with jumbled blocks, and you can see many more as we turn north to Hydaspis Chaos. This ‘chaotic terrain’ is typical of regions influenced by massive outflow channels. Its distinctive muddled appearance is thought to arise when subsurface water is suddenly released from underground to the surface. The resulting loss of support from below causes the surface to slump and break into blocks of various sizes and shapes.
Just beyond this chaotic array of blocks is Galilaei crater, which has a highly eroded rim and a gorge carved between the crater and neighbouring channel. It is likely that the crater once contained a lake, which flooded out into the surroundings. Continuing on, we see streamlined islands and terraced river banks, the teardrop-shaped island ‘tails’ pointing in the downstream direction of the water flow at the time.
Crossing over Ares Vallis again, the flight brings us to the smoother terrain of Oxia Planum and the planned landing site for ESA’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. The primary goal of the mission is to search for signs of past or present life on Mars, and as such, this once water-flooded region is an ideal location.
Zooming out, the flight ends with a stunning bird’s-eye view of Ares Vallis and its fascinating water-enriched neighbourhood.
Disclaimer: This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars. See processing notes below.
How the movie was made
This film was created using the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic, centred at 12°N/330°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape.
For every second of the movie, 50 separate frames are rendered following a predefined camera path in the scene. A three-fold vertical exaggeration has been applied. Atmospheric effects such as clouds and haze have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 300 km.
The HRSC camera on Mars Express is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at Freie Universität Berlin used the data to create the film.
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By NASA
At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of the universe – from our planet to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Supercomputers enable projects across diverse research, such as making discoveries about the Sun’s activity that affects technologies in space and life on Earth, building artificial intelligence-based models for innovative weather and climate science, and helping redesign the launch pad that will send astronauts to space with Artemis II.
These projects are just a sample of the many on display in NASA’s exhibit during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, or SC24. NASA’s Dr. Nicola “Nicky” Fox, associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, will deliver the keynote address, “NASA’s Vision for High Impact Science and Exploration,” on Tuesday, Nov. 19, where she’ll share more about the ways NASA uses supercomputing to explore the universe for the benefit of all. Here’s a little more about the work NASA will share at the conference:
1. Simulations Help in Redesign of the Artemis Launch Environment
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This simulation of the Artemis I launch shows how the Space Launch System rocket's exhaust plumes interact with the air, water, and the launchpad. Colors on surfaces indicate pressure levels—red for high pressure and blue for low pressure. The teal contours illustrate where water is present. NASA/Chris DeGrendele, Timothy Sandstrom Researchers at NASA Ames are helping ensure astronauts launch safely on the Artemis II test flight, the first crewed mission of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, scheduled for 2025. Using the Launch Ascent and Vehicle Aerodynamics software, they simulated the complex interactions between the rocket plume and the water-based sound suppression system used during the Artemis I launch, which resulted in damage to the mobile launcher platform that supported the rocket before liftoff.
Comparing simulations with and without the water systems activated revealed that the sound suppression system effectively reduces pressure waves, but exhaust gases can redirect water and cause significant pressure increases.
The simulations, run on the Aitken supercomputer at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at Ames, generated about 400 terabytes of data. This data was provided to aerospace engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, who are redesigning the flame deflector and mobile launcher for the Artemis II launch.
2. Airplane Design Optimization for Fuel Efficiency
In this comparison of aircraft designs, the left wing models the aircraft’s initial geometry, while the right wing models an optimized shape. The surface is colored by the air pressure on the aircraft, with orange surfaces representing shock waves in the airflow. The optimized design modeled on the right wing reduces drag by 4% compared to the original, leading to improved fuel efficiency. NASA/Brandon Lowe To help make commercial flight more efficient and sustainable, researchers and engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley are working to refine aircraft designs to reduce air resistance, or drag, by fine-tuning the shape of wings, fuselages, and other aircraft structural components. These changes would lower the energy required for flight and reduce the amount of fuel needed, produce fewer emissions, enhance overall performance of aircraft, and could help reduce noise levels around airports.
Using NASA’s Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics computational modeling software, developed at Ames, researchers are leveraging the power of agency supercomputers to run hundreds of simulations to explore a variety of design possibilities – on existing aircraft and future vehicle concepts. Their work has shown the potential to reduce drag on an existing commercial aircraft design by 4%, translating to significant fuel savings in real-world applications.
3. Applying AI to Weather and Climate
This visualization compares the track of the Category 4 hurricane, Ida, from MERRA-2 reanalysis data (left) with a prediction made without specific training, from NASA and IBM’s Prithvi WxC foundation model (right). Both models were initialized at 00 UTC on 2021-08-27.The University of Alabama in Huntsville/Ankur Kumar; NASA/Sujit Roy Traditional weather and climate models produce global and regional results by solving mathematical equations for millions of small areas (grid boxes) across Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. NASA and partners are now exploring newer approaches using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to train a foundation model.
Foundation models are developed using large, unlabeled datasets so researchers can fine-tune results for different applications, such as creating forecasts or predicting weather patterns or climate changes, independently with minimal additional training.
NASA developed the open source, publicly available Prithvi Weather-Climate foundation model (Prithvi WxC), in collaboration with IBM Research. Prithvi WxC was pretrained using 160 variables from NASA’s Modern-era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA-2) dataset on the newest NVIDIA A100 GPUs at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility.
Armed with 2.3 billion parameters, Prithvi WxC can model a variety of weather and climate phenomena – such as hurricane tracks – at fine resolutions. Applications include targeted weather prediction and climate projection, as well as representing physical processes like gravity waves.
4. Simulations and AI Reveal the Fascinating World of Neutron Stars
3D simulation of pulsar magnetospheres, run on NASA’s Aitken supercomputer using data from the agency‘s Fermi space telescope. The red arrow shows the direction of the star’s magnetic field. Blue lines trace high-energy particles, producing gamma rays, in yellow. Green lines represent light particles hitting the observer’s plane, illustrating how Fermi detects pulsar gamma rays. NASA/Constantinos Kalapotharakos To explore the extreme conditions inside neutron stars, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are using a blend of simulation, observation, and AI to unravel the mysteries of these extraordinary cosmic objects. Neutron stars are the dead cores of stars that have exploded and represent some of the densest objects in the universe.
Cutting-edge simulations, run on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility, help explain phenomena observed by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) observatory. These phenomena include the rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron stars known as pulsars, whose detailed physical mechanisms have remained mysterious since their discovery. By applying AI tools such as deep neural networks, the scientists can infer the stars’ mass, radius, magnetic field structure, and other properties from data obtained by the NICER and Fermi observatories.
The simulations’ unprecedented results will guide similar studies of black holes and other space environments, as well as play a pivotal role in shaping future scientific space missions and mission concepts.
5. Modeling the Sun in Action – From Tiny to Large Scales
Image from a 3D simulation showing the evolution of flows in the upper layers of the Sun, with the most vigorous motions shown in red. These turbulent flows can generate magnetic fields and excite sound waves, shock waves, and eruptions. NASA/Irina Kitiashvili and Timothy A. Sandstrom The Sun’s activity, producing events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, influences the space environment and cause space weather disturbances that can interfere with satellite electronics, radio communications, GPS signals, and power grids on Earth. Scientists at NASA Ames produced highly realistic 3D models that – for the first time – allow them to examine the physics of solar plasma in action, from very small to very large scales. These models help interpret observations from NASA spacecraft like the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
Using NASA’s StellarBox code on supercomputers at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing facility, the scientists improved our understanding of the origins of solar jets and tornadoes – bursts of extremely hot, charged plasma in the solar atmosphere. These models allow the science community to address long-standing questions of solar magnetic activity and how it affects space weather.
6. Scientific Visualization Makes NASA Data Understandable
This global map is a frame from an animation showing how wind patterns and atmospheric circulation moved carbon dioxide through Earth’s atmosphere from January to March 2020. The DYAMOND model’s high resolution shows unique sources of carbon dioxide emissions and how they spread across continents and oceans.NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio NASA simulations and observations can yield petabytes of data that are difficult to comprehend in their original form. The Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS), based at NASA Goddard, turns data into insight by collaborating closely with scientists to create cinematic, high-fidelity visualizations.
Key infrastructure for these SVS creations includes the NASA Center for Climate Simulation’s Discover supercomputer at Goddard, which hosts a variety of simulations and provides data analysis and image-rendering capabilities. Recent data-driven visualizations show a coronal mass ejection from the Sun hitting Earth’s magnetosphere using the Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment (MAGE) model; global carbon dioxide emissions circling the planet in the DYnamics of the Atmospheric general circulation Modeled On Non-hydrostatic Domains (DYAMOND) model; and representations of La Niña and El Niño weather patterns using the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) model.
For more information about NASA’s virtual exhibit at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, being held in Atlanta, Nov. 17-22, 2024, visit:
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC24
For more information about supercomputers run by NASA High-End Computing, visit:
https://hec.nasa.gov
For news media:
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
Authors: Jill Dunbar, Michelle Moyer, and Katie Pitta, NASA’s Ames Research Center; and Jarrett Cohen, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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By European Space Agency
On 12 November 2014, after a ten year journey through the Solar System and over 500 million kilometres from home, Rosetta’s lander Philae made space exploration history by touching down on a comet for the first time. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this extraordinary feat, we celebrate Philae’s impressive achievements at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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