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By NASA
NASA logo Chile will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 3 p.m. EDT on Friday, Oct. 25, at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will host Aisén Etcheverry, Chile’s minister of science, technology, knowledge and innovation, and Juan Gabriel Valdés, ambassador of Chile to the United States, along with other officials from Chile and the U.S. Department of State.
This event is in-person only. U.S. media and U.S. citizens representing international media organizations interested in attending must RSVP no later than 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24, to hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
The signing ceremony will take place at the agency’s Glennan Assembly Room inside NASA Headquarters located at 300 E St. SW Washington.
NASA, in coordination with the U.S. Department of State and seven other initial signatory nations, established the Artemis Accords in 2020. With many countries and private companies conducting missions and operations around the Moon, the Artemis Accords provide a common set of principles to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space.
The Artemis Accords reinforce the commitment by signatory nations to the Outer Space Treaty, the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior for civil space exploration and use.
Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords
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Meira Bernstein / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Oct 21, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Office of International and Interagency Relations (OIIR) artemis accords View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Image: Cities in Emilia-Romagna, a region in northern Italy, have been hit by severe flooding after heavy rainfall over the weekend. Flooded areas are visible in this multi-temporal image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. The comparison uses an image from 8 October (before the floods) and one from 20 October (after the floods). The blue areas highlight the areas impacted by flooding. View the full article
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By NASA
NASA has selected four new crew members to participate in the final simulated mission to Mars in 2024 inside the agency’s Human Exploration Research Analog. From left are Kristen Magas, Anderson Wilder, Obaid Alsuwaidi, and Tiffany Snyder.Credit: C7M4 Crew NASA selected a crew of four research volunteers to participate in its last simulated mission to Mars in 2024 within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Obaid Alsuwaidi, Kristen Magas, Tiffany Snyder, and Anderson Wilder will step into the 650-square-foot HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog) facility on Friday, Nov. 1. Once inside, the team will live and work like astronauts for 45 days. The crew will exit the facility on Monday, Dec. 16, after simulating their return to Earth. Jordan Hundley and Robert Wilson also were named as alternate crew members.
Scientists use HERA studies to examine how crew members adapt to isolation, confinement, and remote conditions before NASA sends astronauts on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The studies provide data about human health and performance in an enclosed environment over time with crews facing different challenges and tasks.
The four volunteers will carry out scientific research and operational tasks throughout their simulated mission, including raising shrimp, growing vegetables, and “walking” on the surface of Mars using virtual reality. They will also experience communication delays lasting up to five minutes as they “near” Mars, allowing researchers to see how crews may respond to the type of delays astronauts will encounter in deep space. Astronauts traveling to the Red Planet may encounter one-way communication delays lasting as long as 20 minutes.
As with the previous HERA missions, crew members will conduct 18 human health studies during the mission through NASA’s Human Research Program. Collectively, the work helps scientists understand how a spaceflight-like environment contributes to the physiological, behavioral, and psychological health of crew members. Insights gleaned from the studies will allow researchers to develop and test strategies aimed at helping astronauts overcome obstacles on deep space missions.
Primary Crew
Obaid Alsuwaidi
Obaid Alsuwaidi serves as captain engineer for the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Ministry of Defense. In this role, he provides guidance in civil and marine engineering and addresses challenges facing the organization. Previously, Alsuwaidi worked as a project manager for the defense ministry, helping to streamline productivity, establish high standards of professionalism, and build a team of experts to serve the UAE’s needs.
Alsuwaidi earned a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Western Sydney University in Australia, followed by a master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from George Washington University in Washington.
In his free time, Alsuwaidi enjoys horseback riding, swimming, and running.
Kristen Magas
Kristen Magas is an educator and engineer, currently teaching at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, Massachusetts. She also mentors students involved in a NASA design and prototyping program, helping them develop and fabricate products to improve life in space on both International Space Station and Artemis missions. Magas was a finalist for the 2025 Massachusetts State Teacher of the Year.
Magas received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She also holds a master’s degree in Vocational Education from Westfield State University in Massachusetts. She has worked as a community college professor as well as a design engineer in municipal water and wastewater treatment.
In her spare time, Magas enjoys coaching robotics and track and field, hiking, biking, and staying connected with her community. She has two children and resides in North Attleboro, Massachusetts with her husband of 25 years.
Tiffany Snyder
Tiffany Snyder is a supervisor for the Cybersecurity Mission Integration Office at NASA, helping to ensure agency missions are shielded against cybersecurity threats. She has more than 20 years of information technology and cybersecurity experience, working with the Air National Guard and as a special agent with the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency. She joined NASA in 2018 as an IT specialist, and later served as the deputy chief information security officer at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, providing cybersecurity oversight.
Snyder holds a bachelor’s degree in Earth Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master’s degree in Digital Forensics from the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
In her spare time, she enjoys playing with her dogs — Artemis and Apollo, gardening, running, and visiting the beach with her family.
Anderson Wilder
Anderson Wilder is a Florida Institute of Technology graduate student working on his doctorate in Psychology. His research focuses on team resiliency and human-machine interactions. He also works in the campus’s neuroscience lab, investigating how spaceflight contributes to neurobehavioral changes in astronauts.
Wilder previously served as an executive officer and engineer for an analog mission at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. There, he performed studies related to crew social dynamics, plant growth, and geology.
Wilder received his bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and in Psychology from Ohio State University in Columbus. He also holds master’s degrees in Space Studies from International Space University in Strasbourg, France, and in Aviation Human Factors from the Florida Institute of Technology. He is completing another master’s degree in Cognitive Experimental Psychology at Cleveland State University in Ohio.
Outside of school, Wilder works as a parabolic flight coach, teaching people how to fly in reduced gravity environments. He also enjoys chess, reading, video games, skydiving, and scuba diving. On a recent dive, he explored a submerged section of the Great Wall of China.
Alternate Crew
Jordan Hundley
Jordan Hundley is a senior consultant at a professional services firm, offering federal agencies technical and programmatic support. Prior to his current position, he focused on U.S. Department of Defense clients, performing model-based system engineering and serving as a subject matter expert for related operations.
Hundley was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. While on active duty, he served as an intercontinental ballistic missile operations officer. He later joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Currently, he is a space operations officer with experience in space battle management and electromagnetic warfare.
Hundley earned a master’s degree in Engineering Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in Systems Engineering at the university.
Hundley holds a private pilot license and is a certified rescue diver. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking and camping, researching theology, and learning musical instruments.
Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson is a senior researcher and project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. He leads work enhancing human-machine collaborations, developing human prediction models, and integrating that technology into virtual reality and robotic systems designed to operate in isolated, constrained, and extreme environments. His human-machine teaming expertise also extends into responsible artificial intelligence development. He recently participated in a United Nations Roundtable discussion about artificial intelligence in security and defense.
Wilson received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University in 2013 and 2015, respectively. He earned his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2020.
Outside of work, Wilson is an avid outdoors enthusiast. He enjoys scuba diving, winter camping, backcountry skiing, and hiking through the woods or mountains throughout the year. At home, he also likes to tinker in computer networking and self-hosted systems.
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NASA’s Human Research Program pursues the best methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, commercial missions, and the International Space Station, the program scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research continues to drive NASA’s mission to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready as human space exploration expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
For more information about human research at NASA, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp
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By European Space Agency
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By NASA
Due to launch in the early 2030s, NASA’s DAVINCI mission will investigate whether Venus — a sweltering world wrapped in an atmosphere of noxious gases — once had oceans and continents like Earth.
Consisting of a flyby spacecraft and descent probe, DAVINCI will focus on a mountainous region called Alpha Regio, a possible ancient continent. Though a handful of international spacecraft plunged through Venus’ atmosphere between 1970 and 1985, DAVINCI’s probe will be the first to capture images of this intriguing terrain ever taken from below Venus’ thick and opaque clouds.
But how does a team prepare for a mission to a planet that hasn’t seen an atmospheric probe in nearly 50 years, and that tends to crush or melt its spacecraft visitors?
Scientists leading the DAVINCI mission started by using modern data-analysis techniques to pore over decades-old data from previous Venus missions. Their goal is to arrive at our neighboring planet with as much detail as possible. This will allow scientists to most effectively use the probe’s descent time to collect new information that can help answer longstanding questions about Venus’ evolutionary path and why it diverged drastically from Earth’s.
On the left, a new and more detailed view of Venus’ Alpha Regio region developed by scientists on NASA’s DAVINCI mission to Venus, due to launch in the early 2030s. On the right is a less detailed map created using radar altimeter data collected by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s. The colors on the maps depict topography, with dark blues identifying low elevations and browns identifying high elevations. To make the map on the left, the DAVINCI science team re-analyzed Magellan data and supplemented it with radar data collected on three occasions from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and used machine vision computer models to scrutinize the data and fill in gaps in information. The red ellipses on each image mark the area DAVINCI’s probe will descend over as it collects data on its way toward the surface. Jim Garvin/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Between 1990 and 1994, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft used radar imaging and altimetry to map the topography of Alpha Regio from Venus’ orbit. Recently, NASA’s DAVINICI’s team sought more detail from these maps, so scientists applied new techniques to analyze Magellan’s radar altimeter data. They then supplemented this data with radar images taken on three occasions from the former Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and used machine vision computer models to scrutinize the data and fill in gaps in information at new scales (less than 0.6 miles, or 1 kilometer).
As a result, scientists improved the resolution of Alpha Regio maps tenfold, predicting new geologic patterns on the surface and prompting questions about how these patterns could have formed in Alpha Regio’s mountains.
Benefits of Looking Backward
Old data offers many benefits to new missions, including information about what frequencies, parts of spectrum, or particle sizes earlier instruments covered so that new instruments can fill in the gaps.
At NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive, which is managed out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, staff restore and digitize data from old spacecraft. That vintage data, when compared with modern observations, can show how a planet changes over time, and can even lead to new discoveries long after missions end. Thanks to new looks at Magellan observations, for instance, scientists recently found evidence of modern-day volcanic activity on Venus.
The three images in this carousel were taken in March 2024 at NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first shows stacked boxes of microfilm with data from Apollo missions. The middle image shows miniaturized records from NASA’s 1964 Mariner 4 flyby mission to Mars. And the final image shows a view of Jupiter from NASA’s Pioneer 10 flyby mission to the outer planets, which launched on March 2, 1972. The three images in this carousel were taken in March 2024 at NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first shows stacked boxes of microfilm with data from Apollo missions. The middle image shows miniaturized records from NASA’s 1964 Mariner 4 flyby mission to Mars. And the final image shows a view of Jupiter from NASA’s Pioneer 10 flyby mission to the outer planets, which launched on March 2, 1972. The three images in this carousel were taken in March 2024 at NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first shows stacked boxes of microfilm with data from Apollo missions. The middle image shows miniaturized records from NASA’s 1964 Mariner 4 flyby mission to Mars. And the final image shows a view of Jupiter from NASA’s Pioneer 10 flyby mission to the outer planets, which launched on March 2, 1972.
Magellan was among the first missions to be digitally archived in NASA’s publicly accessible online repository of planetary mission data. But the agency has reams of data — much of it not yet digitized — dating back to 1958, when the U.S. launched its first satellite, Explorer 1.
Data restoration is a complex and resource-intensive job, and NASA prioritizes digitizing data that scientists need. With three forthcoming missions to Venus — NASA’s DAVINCI and VERITAS, plus ESA’s (European Space Agency) Envision — space data archive staff are helping scientists access data from Pioneer Venus, NASA’s last mission to drop probes into Venus’ atmosphere in 1978.
Mosaic of Venus
Alpha Regio is one of the most mysterious spots on Venus. Its terrain, known as “tessera,” is similar in appearance to rugged Earth mountains, but more irregular and disorderly.
So called because they resemble a geometric parquet floor pattern, tesserae have been found only on Venus, and DAVINCI will be the first mission to explore such terrain in detail and to map its topography.
DAVINCI’s probe will begin photographing Alpha Regio — collecting the highest-resolution images yet — once it descends below the planet’s clouds, starting at about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, altitude. But even there, gases in the atmosphere scatter light, as does the surface, such that these images will appear blurred.
Could Venus once have been a habitable world with liquid water oceans — like Earth? This is one of the many mysteries associated with our shrouded sister world. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center DAVINCI scientists are working on a solution. Recently, scientists re-analyzed old Venus imaging data using a new artificial-intelligence technique that can sharpen the images and use them to compute three-dimensional topographic maps. This technique ultimately will help the team optimize DAVINCI’s images and maps of Alpha Regio’s mountains. The upgraded images will give scientists the most detailed view ever — down to a resolution of 3 feet, or nearly 1 meter, per pixel — possibly allowing them to detect small features such as rocks, rivers, and gullies for the first time in history.
“All this old mission data is part of a mosaic that tells the story of Venus,” said Jim Garvin, DAVINCI principal investigator and chief scientist at NASA Goddard. “A story that is a masterpiece in the making but incomplete.”
By analyzing the surface texture and rock types at Alpha Regio, scientists hope to determine if Venusian tesserae formed through the same processes that create mountains and certain volcanoes on Earth.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Get to know Venus
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Last Updated Oct 17, 2024 Editor Lonnie Shekhtman Contact Lonnie Shekhtman lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) Pioneer Venus Planetary Science Planetary Science Division Planets Science & Research Science Mission Directorate The Solar System Venus VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography & Spectroscopy) View the full article
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