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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This team from University High School in Irvine, California, won the 2025 regional Oceans Science Bowl, hosted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. From left: Nethra Iyer, Joanne Chen, Matthew Feng, Avery Hexun, Angelina Yan, and coach David Knight.NASA/JPL-Caltech The annual regional event puts students’ knowledge of ocean-related science to the test in a fast-paced academic competition.
A team of students from University High School in Irvine earned first place at a fast-paced regional academic competition focused on ocean science disciplines and hosted by NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Eight teams from Los Angeles and Orange counties competed at the March 29 event, dubbed the Los Angeles Surf Bowl. It was the last of about 20 regional competitions held across the U.S. this year in the lead-up to the virtual National Ocean Sciences Bowl finals event in mid-May.
Santa Monica High School earned second place; Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles came in third. With its victory, University repeated its winning performance from last year. The school also won the JPL-hosted regional Science Bowl earlier this month.
Teams from all eight schools that participated in the JPL-hosted 2025 regional Ocean Sciences Bowl pose alongside volunteers and coaches.NASA/JPL-Caltech For the Ocean Sciences Bowl, teams are composed of four to five students and a coach. To prepare for the event, team members spend months answering multiple-choice questions with a “Jeopardy!”-style buzzer in just five seconds. Questions come in several categories, including biology, chemistry, geology, and physics along with related geography, technology, history, policy, and current events topics.
A question in the chemistry category might be “What chemical is the principal source of energy at many of Earth’s hydrothermal vent systems?” (It’s hydrogen sulfide.) Other questions can be considerably more challenging.
When a team member buzzes in and gives the correct answer to a multiple-choice question, the team earns a bonus question, which allows teammates to consult with one another to come up with an answer. More complicated “team challenge questions” prompt students to work together for a longer period. The theme of this year’s competition is “Sounding the Depths: Understanding Ocean Acoustics.”
University High junior Matthew Feng, a return competitor, said the team’s success felt like a payoff for hours of studying together, including on weekends. He keeps coming back to the competition partly for the sense of community and also for the personal challenge, he said. “It’s nice to compete and meet people, see people who were here last year,” Matthew added. “Pushing yourself mentally — the first year I was shaking so hard because I wasn’t used to that much adrenaline.”
Since 2000, JPL’s Public Services Office has coordinated the Los Angeles regional contest with the help of volunteers from laboratory staff and former Ocean Sciences Bowl participants in the local community. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech.
The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is a program of the Center for Ocean Leadership at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of colleges and universities focused in part on Earth science-related education.
News Media Contact
Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
On the night of February 23, 2025, residents of Tucumán, Argentina witnessed an astonishing sight during a violent thunderstorm. As a powerful lightning bolt tore through the sky, it briefly illuminated a massive, cigar-shaped object hovering in the storm’s center.
Eyewitnesses described the object as dark, elongated, and solid, standing in stark contrast to the swirling storm clouds around it. Unlike a natural weather phenomenon, the shape appeared structured and deliberate, leading many to speculate that it was a UFO of intelligent design, possibly of extraterrestrial origin.
It is not clear whether the object was struck by the lightning but there have been reports of UFOs being hit by lightning yet remaining unaffected, suggesting they may either harness or withstand immense energy levels.
Some researchers believe that certain UFOs absorb energy from lightning as a means of propulsion or power generation. In past cases, similar sightings have been reported in the presence of electrical storms, further fueling theories that such crafts may recharge their systems using natural energy sources.
It is known that theoretical physics explores the concept of extracting energy from electrical phenomena, such as Tesla’s ideas about wireless energy transmission. If an advanced civilization mastered this, lightning could be a viable energy source.
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By NASA
A group of attendees of the joint NASA-USGS workshop, Planetary Subsurface Exploration for Science and Resources, gathers for a photo at NASA’s Ames Research Center on Feb. 11, 2025. Workshop participants discussed observations, technologies, and operations needed to support new economies for terrestrial and off-world resources, including critical minerals.NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) welcomed a community of government, industry, and international partners to explore current technology needs around natural resources – both on Earth and “off world.” During a workshop held in February at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, participants discussed technologies that will improve the ability to detect, assess, and develop resources, such as critical minerals and water ice to be found on our Moon, other planets and their moons, and asteroids.
More than 300 attendees, taking part in person and virtually, worked to define the elements needed to find and map resources beyond Earth to support the growing space economy. These include sensors to image the subsurface of planetary bodies, new platforms for cost-effective operations, and technologies that enable new concepts of operation for these systems.
Scientific studies and measurements of off-world sites will be key to detecting and characterizing resources of interest, creating an important synergy with technology goals and helping to answer fundamental science questions as well.
The workshop was the third in a series called Planetary Subsurface Exploration for Science and Resources. By leveraging the expertise gained from decades of resource exploration on this planet and that of the space technology and space mission communities, NASA and USGS aim to spark collaboration across industry, government, and academia to develop new concepts and technologies.
Participants in the NASA-USGS off-world resources workshop take part in a panel review of technology opportunities, Feb. 13, 2025, at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The panelists were Dave Alfano, chief of the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley (left); Rob Mueller, a senior technologist and principal investigator in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Directorate at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida; Christine Stewart, CEO at Austmine Limited in Australia; Gerald Sanders, in-situ resource utilization system capability lead for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; and Jonathon Ralston, Integrated Mining Research Team lead at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete
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By NASA
Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Images Young, Giant Exoplanets, Detects Carbon Dioxide
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the clearest look in the infrared yet at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. Full image below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of multiple gas giant planets within an iconic planetary system. HR 8799, a young system 130 light-years away, has long been a key target for planet formation studies.
The observations indicate that the well-studied planets of HR 8799 are rich in carbon dioxide gas. This provides strong evidence that the system’s four giant planets formed much like Jupiter and Saturn, by slowly building solid cores that attract gas from within a protoplanetary disk, a process known as core accretion.
The results also confirm that Webb can infer the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres through imaging. This technique complements Webb’s powerful spectroscopic instruments, which can resolve the atmospheric composition.
“By spotting these strong carbon dioxide features, we have shown there is a sizable fraction of heavier elements, like carbon, oxygen, and iron, in these planets’ atmospheres,” said William Balmer, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Given what we know about the star they orbit, that likely indicates they formed via core accretion, which is an exciting conclusion for planets that we can directly see.”
Balmer is the lead author of the study announcing the results published today in The Astrophysical Journal. Balmer and their team’s analysis also includes Webb’s observation of a system 97 light-years away called 51 Eridani.
Image A: HR 8799 (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the clearest look in the infrared yet at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. The closest planet to the star, HR 8799 e, orbits 1.5 billion miles from its star, which in our solar system would be located between the orbit of Saturn and Neptune. The furthest, HR 8799 b, orbits around 6.3 billion miles from the star, more than twice Neptune’s orbital distance. Colors are applied to filters from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), revealing their intrinsic differences. A star symbol marks the location of the host star HR 8799, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph. In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to the 4.6 micron light. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) Image B: 51 Eridani (NIRCam Image)
Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this image of 51 Eridani b (also referred to as 51 Eri b), a cool, young exoplanet that orbits 890 million miles from its star, similar to Saturn’s orbit in our solar system. The 51 Eridani system is 97 light-years from Earth. This image includes filters representing 4.1-micron light as red. The background red in this image is not light from other planets, but a result of light subtraction during image processing. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) HR 8799 is a young system about 30 million years old, a fraction of our solar system’s 4.6 billion years. Still hot from their tumultuous formation, the planets within HR 8799 emit large amounts of infrared light that give scientists valuable data on how they formed.
Giant planets can take shape in two ways: by slowly building solid cores with heavier elements that attract gas, just like the giants in our solar system, or when particles of gas rapidly coalesce into massive objects from a young star’s cooling disk, which is made mostly of the same kind of material as the star. The first process is called core accretion, and the second is called disk instability. Knowing which formation model is more common can give scientists clues to distinguish between the types of planets they find in other systems.
“Our hope with this kind of research is to understand our own solar system, life, and ourselves in the comparison to other exoplanetary systems, so we can contextualize our existence,” Balmer said. “We want to take pictures of other solar systems and see how they’re similar or different when compared to ours. From there, we can try to get a sense of how weird our solar system really is—or how normal.”
Image C: Young Gas Giant HR 8799 e (NIRCam Spectrum)
This graph shows a spectrum of one of the planets in the HR 8799 system, HR 8799 e. Spectral fingerprints of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide appear in data collected by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI) Of the nearly 6,000 exoplanets discovered, few have been directly imaged, as even giant planets are many thousands of times fainter than their stars. The images of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani were made possible by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) coronagraph, which blocks light from bright stars to reveal otherwise hidden worlds.
This technology allowed the team to look for infrared light emitted by the planets in wavelengths that are absorbed by specific gases. The team found that the four HR 8799 planets contain more heavy elements than previously thought.
The team is paving the way for more detailed observations to determine whether objects they see orbiting other stars are truly giant planets or objects such as brown dwarfs, which form like stars but don’t accumulate enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion.
“We have other lines of evidence that hint at these four HR 8799 planets forming using this bottom-up approach” said Laurent Pueyo, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who co-led the work. “How common is this for planets we can directly image? We don’t know yet, but we’re proposing more Webb observations to answer that question.”
“We knew Webb could measure colors of the outer planets in directly imaged systems,” added Rémi Soummer, director of STScI’s Russell B. Makidon Optics Lab and former lead for Webb coronagraph operations. “We have been waiting for 10 years to confirm that our finely tuned operations of the telescope would also allow us to access the inner planets. Now the results are in and we can do interesting science with it.”
The NIRCam observations of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani were conducted as part of Guaranteed Time Observations programs 1194 and 1412 respectively.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Roberto Molar Candanosa
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
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By USH
On March 26, 2020, a French astronomer Mark Carlotto used a telescope to capture a video showing the moon at night. Dr. M. Carlotto is a specialist in digital video analysis of space objects. The video shows three objects rising above the Moon’s limb, flying across the lunar surface and disappearing in the Moon’s shadow.
The fact that some of these objects are so clearly visible and close enough to the moon to be able to cast noticeable shadows immediately suggests that they are quite large. Using the large Endymion crater as a benchmark, the sizes of the objects were determined.
The size of the object flying over Endymion is about 5 miles long and about 1 to 3 miles wide. The other two objects appear to be comparable in size.
By measuring the displacement of the object it appears that the object is traveling at about 31 mps. It is traveling more than 30 times faster than if it were in lunar orbit.
A paper was recently published that attempts to prove that the original video is a fake. Arxiv.org analyzed the video (not included in the analysis) but extracted and provided three images of the recorded objects for examination, as seen above, and they then conducted calculations to verify its authenticity.
Despite government and space agency denials of UFO existence, photographic evidence and subsequent analysis suggest the presence of large extraterrestrial craft near the Moon and elsewhere in space.View the full article
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