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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The C-20A aircraft, based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, flies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California for the Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission on Feb. 28, 2025. The DUST mission collected airborne data about snow water to help improve water management and reservoir systems on the ground.NASA/Starr Ginn As part of a science mission tracking one of Earth’s most precious resources – water – NASA’s C-20A aircraft conducted a series of seven research flights in March that can help researchers track the process and timeline as snow melts and transforms into a freshwater resource. The agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) installed on the aircraft collected measurements of seasonal snow cover and estimate the freshwater contained in it.
“Seasonal snow is a critical resource for drinking water, power generation, supporting multi-billion dollar agricultural and recreation industries,” said Starr Ginn, C-20A project manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. “Consequently, understanding the distribution of seasonal snow storage and subsequent runoff is essential.”
The Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission mapped snow accumulation over the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and the Rocky Mountains in Idaho. Mission scientists can use these observations to estimate the amount of water stored in that snow.
Peter Wu, radar operator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, observes data collected during the Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission onboard NASA’s C-20A aircraft on Feb. 28, 2025. The C-20A flew from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to collect data about snow water.NASA/Starr Ginn “Until recently, defining the best method for accurately measuring snow water equivalent (SWE) – or how much and when fresh water is converted from snow – has been a challenge,” said Shadi Oveisgharan, principal investigator of DUST and scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The UAVSAR has been shown to be a good instrument to retrieve SWE data.”
Recent research has shown that snow properties, weather patterns, and seasonal conditions in the American West have been shifting in recent decades. These changes have fundamentally altered previous expectations about snowpack monitoring and forecasts of snow runoff. The DUST mission aims to better track and understand those changes to develop more accurate estimates of snow-to-water conversions and their timelines.
“We are trying to find the optimum window during which to retrieve snow data,” Oveisgharan said. “This estimation will help us better estimate available fresh snow and manage our reservoirs better.”
The Dense UAVSAR Snow Time (DUST) mission team assembles next to the C-20A aircraft at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Feb. 28, 2025. From left, radar operator Adam Vaccaro, avionics lead Kelly Jellison, C-20A project manager Starr Ginn, pilot Carrie Worth, pilot Troy Asher, aircraft mechanic Eric Apikian, and operations engineer Ian Elkin.NASA/Starr Ginn The DUST mission achieved a new level of snow data accuracy, which is partly due to the specialized flight paths flown by the C-20A. The aircraft’s Platform Precision Autopilot (PPA) enables the team to fly very specific routes at exact altitudes, speeds, and angles so the UAVSAR can more precisely measure terrain changes.
“Imagine the rows made on grass by a lawn mower,” said Joe Piotrowski Jr., operations engineer for NASA Armstrong’s airborne science program. “The PPA system enables the C-20A to make those paths while measuring terrain changes down to the diameter of a centimeter.”
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Last Updated Apr 24, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactErica HeimLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
First Results from the Eclipse Soundscapes Project: Webinar on May 7
How do the sudden darkness and temperature changes of a solar eclipse impact life on Earth? The Eclipse Soundscapes project invited you to document changes in the environment during the week of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, using your own senses or an audiomoth sound recorder.
Thanks to your participation, the Eclipse Soundscapes team collected 25 terabytes of audio data during the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses. “It was really empowering for me to participate in a scientific research study with my son beside me so he could see how scientific data can be (collected),” said one Eclipse Soundscapes volunteer.
More than 500 volunteers collected data using AudioMoth recorders during the April 8, 2024 eclipse for the Eclipse Soundscapes project. Credit: Eclipse Soundscapes Since the eclipse, the Eclipse Soundscapes team has been turning the submitted data into a new, carefully validated data set. They have been assessing recording quality, verifying timestamps, and logging other kinds of information that support the submitted data. With the newly validated data, they are now using machine learning to study wildlife behavior and compare regional differences. They do some of this work using spectrographic analysis—spreading out the sound into different frequency ranges like a prism spreads light into a rainbow. The team is also working to make the validated data freely available to the public on the Zenodo website—a free, open-source research data repository developed by CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) that allows researchers to share and preserve their work, regardless of discipline or format.
The team’s first inspection of the data suggests that some species may mimic dusk-like behavior during totality. Want to hear more early results? You can join the team’s live webinar on May 7, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. EST with Dr. Brent Pease. Register now at EclipseSoundscapes.org. You can also explore this interactive map of data analysis sites, with details about each site, including partner organizations.
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Last Updated Apr 22, 2025 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:06:15 English
From 7 to 11 April, ESA's Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, ESRIN, hosted the 2025 edition of ESA School Days, welcoming almost 1400 young students.
The event kicked off with primary school students (4th and 5th grades) visiting during the first three days, followed by secondary school students on the final two days.
Throughout the week, 35 schools from across Italy engaged in presentations and laboratories, delving into the diverse space activities conducted at ESA’s establishment.
This initiative, which included contributions from ESERO Italia and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), aims to inspire and engage the next generation of STEM students by sharing knowledge about space and the European Space Agency.
Italian
Dal 7 all'11 aprile, ESRIN, il Centro per l'Osservazione della Terra dell'ESA a Frascati, ha ospitato l'edizione 2025 degli ESA School Days, accogliendo quasi1 400 giovani studenti. L'evento ha preso il via con la visita degli studenti delle scuole primarie (classi quarte e quinte) durante i primi tre giorni, seguiti dagli studenti delle scuole secondarie nei due giorni finali.
Per tutta la settimana, 35 scuole da tutta Italia si sono cimentate in presentazioni e laboratori, approfondendo la loro conoscenza delle diverse attività spaziali condotte presso lo stabilimento dell'ESA.
L'iniziativa, che ha visto il contributo di ESERO Italia e dell'Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), mira a ispirare e coinvolgere la prossima generazione di studenti STEM condividendo le conoscenze sullo spazio e sull'Agenzia Spaziale Europea.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover sees its tracks receding into the distance at a site nicknamed “Ubajara” on April 30, 2023. This site is where Curiosity made the discovery of siderite, a mineral that may help explain the fate of the planet’s thicker ancient atmosphere.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover could provide an answer to the mystery of what happened to the planet’s ancient atmosphere and how Mars has evolved over time.
Researchers have long believed that Mars once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and liquid water on the planet’s surface. That carbon dioxide and water should have reacted with Martian rocks to create carbonate minerals. Until now, though, rover missions and near-infrared spectroscopy analysis from Mars-orbiting satellites haven’t found the amounts of carbonate on the planet’s surface predicted by this theory.
Reported in an April paper in Science, data from three of Curiosity’s drill sites revealed the presence of siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, within the sulfate-rich rocky layers of Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale Crater.
“The discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars,” said Benjamin Tutolo, associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, and lead author of the paper.
To study the Red Planet’s chemical and mineral makeup, Curiosity drills three to four centimeters down into the subsurface, then drops the powdered rock samples into its CheMin instrument. The instrument, led by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, uses X-ray diffraction to analyze rocks and soil. CheMin’s data was processed and analyzed by scientists at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Drilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book,” said Thomas Bristow, research scientist at NASA Ames and coauthor of the paper. “Just a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago.”
The discovery of this carbonate mineral in rocks beneath the surface suggests that carbonate may be masked by other minerals in near-infrared satellite analysis. If other sulfate-rich layers across Mars also contain carbonates, the amount of stored carbon dioxide would be a fraction of that needed in the ancient atmosphere to create conditions warm enough to support liquid water. The rest could be hidden in other deposits or have been lost to space over time.
In the future, missions or analyses of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm these findings and help us better understand the planet’s early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost.
Curiosity, part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio, was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on Curiosity, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Last Updated Apr 17, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Scientists have hypothesized since the 1960s that the Sun is a source of ingredients that form water on the Moon. When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind smashes into the lunar surface, the idea goes, it triggers a chemical reaction that could make water molecules.
Now, in the most realistic lab simulation of this process yet, NASA-led researchers have confirmed this prediction.
The finding, researchers wrote in a March 17 paper in JGR Planets, has implications for NASA’s Artemis astronaut operations at the Moon’s South Pole. A critical resource for exploration, much of the water on the Moon is thought to be frozen in permanently shadowed regions at the poles.
“The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the Sun, which is always spitting out hydrogen, there’s a possibility of creating water,” Li Hsia Yeo, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s incredible to think about,” said Yeo, who led the study.
Solar wind flows constantly from the Sun. It’s made largely of protons, which are nuclei of hydrogen atoms that have lost their electrons. Traveling at more than one million miles per hour, the solar wind bathes the entire solar system. We see evidence of it on Earth when it lights up our sky in auroral light shows.
Computer-processed data of the solar wind from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft. Download here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20278/ NASA/SwRI/Craig DeForest Most of the solar particles don’t reach the surface of Earth because our planet has a magnetic shield and an atmosphere to deflect them. But the Moon has no such protection. As computer models and lab experiments have shown, when protons smash into the Moon’s surface, which is made of a dusty and rocky material called regolith, they collide with electrons and recombine to form hydrogen atoms.
Then, the hydrogen atoms can migrate through the lunar surface and bond with the abundant oxygen atoms already present in minerals like silica to form hydroxyl (OH) molecules, a component of water, and water (H2O) molecules themselves.
Scientists have found evidence of both hydroxyl and water molecules in the Moon’s upper surface, just a few millimeters deep. These molecules leave behind a kind of chemical fingerprint — a noticeable dip in a wavy line on a graph that shows how light interacts with the regolith. With the current tools available, though, it is difficult to tell the difference between hydroxyl and water, so scientists use the term “water” to refer to either one or a mix of both molecules.
Many researchers think the solar wind is the main reason the molecules are there, though other sources like micrometeorite impacts could also help by creating heat and triggering chemical reactions.
In 2016, scientists discovered that water is released from the Moon during meteor showers. When a speck of comet debris strikes the moon, it vaporizes on impact, creating a shock wave in the lunar soil. With a sufficiently large impactor, this shock wave can breach the soil’s dry upper layer and release water molecules from a hydrated layer below. NASA’s LADEE spacecraft detected these water molecules as they entered the tenuous lunar atmosphere. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab Spacecraft measurements had already hinted that the solar wind is the primary driver of water, or its components, at the lunar surface. One key clue, confirmed by Yeo’s team’s experiment: the Moon’s water-related spectral signal changes over the course of the day.
In some regions, it’s stronger in the cooler morning and fades as the surface heats up, likely because water and hydrogen molecules move around or escape to space. As the surface cools again at night, the signal peaks again. This daily cycle points to an active source — most likely the solar wind—replenishing tiny amounts of water on the Moon each day.
To test whether this is true, Yeo and her colleague, Jason McLain, a research scientist at NASA Goddard, built a custom apparatus to examine Apollo lunar samples. In a first, the apparatus held all experiment components inside: a solar particle beam device, an airless chamber that simulated the Moon’s environment, and a molecule detector. Their invention allowed the researchers to avoid ever taking the sample out of the chamber — as other experiments did — and exposing it to contamination from the water in the air.
“It took a long time and many iterations to design the apparatus components and get them all to fit inside,” said McLain, “but it was worth it, because once we eliminated all possible sources of contamination, we learned that this decades-old idea about the solar wind turns out to be true.”
Using dust from two different samples picked up on the Moon by NASA’s Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, Yeo and her colleagues first baked the samples to remove any possible water they could have picked up between air-tight storage in NASA’s space-sample curation facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and Goddard’s lab. Then, they used a tiny particle accelerator to bombard the dust with mock solar wind for several days — the equivalent of 80,000 years on the Moon, based on the high dose of the particles used.
They used a detector called a spectrometer to measure how much light the dust molecules reflected, which showed how the samples’ chemical makeup changed over time.
In the end, the team saw a drop in the light signal that bounced to their detector precisely at the point in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum — near 3 microns — where water typically absorbs energy, leaving a telltale signature.
While they can’t conclusively say if their experiment made water molecules, the researchers reported in their study that the shape and width of the dip in the wavy line on their graph suggests that both hydroxyl and water were produced in the lunar samples.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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