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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Data from the SWOT satellite was used to calculate average water levels for lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin from July 2023 to November 2024. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters) above sea level; dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Data from the U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission gives researchers a detailed look at lakes and reservoirs in a U.S. watershed.
The Ohio River Basin stretches from Pennsylvania to Illinois and contains a system of reservoirs, lakes, and rivers that drains an area almost as large as France. Researchers with the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission, a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), now have a new tool for measuring water levels not only in this area, which is home to more than 25 million people, but in other watersheds around the world as well.
Since early 2023, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface — including oceans, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers — covering nearly the entire globe at least once every 21 days. The SWOT satellite also measures the horizontal extent of water in freshwater bodies. Earlier this year, the mission started making validated data publicly available.
“Having these two perspectives — water extent and levels — at the same time, along with detailed, frequent coverage over large areas, is unprecedented,” said Jida Wang, a hydrologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a member of the SWOT science team. “This is a groundbreaking, exciting aspect of SWOT.”
Researchers can use the mission’s data on water level and extent to calculate how the amount of water stored in a lake or reservoir changes over time. This, in turn, can give hydrologists a more precise picture of river discharge — how much water moves through a particular stretch of river.
The visualization above uses SWOT data from July 2023 to November 2024 to show the average water level above sea level in lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin, which drains into the Mississippi River. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters), and dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Comparing how such levels change can help hydrologists measure water availability over time in a local area or across a watershed.
Complementing a Patchwork of Data
Historically, estimating freshwater availability for communities within a river basin has been challenging. Researchers gather information from gauges installed at certain lakes and reservoirs, from airborne surveys, and from other satellites that look at either water level or extent. But for ground-based and airborne instruments, the coverage can be limited in space and time. Hydrologists can piece together some of what they need from different satellites, but the data may or may not have been taken at the same time, or the researchers might still need to augment the information with measurements from ground-based sensors.
Even then, calculating freshwater availability can be complicated. Much of the work relies on computer models. “Traditional water models often don’t work very well in highly regulated basins like the Ohio because they have trouble representing the unpredictable behavior of dam operations,” said George Allen, a freshwater researcher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and a member of the SWOT science team.
Many river basins in the United States include dams and reservoirs managed by a patchwork of entities. While the people who manage a reservoir may know how their section of water behaves, planning for water availability down the entire length of a river can be a challenge. Since SWOT looks at both rivers and lakes, its data can help provide a more unified view.
“The data lets water managers really know what other people in these freshwater systems are doing,” said SWOT science team member Colin Gleason, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
While SWOT researchers are excited about the possibilities that the data is opening up, there is still much to be done. The satellite’s high-resolution view of water levels and extent means there is a vast ocean of data that researchers must wade through, and it will take some time to process and analyze the measurements.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
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Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Last Updated Dec 17, 2024 Related Terms
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5 min read NASA Mars Orbiter Spots Retired InSight Lander to Study Dust Movement
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Spots a Spiral in the… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 2 min read
Hubble Spots a Spiral in the Celestial River
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 1637. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, the River.
This image comes from an observing program dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.
NGC 1637 holds evidence of star formation scattered throughout its disk, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms have pockets of pink clouds, many with bright blue stars. The pinkish color comes from hydrogen atoms excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars forming within the clouds. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s center, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.
The stars that set their cloudy birthplaces aglow are comparatively short-lived, and many of these stars will explode as supernovae just a few million years after they’re born. In 1999, NGC 1637 played host to a supernova named SN 1999EM, lauded as the brightest supernova seen that year. When a massive star expires as a supernova, the explosion outshines its entire home galaxy for a short time. While a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also jump start the formation of new stars by compressing nearby clouds of gas, beginning the stellar lifecycle anew.
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Dec 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this photo of large meanders of the Alabama River while orbiting over the southern United States. The river’s smooth water surface reflects sunlight back toward the astronaut’s camera, producing an optical phenomenon known as sunglint.NASA/Woody Hoburg In this June 26, 2023, photo taken from the International Space Station, sunlight shines off the smooth waters of the Alabama River in a phenomenon known as sunglint. When photographing Earth, astronauts often take advantage of sunglint’s tendency to increase the contrast between water surfaces and surrounding land surfaces.
In the 1960s, the Alabama River was dammed, creating Dannelly Reservoir (the large shining area at center left). Construction of the dam also raised water levels upriver. This resulted in flooding at several points along the river. These flooded zones are typical of floodplains—the low, flat areas immediately next to larger rivers. In this image, flooded zones appear as irregular, bright shapes extending away from the river, like at Gee’s Bend (center bottom).
Text Credit: Justin Wilkinson
Image Credit: NASA/Woody Hoburg
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By NASA
5 Min Read ‘Current’ Events: NASA and USGS Find a New Way to Measure River Flows
The River Observing System (RiOS) tracking the motion of water surface features from above a section of the Sacramento River in Northern California in 2023. Credits: NASA/USGS/Joe Adams and Chris Gazoorian A team of scientists and engineers at NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collaborated to see if a small piloted drone, equipped with a specialized payload, could help create detailed maps of how fast water is flowing. Rivers supply fresh water to our communities and farms, provide homes for a variety of creatures, transport people and goods, and generate electricity. But river flows can also carry pollutants downstream or suddenly surge, posing dangers to people, wildlife, and property. As NASA continues its ongoing commitment to better understand our home planet, researchers are working to answer the question of how do we stay in-the-know about where and how quickly river flows change?
NASA and USGS scientists have teamed up to create an instrument package – about the size of a gallon of milk – called the River Observing System (RiOS). It features thermal and visible cameras for tracking the motion of water surface features, a laser to measure altitude, navigation sensors, an onboard computer, and a wireless communications system. In 2023, researchers took RiOS into the field for testing along a section of the Sacramento River in Northern California, and plan to return for a third and final field test in the fall of 2024.
The River Observing System (RiOS) tracking the motion of water surface features from above a section of the Sacramento River in Northern California in 2023. “Deploying RiOS above a river to evaluate the system’s performance in a real-world setting is incredibly important,” said Carl Legleiter, USGS principal investigator of the joint NASA-USGS StreamFlow project. “During these test flights we demonstrated that the onboard payload can be used to make calculations – do the analysis – in nearly real-time, while the drone is flying above the river. This was one of our top-tier goals: to enable minimal latency between the time we acquire images and when we have detailed information on current speeds and flow patterns within the river.”
To realize this vision for onboard computing, the team uses open-source software, combined with their own code, to produce maps of water surface velocities, or flow field, from a series of images taken over time.
“You might think that we need to be able to see discrete, physical objects – like sticks or silt or other debris as they move downstream – to estimate the flow velocity, but that’s not always the case, nor is it always possible,” said Legleiter. “Using a highly-sensitive infrared camera, we instead detect the movement of subtle differences in the temperature of water carried downstream.”
Those same tiny temperature differences also appear wherever there are undulations – like at the boundary between the air and the water or ice below. Knowing this, NASA members of the StreamFlow team used this phenomenon to their advantage when developing methods for possible future landed planetary missions to navigate at distant and hard-to-see environments, including Europa, the icy moon orbiting Jupiter.
Our technology can precisely track the static surface of icy terrain while flying over it, or a moving surface, like water, while hovering above it to keep the spacecraft safe while gathering valuable data
uland wong
Co-investigator and NASA lead of the StreamFlow Project
“Icy surfaces present challenging visual conditions such as lack of contrast,” said Uland Wong, co-investigator and NASA lead of the StreamFlow project at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “Our technology can precisely track the static surface of icy terrain while flying over it, or a moving surface, like water, while hovering above it to keep the spacecraft safe while gathering valuable data.”
To prepare for the Sacramento River field tests, the NASA team built a robotics simulator to run thousands of virtual drone flights over the Sacramento River test site using flow fields modeled by USGS. These simulations are helping the team create intelligent software capable of selecting the best routes for the drone to fly and ensuring efficient use of limited battery power.
The next step in the partnership is for NASA to develop techniques for making the system more autonomous. The researchers want to use calculations of river flows – performed onboard in real time – to guide where the drone should fly next.
“Does the drone drop down to get better resolution data about a particular location or stay high and capture a wide-angle view,” posed Wong. “If it identifies areas that are flowing particularly fast or slow, could the drone more quickly detect areas of flooding?”
The USGS currently operates an extensive network of thousands of automated stream gauges and fixed cameras installed on bridges and riverbanks to monitor river flows in real-time across the country.
“Drones could enable us to make measurements in so many more areas, potentially allowing our network to be larger, more robust, and safer for our technicians to monitor and maintain,” said Paul Kinzel, StreamFlow co-investigator at USGS. “Drones could help keep our people and equipment out of harm’s way in addition to telling us how the environment is changing over time in as many locations as possible.”
A drone with the StreamFlow thermal mapping payload flying above the Sacramento River in Northern California.NASA/Massimo Vespignani For more information about how NASA improves life on Earth through climate and technological innovations, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/earth
The StreamFlow project is a collaboration between researchers with the USGS’s Hydrologic Remote Sensing Branch, Unmanned Aircraft Systems engineers with the USGS National Innovation Center, and scientists in the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames. The Streamflow payload concept was demonstrated through research initially seeded by a grant from the USGS National Innovation Center and is now supported by NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology program, which is managed by the agency’s Earth Science Technology Office. The field tests were conducted in collaboration with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Southwest Fisheries Science Center, which helped collect direct field measurements of the river’s flow velocity and granted access to the field site, which is owned by the Nature Conservancy.
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Last Updated Aug 05, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Perseverance captured this mosaic looking downstream of the dune-filled Neretva Vallis river channel on May 17. The channel fed Jezero Crater with fresh water billions of years ago.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Originally thought of as little more than a route clear of rover-slowing boulders, Neretva Vallis has provided a bounty of geologic options for the science team.
After detouring through a dune field to avoid wheel-rattling boulders, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover reached its latest area of scientific interest on June 9. The route change not only shortened the estimated drive time to reach that area — nicknamed “Bright Angel” — by several weeks, but also gave the science team an opportunity to find exciting geologic features in an ancient river channel.
Perseverance is in the later stages of its fourth science campaign, looking for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the “Margin Unit,” an area along the inside of Jezero Crater’s rim. Located at the base of the northern channel wall, Bright Angel features rocky light-toned outcrops that may represent either ancient rock exposed by river erosion or sediments that filled the channel. The team hopes to find rocks different from those in the carbonate-and-olivine-rich Margin Unit and gather more clues about Jezero’s history.
Stitched together from 18 images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover, this mosaic shows a boulder field on “Mount Washburn” on May 27. Intrigued by the diversity of textures and chemical composition in the light-toned boulder at center, the rover’s science team nicknamed the rock “Atoko Point.”NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS To get to Bright Angel, the rover drove on a ridge along the Neretva Vallis river channel, which billions of years ago carried a large amount of the water that flowed into Jezero Crater. “We started paralleling the channel in late January and were making pretty good progress, but then the boulders became bigger and more numerous,” said Evan Graser, Perseverance’s deputy strategic route planner lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “What had been drives averaging over a hundred meters per Martian day went down to only tens of meters. It was frustrating.”
Channel Surfing
In rough terrain, Evan and his team use rover imagery to plan drives of about 100 feet (30 meters) at a time. To go farther on any given Martian day, or sol, planners rely on Perseverance’s auto-navigation, or AutoNav, system to take over. But as the rocks became more plentiful, AutoNav would, more times than not, determine the going was not to its liking and stop, dimming the prospects of a timely arrival at Bright Angel. The team held out hope, however, knowing they might find success cutting across a quarter-mile (400-meter) dune field in the river channel.
NASA’s Perseverance rover was traveling in the ancient Neretva Vallis river channel when it captured this view of an area of scientific interest named “Bright Angel” — the light-toned area in the distance at right — with one of its navigation cameras on June 6.NASA/JPL-Caltech “We had been eyeing the river channel just to the north as we went, hoping to find a section where the dunes were small and far enough apart for a rover to pass between — because dunes have been known to eat Mars rovers,” said Graser. “Perseverance also needed an entrance ramp we could safely travel down. When the imagery showed both, we made a beeline for it.”
The Perseverance science team was also eager to travel through the ancient river channel because they wanted to investigate ancient Martian river processes.
Rock Star
With AutoNav helping guide the way on the channel floor, Perseverance covered the 656 feet (200 meters) to the first science stop in one sol. The target: “Mount Washburn,” a hill covered with intriguing boulders, some of a type never observed before on Mars.
Superimposed on an image from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, this map shows Perseverance’s path between Jan. 21 and June 11. White dots indicate where the rover stopped after completing a traverse beside Neretva Vallis river channel. The pale blue line indicates the rover’s route inside the channel.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona “The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond,” said Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University in Bellingham, the co-lead of the current science campaign.“But among all these different rocks, there was one that really caught our attention.” They nicknamed it “Atoko Point.”
Some 18 inches (45 centimeters) wide and 14 inches (35 centimeters) tall, the speckled, light-toned boulder stands out in a field of darker ones. Analysis by Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments indicates that the rock is composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar. In terms of the size, shape, and arrangement of its mineral grains and crystals — and potentially its chemical composition — Atoko Point it is in a league of its own.
Some Perseverance scientists speculate the minerals that make up Atoko Point were produced in a subsurface body of magma that is possibly exposed now on the crater rim. Others on the team wonder if the boulder had been created far beyond the walls of Jezero and transported there by the swift Martian waters eons ago. Either way, the team believes that while Atoko is the first of its kind they’ve seen, it won’t be the last.
After leaving Mount Washburn, the rover headed 433 feet (132 meters) north to investigate the geology of “Tuff Cliff” before making the four-sol, 1,985-foot (605-meter) journey to Bright Angel. Perseverance is currently analyzing a rocky outcrop to assess whether a rock core sample should be collected.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
2024-084
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Last Updated Jun 13, 2024 Related Terms
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