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By NASA
The Sun rises above the Flight Research Building at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.Credit: NASA NASA‘s Watts on the Moon Challenge, designed to advance the nation’s lunar exploration goals under the Artemis campaign by challenging United States innovators to develop breakthrough power transmission and energy storage technologies that could enable long-duration Moon missions, concludes on Friday, Sept. 20, at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland.
“For astronauts to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon during Artemis missions, they will need continuous, reliable power,” said Kim Krome-Sieja, acting program manager, Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “NASA has done extensive work on power generation technologies. Now, we’re looking to advance these technologies for long-distance power transmission and energy storage solutions that can withstand the extreme cold of the lunar environment.”
The technologies developed through the Watts on the Moon Challenge were the first power transmission and energy storage prototypes to be tested by NASA in an environment that simulates the extreme cold and weak atmospheric pressure of the lunar surface, representing a first step to readying the technologies for future deployment on the Moon. Successful technologies from this challenge aim to inspire, for example, new approaches for helping batteries withstand cold temperatures and improving grid resiliency in remote locations on Earth that face harsh weather conditions.
Media and the public are invited to attend the grand finale technology showcase and awards ceremony for the $5 million, two-phase competition. U.S. and international media interested in covering the event should confirm their attendance with Lane Figueroa by 3 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Sept. 17, at: lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Members of the public may register as an attendee by completing this form, also by Friday, Sept. 17.
During the final round of competition, finalist teams refined their hardware and delivered a full system prototype for testing in simulated lunar conditions at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The test simulated a challenging power system scenario where there are six hours of solar daylight, 18 hours of darkness, and the user is three kilometers from the power source.
“Watts on the Moon was a fantastic competition to judge because of its unique mission scenario,” said Amy Kaminski, program executive, Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Each team’s hardware was put to the test against difficult criteria and had to perform well within a lunar environment in our state-of-the-art thermal vacuum chambers at NASA Glenn.”
Each finalist team was scored based on Total Effective System Mass (TESM), which determines how the system works in relation to its mass. At the awards ceremony, NASA will award $1 million to the top team who achieves the lowest TESM score, meaning that during testing, that team’s system produced the most efficient output-to-mass ratio. The team with the second lowest mass will receive $500,000. The awards ceremony stream live on NASA Glenn’s YouTube channel and NASA Prize’s Facebook page.
The Watts on the Moon Challenge is a NASA Centennial Challenge led by NASA Glenn. NASA Marshall manages Centennial Challenges, which are part of the agency’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA has contracted HeroX to support the administration of this challenge.
For more information on NASA’s Watts on the Moon Challenge, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/wattson
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Jasmine Hopkins
Headquarters, Washington
321-432-4624
jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-932-1940
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
Brian Newbacher
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-460-9726
brian.t.newbacher@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program Artemis Centennial Challenges Glenn Research Center Marshall Space Flight Center Space Technology Mission Directorate View the full article
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By Space Force
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By NASA
NASA/Kim Shiflett In preparation for NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission, teams at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida practice getting out of the emergency escape, or egress, basket on Aug. 9, 2024. The baskets, similar to gondolas on ski lifts, are used in the case of a pad abort emergency to enable astronauts and other pad personnel a way to quickly escape from the mobile launcher to the base of the pad and where waiting emergency transport vehicles will then drive them away.
Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This panorama shows the area NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will climb in coming months to crest Jezero Crater’s rim. It is made up of 59 images taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Aug. 4.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS After 2½ years exploring Jezero Crater’s floor and river delta, the rover will ascend to an area where it will search for more discoveries that could rewrite Mars’ history.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will soon begin a monthslong ascent up the western rim of Jezero Crater that is likely to include some of the steepest and most challenging terrain the rover has encountered to date. Scheduled to start the week of Aug. 19, the climb will mark the kickoff of the mission’s new science campaign — its fifth since the rover landed in the crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
“Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected 22 rock cores, and traveled over 18 unpaved miles,” said Perseverance project manager Art Thompson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As we start the Crater Rim Campaign, our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what’s on the roof of this place.”
Two of the priority regions the science team wants to study at the top of the crater are nicknamed “Pico Turquino” and “Witch Hazel Hill.” Imagery from NASA’s Mars orbiters indicates that Pico Turquino contains ancient fractures that may have been caused by hydrothermal activity in the distant past.
One of the navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this view looking back at the “Bright Angel” area on July 30, the 1,224th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech Orbital views of Witch Hazel show layered materials that likely date from a time when Mars had a very different climate than today. Those views have revealed light-toned bedrock similar to what was found at “Bright Angel,” the area where Perseverance recently discovered and sampled the “Cheyava Falls” rock, which exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago when the area contained running water.
It’s Sedimentary
During the river delta exploration phase of the mission, the rover collected the only sedimentary rock ever sampled from a planet other than Earth. Sedimentary rocks are important because they form when particles of various sizes are transported by water and deposited into a standing body of water; on Earth, liquid water is one of the most important requirements for life as we know it.
A study published Wednesday, Aug. 14, in AGU Advances chronicles the 10 rock cores gathered from sedimentary rocks in an ancient Martian delta, a fan-shaped collection of rocks and sediment that formed billions of years ago at the convergence of a river and a crater lake.
The core samples collected at the fan front are the oldest, whereas the rocks cored at the fan top are likely the youngest, produced when flowing water deposited sediment in the western fan.
“Among these rock cores are likely the oldest materials sampled from any known environment that was potentially habitable,” said Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and member of Perseverance’s science team. “When we bring them back to Earth, they can tell us so much about when, why, and for how long Mars contained liquid water and whether some organic, prebiotic, and potentially even biological evolution may have taken place on that planet.”
This map shows the route NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will take (in blue) as it climbs the western rim of Jezero Crater, first reaching “Dox Castle,” then investigating the “Pico Turquino” area before approaching “Witch Hazel Hill.” NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Onward to the Crater Rim
As scientifically intriguing as the samples have been so far, the mission expects many more discoveries to come.
“Our samples are already an incredibly scientifically compelling collection, but the crater rim promises to provide even more samples that will have significant implications for our understanding of Martian geologic history,” said Eleni Ravanis, a University of Hawaiì at Mānoa scientist on Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument team and one of the Crater Rim Campaign science leads. “This is because we expect to investigate rocks from the most ancient crust of Mars. These rocks formed from a wealth of different processes, and some represent potentially habitable ancient environments that have never been examined up close before.”
Reaching the top of the crater won’t be easy. To get there, Perseverance will rely on its auto-navigation capabilities as it follows a route that rover planners designed to minimize hazards while still giving the science team plenty to investigate. Encountering slopes of up to 23 degrees on the journey (rover drivers avoid terrain that would tilt Perseverance more than 30 degrees), the rover will have gained about 1,000 feet (300 meters) in elevation by the time it summits the crater’s rim at a location the science team has dubbed “Aurora Park.”
Then, perched hundreds of meters above a crater floor stretching 28 miles (45 kilometers) across, Perseverance can begin the next leg of its adventure.
More Mission Information
A key objective of 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, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and as the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to 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:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Alise Fisher / Erin Morton
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / erin.morton@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 14, 2024 Related Terms
Perseverance (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars 2020 Mars Sample Return (MSR) The Solar System Explore More
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