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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
With one of its solar arrays deployed, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer sits in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space. The large silver grate attached to the spacecraft is the radiator for HVM³, one of two instruments that the mission will use to better understand the lunar water cycle.Lockheed Martin Space There’s water on the Moon, but scientists only have a general idea of where it is and what form it is in. A trailblazing NASA mission will get some answers.
When NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer begins orbiting the Moon next year, it will help resolve an enduring mystery: Where is the Moon’s water? Scientists have seen signs suggesting it exists even where temperatures soar on the lunar surface, and there’s good reason to believe it can be found as surface ice in permanently shadowed craters, places that have not seen direct sunlight for billions of years. But, so far, there have been few definitive answers, and a full understanding of the nature of the Moon’s water cycle remains stubbornly out of reach.
This is where Lunar Trailblazer comes in. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, the small satellite will map the Moon’s surface water in unprecedented detail to determine the water’s abundance, location, form, and how it changes over time.
“Making high-resolution measurements of the type and amount of lunar water will help us understand the lunar water cycle, and it will provide clues to other questions, like how and when did Earth get its water,” said Bethany Ehlmann, principal investigator for Lunar Trailblazer at Caltech. “But understanding the inventory of lunar water is also important if we are to establish a sustained human and robotic presence on the Moon and beyond.”
Future explorers could process lunar ice to create breathable oxygen or even fuel. And they could also conduct science. Using information from Lunar Trailblazer, future human or robotic scientific investigations could sample the ice for later study to determine where the water came from. For example, the presence of ammonia in ice samples may indicate the water came from comets; sulfur, on the other hand, could show that it was vented to the surface from the lunar interior when the Moon was young and volcanically active.
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer in lunar orbit about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft weighs only 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and measures 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed.Lockheed Martin Space “In the future, scientists could analyze the ice in the interiors of permanently shadowed craters to learn more about the origins of water on the Moon,” said Rachel Klima, Lunar Trailblazer deputy principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Like an ice core from a glacier on Earth can reveal the ancient history of our planet’s atmospheric composition, this pristine lunar ice could provide clues as to where that water came from and how and when it got there.”
Understanding whether water molecules move freely across the surface of the Moon or are locked inside rock is also scientifically important. Water molecules could move from frosty “cold traps” to other locations throughout the lunar day. Frost heated by the Sun sublimates (turning from solid ice to a gas without going through a liquid phase), allowing the molecules to move as a gas to other cold locations, where they could form new frost as the Sun moves overhead. Knowing how water moves on the Moon could also lead to new insights into the water cycles on other airless bodies, such as asteroids
Two Instruments, One Mission
Two science instruments aboard the spacecraft will help unlock these secrets: the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) infrared spectrometer and the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) infrared multispectral imager.
Developed by JPL, HVM3 will detect and map the spectral fingerprints, or wavelengths of reflected sunlight, of minerals and the different forms of water on the lunar surface. The spectrometer can use faint reflected light from the walls of craters to see the floor of even permanently shadowed craters.
The LTM instrument, which was built by the University of Oxford and funded by the UK Space Agency, will map the minerals and thermal properties of the same lunar landscape. Together they will create a picture of the abundance, location, and form of water while also tracking how its distribution changes over time.
“The LTM instrument precisely maps the surface temperature of the Moon while the HVM3 instrument looks for the spectral signature of water molecules,” said Neil Bowles, instrument scientist for LTM at the University of Oxford. “Both instruments will allow us to understand how surface temperature affects water, improving our knowledge of the presence and distribution of these molecules on the Moon.”
Weighing only 440 pounds (200 kilograms) and measuring 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide when its solar panels are fully deployed, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the Moon about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the surface. The mission was selected by NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) program in 2019 and will hitch a ride on the same launch as the Intuitive Machines-2 delivery to the Moon through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. Lunar Trailblazer passed a critical operational readiness review in early October at Caltech after completing environmental testing in August at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, where it was assembled.
The orbiter and its science instruments are now being put through flight system software tests that simulate key aspects of launch, maneuvers, and the science mission while in orbit around the Moon. At the same time, the operations team led by IPAC at Caltech is conducting tests to simulate commanding, communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network, and navigation.
More About Lunar Trailblazer
Lunar Trailblazer is managed by JPL, and its science investigation and mission operations are led by Caltech with the mission operations center at IPAC. Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL also provides system engineering, mission assurance, the HVM3 instrument, as well as mission design and navigation. Lockheed Martin Space provides the spacecraft, integrates the flight system, and supports operations under contract with Caltech.
SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The program conducts space science investigations in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
For more information about Lunar Trailblazer, visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/lunar-trailblazer
News Media Contacts
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Gordon Squires
IPAC, Pasadena, Calif.
626-395-3121
squires@ipac.caltech.edu
2024-148
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Last Updated Oct 29, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Learn Home Europa Trek: NASA Offers a New… Europa Clipper Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 3 min read
Europa Trek: NASA Offers a New Guided Tour of Jupiter’s Ocean Moon
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is on its way to explore a moon of Jupiter that researchers believe may be one of the best places in the Solar System to search for life beyond Earth. While the spacecraft makes its more-than-five year journey to Europa, scientists, students, teachers, and the public can tour and explore the landforms of Europa with newly-released enhancements to NASA’s Europa Trek web portal.
One of the largest of Jupiter’s nearly 100 recognized moons, Europa is covered with a global ice cap. But beneath that crust of ice, researchers have found an ocean of liquid water, estimated to have about twice the volume of all of Earth’s oceans combined. This vast amount of liquid water is of particular interest to astrobiologists, scientists studying the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the Universe. Though Europa’s ocean remains hidden beneath its global crust of ice, we can get important clues about its nature by studying the remarkable landforms of Europa’s icy surface.
To accompany the launch of Europa Clipper, NASA’s Solar System Treks Project released exciting new enhancements to its online Europa Trek portal on September 30, 2024. The new additions to Europa Trek allow users to interactively fly over and explore high-resolution imagery of Europa’s surface from the Voyager, Galileo, and Juno missions. Users can also take a new guided tour of Europa’s amazing landforms, with commentary developed by a collaboration between NASA’s Astrobiology Science Communication Guild and NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. The tour and its commentary introduce virtual explorers to the geology and possible biological significance of the diverse features of Europa’s surface.
“This is really fun. It’s cool how you can zoom into the high resolution data. I’ll spread the word about using this!” – Bob Pappalardo, Europa Clipper Project Scientist
The new tour and capabilities of Europa Trek were featured at the Europa Clipper public launch program at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center on October 6,2024, in advance of the October 14 launch of the mission. As part of the public program conducted by NASA’s Planetary Mission Program Office, the Europa Trek exhibit allowed hundreds of visitors to try their hands at flying over Europa and visualizing its exotic terrain.
NASA’s Solar System Treks is an infrastructure project within NASA’s Science Activation Team. Their online portals are used for mission planning, planetary science research, and Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) education. NASA’s Astrobiology Science Communication Guild is an international, community-based network of astrobiologists who engage in science communication with diverse audiences and learners. Watch for future collaborations between Solar System Treks and the Astrobiology Science Communication Guild at more locations across the Solar System!
Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
A stop along the guided tour of Europa landforms Share
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Last Updated Oct 23, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
On Oct. 18, 1989, space shuttle Atlantis took off on its fifth flight, STS-34, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Its five-person crew of Commander Donald E. Williams, Pilot Michael J. McCulley, and Mission Specialists Shannon W. Lucid, Franklin R. Chang-Díaz, and Ellen S. Baker flew a five-day mission that deployed the Galileo spacecraft, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to study Jupiter. The astronauts deployed Galileo and its upper stage on their first day in space, sending the spacecraft on its six-year journey to the giant outer planet. Following its arrival at Jupiter in December 1995, Galileo deployed its atmospheric probe while the main spacecraft entered orbit around the planet, studying it in great detail for eight years.
Left: The STS-34 crew of Mission Specialists Shannon W. Lucid, sitting left, Franklin R. Chang-Díaz, and Ellen S. Baker; Commander Donald E. Williams, standing left, and Pilot Michael J. McCulley. Middle: The STS-34 crew patch. Right: The Galileo spacecraft in Atlantis’ payload bay in preparation for STS-34.
In November 1988, NASA announced Williams, McCulley, Lucid, Chang-Díaz, and Baker as the STS-34 crew for the flight planned for October 1989. Williams and Lucid, both from the Class of 1978, had each flown once before, on STS-51D in April 1985 and STS-51G in June 1985, respectively. Chang-Díaz, selected in 1980, had flown once before on STS-61C in January 1986, while for McCulley and Baker, both selected in 1984, STS-34 represented their first spaceflight. During their five-day mission, the astronauts planned to deploy Galileo and its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) on the first flight day. Following the Galileo deployment, the astronauts planned to conduct experiments in the middeck and the payload bay.
Left: Voyager 2 image of Jupiter. Middle: Galileo as it appeared in 1983. Right: Illustration of Galileo’s trajectory from Earth to Jupiter.
Following the successful Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions, NASA’s next step to study Jupiter in depth involved an ambitious orbiter and atmospheric entry probe. NASA first proposed the Jupiter Orbiter Probe mission in 1975, and Congress approved it in 1977 for a planned 1982 launch on the space shuttle. In 1978, NASA renamed the spacecraft Galileo after the 17th century Italian astronomer who turned his new telescope toward Jupiter and discovered its four largest moons. Delays in the shuttle program and changes in the upper stage to send Galileo from low Earth orbit on to Jupiter resulted in the slip of its launch to May 1986, when on Atlantis’ STS-61G mission, a Centaur upper stage would send the spacecraft toward Jupiter.
The January 1986 Challenger accident not only halted shuttle flights for 31 months but also canceled the Centaur as an upper stage for the orbiter. Remanifested onto the less powerful IUS, Galileo would require gravity assist maneuvers at Venus and twice at Earth to reach its destination, extending the transit time to six years. Galileo’s launch window extended from Oct. 12 to Nov. 21, 1989, dictated by planetary alignments required for the gravity assists. During the transit, Galileo had the opportunity to pass by two main belt asteroids, providing the first closeup study of this class of objects. Upon arrival at Jupiter, Galileo would release its probe to return data as it descended through Jupiter’s atmosphere while the main spacecraft would enter an elliptical orbit around the planet, from which it would conduct in depth studies for a minimum of 22 months.
Left: The Galileo atmospheric probe during preflight processing. Middle: The Galileo orbiter during preflight processing. Right: Space shuttle Atlantis arrives at Launch Pad 39B.
The Galileo atmospheric probe arrived at KSC on April 17 and the main spacecraft on May 16, following which workers joined the two together for preflight testing. Meanwhile, Atlantis returned to KSC on May 15, following the STS-30 mission that deployed the Magellan spacecraft to Venus. The next day workers towed it into the Orbiter Processing Facility to prepare it for STS-34. In KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), workers began stacking the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) on June 15, completing the activity on July 22, and then adding the External Tank (ET) on July 30. Atlantis rolled over to the VAB on Aug. 22 for mating with the ET and SRBs. Galileo, now mated to its IUS, transferred to Launch Pad 39B on Aug. 25, awaiting Atlantis’ arrival four days later.
The next day, workers placed Galileo into Atlantis’ payload bay and began preparations for the Oct. 12 launch. The Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test took place on Sept. 14-15, with the astronauts participating in the final few hours as on launch day. A faulty computer aboard the IUS threatened to delay the mission, but workers replaced it without impacting the planned launch date. The five-member astronaut crew arrived at KSC Oct. 9 for final preparations for the flight and teams began the countdown for launch. A main engine controller problem halted the countdown at T minus 19 hours. The work required to replace it pushed the launch date back to Oct. 17. On that day, the weather at the pad supported a launch, but clouds and rain at the Shuttle Landing Facility several miles away, and later rain at a Transatlantic (TAL) abort site, violated launch constraints, so managers called a 24-hour scrub. The next day, the weather cooperated at all sites, and other than a brief hold to reconfigure Atlantis’ computers from one TAL site to another, the countdown proceeded smoothly.
Left: STS-34 astronauts pose following their Sept. 6 preflight press conference. Middle: Liftoff of Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Right: Controllers in the Firing Room watch Atlantis take to the skies.
Atlantis lifted off Launch Pad 39B at 12:53 p.m. EDT on Oct. 18. As soon as the shuttle cleared the launch tower, control shifted to the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Ascent Flight Director Ronald D. Dittemore and his team of controllers, including astronaut Frank L. Culbertson serving as the capsule communicator, or capcom, monitored all aspects of the launch. Following main engine cutoff, Atlantis and its crew had achieved orbit. Forty minutes later, a firing of the two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines circularized the orbit at 185 miles. The astronauts removed their bulky Launch and Entry Suits (LES) and prepared Atlantis for orbital operations, including opening the payload bay doors.
Left: Galileo and its Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) in Atlantis’ payload bay, just before deployment. Middle: Galileo and its IUS moments after deployment. Right: Galileo departs from the shuttle.
Preparations for Galileo’s deployment began shortly thereafter. In Mission Control, Flight Director J. Milton Heflin and his team, including capcom Michael A. Baker, took over to assist the crew with deployment operations. The astronauts activated Galileo and the IUS, and ground teams began checking out their systems, with the first TV from the mission showing the spacecraft and its upper stage in the payload bay. Lucid raised Galileo’s tilt table first to 29 degrees, McCulley oriented Atlantis to the deployment attitude, then Lucid raised the tilt table to the deploy position of 58 degrees. With all systems operating normally, Mission Control gave the go for deploy.
Six hours and 20 minutes into the mission, Lucid deployed the Jupiter-bound spacecraft and its upper stage, weighing a combined 38,483 pounds. “Galileo is on its way to another world,” Williams called down. The combination glided over the shuttle’s crew compartment. Williams and McCulley fired the two OMS engines to move Atlantis a safe distance away from the IUS burn that took place one hour after deployment, sending Galileo on its circuitous journey through the inner solar system before finally heading to Jupiter. The primary task of the mission accomplished, the astronauts prepared for their first night’s sleep in space.
STS-34 crew Earth observation photographs. Left: The Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. Middle left: Jamaica. Middle right: Greece. Right: The greater Tokyo area with Mt. Fuji at upper left.
For the next three days, the STS-34 astronauts focused their attention on the middeck and payload bay experiments, as well as taking photographs of the Earth. Located in the payload bay, the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment, managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, measured ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere and compared the results with data obtained by weather satellites at the same locations. The comparisons served to calibrate the weather satellite instruments. Baker conducted the Growth Hormone Concentrations and Distributions in Plants experiment, that investigated the effect of the hormone Auxin in corn shoot tissue. Three days into the mission, she placed plant canisters into a freezer to arrest plant growth and for postflight analysis. Chang-Díaz and Lucid had prime responsibility for the Polymer Morphology experiment, developed by the 3M Company. They used a laptop to control experiment parameters as the hardware melted different samples to see the effects of weightlessness. Baker conducted several medical investigations, including studying blood vessels in the retina, changes in leg volume due to fluid shifts, and carotid blood flow.
Left: The Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet experiment in Atlantis’ payload bay. Middle: Ellen S. Baker, right, performs a carotid blood flow experiment on Franklin R. Chang-Díaz. Right: Chang-Díaz describes the Polymer Mixing experiment.
Left: The STS-34 crew poses on Atlantis’ fight deck. Middle: Atlantis touches down at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Right: The STS-34 astronauts pose in front of Atlantis.
On Oct. 23, the astronauts awakened for their final day in space. Because of high winds expected at the primary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), managers moved the landing up by two revolutions. In preparation for reentry, the astronauts donned their orange LESs and closed the payload bay doors. Williams and McCulley oriented Atlantis into the deorbit attitude, with the OMS engines facing in the direction of travel. Over the Indian Ocean, they fired the two engines for 2 minutes 48 seconds to bring the spacecraft out of orbit. They reoriented the orbiter to fly with its heat shield exposed to the direction of flight as it encountered Earth’s atmosphere at 419,000 feet. The buildup of ionized gases caused by the heat of reentry prevented communications for about 15 minutes but provided the astronauts a great light show. The entry profile differed slightly from the planned one because Atlantis needed to make up 500 miles of cross range since it returned two orbits early. After completing the Heading Alignment Circle turn, Williams aligned Atlantis with the runway, and McCulley lowered the landing gear. Atlantis touched down and rolled to a stop, ending a 4-day 23-hour 39-minute flight, having completed 79 orbits of the Earth. Following postlanding inspections, workers placed Atlantis atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing-747, and the combination left Edwards on Oct. 28. Following refueling stops at Biggs Army Airfield in Texas and Columbus AFB in Mississippi, Atlantis and the SCA arrived back at KSC on Oct. 29. Workers began to prepare it for its next flight, STS-36 in February 1990.
Left: An illustration of Galileo in orbit around Jupiter. Right: Galileo’s major mission events, including encounters with Jupiter’s moons during its eight-year orbital study.
One hour after deployment from Atlantis, the IUS ignited to send Galileo on its six-year journey to Jupiter, with the spacecraft flying free of the rocket stage 47 minutes later. The spacecraft’s circuitous path took it first to Venus on Feb. 10, 1990, back to Earth on Dec. 8, 1990, and again on Dec. 8, 1992, each time picking up velocity from the gravity assist to send it on to the giant planet. Along the way, Galileo also passed by and imaged the main belt asteroids Gaspra and Ida and observed the crash of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 onto Jupiter. On Dec. 7, 1995, the probe plummeted through Jupiter’s dense atmosphere, returning data along the way, until it succumbed to extreme pressures and temperatures. Meanwhile, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter and far exceeded its 22-month primary mission, finally plunging into the giant planet on Sept. 21, 2003, 14 years after leaving Earth. During its 35 orbits around Jupiter, it studied not only the planet but made close observations of many of its moons, especially its four largest ones, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io.
Left: Galileo image of could formations on Jupiter. Right: Closeup image of terrain on Europa.
Of particular interest to many scientists, Galileo made 11 close encounters with icy Europa, coming as close as 125 miles, revealing incredible details about its surface. Based on Galileo data, scientists now believe a vast ocean lies beneath Europa’s icy crust, and heating from inside the moon may produce conditions favorable for supporting life. NASA’s Europa Clipper, launched on Oct. 14, 2024, hopes to expand on Galileo’s observations when it reaches Jupiter in April 2030.
Enjoy the crew narrated video of the STS-34 mission. Read Williams‘ recollections of the STS-34 mission in his oral history with the JSC History Office.
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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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By NASA
SpaceX A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
Europa Clipper is the first mission designed to conduct a detailed study of Jupiter’s moon Europa to determine if it currently has habitable conditions. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) to reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa.
Follow Europa Clipper’s journey in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System app.
Image credit: SpaceX
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