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Here's Looking At You: Spooky Shadow Play Gives Jupiter a Giant Eye
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
During the Apollo program, when NASA sent humans to the Moon, those missions took several days to reach the Moon. The fastest of these was Apollo 8, which took just under three days to go from Earth orbit to orbit around the Moon.
Now it’s possible to save some fuel by flying different kinds of trajectories to the Moon that are shaped in such a way to save fuel. And those trajectories can take more time, potentially weeks or months, to reach the Moon, depending on how you do it.
Mars is further away, about 50 percent further away from the Sun than Earth is. And reaching Mars generally takes somewhere between seven to ten months, flying a relatively direct route.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission took about seven and a half months to reach Mars. And NASA’s MAVEN mission took about ten months to reach Mars.
Jupiter is about five times further away from the Sun than the Earth is. And so in order to make those missions practical, we have to find ways to reduce the fuel requirements. And the way we do that is by having the spacecraft do some flybys of Earth and or Venus to help shape the spacecraft’s trajectory and change the spacecraft’s speed without using fuel. And using that sort of approach, it takes between about five to six years to reach Jupiter.
So NASA’s Galileo mission, the first mission to Jupiter, took just a little over six years. And then NASA’s second mission to Jupiter, which was called Juno, took just under five years.
So to get to the Moon takes several days. To get to Mars takes seven to ten months. And getting to Jupiter takes between five and six years.
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Last Updated Feb 19, 2025 Related Terms
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions 3 min read
Sols 4447–4449: Looking Back at the Marker Band Valley
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of its workspace using the rover’s Rear Hazard Avoidance Camera (Rear Hazcam) on sol 4447 — or Martian day 4,447 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Feb. 8, 2025, at 13:54:13 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 7, 2025
We are continuing our merry way alongside “Texoli” butte, heading toward the boxworks feature in the distance, our next major waypoint. This is a series of large-scale ridges, which appear from orbital data to be a complex fracture network.
Of course, we don’t actually expect to get there until late fall 2025, at the earliest. Our drives are long right now (the weekend plan has a 50-meter drive, or about 164 feet) but we are still taking the time to document all of the wonderful geology as we go, and not just speeding past all of the cool things!
As Conor mentioned in Wednesday’s blog, power is becoming a challenge right now. Those of us in the northern hemisphere might be thinking (eagerly anticipating!) about the return of Spring but Mars is heading into colder weather, meaning we need to use more power for warming up the rover. However, we are also in a very interesting cloud season (as Conor mentioned), so the environmental theme group (ENV) are keen to do lots of imaging right now. This means very careful planning and negotiating between ENV and the geology theme group (GEO) to make the most of the power we do have. Luckily, this plan has something for everyone.
The GEO group was handed a weekend workspace containing a jumble of rocks — some layered, some not. None of the rocks were very large but we were able to plan APXS and MAHLI on a brushed rock surface at “Aliso Canyon” and on a small, flat unbrushed target, “Bridge to Nowhere,” close to the rover. ChemCam will use the LIBS laser to shoot three bedrock targets, sampling regular bedrock at “Newcomb,” some cracked bedrock at “Devore” and some of the more layered material at “Rubio Canyon.” Mastcam will document the ChemCam LIBS targets. In addition to the cloud imaging, we have lots of other imaging in this plan. We are in position right now to look back down at the “Marker Band Valley,” which we first entered almost a thousand sols ago! Before we go too much further along the side of Texoli butte and lose sight of the Marker Band Valley for some time, both ChemCam and Mastcam will take advantage of this to image the Marker Band Valley and the “Marker Band.” Other images include ChemCam remote images of cap rocks in the distance and two Mastcams of near-field (i.e., close to the rover) troughs.
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Feb 10, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
“I’m hopeful anyone, regardless of their scientific background, could read a Hubble post and understand the gist of it and be interested in it,” said Elizabeth Tammi, social media lead for the Hubble Space Telescope. “I also read our stories with the eye of the potential audience member: What are they going to care about? What is going to bring them into this story? What is going to make them want to read more?”Credits: Courtesy of Elizabeth Tammi Name: Elizabeth Tammi
Title: Hubble Space Telescope Social Media Lead
Formal Job Classification: Communications Specialist
Organization: Hubble Space Telescope Operations (Code 441)
What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? How do you help support Goddard’s mission?
I am the social media lead for the Hubble Space Telescope mission at Goddard. In short, Hubble is an orbiting observatory that’s been in low-Earth orbit for more than 30 years. It’s one of NASA’s flagship missions, probably one of its most iconic missions. Hubble has shaped our understanding of how we imagine the universe — visually how we think about it.
I run Hubble’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr, along with various other multimedia and communications tasks. We’re a very close-knit team, so we collaborate a lot, both within our team, and with other missions across the agency as well.
I’m primarily focused on social media and figuring out how are we going to share our news. On any given day, I might also be working on a script, editing news releases, or working with other accounts on social media campaigns. It’s different every day, which I really like.
What is your educational background?
I went to Mercer University, which is in Macon, Georgia. I graduated in 2020 with a degree in journalism and creative writing. There, they have a great program called the Center for Collaborative Journalism, which allowed us to work in newsrooms for academic credit. That was really useful, especially in this field, getting that hands-on experience and getting published from my freshman year on. I was eventually able to intern at Goddard the summer before my senior year. I really don’t think that would have been possible if I hadn’t had the audio production experience that Mercer allowed me to get, along with just all aspects of journalism, media, and communications.
“Hubble is one of NASA’s flagship missions, probably one of its most iconic missions,” said Elizabeth Tammi, social media lead for the Hubble Space Telescope. “Hubble has shaped our understanding of how we imagine the universe — visually how we think about it.”Credits: Courtesy of Elizabeth Tammi How does your writing experience contribute to your role with Hubble?
I know how to write accessibly and in a straightforward manner. I’m hopeful anyone, regardless of their scientific background, could read a post and understand the gist of it and be interested in it. That’s the goal. I try to come up with interesting turns of phrase when I can. I also read our stories with the eye of the potential audience member: What are they going to care about? What is going to bring them into this story? What is going to make them want to read more?
Outside work, you’ve written and published books. What inspired you to decide to write?
There’s not a day I can remember where I wasn’t absolutely infatuated with books. I think my parents read to me long before I could even understand them. It was just always such a huge part of my life — and I loved, loved, loved reading. When I realized that actual people wrote books, then I knew I wanted to write. To be clear, I didn’t take real steps toward that until I was about 15, 16-ish years old, because I guess in my mind, I still had this idea that authors were more than human.
I’ve since had two novels published. Both are in the fantasy genre and earned complimentary reviews; my second novel even earned a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award.
“I know it can be intimidating, to think about NASA as a place to intern,” said Hubble Space Telescope social media lead Elizabeth Tammi. “If you have any interest in space, I think that’s the most important part: People who are passionate and interested in our space program.”Credits: Courtesy of Elizabeth Tammi What do you most enjoy about sharing the Hubble story?
I think my favorite part is reading the comments that we get from the public, just because everyone has been so supportive of the telescope. Social media can put on display the best and worst aspects of humanity. It’s very nice to see this supportive corner of the Internet.
So far, what I’ve really enjoyed was our “Deep Field Week” social media campaign, which was around the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Deep Field image . To the unaided eye, this was a seemingly empty patch of sky. Hubble revealed it has countless galaxies. It was a really staggering finding and definitely was a huge cultural shift in how we think about our universe.
Previously, you were a NASA intern from the Summer of 2019 to May 2020. How has that experience shaped your current role?
It was absolutely vital. I don’t think I would be here in this position without that internship experience. It was the summer before my senior year of college. I got to go up to Goddard for summer 2019 and I was working primarily as an audio production intern, though the internship afforded me the opportunity to contribute to the newsroom’s work overall.
I worked with Katie Atkinson, who I also went to college with, and we got to work on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. One of my primary tasks that summer was working on an oral history campaign tied to Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary . We encouraged people from all over to send in audio accounts of what they remember experiencing when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969. Or, if they didn’t remember seeing it as it happened, how did the landing affect them and their view of the world, or their career aspirations, or if they have family stories tied to Apollo.
If I could describe my NASA experience with a book title, it would be the term “Galaxy Brain.” It’s when you have a normal thought but then you think harder, and it gets bigger. From the idea of constantly feeling mind-blown by the work that’s going on around me to being part of it makes me feel, “Oh my gosh!” This “Galaxy Brain” imagery symbolizes the enormous magnitude of everything that is interesting and mysterious. It’s just something that’s constantly engaging.
Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.
By Elissa Fielding
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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By NASA
An image of a coastal marshland combines aerial and satellite views in a technique similar to hyperspectral imaging. Combining data from multiple sources gives scientists information that can support environmental management.John Moisan When it comes to making real-time decisions about unfamiliar data – say, choosing a path to hike up a mountain you’ve never scaled before – existing artificial intelligence and machine learning tech doesn’t come close to measuring up to human skill. That’s why NASA scientist John Moisan is developing an AI “eye.”
Oceanographer John MoisanNASA Moisan, an oceanographer at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia, said AI will direct his A-Eye, a movable sensor. After analyzing images his AI would not just find known patterns in new data, but also steer the sensor to observe and discover new features or biological processes.
“A truly intelligent machine needs to be able to recognize when it is faced with something truly new and worthy of further observation,” Moisan said. “Most AI applications are mapping applications trained with familiar data to recognize patterns in new data. How do you teach a machine to recognize something it doesn’t understand, stop and say ‘What was that? Let’s take a closer look.’ That’s discovery.”
Finding and identifying new patterns in complex data is still the domain of human scientists, and how humans see plays a large part, said Goddard AI expert James MacKinnon. Scientists analyze large data sets by looking at visualizations that can help bring out relationships between different variables within the data.
Infrared images like this one from a marsh area on the Maryland/Virginia Eastern Shore coastal barrier and back bay regions reveal clues to scientists about plant health, photosynthesis, and other conditions that affect vegetation and ecosystems.John Moisan It’s another story to train a computer to look at large data streams in real time to see those connections, MacKinnon said. Especially when looking for correlations and inter-relationships in the data that the computer hasn’t been trained to identify.
Moisan intends first to set his A-Eye on interpreting images from Earth’s complex aquatic and coastal regions. He expects to reach that goal this year, training the AI using observations from prior flights over the Delmarva Peninsula. Follow-up funding would help him complete the optical pointing goal.
“How do you pick out things that matter in a scan?” Moisan asked. “I want to be able to quickly point the A-Eye at something swept up in the scan, so that from a remote area we can get whatever we need to understand the environmental scene.”
Moisan’s on-board AI would scan the collected data in real-time to search for significant features, then steer an optical sensor to collect more detailed data in infrared and other frequencies.
Thinking machines may be set to play a larger role in future exploration of our universe. Sophisticated computers taught to recognize chemical signatures that could indicate life processes, or landscape features like lava flows or craters, might offer to increase the value of science data returned from lunar or deep-space exploration.
Today’s state-of-the-art AI is not quite ready to make mission-critical decisions, MacKinnon said.
“You need some way to take a perception of a scene and turn that into a decision and that’s really hard,” he said. “The scary thing, to a scientist, is to throw away data that could be valuable. An AI might prioritize what data to send first or have an algorithm that can call attention to anomalies, but at the end of the day, it’s going to be a scientist looking at that data that results in discoveries.”
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Last Updated Feb 10, 2025 Related Terms
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