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By European Space Agency
Image: ESA’s Metal 3D Printer has produced the first metal part ever created in space.
The technology demonstrator, built by Airbus and its partners, was launched to the International Space Station at the start of this year, where ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen installed the payload in the European Drawer Rack of ESA’s Columbus module. In August, the printer successfully printed the first 3D metal shape in space.
This product, along with three others planned during the rest of the experiment, will return to Earth for quality analysis: two of the samples will go to ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands (ESTEC), another will go to ESA’s astronaut training centre in Cologne (EAC) for use in the LUNA facility, and the fourth will go to the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
As exploration of the Moon and Mars will increase mission duration and distance from Earth, resupplying spacecraft will be more challenging. Additive manufacturing in space will give autonomy for the mission and its crew, providing a solution to manufacture needed parts, to repair equipment or construct dedicated tools, on demand during the mission, rather than relying on resupplies and redundancies.
ESA’s technology demonstrator is the first to successfully print a metal component in microgravity conditions. In the past, the International Space Station has hosted plastic 3D printers.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Two robotic arms wrapped in gold material sitting on top of a black and silver box.Naval Research Laboratory NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have signed an interagency agreement to collaborate on a satellite servicing demonstration in geosynchronous Earth orbit, where hundreds of satellites provide communications, meteorological, national security, and other vital functions.
Under this agreement, NASA will provide subject matter expertise to DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program to help complete the technology development, integration, testing, and demonstration. The RSGS servicing spacecraft will advance in-orbit satellite inspection, repair, and upgrade capabilities.
NASA is excited to support our long-term partner and advance important technologies poised to benefit commercial, civil, and national objectives. Together, we will make meaningful, long-lasting contributions to the nation’s in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities.
Pam Melroy
NASA Deputy Administrator
NASA will use expertise from the agency’s On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 project and other relevant efforts to provide hands-on support to RSGS in the areas of space robotics, systems engineering, spacecraft subsystems, integration and testing, operator training, and spaceflight operations. NASA’s involvement in RSGS will continue advancing the agency’s understanding of and experience with complex ISAM systems.
DARPA will continue to lead the RSGS program, which has already achieved several important milestones, including the completion of two dexterous robotic arms designed for inspection and service that have been stress-tested for an on-orbit environment and the integration of those arms with their associated electronics, tools, and ancillary hardware to produce the fully integrated robotic payload.
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Last Updated Sep 05, 2024 EditorLoura Hall Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
More than 100 scientists will participate in a field campaign involving a research vessel and two aircraft this month to verify the accuracy of data collected by NASA’s new PACE satellite: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission. The process of data validation includes researchers comparing PACE data with data collected by similar, Earth-based instruments to ensure the measurements match up. Since the mission’s Feb. 8, 2024 launch, scientists around the world have successfully completed several data validation campaigns; the September deployment — PACE-PAX — is its largest. From sea to sky to orbit, a range of vantage points allow NASA Earth scientists to collect different types of data to better understand our changing planet. Collecting them together, at the same place and the same time, is an important step used to verify the accuracy of satellite data.
NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite launched in February 2024 and is collecting observations of the ocean and measuring atmospheric particle and cloud properties. This data will help inform scientists and decision makers about the health of Earth’s ocean, land surfaces, and atmosphere and the interactions between them.
Technicians work to process the NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) observatory on a spacecraft dolly in a high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett To make sure the data from PACE’s instruments accurately represent the ocean and the atmosphere, scientists compare (or “validate”) the data collected from orbit with measurements they collect at or near Earth’s surface. The mission’s biggest validation campaign, called PACE Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX), began on Sept. 3, 2024, and will last the entire month.
“If we want to have confidence in the observations from PACE, we need to validate those observations,” said Kirk Knobelspiesse, mission scientist for PACE-PAX and an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This field campaign is focused on doing just that.”
Scientists will make measurements both from aircraft and ships. Based out of three locations across California — Marina, Santa Barbara, and NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards — the campaign includes more than 100 people working in the field and several dozen instruments.
“This campaign allows us to validate data for both the atmosphere and the ocean, all in one campaign,” said Brian Cairns, deputy mission scientist for PACE-PAX and an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
On the ocean, ships, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Shearwater, will gather data on ocean biology and the optical properties of the water. Scientists onboard will gather water samples to help define the types of phytoplankton at different locations and their relative abundance, something that PACE’s hyperspectral Ocean Color Instrument measures from orbit.
Members of the PACE-PAX team – from left to right, Cecile Carlson, Adam Ahern (NOAA), Dennis Hamaker (NPS), Luke Ziemba, and Michael Shook (NASA Langley Research Center) – in front of the Twin Otter aircraft as they prep for the start of the campaign. Credit: Judy Alfter/NASA Overhead, a Twin Otter research aircraft operated by the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, will collect data on the atmosphere. At altitudes of up to 10,000 feet, the aircraft will sample and measure cloud droplet sizes, aerosol sizes, and the amount of light that those particles scatter and absorb. These are the atmospheric properties that PACE observes with its two polarimeters, SPEXOne and HARP2.
At a higher altitude — approximately 70,000 feet up — NASA’s ER-2 aircraft will provide a complementary view from above clouds, looking down on the atmosphere and ocean in finer detail than the satellite, but with a narrower view.
The NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft preparing for flight on Jan. 29, 2023. The aircraft is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703 in Palmdale, California.Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas The plane will carry several instruments that are similar to those on PACE, including two prototypes of PACE’s polarimeters, called SPEXAirborne and AirHARP. In addition, two instruments called the Portable Remote Imaging SpectroMeter and Pushbroom Imager for Cloud and Aerosol Research and Development — from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasedena, California, and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, respectively — will measure essentially all the wavelengths of visible light (color). The remote sensing measurements are key for scientists who want to test the methods they use to analyze PACE satellite data.
Together, the instruments on the ER-2 approximate the data that PACE gathers and complement the in situ measurements from the ocean research vessel and the Twin Otter.
As the field campaign team gathers data, PACE will be observing the same areas of the ocean surface and atmosphere. Once the campaign is over, scientists will look at the data PACE returned and compare them to the measurements they took from the other three vantage points.
“Once you launch the satellite, there’s no more tinkering you can do,” said Ivona Cetinic, deputy mission scientist for PACE-PAX and an ocean scientist at NASA Goddard.
Though the scientists cannot alter the satellite anymore, the algorithms designed to interpret PACE data can be adjusted to make the measurements more accurate. Validation checks from campaigns like PACE-PAX help scientists ensure that PACE will be able to return accurate data about our oceans and atmosphere — critical to better understand our changing planet and its interconnected systems — for years to come.
“The ocean and atmosphere are such changing environments that it’s really important to validate what we see,” Cetinic said. “Understanding the accuracy of the view from the satellite is important, so we can use the data to answer important questions about climate change.”
By Erica McNamee
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 04, 2024 EditorKate D. RamsayerContactErica McNameeerica.s.mcnamee@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Earth Airborne Science Goddard Space Flight Center PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) Explore More
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By NASA
On Aug. 30, 1984, space shuttle Discovery lifted off on the STS-41D mission, joining NASA’s fleet as the third space qualified orbiter. The newest shuttle incorporated newer technologies making it significantly lighter than its two predecessors. Discovery lofted the heaviest payload up to that time in shuttle history. The six-person crew included five NASA astronauts and the first commercial payload specialist. During the six-day mission, the crew deployed a then-record three commercial satellites, tested an experimental solar array, and ran a commercial biotechnology experiment. The astronauts recorded many of the activities using a large format film camera, the scenes later incorporated into a motion picture for public engagement. The mission marked the first of Discovery’s 39 trips to space, the most of any orbiter.
Left: Space shuttle Discovery rolls out of Rockwell’s Palmdale, California, facility. Middle: Discovery atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft during the cross-country ferry flight. Right: Discovery arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Space shuttle Discovery, the third space-qualified orbiter in NASA’s fleet and named after several historical ships of exploration, incorporated manufacturing lessons learned from the first orbiters. In addition, through the use of more advanced materials, the new vehicle weighed nearly 8,000 pounds less than its sister ship Columbia and 700 pounds less than Challenger. Discovery rolled out of Rockwell International’s plant in Palmdale, California, on Oct. 16, 1983. Five of the six crew members assigned to its first flight attended the ceremony. Workers trucked Discovery overland from Palmdale to NASA’s Dryden, now Armstrong, Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), where they mounted it atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747, for the transcontinental ferry flight to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Discovery arrived at KSC on Nov. 9 following a two-day stopover at Vandenberg Air Force, now Space Force Base, in California.
Left: STS-41D crew patch. Middle: Official photograph of the STS-41D crew of R. Michael “Mike” Mullane, front row left, Steven A. Hawley, Henry “Hank” W. Hartsfield, and Michael L. Coats; Charles D. Walker, back row left, and Judith A. Resnik. Right: Payloads installed in Discovery’s payload bay for the STS-41D mission include OAST-1, top, SBS-4, Telstar 3C, and Leasat-2.
To fly Discovery’s first flight, originally designated STS-12 and later renamed STS-41D, in February 1983 NASA assigned Commander Henry W. Hartsfield, a veteran of STS-4, and first-time flyers Pilot Michael L. Coats, and Mission Specialists R. Michael Mullane, Steven A. Hawley, and Judith A. Resnik, all from the 1978 class of astronauts and making their first spaceflights. In May 1983, NASA announced the addition of Charles D. Walker, an employee of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, to the crew, flying as the first commercial payload specialist. He would operate the company’s Continuous Flow Electrophoresis System (CFES) experiment. The mission’s primary payloads included the Leasat-1 (formerly known as Syncom IV-1) commercial communications satellite and OAST-1, three experiments from NASA’s Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, including the Solar Array Experiment, a 105-foot long lightweight deployable and retractable solar array. Following the June 1984 launch abort, NASA canceled the STS-41F mission, combining its payloads with STS-41D’s, resulting in three communications satellites – SBS-4 for Small Business Systems, Telstar 3C for AT&T, and Leasat 2 (Syncom IV-2) for the U.S. Navy – launching on the flight. The combined cargo weighed 41,184 pounds, the heaviest of the shuttle program up to that time. A large format IMAX® camera, making its second trip into space aboard the shuttle, flew in the middeck to film scenes inside the orbiter and out the windows.
Left: First rollout of Discovery from the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Right: The June 26 launch abort.
The day after its arrival at KSC, workers towed Discovery to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to begin preparing it for its first space flight. They towed it to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on May 12, 1984, for mating with its External Tank (ET) and Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). The completed stack rolled out to Launch Pad 39A a week later. On June 2, engineers successfully completed an 18-second Flight Readiness Firing of Discovery’s main engines. Post test inspections revealed a debonding of a thermal shield in main engine number 1’s combustion chamber, requiring its replacement at the pad. The work pushed the planned launch date back three days to June 25. The failure of the shuttle’s backup General Purpose Computer (GPC) delayed the launch by one day. The June 26 launch attempt ended just four seconds before liftoff, after two of the main engines had already ignited. The GPC detected that the third engine had not started and shut all three down. It marked the first time a human spaceflight launch experienced an abort after the start of its engines since Gemini VI in October 1965. The abort necessitated a rollback to the VAB on July 14 where workers demated Discovery from the ET and SRBs. Engineers replaced the faulty engine, and Discovery rolled back out to the launch pad on Aug. 9 for another launch attempt. The six-person crew participated in the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, essentially a dress rehearsal for the actual countdown to launch, on Aug. 15. A software issue delayed the first launch attempt on Aug. 29 by one day.
Left: The STS-41D crew pose at Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida following the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. Right: Liftoff of Discovery on the STS-41D mission.
Finally, on Aug. 30, 1984, Discovery roared off its launch pad on a pillar of flame and within 8 and a half minutes entered orbit around the Earth. The crew got down to work and on the first day Mullane and Hawley deployed the SBS-4 satellite. On the second day in space, they deployed Leasat, the first satellite designed specifically to be launched from the shuttle. On the third day, they deployed the Telstar satellite, completing the satellite delivery objectives of the mission. Resnik deployed the OAST-1 solar array to 70% of its length to conduct dynamic tests on the structure. On the fourth day, she deployed the solar array to its full length and successfully retracted it, completing all objectives for that experiment.
The deployment of the SBS-4, left, Leasat-2, and Telstar 3C satellites during STS-41D.
Walker remained busy with the CFES, operating the unit for about 100 hours, and although the experiment experienced two unexpected shutdowns, he processed about 85% of the planned samples. Hartsfield and Coats exposed two magazines and six rolls of IMAX® film, recording OAST-1 and satellite deployments as well as in-cabin crew activities. Clips from the mission appear in the 1985 IMAX® film “The Dream is Alive.” On the mission’s fifth day, concern arose over the formation of ice on the orbiter’s waste dump nozzle. The next day, Hartsfield used the shuttle’s robotic arm to dislodge the large chunk of ice.
Left: Payload Specialist Charles D. Walker in front of the Continuous Flow Experiment System. Middle: Henry “Hank” W. Hartsfield loading film into the IMAX® camera. Right: The OAST-1 Solar Array Experiment extended from Discovery’s payload bay.
On Sep. 5, the astronauts closed Discovery’s payload bay doors in preparation for reentry. They fired the shuttle’s Orbital Maneuvering System engines to slow their velocity and begin their descent back to Earth. Hartsfield guided Discovery to a smooth landing at Edwards AFB in California, completing a flight of 6 days and 56 minutes. The crew had traveled 2.5 million miles and orbited the Earth 97 times.
Left: The STS-41D crew pose in Discovery’s middeck. Right: Space shuttle Discovery makes a perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California to end the STS-41D mission.
By Sept. 10, workers had returned Discovery to KSC to prepare it for its next mission, STS-51A, in November 1984. During its lifetime, Discovery flew a fleet leading 39 missions, making its final trip to space in February 2011. It flew both return to flight missions, STS-26 in 1988 and STS-114 in 2005. It launched the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and flew two of the missions to service the facility. Discovery flew two mission to Mir, docking once. It completed the first docking to the International Space Station in 1999 and flew a total of 13 assembly and resupply missions to the orbiting lab. By its last mission, Discovery had traveled 149 million miles, completed 5,830 orbits of the Earth, and spent a cumulative 365 days in space in the span of 27 years. The public can view Discovery on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.
Read recollections of the STS-41D mission by Hartsfield, Coats, Mullane, Hawley, and Walker in their oral histories with the JSC History Office. Enjoy the crew’s narration of a video about the STS-41D mission.
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Data from one of the two CubeSats that comprise NASA’s PREFIRE mission was used to make this data visualization showing brightness temperature — the intensity of infrared emissions — over Greenland. Red represents more intense emissions; blue indicates lower intensities. The data was captured in July.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio The PREFIRE mission will help develop a more detailed understanding of how much heat the Arctic and Antarctica radiate into space and how this influences global climate.
NASA’s newest climate mission has started collecting data on the amount of heat in the form of far-infrared radiation that the Arctic and Antarctic environments emit to space. These measurements by the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-Infrared Experiment (PREFIRE) are key to better predicting how climate change will affect Earth’s ice, seas, and weather — information that will help humanity better prepare for a changing world.
One of PREFIRE’s two shoebox-size cube satellites, or CubeSats, launched on May 25 from New Zealand, followed by its twin on June 5. The first CubeSat started sending back science data on July 1. The second CubeSat began collecting science data on July 25, and the mission will release the data after an issue with the GPS system on this CubeSat is resolved.
The PREFIRE mission will help researchers gain a clearer understanding of when and where the Arctic and Antarctica emit far-infrared radiation (wavelengths greater than 15 micrometers) to space. This includes how atmospheric water vapor and clouds influence the amount of heat that escapes Earth. Since clouds and water vapor can trap far-infrared radiation near Earth’s surface, they can increase global temperatures as part of a process known as the greenhouse effect. This is where gases in Earth’s atmosphere — such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor — act as insulators, preventing heat emitted by the planet from escaping to space.
“We are constantly looking for new ways to observe the planet and fill in critical gaps in our knowledge. With CubeSats like PREFIRE, we are doing both,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The mission, part of our competitively-selected Earth Venture program, is a great example of the innovative science we can achieve through collaboration with university and industry partners.”
Earth absorbs much of the Sun’s energy in the tropics; weather and ocean currents transport that heat toward the Arctic and Antarctica, which receive much less sunlight. The polar environment — including ice, snow, and clouds — emits a lot of that heat into space, much of which is in the form of far-infrared radiation. But those emissions have never been systematically measured, which is where PREFIRE comes in.
“It’s so exciting to see the data coming in,” said Tristan L’Ecuyer, PREFIRE’s principal investigator and a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “With the addition of the far-infrared measurements from PREFIRE, we’re seeing for the first time the full energy spectrum that Earth radiates into space, which is critical to understanding climate change.”
This visualization of PREFIRE data (above) shows brightness temperatures — or the intensity of radiation emitted from Earth at several wavelengths, including the far-infrared. Yellow and red indicate more intense emissions originating from Earth’s surface, while blue and green represent lower emission intensities coinciding with colder areas on the surface or in the atmosphere.
The visualization starts by showing data on mid-infrared emissions (wavelengths between 4 to 15 micrometers) taken in early July during several polar orbits by the first CubeSat to launch. It then zooms in on two passes over Greenland. The orbital tracks expand vertically to show how far-infrared emissions vary through the atmosphere. The visualization ends by focusing on an area where the two passes intersect, showing how the intensity of far-infrared emissions changed over the nine hours between these two orbits.
The two PREFIRE CubeSats are in asynchronous, near-polar orbits, which means they pass over the same spots in the Arctic and Antarctic within hours of each other, collecting the same kind of data. This gives researchers a time series of measurements that they can use to study relatively short-lived phenomena like ice sheet melting or cloud formation and how they affect far-infrared emissions over time.
More About PREFIRE
The PREFIRE mission was jointly developed by NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and provided the spectrometers. Blue Canyon Technologies built and now operates the CubeSats, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is processing and analyzing the data collected by the instruments.
To learn more about PREFIRE, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/prefire/
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Last Updated Sep 03, 2024 Related Terms
PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) Climate Change Earth Earth Science Polar Explore More
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