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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A test rover with shape memory alloy spring tires traverses rocky, Martian-simulated terrain.Credit: NASA The mystique of Mars has been studied for centuries. The fourth planet from the Sun is reminiscent of a rich, red desert and features a rugged surface challenging to traverse. While several robotic missions have landed on Mars, NASA has only explored 1% of its surface. Ahead of future human and robotic missions to the Red Planet, NASA recently completed rigorous rover testing on Martian-simulated terrain, featuring revolutionary shape memory alloy spring tire technology developed at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland in partnership with Goodyear Tire & Rubber.
Rovers — mobile robots that explore lunar or planetary surfaces — must be equipped with adequate tires for the environments they’re exploring. As Mars has an uneven, rocky surface, durable tires are essential for mobility. Shape memory alloy (SMA) spring tires help make that possible.
Shape memory alloys are metals that can return to their original shape after being bent, stretched, heated, and cooled. NASA has used them for decades, but applying this technology to tires is a fairly new concept.
“We at Glenn are one of the world leaders in bringing the science and understanding of how you change the alloy compositions, how you change the processing of the material, and how you model these systems in a way that we can control and stabilize the behaviors so that they can actually be utilized in real applications,” said Dr. Santo Padula II, materials research engineer at NASA Glenn.
Researchers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Airbus Defence & Space pose with a test rover on Martian-simulated terrain.Credit: NASA Padula and his team have tested several applications for SMAs, but his epiphany of the possibilities for tires came about because of a chance encounter.
While leaving a meeting, Padula encountered Colin Creager, a mechanical engineer at NASA Glenn whom he hadn’t seen in years. Creager used the opportunity to tell him about the work he was doing in the NASA Glenn Simulated Lunar Operations (SLOPE) Laboratory, which can simulate the surfaces of the Moon and Mars to help scientists test rover performance. He brought Padula to the lab, where Padula immediately took note of the spring tires. At the time, they were made of steel.
Padula remarked, “The minute I saw the tire, I said, aren’t you having problems with those plasticizing?” Plasticizing refers to a metal undergoing deformation that isn’t reversible and can lead to damage or failure of the component.
“Colin told me, ‘That’s the only problem we can’t solve.’” Padula continued, “I said, I have your solution. I’m developing a new alloy that will solve that. And that’s how SMA tires started.”
From there, Padula, Creager, and their teams joined forces to improve NASA’s existing spring tires with a game-changing material: nickel-titanium SMAs. The metal can accommodate deformation despite extreme stress, permitting the tires to return to their original shape even with rigorous impact, which is not possible for spring tires made with conventional metal.
Credit: NASA Since then, research has been abundant, and in the fall of 2024, teams from NASA Glenn traveled to Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, United Kingdom, to test NASA’s innovative SMA spring tires. Testing took place at the Airbus Mars Yard — an enclosed facility created to simulate the harsh conditions of Martian terrain.
“We went out there with the team, we brought our motion tracking system and did different tests uphill and back downhill,” Creager said. “We conducted a lot of cross slope tests over rocks and sand where the focus was on understanding stability because this was something we had never tested before.”
During the tests, researchers monitored rovers as the wheels went over rocks, paying close attention to how much the crowns of the tires shifted, any damage, and downhill sliding. The team expected sliding and shifting, but it was very minimal, and testing met all expectations. Researchers also gathered insights about the tires’ stability, maneuverability, and rock traversal capabilities.
As NASA continues to advance systems for deep space exploration, the agency’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility program enlisted Padula to research additional ways to improve the properties of SMAs for future rover tires and other potential uses, including lunar environments.
“My goal is to extend the operating temperature capability of SMAs for applications like tires, and to look at applying these materials for habitat protection,” Padula said. “We need new materials for extreme environments that can provide energy absorption for micrometeorite strikes that happen on the Moon to enable things like habitat structures for large numbers of astronauts and scientists to do work on the Moon and Mars.”
Researchers say shape memory alloy spring tires are just the beginning.
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA Solar Observatory Sees Coronal Loops Flicker Before Big Flares
For decades, scientists have tried in vain to accurately predict solar flares — intense bursts of light on the Sun that can send a flurry of charged particles into the solar system. Now, using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, one team has identified flickering loops in the solar atmosphere, or corona, that seem to signal when the Sun is about to unleash a large flare.
These warning signs could help NASA and other stakeholders protect astronauts as well as technology both in space and on the ground from hazardous space weather.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of coronal loops above an active region on the Sun in mid-January 2012. The image was taken in the 171 angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory Led by heliophysicist Emily Mason of Predictive Sciences Inc. in San Diego, California, the team studied arch-like structures called coronal loops along the edge of the Sun. Coronal loops rise from magnetically driven active regions on the Sun, where solar flares also originate.
The team looked at coronal loops near 50 strong solar flares, analyzing how their brightness in extreme ultraviolet light varied in the hours before a flare compared to loops above non-flaring regions. Like flashing warning lights, the loops above flaring regions varied much more than those above non-flaring regions.
“We found that some of the extreme ultraviolet light above active regions flickers erratically for a few hours before a solar flare,” Mason explained. “The results are really important for understanding flares and may improve our ability to predict dangerous space weather.”
Published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in December 2024 and presented on Jan. 15, 2025, at a press conference during the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the results also hint that the flickering reaches a peak earlier for stronger flares. However, the team says more observations are needed to confirm this link.
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The four panels in this movie show brightness changes in coronal loops in four different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light (131, 171, 193, and 304 angstroms) before a solar flare in December 2011. The images were taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed to reveal flickering in the coronal loops. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory/JHelioviewer/E. Mason Other researchers have tried to predict solar flares by examining magnetic fields on the Sun, or by looking for consistent trends in other coronal loop features. However, Mason and her colleagues believe that measuring the brightness variations in coronal loops could provide more precise warnings than those methods — signaling oncoming flares 2 to 6 hours ahead of time with 60 to 80 percent accuracy.
“A lot of the predictive schemes that have been developed are still predicting the likelihood of flares in a given time period and not necessarily exact timing,” said team member Seth Garland of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Each solar flare is like a snowflake — every single flare is unique.
Kara kniezewski
Air Force Institute of Technology
“The Sun’s corona is a dynamic environment, and each solar flare is like a snowflake — every single flare is unique,” said team member Kara Kniezewski, a graduate student at the Air Force Institute of Technology and lead author of the paper. “We find that searching for periods of ‘chaotic’ behavior in the coronal loop emission, rather than specific trends, provide a much more consistent metric and may also correlate with how strong a flare will be.”
The scientists hope their findings about coronal loops can eventually be used to help keep astronauts, spacecraft, electrical grids, and other assets safe from the harmful radiation that accompanies solar flares. For example, an automated system could look for brightness changes in coronal loops in real-time images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and issue alerts.
“Previous work by other researchers reports some interesting prediction metrics,” said co-author Vadim Uritsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Catholic University of Washington in D.C. “We could build on this and come up with a well-tested and, ideally, simpler indicator ready for the leap from research to operations.”
By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jan 15, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA/Joel Kowsky An adult Alamosaurus sports eclipse glasses outside of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, on April 6, 2024. Two days later, the total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of Central America and Europe.
The NASA Headquarters photo team chose this image as one of the best from 2024. See more of the top 100 from last year on Flickr.
Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
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By NASA
NASA’s SPHEREx observatory will use a technique called spectroscopy across the entire sky, capturing the universe in more than 100 colors.Credit: BAE Systems Media accreditation is open for the launch of two NASA missions that will explore the mysteries of our universe and Sun.
The agency is targeting late February to launch its SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory, a space telescope that will create a 3D map of the entire sky to help scientists investigate the origins of our universe. NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study origins of the Sun’s outflow of material, or the solar wind, also will ride to space with the telescope.
NASA and SpaceX will launch the missions aboard the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Accredited media will have the opportunity to participate in a series of prelaunch briefings and interviews with key mission personnel, including a science briefing the week of launch. NASA will communicate additional details regarding the media event schedule as the launch date approaches.
Media interested in covering the launch must apply for media accreditation. The application deadline for U.S. citizens is 11:59 p.m. EST, Thursday, Feb. 6, while international media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 11:59 p.m., Monday, Jan. 20.
NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. For questions about accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other mission questions, please contact the newsroom at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 321-867-2468.
Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425, o Messod Bendayan: 256-930-1371.
Updates about spacecraft launch preparations are available on the agency’s SPHEREx blog and PUNCH blog.
The SPHEREx mission will observe hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in infrared light, a range of wavelengths not visible to the human eye. With this map, SPHEREx will enable scientists to study inflation, or the rapid expansion of the universe a fraction of a second after the big bang. The observatory also will measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far, including light from hidden galaxies that individually haven’t been observed, and look for reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and other key ingredients for life in our home galaxy.
Launching as a rideshare with SPHEREx, the agency’s PUNCH mission is made up of four suitcase-sized satellites that will spread out around Earth’s day-night line to observe the Sun and space with a combined field of view. Working together, the four satellites will map out the region where the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, transitions to the solar wind, or the constant outflow of material from the Sun.
The SPHEREx observatory is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the Astrophysics Division within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission principal investigator is based jointly at NASA JPL and Caltech. Formerly Ball Aerospace, BAE Systems built the telescope, supplied the spacecraft bus, and performed observatory integration. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The SPHEREx data set will be publicly available.
The agency’s PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions.
For more details about the SPHEREx mission and updates on launch preparations, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex
-end-
Alise Fisher (SPHEREx)
Headquarters, Washington
202-617-4977
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier (PUNCH)
Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
Laura Aguiar
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-593-6245
laura.aguiar@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 13, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Jet Propulsion Laboratory Kennedy Space Center Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Artist concept highlighting the novel approach proposed by the 2025 NIAC awarded selection of the Thermo-Photo-Catalysis of Water for Crewed Mars Transit Spacecraft Oxygen Supply concept.NASA/Saurabh Vilekar Saurabh Vilekar
Precision Combustion
Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) proposes to develop a uniquely compact, lightweight, low-power, and durable Microlith® Thermo-Photo-Catalytic (TPC) Reactor for crewed Mars transit spacecraft O2 supply. As crewed space exploration mission destinations move from low Earth orbit to sustained lunar surface habitation toward Mars exploration, the need becomes more intense to supplant heritage physico-chemical unit operations employed for crewed spacecraft cabin CO2 removal, CO2 reduction, and O2 supply. The primary approach to date has been toward incremental improvement of the heritage, energy intensive process technologies used aboard the International Space Station (ISS), particularly for water electrolysis-based O2 generation. A major breakthrough is necessary to depose these energy intensive process technologies either partly or completely. This is achievable by considering the recent advances in photocatalysis. Applications are emerging for converting CO2 to useful commodity products and generating H2 from atmospheric water vapor. Considering these developments, a low power thermo-photo-catalytic process to replace the heritage high-power water electrolysis process is proposed for application to a Mars transit vehicle life support system (LSS) functional architecture. A key component in realizing this breakthrough is utilizing a catalyst substrate such as Microlith that affords high surface area and promotes mass transport to the catalyst surface. The proposed TPC oxygenator is expected to operate passively to continually renew the O2 content of the cabin atmosphere. The targeted mission for the proposed TPC oxygenator technology deployment is a 2039 Long Stay, Earth-Mars-Earth mission opportunity. This mission as defined by the Moon to Mars (M2M) 2024 review consists of 337.9 days outbound, 348.5 days in Mars vicinity, and 295.8 days return for a total 982.2-day mission. The proposed Microlith oxygenator technology, if successful, is envisioned to replace the OGA technology in the LSS process architecture with significant weight and power savings. In Phase I, we will demonstrate technical feasibility of Microlith TPC for O2 generation, interface requirements, and integration trade space and a clear path towards a prototype demonstration in Phase II will also be described in the final report.
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Last Updated Jan 10, 2025 EditorLoura Hall Related Terms
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