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Discovery Alert: Watch the Synchronized Dance of a 6-Planet System
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Mechanical Engineer Jeff Pollack finalizes his design for the integration of the laser communications terminal into the PC-12 research aircraft.Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian NASA invites media to attend a real-time laser communications experiment at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Researchers are testing a laser communications networking system that could enable the public to watch the first woman and first person of color walk on the Moon in HD during the Artemis missions.
The media availability begins at 11 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 30 (weather permitting) at the NASA Glenn aircraft hangar. Media will have the opportunity to see NASA’s Pilatus PC-12 aircraft take off and to film researchers on the ground as they communicate with the airborne team.
During these tests, researchers flying over Lake Erie will test communications between NASA Glenn and the aircraft using High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking developed by Glenn. The data is transferred over laser communications links at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second — faster than most home internet speeds.
Earlier this summer, the research team streamed 4K video to the International Space Station from an aircraft for the first time in history.
Media interested in attending should contact Jan Wittry at jan.m.wittry-1@nasa.gov by 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, July 29.
These experiments are part of NASA’s goal to stream very high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space, enabling future human missions beyond Earth orbit. In December, NASA streamed a video featuring a cat named Taters back to Earth from nearly 19 million miles away in deep space using NASA’s laser communications demonstration, marking a historic milestone.
About Laser Communications
Historically, missions have relied on the use of radio waves to exchange information to and from space. Now, NASA is embracing the power of laser communications, also known as optical communications, which uses infrared light rather than radio waves to transmit more data at once.
As NASA explores the lunar surface with advanced science instruments and captures high-definition data, researchers will need faster ways to send large amounts of information to Earth. Laser communications will accelerate the data transfer process and enable 10 to 100 times more data transmitted back to Earth than current radio frequency systems.
For more information on NASA, visit:
http://www.nasa.govnasa.gov
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Jan Wittry
NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-433-5466
jan.m.wittry-1@nasa.gov
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By NASA
5 Min Read Watch Carbon Dioxide Move Through Earth’s Atmosphere
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move orbits Earth from a distance. Credits:
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Earth (ESD) Earth Home Explore Climate Change Science in Action Multimedia Data For Researchers What we’re looking at:
This global map shows concentrations of carbon dioxide as the gas moved through Earth’s atmosphere from January through March 2020, driven by wind patterns and atmospheric circulation.
Because of the model’s high resolution, you can zoom in and see carbon dioxide emissions rising from power plants, fires, and cities, then spreading across continents and oceans.
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move orbits Earth from a distance. Download this visualization from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5196 Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio “As policymakers and as scientists, we’re trying to account for where carbon comes from and how that impacts the planet,” said climate scientist Lesley Ott at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.”
You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.
Lesley Ott
NASA Climate scientist
What are the sources of CO2?
Over China, the United States, and South Asia, the majority of emissions came from power plants, industrial facilities, and cars and trucks, Ott said. Meanwhile, in Africa and South America, emissions largely stemmed from fires, especially those related to land management, controlled agricultural burns and deforestation, along with the burning of oil and coal. Fires release carbon dioxide as they burn.
Why does the map look like it’s pulsing?
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move zooms in on the eastern United States. Download this visualization from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5196 Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio There are two primary reasons for the pulsing: First, fires have a clear day-night cycle. They typically flare up during the day and die down at night.
Second, you’re seeing the absorption and release of carbon dioxide as trees and plants photosynthesize. Earth’s land and oceans absorb about 50% of carbon dioxide; these are natural carbon sinks. Plants take up carbon dioxide during the day as they photosynthesize and then release it at night through respiration. Notice that much of the pulsing occurred in regions with lots of trees, like mid- or high-latitude forests. And because the data were taken during the Southern Hemisphere summer, you see more pulsing in the tropics and South America, where it was the active growing season.
Some of the pulsing also comes from the planetary boundary layer — the lowest 3,000 feet (900 meters) of the atmosphere — which rises as the Earth’s surface is heated by sunlight during the day, then falls as it cools at night.
The data that drives it:
The map was created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using a model called GEOS, short for the Goddard Earth Observing System. GEOS is a high-resolution weather model, powered by supercomputers, that is used to simulate what was happening in the atmosphere — including storm systems, cloud formations, and other natural events. GEOS pulls in billions of data points from ground observations and satellite instruments, such as the Terra satellite’s MODIS and the Suomi-NPP satellite’s VIIRS instruments. Its resolution is more than 100 times greater than a typical weather model.
Ott and other climate scientists wanted to know what GEOS would show if it was used to model the movement and density of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere.
“We had this opportunity to say: can we tag along and see what really high-resolution CO2 looks like?” Ott said. “We had a feeling we were going to see plume structures and things that we’ve never been able to see when we do these coarser resolution simulations.”
Her instinct was right. “Just seeing how persistent the plumes were and the interaction of the plumes with weather systems, it was tremendous.”
Why it matters:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/ Katie Jepson We can’t tackle climate change without confronting the fact that we’re emitting massive amounts of CO2, and it’s warming the atmosphere, Ott said.
Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas and the primary reason for Earth’s rising temperatures. As CO2 builds in the atmosphere, it warms our planet. This is clear in the numbers. 2023 was the hottest year on record, according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Most of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade.
All this carbon dioxide isn’t harmful to air quality. In fact, we need some carbon dioxide to keep the planet warm enough for life to exist. But when too much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere, the Earth warms too much and too fast. That’s what has been happening for at least the past half century. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from approximately 278 parts per million in 1750, the beginning of the industrial era, to 427 parts per million in May 2024.
Read More: Emissions from Fossil Fuels Continue to Rise
Human activities have “unequivocally caused warming,” according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This warming is leading to all sorts of changes to our climate, including more intense storms, wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels.
Inside the SVS studio:
Carbon dioxide exists everywhere in the atmosphere, and the challenge for AJ Christensen, a senior visualization designer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was to show the differences in density of this invisible gas.
“We didn’t want people to get the impression that there was no carbon dioxide in these sparser regions,” Christensen said. “But we also wanted to really highlight the dense regions because that’s the interesting feature of the data. We were trying to show that there’s a lot of density over New York and Beijing.”
Data visualizations help people understand how Earth’s systems work, and they can help scientists find patterns in massive datasets, Ott said.
“What’s happening is you’re stitching together this very complex array of models to make use of the different satellite data, and that’s helping us fill in this broad puzzle of all the processes that control carbon dioxide,” Ott said. “The hope is that if we understand greenhouse gases really well today, we’ll be able to build models that better predict them over the next decades or even centuries.”
For more information and data on greenhouse gases, visit the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center.
About the Author
Jenny Marder
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Last Updated Jul 23, 2024 Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Official NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 portraits with Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, Stephanie Wilson and Aleksandr Gorbunov. Credit: NASA Media accreditation now is open for the launch of NASA’s ninth rotational mission of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station for a science expedition. This mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission is targeted for no earlier than mid-August from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, pending completion of the company’s ongoing Falcon 9 investigation. Crew safety and mission assurance are top priorities for NASA and its partners.
The launch will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, commander; Nick Hague, pilot; and Stephanie Wilson, mission specialist; along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, mission specialist. This is the first spaceflight for Cardman and Gorbunov, the second mission to the orbiting laboratory for Hague, and fourth spaceflight for Wilson, who has spent 42 days in space aboard three space shuttle Discovery missions – STS-120, STS-121, and STS-131.
U.S. media, international media without U.S. citizenship, and U.S. citizens representing international media organizations must apply by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, July 31. All accreditation requests must be submitted online at:
https://media.ksc.nasa.gov
NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. For questions about accreditation or special logistical requests, email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. Requests for space for satellite trucks, tents, or electrical connections are due by Thursday, Aug. 1.
For other questions, please contact NASA Kennedy’s newsroom 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.
For launch coverage and more information about the mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
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Joshua Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Steve Siceloff / Danielle Sempsrott / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / danielle.c.sempsrott@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov
Leah Cheshier
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Discovery Alert: With Six New Worlds, 5,500 Discovery Milestone Passed!
NASA’s Exoplanet Archive confirmed four new worlds, bringing the total past 5,500. On Aug. 24, 2023, more than three decades after the first confirmation of planets beyond our own solar system, scientists announced the discovery of six new exoplanets, stretching that number to 5,502. From zero exoplanet confirmations to over 5,500 in just a few decades, this new milestone marks another major step in the journey to understand the worlds beyond our solar system.
The Discovery
With the discovery of six new exoplanets, scientists have tipped the scales and surpassed 5,500 exoplanets found (there are now 5,502 known exoplanets, to be exact).
Just about 31 years ago, in 1992, the first exoplanets were confirmed when scientists detected twin planets Poltergeist and Phobetor orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. In March 2022, just last year, scientists celebrated passing 5,000 exoplanets discovered.
Key Facts
Scientists have discovered six new exoplanets — HD 36384 b, TOI-198 b, TOI-2095 b, TOI-2095 c, TOI-4860 b, and MWC 758 c — this has pushed the total number of confirmed exoplanets discovered to 5,502.
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HD 36384 b is a super-Jupiter that orbits an enormous M giant star.
This planet was discovered using the radial velocity method, which measures the “wobble” of far-off stars that is caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. Orbits a star so large that it clocks in at nearly 40 times the size of our Sun. TOI-198 b is a potentially rocky planet that orbits on the innermost edge of the habitable zone around its star, an M dwarf.
This planet was discovered using the transit method, which detects exoplanets as they cross the face of their stars in their orbit, causing the star to temporarily dim. TOI-2095 b and TOI-2095 c are both large, hot super-Earths that orbit in the same system around a shared star, an M dwarf.
Planets were both discovered using the transit method. Are close enough to their star that they are likely more similar to Venus than Earth. TOI-4860 b is a Jupiter-sized gas giant, or a “hot Jupiter,” that orbits an M dwarf star.
This planet was discovered using the transit method. Completes an orbit every 1.52 days, meaning it is very close to its star. While it is extremely rare for giant planets like this to orbit so closely to Sun-like stars, it is even rarer for them to orbit M-dwarf stars as is the case here. MWC 758 c is a giant protoplanet that orbits a very young star. This star still has its protoplanetary disk, which is a rotating disc of gas and dust that can surround a young star.
This planet was discovered using direct imaging. Was found carving spiral arms into its star’s protoplanetary disk. Is one of the first exoplanets discovered in a system where the star has a protoplanetary disk. The field of exoplanet science has exploded since the first exoplanet confirmation in 1992, and with evolving technology, the future for this field looks brighter than ever.
In March 2022, NASA passed 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. Tis data sonification allows us to hear the pace of the discovery of those worlds. In this animation, exoplanets are represented by musical notes played across decades of discovery. Circles show location and size of orbit, while their color indicates the detection method. Lower notes mean longer orbits, higher notes mean shorter orbits. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Russo, A. Santaguida (SYSTEM Sounds) Watch this video in 3D There are a number of both space and ground-based instruments and observatories that scientists have used to detect and study exoplanets.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched in 2018 and has identified thousands of exoplanet candidates and confirmed over 320 planets.
NASA’s flagship space telescopes Spitzer, Hubble, and most recently the James Webb Space Telescope have also been used to discover and study exoplanets.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch in May 2027. Roman will be carrying a technology demonstration called the Roman Coronagraph Instrument. This coronagraph will work by using a series of complex masks and mirrors to distort the light coming from far-away stars. By distorting this starlight, the instrument will reveal and directly-image hidden exoplanets.
With the success of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, NASA could push the envelope even further with is a concept for the mission the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would search for “signatures of life on planets outside of our solar system,” according to the 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The Discoverers
These six exoplanets were discovered by different teams as part of five separate studies:
TOI-4860 b TOI-2095 b & c HD 36384 b TOI-198 b MWC 758 c Share
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Last Updated Jul 16, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Artemis missions aim to establish a sustained lunar presence on and around the Moon. Communications and navigation technologies will be critical to enabling the safety, science, and operations of our astronauts and missions.NASA Solicitation Number: NNH16ZCQ001K-1_Appendix-Q-LUTNOMS
July 8, 2024 – Solicitation Released
Solicitation Overview
NASA’s long-term vision to provide for a resilient space and ground communications and navigation infrastructure in which space mission users can seamlessly “roam” between an array of space-based and ground-based networks has been bolstered by innovative studies delivered by industry through the Next Space Technologies for Exploration (NextSTEP) – 2 Omnibus Broad Agency Announcement vehicle. Initially, NASA seeks to create an interoperable architecture composed of a mixture of existing NASA assets and commercial networks and services. In the long-term, this will allow for a smooth transition to fully commercialized communications services for near-Earth users. The overarching goal is to create a reliable, robust, and cost-effective set of commercial services in which NASA is one of many customers.
NASA’s Commercialization, Innovation, and Synergies (CIS) Office has released a solicitation notice under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (Next STEP-2) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to seek industry insights, innovative guidance, and demonstrations in the following two (2) Study Areas:
Lunar User Terminals Network Orchestration and Management System (NOMS) To support lunar surface operations, NASA is seeking state-of-the-art industry studies, system development, and demonstrations for a dual-purpose navigation and communication lunar surface user terminal. The terminal must meet technical requirements provided by the government to support lunar surface exploration plans and ensure interoperability with developed LunaNet and Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation System (LCRNS) standards. The requirements will be split into separate LunaNet Augmented Forward Signal (AFS) navigation receiver and communications transceiver capabilities. However, the development of a combined communications and position, navigation, and timing (CPNT) system capable of meeting the full suite of requirements is desired.
Additionally, NASA is seeking innovative industry studies and demonstrations on advanced Network Orchestration and Management Systems (NOMS) that effectively address NASA technical requirements aimed at controlling and interfacing with a globally distributed network of Satellite Ground Systems currently supporting the Near Space Network (NSN).
The resulting studies will ensure advancement of NASA’s development of space communication and exploration technologies, capabilities, and concepts.
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