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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Swept Wing Flow Test model, known as SWiFT, with pressure sensitive paint applied, sports a pink glow under ultraviolet lights while tested during 2023 in a NASA wind tunnel at Langley Research Center in Virginia.NASA / Dave Bowman Many of us grew up using paint-by-number sets to create beautiful color pictures.
For years now, NASA engineers studying aircraft and rocket designs in wind tunnels have flipped that childhood pastime, using computers to generate images from “numbers-by-paint” – pressure sensitive paint (PSP), that is.
Now, advances in the use of high-speed cameras, supercomputers, and even more sensitive PSP have made this numbers-by-paint process 10,000 times faster while creating engineering visuals with 1,000 times higher resolution.
So, what’s the big difference exactly between the “old” capability in use at NASA for more than a decade and the “new?”
“The key is found by adding a single word in front of PSP, namely ‘unsteady’ pressure sensitive paint, or uPSP,” said E. Lara Lash, an aerospace engineer from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
With PSP, NASA researchers study the large-scale effects of relatively smooth air flowing over the wings and body of aircraft. Now with uPSP, they are able to see in finer detail what happens when more turbulent air is present – faster and better than ever before.
In some cases with the new capability, researchers can get their hands on the wind tunnel data they’re looking for within 20 minutes. That’s quick enough to allow engineers to adjust their testing in real time.
Usually, researchers record wind tunnel data and then take it back to their labs to decipher days or weeks later. If they find they need more data, it can take additional weeks or even months to wait in line for another turn in the wind tunnel.
“The result of these improvements provides a data product that is immediately useful to aerodynamic engineers, structural engineers, or engineers from other disciplines,” Lash said.
Robert Pearce, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics, who recently saw a demonstration of uPSP-generated data displayed at Ames, hailed the new tool as a national asset that will be available to researchers all over the country.
“It’s a unique NASA innovation that isn’t offered anywhere else,” Pearce said. “It will help us maintain NASA’s world leadership in wind tunnel capabilities.”
A technician sprays unsteady pressure sensitive paint onto the surface of a small model of the Space Launch System in preparation for testing in a NASA wind tunnel.NASA / Dave Bowman How it Works
With both PSP and uPSP, a unique paint is applied to scale models of aircraft or rockets, which are mounted in wind tunnels equipped with specific types of lights and cameras.
When illuminated during tests, the paint’s color brightness changes depending on the levels of pressure the model experiences as currents of air rush by. Darker shades mean higher pressure; lighter shades mean lower pressure.
Cameras capture the brightness intensity and a supercomputer turns that information into a set of numbers representing pressure values, which are made available to engineers to study and glean what truths they can about the vehicle design’s structural integrity.
“Aerodynamic forces can vibrate different parts of the vehicle to different degrees,” Lash said. “Vibrations could damage what the vehicle is carrying or can even lead to the vehicle tearing itself apart. The data we get through this process can help us prevent that.”
Traditionally, pressure readings are taken using sensors connected to little plastic tubes strung through a model’s interior and poking up through small holes in key places, such as along the surface of a wing or the fuselage.
Each point provides a single pressure reading. Engineers must use mathematical models to estimate the pressure values between the individual sensors.
With PSP, there is no need to estimate the numbers. Because the paint covers the entire model, its brightness as seen by the cameras reveals the pressure values over the whole surface.
A four-percent scale model of the Space Launch System rocket is tested in 2017 using unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint inside the 11-foot by 11-foot Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.NASA / Dominic Hart Making it Better
The introduction, testing, and availability of uPSP is the result of a successful five-year-long effort, begun in 2019, in which researchers challenged themselves to significantly improve the PSP’s capability with its associated cameras and computers.
The NASA team’s desire was to develop and demonstrate a better process of acquiring, processing, and visualizing data using a properly equipped wind tunnel and supercomputer, then make the tool available at NASA wind tunnels across the country.
The focus during a capability challenge was on NASA’s Unitary Plan Facility’s 11-foot transonic wind tunnel, which the team connected to the nearby NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility, both located at Ames.
Inside the wind tunnel, a scale model of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket served as the primary test subject during the challenge period.
Now that the agency has completed its Artemis I uncrewed lunar flight test mission, researchers can match the flight-recorded data with the wind tunnel data to see how well reality and predictions compare.
With the capability challenge officially completed at the end of 2024, the uPSP team is planning to deploy it to other wind tunnels and engage with potential users with interests in aeronautics or spaceflight.
“This is a NASA capability that we have, not only for use within the agency, but one that we can offer industry, academia, and other government agencies to come in and do research using these new tools,” Lash said.
NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities portfolio office, an organization managed under the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, oversaw the development of the uPSP capability.
Watch this uPSP Video
About the Author
Jim Banke
Managing Editor/Senior WriterJim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on the NASA website.
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By NASA
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a bobcat wades through one of the waterways near Launch Pad 39B.NASA/Tony Gray A NASA photographer captured this June 14, 2013, photo of a bobcat wading through a waterway near Launch Pad 38B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Bobcats are just one of over 30 mammal species that call the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge home, along with hundreds of bird, fish, amphibian, and reptile species. The refuge, which shares space with NASA Kennedy, is also home to over 1,000 known plant species.
See more photos of mammals around NASA.
Image credit: NASA/Tony Gray
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By European Space Agency
Image: A thick plume of sand and dust from the Sahara Desert is seen in these satellite images blowing from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean. View the full article
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!
Perseverance self portrait, acquired by the WATSON camera on Sol 1500 on Mars. The Bell Island borehole where the rover acquired a sample is visible in the workspace in front of the rover. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
To celebrate her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the surrounding landscape. But when team members reviewed the photo, they were surprised to find that Perseverance had been photobombed!
As the rover sat at the “Pine Pond” workspace, located on the outer rim of Jezero crater, which it has been exploring for the past several months, the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) camera on the end of its arm was used to acquire a 59-image mosaic of the rover. This is the fifth “selfie” that Perseverance has acquired since landing on Mars in 2021. The rover’s robotic arm is not visible in the self portrait because — just like a selfie you would take with your own cellphone camera — rover operators make sure not to have the arm get “in the way” of the body of the rover. This is even easier to do on Mars because Perseverance needs to take 59 different images at slightly different arm positions to build up the selfie, and the elbow of the robotic arm is kept out of the way while the images are acquired. You can find more details about the Sol 1500 selfie here, and this YouTube video shows how the rover arm moves when these activities take place.
While snapping away, Perseverance was photobombed by a dust devil in the distance! These are relatively common phenomena both on Mars and in Earth’s desert regions, and form from rising and rotating columns of warm air, which gives the appearance of a dust tornado. Just like many other weather patterns, there is a peak “season” for dust-devil activity, and Jezero crater is in the peak of that season now (late northern spring). The one seen in the selfie is fairly large, about 100 meters, or 328 feet, across. While Perseverance regularly monitors the horizon for dust-devil activity with Navcam movies, this is the first time the WATSON camera on the end of the robotic arm has ever captured an image of a dust devil!
The dark hole in front of the rover, surrounded by gray rock powder created during the drilling process, shows the location of Perseverance’s 26th sample. Nicknamed “Bell Island” after an island near Newfoundland, Canada, this rock sample contains small spherules, thought to have formed by volcanic eruptions or impacts early in Martian history. Later, this ancient rock was uplifted during the impact that formed Jezero crater. Now that the rover has successfully acquired the spherule sample the science team was searching for, Perseverance is leaving the area to explore new rock exposures. Last week, the rover arrived at an exposure of light-toned bedrock called “Copper Cove,” and the science team was interested to determine if this unit underlies or overlies the rock sequence explored earlier. After performing an abrasion to get a closer look at the chemistry and textures, the rover drove south to scout out more sites along the outer edge of the Jezero crater rim.
Learn more, and see more detailed views of Perseverance’s ‘Selfie With Dust Devil’
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Last Updated May 29, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming its smaller friend in this short video made of images taken at the rim of Jezero Crater by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Jan. 25, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI The six-wheeled explorer recently captured several Red Planet mini-twisters spinning on the rim of Jezero Crater.
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming a smaller one in this short video made of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. These swirling, sometimes towering columns of air and dust are common on Mars. The smaller dust devil’s demise was captured during an imaging experiment conducted by Perseverance’s science team to better understand the forces at play in the Martian atmosphere.
When the rover snapped these images from about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) away, the larger dust devil was approximately 210 feet (65 meters) wide, while the smaller, trailing dust devil was roughly 16 feet (5 meters) wide. Two other dust devils can also be seen in the background at left and center. Perseverance recorded the scene Jan. 25 as it explored the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater at a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.”
“Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish,” said Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area. If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker.”
While exploring the rim of Jezero Crater on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover captured new images of multiple dust devils in January 2025. These captivating phenomena have been documented for decades by the agency’s Red Planet robotic explorers. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/INTA-CSIC/Space Science Institute/ISAE-Supaero/University of Arizona Science of Whirlwinds
Dust devils are formed by rising and rotating columns of warm air. Air near the planet’s surface becomes heated by contact with the warmer ground and rises through the denser, cooler air above. As other air moves along the surface to take the place of the rising warmer air, it begins to rotate. When the incoming air rises into the column, it picks up speed like a spinning ice skater bringing their arms closer to their body. The air rushing in also picks up dust, and a dust devil is born.
“Dust devils play a significant role in Martian weather patterns,” said Katie Stack Morgan, project scientist for the Perseverance rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Dust devil study is important because these phenomena indicate atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing wind directions and speed, and are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere.”
NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter captured this Martian dust devil casting a shadow on Aug. 1, 1978. During the 15-second interval between the two images, the dust devil moved toward the northeast (toward the upper right) at a rate of about 59 feet (18 meters) per second. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Since landing in 2021, Perseverance has imaged whirlwinds on many occasions, including one on Sept. 27, 2021, where a swarm of dust devils danced across the floor of Jezero Crater and the rover used its SuperCam microphone to record the first sounds of a Martian dust devil.
NASA’s Viking orbiters, in the 1970s, were the first spacecraft to photograph Martian dust devils. Two decades later, the agency’s Pathfinder mission was the first to image one from the surface and even detected a dust devil passing over the lander. Twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity managed to capture their fair share of dusty whirlwinds. Curiosity, which is exploring a location called Mount Sharp in Gale Crater on the opposite side of the Red Planet as Perseverance, sees them as well.
Capturing a dust devil image or video with a spacecraft takes some luck. Scientists can’t predict when they’ll appear, so Perseverance routinely monitors in all directions for them. When scientists see them occur more frequently at a specific time of day or approach from a certain direction, they use that information to focus their monitoring to try to catch additional whirlwinds.
“If you feel bad for the little devil in our latest video, it may give you some solace to know the larger perpetrator most likely met its own end a few minutes later,” said Lemmon. “Dust devils on Mars only last about 10 minutes.”
More About Perseverance
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and as the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio and the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
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DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 03, 2025 Related Terms
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