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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This summer, NASA welcomed interns with professional teaching experience to help make the agency’s data more interactive and accessible in the classroom. Their efforts are an important step in fostering the education and curiosity of the Artemis Generation of students who will shape the future workforce.
Diane Ripollone: Making Activities Accessible for Low-Vision Students
In the center, Diane Ripollone smiles in a blue jacket with the blue, white, and red NASA logo on the left and a SOFIA patch on the right. Behind Diane is the SOFIA aircraft and her arm rests on a railing beside her. Credit: Diane Ripollone A 35-year-veteran educator, Diane Ripollone teaches Earth science, astronomy, and physics to high school students in North Carolina. In her decades of experience, she’s seen firsthand how students with physical challenges can face difficulties in connecting with lessons. She decided to tackle the issue head-on with her internship.
Ripollone supports the My NASA Data Program, which provides educational materials to interact with live data collected by NASA satellites, observatories, and sensors worldwide. As a NASA intern, she has worked to create physical materials with braille for students with- vision limitations.
“It’s a start for teachers,” Ripollone said. “Although every classroom is different, this helps to provide teachers a jumpstart to make engaging lesson plans centered around real NASA data.” Her NASA internship has excited and inspired her students, according to Ripollone. “My students have been amazed! I see their eyes open wide,” she said. “They say, ‘My teacher is working for NASA!'”
Felicia Haseleu: Improving Reading and Writing Skills
North Dakota teacher Felicia Haseleu never imagined she’d be a NASA intern until a colleague forwarded the opportunity to her inbox. A teacher on her 11th year, she has seen how COVID-19 has affected students: “It’s caused a regression in reading and writing ability,” a shared impact that was seen in students nationwide.
A science teacher passionate about reading and writing, Felicia set out to utilize these in the science curriculum. As an intern with My NASA Data, she’s prepared lesson plans that combine using the scientific method with creative writing, allowing students to strengthen their reading and writing skills while immersing themselves in science.
Haseleu anticipates her NASA internship will provide benefits inside and outside the classroom.
“It’s going to be awesome to return to the classroom with all of these materials,” she said. “Being a NASA intern has been a great experience! I’ve felt really supported and you can tell that NASA is all encompassing and supports one another. From the camaraderie to NASA investing in interns, it’s nice to feel valued by NASA.”
Teri Minami: Hands-on Lesson for Neurodivergent and Artistic Students
Teri Minami poses in a white lab coat, lilac gloves, glasses, and “Dexter” name tag. She is on the right of the image with a coworker on the left. Red school lockers line the wall behind them. Credit: Teri Minami “I’ve never been a data-whiz; I’ve always connected with science hands-on or through art,” said NASA intern Teri Minami, a teacher of 10 years in coastal Virginia. She cites her personal experience in science to guide her to develop lessons using NASA data for neurodivergent students or those with a more artistic background.
Through her NASA internship, she aims to create lesson plans which allow students to engage first-hand with science while outdoors, such as looking at water quality data, sea level ice, and CO2 emissions, taking their own measurements, and doing their own research on top of that.
Although many people associate being an intern with being an undergraduate in college, NASA interns come from all ages and backgrounds. In 2024, the agency’s interns ranged in age from 16 to 61 and included high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, doctoral students, and teachers.
Interested in joining NASA as an intern? Apply at intern.nasa.gov.
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By NASA
5 Min Read NASA Returns to Arctic Studying Summer Sea Ice Melt
NASA's Gulfstream III aircraft taxis on the runway at Pituffik Space Base as it begins one of its daily science flights for the ARCSIX mission. Credits: NASA/Gary Banziger What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and a new NASA mission is helping improve data modeling and increasing our understanding of Earth’s rapidly changing climate. Changing ice, ocean, and atmospheric conditions in the northernmost part of Earth have a large impact on the entire planet. That’s because the Arctic region acts like Earth’s air conditioner.
Much of the Sun’s energy is transported from tropical regions of our planet by winds and weather systems into the Arctic where it is then lost to space. This process helps cool the planet.
The NASA-sponsored Arctic Radiation Cloud Aerosol Surface Interaction Experiment (ARCSIX) mission is flying three aircraft over the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland to study these processes. The aircraft are equipped with instruments to gather observations of surface sea ice, clouds, and aerosol particles, which affect the Arctic energy budget and cloud properties. The energy budget is the balance between the energy that Earth receives from the Sun and the energy the Earth loses to outer space.
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This highlight video gives viewers a front row seat to a typical day on the ARCSIX mission from Pituffik Space Base as NASA's research scientists, instrument operators, and flight crews fly daily routes observing sea ice and clouds 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland.NASA/Gary Banziger “More sea ice makes that air conditioning effect more efficient. Less sea ice lessens the Arctic’s cooling effect,” says Patrick Taylor, a climate scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “Over the last 40 years, The Arctic has lost a significant amount of sea ice making the Arctic warm faster. As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts, it can cause ripple effects that impact weather conditions thousands of miles away, how fast our seas are rising, and how much flooding we get in our neighborhoods.”
As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts, it can cause ripple effects…thousands of miles away.
Patrick Taylor
NASA Climate Research Scientist
The first series of flights took place in May and June as the seasonal melting of ice started. Flights began again on July 24 during the summer season, when sea ice melting is at its most intense.
“We can’t do this kind of Arctic science without having two campaigns,” said Taylor, the deputy science lead for ARCSIX. “The sea ice surface in the spring was very bright white and snow covered. We saw some breaks in the ice. What we will see in the second campaign is less sea ice and sea ice that is bare, with no snow. It will be covered with all kinds of melt ponds – pooling water on top of the ice – that changes the way the ice interacts with sunlight and potentially changes how the ice interacts with the atmosphere and clouds above.”
Sea ice and the snow on top of the ice insulate the ocean from the atmosphere, reflecting the Sun’s radiation back towards space, and helping to cool the planet. Less sea ice and darker surfaces result in more of the Sun’s radiation being absorbed at the surface or trapped between the surface and the clouds.
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A pilot's view of Arctic sea ice from NASA's P-3 Orion aircraft during NASA's ARCSIX airborne science mission flights in June.NASA/Gary Banziger Understanding this relationship, and the role clouds play in the system, will help scientists improve satellite data and better predict future changes in the Arctic climate.
“This unique team of pilots, engineers, scientists, and aircraft can only be done by leveraging expertise from multiple NASA centers and our partners,” said Linette Boisvert, cryosphere lead for the mission from NASA’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We gathered great data of the snow and ice pre-melt and at the onset of melt. I can’t wait to see the changes at the height of melt as we measure the same areas covered with melt ponds.”
NASA partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder for the ARCSIX mission, and the research team found some surprises in their early data analysis from the spring campaign. One potential discovery is something Taylor is calling a “sea ice sandwich”, when a younger layer of sea ice is caught in between two layers of older sea ice. Scientists also found more drizzle within the clouds than expected. Both observations will need further investigating once the data is fully processed.
A research scientist monitors data measurements in-flight during the spring campaign of the ARCSIX mission.NASA/Gary Banziger “A volcano erupted in Iceland, and we believe the volcanic aerosol plume was indicated by our models four days later,” Taylor said. “Common scientific knowledge tells us volcanic particles, like ash and sulfate, would have already been removed from the atmosphere. More work needs to be done, but our initial results suggest these particles might live in the atmosphere much longer than previously thought.”
Previous studies suggest that aerosol particles in clouds can influence sea ice melt. Data collected during ARCSIX’s spring flights showed the Arctic atmosphere had several aerosol particle layers, including wildfire smoke, pollution, and dust transported from Asia and North America.
“We got everything we hoped for and more in the first campaign,” Taylor added. “The data from this summer will help us better understand how clouds and sea ice behave. We’ll be able to use these results to improve predictive models. In the coming years, scientists will be able to better predict how to mitigate and adapt to the rapid changes in climate we’re seeing in the Arctic.”
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Last Updated Jul 26, 2024 EditorCharles G. HatfieldContactCharles G. Hatfieldcharles.g.hatfield@nasa.govLocationLangley Research Center Related Terms
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4 min read NASA Mission Flies Over Arctic to Study Sea Ice Melt Causes
Article 2 months ago 5 min read Antarctic Sea Ice Near Historic Lows; Arctic Ice Continues Decline
Article 4 months ago 4 min read NASA Ice Scientists Take Flight from Greenland to Study Melting Arctic Ice
Article 2 years ago View the full article
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Fermi Finds New Feature in Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Yet Seen
In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before.
The brightest gamma-ray burst yet recorded gave scientists a new high-energy feature to study. Learn what NASA’s Fermi mission saw, and what this feature may be telling us about the burst’s light-speed jets. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”
A paper about the discovery appears in the July 26 edition of the journal Science.
When matter interacts with light, the energy can be absorbed and reemitted in characteristic ways. These interactions can brighten or dim particular colors (or energies), producing key features visible when the light is spread out, rainbow-like, in a spectrum. These features can reveal a wealth of information, such as the chemical elements involved in the interaction. At higher energies, spectral features can uncover specific particle processes, such as matter and antimatter annihilating to produce gamma rays.
“While some previous studies have reported possible evidence for absorption and emission features in other GRBs, subsequent scrutiny revealed that all of these could just be statistical fluctuations. What we see in the BOAT is different,” said coauthor Om Sharan Salafia at INAF-Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy. “We’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a noise fluctuation are less than one chance in half a billion.”
A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. The star’s core ran out of fuel and collapsed into a black hole. Some of the matter swirling toward the black hole was redirected into dual jets firing in opposite directions. We see a gamma-ray burst when one of these jets happens to point directly at Earth. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos and emit copious amounts of gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. The most common type occurs when the core of a massive star exhausts its fuel, collapses, and forms a rapidly spinning black hole. Matter falling into the black hole powers oppositely directed particle jets that blast through the star’s outer layers at nearly the speed of light. We detect GRBs when one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth.
The BOAT, formally known as GRB 221009A, erupted Oct. 9, 2022, and promptly saturated most of the gamma-ray detectors in orbit, including those on Fermi. This prevented them from measuring the most intense part of the blast. Reconstructed observations, coupled with statistical arguments, suggest the BOAT, if part of the same population as previously detected GRBs, was likely the brightest burst to appear in Earth’s skies in 10,000 years.
The putative emission line appears almost 5 minutes after the burst was detected and well after it had dimmed enough to end saturation effects for Fermi. The line persisted for at least 40 seconds, and the emission reached a peak energy of about 12 MeV (million electron volts). For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from 2 to 3 electron volts.
So what produced this spectral feature? The team thinks the most likely source is the annihilation of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.
“When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV,” said coauthor Gor Oganesyan at Gran Sasso Science Institute and Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy. “Because we’re looking into the jet, where matter is moving at near light speed, this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and pushed toward much higher energies.”
If this interpretation is correct, to produce an emission line peaking at 12 MeV, the annihilating particles had to have been moving toward us at about 99.9% the speed of light.
“After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” noted Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.”
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat following a full-scale ultimate burst pressure test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AlabamaSierra Space An element of a NASA-funded commercial space station, Orbital Reef, under development by Blue Origin and Sierra Space, recently completed a full-scale ultimate burst pressure test as part of the agency’s efforts for new destinations in low Earth orbit.
NASA, Sierra Space, and ILC Dover teams conducting a full-scale ultimate burst pressure test on Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat structure using testing capabilities at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Video Credits: Sierra Space This milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement awarded to Blue Origin in 2021. Orbital Reef includes elements provided by Sierra Space, including the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat structure.
A close-up view of Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat, which is fabricated from high-strength webbings and fabric, after the pressurization to failure experienced during a burst test.Sierra Space Teams conducted the burst test on Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat structure using testing capabilities at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The inflatable habitat is fabricated from high-strength webbings and fabric that form a solid structure once pressurized. The multiple layers of soft goods materials that make up the shell are compactly stowed in a payload fairing and inflated when ready for use, enabling the habitat to launch on a single rocket.
A close-up view of a detached blanking plate from the Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat structure following its full-scale ultimate burst pressure test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The plate is used to test the concept of a habitat window.Sierra Space “This is an exciting test by Sierra Space for Orbital Reef, showing industry’s commitment and capability to develop innovative technologies and solutions for future commercial destinations,” said Angela Hart, manager of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Every successful development milestone by our partners is one more step to achieving our goal of enabling commercial low Earth orbit destinations and expanding the low Earth orbit marketplace.”
Dr. Tom Marshburn, Sierra Space chief medical officer, speaks with members of the Sierra Space team following the burst test.Sierra Space The pressurization to failure during the test demonstrated the habitat’s capabilities and provided the companies with critical data supporting NASA’s inflatable softgoods certification guidelines, which recommend a progression of tests to evaluate these materials in relevant operational environments and understand the failure modes.
Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat following a full-scale ultimate burst pressure test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.Sierra Space Demonstrating the habitat’s ability to meet the recommended factor of safety through full-scale ultimate burst pressure testing is one of the primary structural requirements on a soft goods article, such as Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat, seeking flight certification.
Prior to this recent test, Sierra Space conducted its first full-scale ultimate burst pressure test on the LIFE habitat at Marshall in December 2023. Additionally, Sierra Space previously completed subscale tests, first at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and then at Marshall as part of ongoing development and testing of inflatable habitation architecture.
Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat on the test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center ahead of a burst test. The LIFE habitat will be part of Blue Origin’s commercial destination, Orbital Reef.Sierra Space NASA supports the design and development of multiple commercial space stations, including Orbital Reef, through funded and unfunded agreements. The current design and development phase will be followed by the procurement of services from one or more companies.
NASA’s goal is to achieve a strong economy in low Earth orbit where the agency can purchase services as one of many customers to meet its science and research objectives in microgravity. NASA’s commercial strategy for low Earth orbit will provide the government with reliable and safe services at a lower cost, enabling the agency to focus on Artemis missions to the Moon in preparation for Mars while also continuing to use low Earth orbit as a training and proving ground for those deep space missions.
Learn more about NASA’s commercial space strategy at:
https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space
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