Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
NASA Names Finalists to Help Deal with Dust in Human Lander Challenge
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
3 Min Read NASA Shares Final Contenders for Artemis II Moon Mascot Design Contest
NASA is down to 25 finalists for the Artemis II zero gravity indicator set to fly with the mission’s crew around the Moon and back next year.
Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen will soon select one of the finalist designs to join them inside the Orion spacecraft as their Moon mascot.
“The Artemis II zero gravity indicator will be special for the crew,” said Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander. “In a spacecraft filled with complex hardware to keep the crew alive in deep space, the indicator is a friendly and useful way to highlight the human element that is so critical to our exploration of the universe. Our crew is excited about these designs from across the world and we are looking forward to bringing the winner along for the ride.”
A zero gravity indicator is a small plush item that typically rides with a crew to visually indicate when they are in space. For the first eight minutes after liftoff, the crew and their indicator nearby will still be pushed into their seats by gravity, and the force of the climb into space. When the main engines of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s core stage cut off, gravity’s restraints are lifted, but the crew will still be strapped safely into their seats – their zero gravity indicator’s ability to float will provide proof that they’ve made it into space.
Artemis II will mark the first time that the public has had a hand in creating the crew’s mascot.
These designs – ideas spanning from Moon-related twists on Earthly creatures to creative visions of exploration and discovery – were selected from more than 2,600 submissions from over 50 countries, including from K-12 students. The finalists represent 10 countries including the United States, Canada, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Peru, Singapore, and Wales.
View the finalist designs:
Lucas Ye | Mountain View, California“Rise” Kenan Ziyan | Canyon, Texas“Zappy Zebra” Royal School, SKIES Space Club | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada“Luna the Space Polar Bear” Garden County Schools | Oshkosh, Nebraska“Team GarCo” Richellea Quinn Wijaya | Singapore“Parsec – The Bird That Flew to the Moon” Anzhelika Iudakova | Finland“Big Steps of Little Octopus” Congressional School | Falls Church, Virginia“Astra-Jelly” Congressional School | Falls Church, Virginia“Harper, Chloe, and Mateo’s ZGI” Alexa Pacholyk | Madison, Connecticut“Artemis” Leila Fleury | Rancho Palos Verdes, California“Beeatrice” Oakville Trafalgar School | Oakville, Ontario, Canada“Lepus the Moon Rabbit” Avon High School | Avon, Connecticut“Sal the Salmon” Daniela Colina | Lima, Peru“Corey the Explorer” Caroline Goyer-Desrosiers | St. Eustache, Quebec, Canada“Flying Squirrel Ready for Its Take Off to Space!” Giulia Bona | Berlin, Germany“Art & the Giant” Tabitha Ramsey | Frederick, Maryland“Lunar Crust-acean” Gabriela Hadas | Plano, Texas“Celestial Griffin” Savon Blanchard | Pearland, Texas“Soluna Flier” Ayako Moriyama | Kyoto, Japan“MORU: A Cloud Aglow with Moonlight and Hope” Johanna Beck | McPherson, Kansas“Creation Mythos” Guillaume Truong | Toulouse, France“Space Mola-mola (aka Moon Fish) Plushie” Arianna Robins | Rockledge, Florida“Terra the Titanosaurus” Sandy Moya | Madrid, Colombia“MISI: Guardian of the Journey” Bekah Crowmer | Mooresville, Indiana“Mona the Moon Moth” Courtney John | Llanelli, Wales“Past, Present, Future” In March, NASA announced it was seeking design ideas from global creators for a zero gravity indicator to fly aboard Artemis II, the first crewed mission under NASA’s Artemis campaign. Creators were asked to submit ideas representing the significance of Artemis, the mission, or exploration and discovery, and to meet specific size and materials requirements. Crowdsourcing company Freelancer facilitated the contest on NASA’s behalf though the NASA Tournament Lab, managed by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Once the crew has selected a final design, NASA’s Thermal Blanket Lab will fabricate it for flight. The indicator will be tethered inside Orion before launch.
The approximately 10-day mission is another step toward missions on the lunar surface and helping the agency prepare for future human missions to Mars.
Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
View the full article
-
By NASA
NASA/Christopher LC Clark The parachute of the Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy, or EPIC, test experiment deploys following an air launch from an Alta X drone on June 4, 2025, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASA researchers are developing technology to make supersonic parachutes safer and more reliable for delivering instruments and payloads to Mars.
The flight tests were a first step toward filling gaps in computer models to improve supersonic parachutes. This work could also open the door to future partnerships, including with the aerospace and auto racing industries.
Image Credit: NASA/Christopher LC Clark
View the full article
-
By NASA
A scanning electron microscope image of a micrometeorite impact crater in a particle of asteroid Bennu material. Credits: NASA/Zia Rahman 5 min read
NASA’s Bennu Samples Reveal Complex Origins, Dramatic Transformation
Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023, is a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.
These insights come from a trio of newly published papers based on the analysis of Bennu samples by scientists at NASA and other institutions.
Bennu is made of fragments from a larger parent asteroid destroyed by a collision in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. One of the papers, co-led by Jessica Barnes at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that Bennu’s ancestor was made up of material that had diverse origins—near the Sun, far from the Sun, and even beyond our solar system.
The analyses show that some of the materials in the parent asteroid, despite very low odds, escaped various chemical processes driven by heat and water and even survived the extremely energetic collision that broke it apart and formed Bennu.
“We traced the origins of these initial materials accumulated by Bennu’s ancestor,” said Nguyen. “We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun. All of these constituents were transported great distances to the region that Bennu’s parent asteroid formed.”
The chemical and atomic similarities of samples from Bennu, the asteroid Ryugu (sampled by JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission) and the most chemically primitive meteorites collected on Earth suggest their parent asteroids may have formed in a similar, distant region of the early solar system. Yet the differences from Ryugu and meteorites that were seen in the Bennu samples may indicate that this region changed over time or did not mix as well as some scientists have thought.
We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun.
Ann Nguyen
Planetary Scientist
Though some original constituents survived, most of Bennu’s materials were transformed by reactions with water, as reported in the paper co-led by Tom Zega of the University of Arizona and Tim McCoy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and published in Nature Geoscience. In fact, minerals in the parent asteroid likely formed, dissolved, and reformed over time.
“Bennu’s parent asteroid accumulated ice and dust. Eventually that ice melted, and the resulting liquid reacted with the dust to form what we see today, a sample that is 80% minerals that contain water,” said Zega. “We think the parent asteroid accumulated a lot of icy material from the outer solar system, and then all it needed was a little bit of heat to melt the ice and cause liquids to react with solids.”
Bennu’s transformation did not end there. The third paper, co-led by Lindsay Keller at NASA Johnson and Michelle Thompson of Purdue University, also published in Nature Geoscience, found microscopic craters and tiny splashes of once-molten rock – known as impact melts – on the sample surfaces, signs that the asteroid was bombarded by micrometeorites. These impacts, together with the effects of solar wind, are known as space weathering and occurred because Bennu has no atmosphere to protect it.
“The surface weathering at Bennu is happening a lot faster than conventional wisdom would have it, and the impact melt mechanism appears to dominate, contrary to what we originally thought,” said Keller. “Space weathering is an important process that affects all asteroids, and with returned samples, we can tease out the properties controlling it and use that data and extrapolate it to explain the surface and evolution of asteroid bodies that we haven’t visited.”
Ann Nguyen, co-lead author of a new paper that gives insights into the diverse origin of asteroid Bennu’s “parent” asteroid works alongside the NanoSIMS 50L (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry) ion microprobe in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/James Blair As the leftover materials from planetary formation 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids provide a record of the solar system’s history. But as Zega noted, we’re seeing that some of these remnants differ from what has been found in meteorites on Earth, because certain types of asteroids burn up in the atmosphere and never make it to the ground. That, the researchers point out, is why collecting actual samples is so important.
“The samples are really crucial for this work,” Barnes said. “We could only get the answers we got because of the samples. It’s super exciting that we’re finally able to see these things about an asteroid that we’ve been dreaming of going to for so long.”
The next samples NASA expects to help unravel our solar system’s story will be Moon rocks returned by the Artemis III astronauts.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from the Canadian Space Agency and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Melissa Gaskill
Johnson Space Center
For more information on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex/
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Victoria Segovia
Johnson Space Center
(281) 483-5111
victoria.segovia@nasa.gov
View the full article
-
By NASA
5 min read
Close-Up Views of NASA’s DART Impact to Inform Planetary Defense
Photos taken by the Italian LICIACube, short for the LICIA Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids. These offer the closest, most detailed observations of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impact aftermath to date. The photo on the left was taken roughly 2 minutes and 40 seconds after impact, as the satellite flew past the Didymos system. The photo on the right was taken 20 seconds later, as LICIACube was leaving the scene. The larger body, near the top of each image is Didymos. The smaller body in the lower half of each image is Dimorphos, enveloped by the cloud of rocky debris created by DART’s impact. NASA/ASI/University of Maryland On Sept. 11, 2022, engineers at a flight control center in Turin, Italy, sent a radio signal into deep space. Its destination was NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft flying toward an asteroid more than 5 million miles away.
The message prompted the spacecraft to execute a series of pre-programmed commands that caused a small, shoebox-sized satellite contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), called LICIACube, to detach from DART.
Fifteen days later, when DART’s journey ended in an intentional head-on collision with near-Earth asteroid Dimorphos, LICIACube flew past the asteroid to snap a series of photos, providing researchers with the only on-site observations of the world’s first demonstration of an asteroid deflection.
After analyzing LICIACube’s images, NASA and ASI scientists report on Aug. 21 in the Planetary Science Journal that an estimated 35.3 million pounds (16 million kilograms) of dust and rocks spewed from the asteroid as a result of the crash, refining previous estimates that were based on data from ground and space-based observations.
While the debris shed from the asteroid amounted to less than 0.5% of its total mass, it was still 30,000 times greater than the mass of the spacecraft. The impact of the debris on Dimorphos’ trajectory was dramatic: shortly after the collision, the DART team determined that the flying rubble gave Dimorphos a shove several times stronger than the hit from the spacecraft itself.
“The plume of material released from the asteroid was like a short burst from a rocket engine,” said Ramin Lolachi, a research scientist who led the study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The important takeaway from the DART mission is that a small, lightweight spacecraft can dramatically alter the path of an asteroid of similar size and composition to Dimorphos, which is a “rubble-pile” asteroid — or a loose, porous collection of rocky material bound together weakly by gravity.
“We expect that a lot of near-Earth asteroids have a similar structure to Dimorphos,” said Dave Glenar, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who participated in the study. “So, this extra push from the debris plume is critical to consider when building future spacecraft to deflect asteroids from Earth.”
The tail of material that formed behind Dimorphos was prominent almost 12 days after the DART impact, giving the asteroid a comet-like appearance, as seen in this image captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in October 2022. Hubble’s observations were made from roughly 6.8 million miles away. NASA, ESA, STScI, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale DART’s Star Witness
NASA chose Dimorphos, which poses no threat to Earth, as the mission target due to its relationship with another, larger asteroid named Didymos. Dimorphos orbits Didymos in a binary asteroid system, much like the Moon orbits Earth. Critically, the pair’s position relative to Earth allowed astronomers to measure the duration of the moonlet’s orbit before and after the collision.
Ground and space-based observations revealed that DART shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by 33 minutes. But these long-range observations, made from 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) away, were too distant to support a detailed study of the impact debris. That was LICIACube’s job.
After DART’s impact, LICIACube had just 60 seconds to make its most critical observations. Barreling past the asteroid at 15,000 miles (21,140 kilometers) per hour, the spacecraft took a snapshot of the debris roughly once every three seconds. Its closest image was taken just 53 miles (85.3 km) from Dimorphos’ surface.
The short distance between LICIACube and Dimorphos provided a unique advantage, allowing the cubesat to capture detailed images of the dusty debris from multiple angles.
The research team studied a series of 18 LICIAcube images. The first images in the sequence showed LICIACube’s head-on approach. From this angle, the plume was brightly illuminated by direct sunlight. As the spacecraft glided past the asteroid, its camera pivoted to keep the plume in view.
This animated series of images was taken by a camera aboard LICIACube 2 to 3 minutes after DART crashed into Dimorphos. As LICIACube made its way past the binary pair of asteroids Didymos, the larger one on top, and Dimorphos, the object at the bottom. The satellite’s viewing angle changed rapidly during its flyby of Dimorphos, allowing scientists o get a comprehensive view of the impact plume from a series of angles. ASI/University of Maryland/Tony Farnham/Nathan Marder As LICIACube looked back at the asteroid, sunlight filtered through the dense cloud of debris, and the plume’s brightness faded. This suggested the plume was made of mostly large particles — about a millimeter or more across — which reflect less light than tiny dust grains.
Since the innermost parts of the plume were so thick with debris that they were completely opaque, the scientists used models to estimate the number of particles that were hidden from view. Data from other rubble-pile asteroids, including pieces of Bennu delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, and laboratory experiments helped refine the estimate.
“We estimated that this hidden material accounted for almost 45% of the plume’s total mass,” said Timothy Stubbs, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who was involved with the study.
While DART showed that a high-speed collision with a spacecraft can change an asteroid’s trajectory, Stubbs and his colleagues note that different asteroid types, such as those made of stronger, more tightly packed material, might respond differently to a DART-like impact. “Every time we interact with an asteroid, we find something that surprises us, so there’s a lot more work to do,” said Stubbs. “But DART is a big step forward for planetary defense.”
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, managed the DART mission and operated the spacecraft for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office.
By Nathan Marder, nathan.marder@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Share
Details
Last Updated Aug 21, 2025 Related Terms
DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) Explore More
2 min read NASA’s DART Team Earns AIAA Space Systems Award for Pioneering Mission
Article
12 months ago
5 min read NASA’s DART Mission Sheds New Light on Target Binary Asteroid System
Article
1 year ago
3 min read NASA Selects Participating Scientists to Join ESA’s Hera Mission
Article
1 year ago
Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)
Asteroids, Comets & Meteors
Our Solar System
For Planetary Science Researchers
Resources specifically curated to help planetary science researchers, whether new to the field or seasoned professionals.
View the full article
-
By NASA
5 Min Read NASA, Army National Guard Partner on Flight Training for Moon Landing
By Corinne Beckinger
When Artemis astronauts land on the Moon’s South Pole in a commercial human landing system, they will encounter a landscape pockmarked with deep craters, sloped connecting ridges, and harsh lighting conditions. The Moon’s lack of contrast, combined with its rolling terrain, will also pose a challenge, making it difficult for astronauts to overcome visual illusions on the lunar surface.
NASA astronaut Bob Hines (left) and Colorado Army National Guard HAATS instructor Ethan Jacobs practice landing procedures in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in April 2025. Depending on the season, the snowy or dusty conditions can cause visual obstruction. Lunar dust can cause similar visual impairment during future crewed missions. In the mountains of northern Colorado, NASA and the U.S. Army National Guard are using military helicopters to develop a foundational lunar landersimulated flight training course to help astronauts practice flight and landing procedures for the Moon.
For decades, military helicopter pilots have trained at the HAATS (High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site) in Gypsum, Colorado. In 2021, NASA and the Colorado Army National Guard began working together to develop a course specifically for the next generation of lunar explorers.
That NASA-specific course is scheduled to be finalized in August 2025, marking an important milestone for Artemis crewed landings training efforts.
“NASA is using a three-pronged approach with motion-based simulation, in-flight lunar landing analog training, and in-flight lunar simulation to build out its foundational training for Artemis Moon landings,” said NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock, who helped coordinate the training program. “Helicopters at or above 10,000 feet are not really efficient in the thin air, forcing us into operating with very thin power margins similar to the Apollo astronauts having to manage energy and momentum to land safely. The operations along with the terrain at the HAATS course in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains provide a valuable, real-world opportunity for Artemis astronauts to practice flying and landing in conditions similar to maneuvering a lander in the lunar environment.”
NASA astronaut Raja Chari participates in the HAATS course in April 2025. Since 2021, 22 NASA astronauts and one ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut have participated and evaluated the course based on functionality and Artemis mission needs. NASA/Laura Kiker NASA astronaut Raja Chari participates in the HAATS course in April 2025. Since 2021, 22 NASA astronauts and one ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut have participated and evaluated the course based on functionality and Artemis mission needs. NASA/Corinne Beckinger NASA’s human landing systems that will safely transport astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface will be provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
NASA’s Artemis III mission will build on earlier test flights and add new capabilities, including SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System and advanced spacesuits, to send the first astronauts to explore the lunar South Pole and prepare humanity to go to Mars.
While each industry provider is responsible for training Artemis astronauts on its specific lander, NASA is establishing foundational training to help prepare astronauts for crewed flights.
Flight training opportunities like this are vital to mission success and crew safety.”
Doug Wheelock
NASA Astronaut
“Over the last few years, NASA and the Army National Guard have worked closely to evaluate training procedures and landing zone areas, incorporating accounts from Apollo astronauts,” Wheelock said. “During training flights at HAATS, astronauts can experience the visual illusions, cross-cockpit communication, and degraded visibility they may experience navigating to their landing zone near the lunar south pole. Flight training opportunities like this are vital to mission success and crew safety.”
Paired with trained instructors from the Army National Guard, astronauts fly to mountaintops and valleys in a range of aircraft, including LUH-72 Lakotas, CH-47 Chinooks, and UH-60 Black Hawks.
While one astronaut pilots the aircraft, an astronaut in the back charts the landing area, marking key landmarks, identifying potential hazards, and helping to track the flight path. Throughout the week-long course, the landing zones and situations become more challenging, allowing astronauts to experience team dynamics and practice communication skills they will need to land on the Moon.
“Our full-time Colorado Army National Guard pilots have thousands of flight hours navigating the Rocky Mountains at altitudes ranging from 6,500 to 14,200 feet, and we are reaching new heights by providing realistic and relevant training with NASA for Artemis,” said first sergeant Joshua Smith of the HAATS program. “Our Colorado Army National Guard pilots may not fly around the Moon, but we wear our motto, de monitbus ad astra — from the mountains to the stars — with pride.”
Fast Facts
On the Moon’s South Pole, the Sun is never more than 1.5 degrees above or below the horizon. With the Sun at such a low angle and with only a thin exosphere, shadows are stark, and astronauts may find it difficult to determine distances and heights.
The Moon’s atmosphere is extremely thin, with few particles, and is called an exosphere. The Moon’s exosphere is thin enough to glow in sunlight, which has been observed by spacecraft and some of the Apollo astronauts. The Moon’s surface is challenging to land on. There are inactive volcanoes, bounders, large basins, craters, and cracks in the Moon’s crust, caused by the Earth’s gravity tugging on the Moon. Moon dust can also obscure the view from the windows of a commercial human landing system, and affect sensors that relay important information, such as altitude and velocity, to astronauts. Through the Artemis campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
Share
Details
Last Updated Aug 18, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactCorinne M. Beckingercorinne.m.beckinger@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
Human Lander Challenge General Human Landing System Program Marshall Space Flight Center Explore More
3 min read Human Rating and NASA-STD-3001
Article 3 days ago 3 min read NASA Seeks Proposals for 2026 Human Exploration Rover Challenge
Article 3 days ago 4 min read NASA IXPE’s ‘Heartbeat Black Hole’ Measurements Challenge Current Theories
Article 6 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Artemis
Human Landing System
Earth’s Moon
The Moon makes Earth more livable, sets the rhythm of ocean tides, and keeps a record of our solar system’s…
Artemis III
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.