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By NASA
NASA astronaut Victor Glover tests collection methods for ISS External Microorganisms in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at Johnson Space Center.NASA Astronauts are scheduled to venture outside the International Space Station to collect microbiological samples during crew spacewalks for the ISS External Microorganisms experiment. This investigation focuses on sampling at sites near life support system vents to examine whether the spacecraft releases microorganisms, how many, and how far they may travel.
This experiment could help researchers understand whether and how these microorganisms survive and reproduce in the harsh space environment and how they may perform at planetary destinations such as the Moon and Mars. Extremophiles, or microorganisms that can survive harsh environments, are also of interest to industries on Earth such as pharmaceuticals and agriculture.
Spacecrafts and spacesuits are thoroughly sterilized before missions; however, humans carry their own microbiomes and continuously regenerate microbial communities. It’s important to understand and address how well current designs and processes prevent or limit the spread of human contamination. The data could help determine whether changes are needed to crewed spacecraft, including spacesuits, that are used to explore destinations where life may exist now or in the past.
Learn more about how researchers monitor microbes on the space station.
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By NASA
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space. This is an artist’s rendering of what the fully assembled system might look like.NASA The trip to Mars and back is not one for the faint of heart. We’re not talking days, weeks, or months. But there are technologies that could help transport a crew on that round-trip journey in a relatively quick two years.
One option NASA is exploring is nuclear electric propulsion, which employs a nuclear reactor to generate electricity that ionizes, or positively charges, and electrically accelerates gaseous propellants to provide thrust to a spacecraft.
Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are working on a system that could help bring nuclear electric propulsion one significant, technology-defining step closer to reality.
Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space.
“By doing that, we eliminate trying to fit the whole system into one rocket fairing,” said Amanda Stark, a heat transfer engineer at NASA Langley and the principal investigator for MARVL. “In turn, that allows us to loosen up the design a little bit and really optimize it.”
Loosening up the design is key, because as Stark mentioned, previous ideas called for fitting the entire nuclear electric radiator system under a rocket fairing, or nose cone, which covers and protects a payload. Fully deployed, the heat dissipating radiator array would be roughly the size of a football field. You can imagine the challenge engineers would face in getting such a massive system folded up neatly inside the tip of a rocket.
The MARVL technology opens a world of possibilities. Rather than cram the whole system into an existing rocket, this would allow researchers the flexibility to send pieces of the system to space in whatever way would make the most sense, then have it all assembled off the planet.
Once in space, robots would connect the nuclear electric propulsion system’s radiator panels, through which a liquid metal coolant, such as a sodium-potassium alloy, would flow.
While this is still an engineering challenge, it is exactly the kind of engineering challenge in-space-assembly experts at NASA Langley have been working on for decades. The MARVL technology could mark a significant first milestone. Rather than being an add-on to an existing technology, the in-space assembly component will benefit and influence the design of the very spacecraft it would serve.
“Existing vehicles have not previously considered in-space assembly during the design process, so we have the opportunity here to say, ‘We’re going to build this vehicle in space. How do we do it? And what does the vehicle look like if we do that?’ I think it’s going to expand what we think of when it comes to nuclear propulsion,” said Julia Cline, a mentor for the project in NASA Langley’s Research Directorate, who led the center’s participation in the Nuclear Electric Propulsion tech maturation plan development as a precursor to MARVL. That tech maturation plan was run out of the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate awarded the MARVL project through the Early Career Initiative, giving the team two years to advance the concept. Stark and her teammates are working with an external partner, Boyd Lancaster, Inc., to develop the thermal management system. The team also includes radiator design engineers from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and fluid engineers from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After two years, the team hopes to move the MARVL design to a small-scale ground demonstration.
The idea of robotically building a nuclear propulsion system in space is sparking imaginations.
“One of our mentors remarked, ‘This is why I wanted to work at NASA, for projects like this,’” said Stark, “which is awesome because I am so happy to be involved with it, and I feel the same way.”
Additional support for MARVL comes from the agency’s Space Nuclear Propulsion project. The project’s ongoing effort is maturing technologies for operations around the Moon and near-Earth exploration, deep space science missions, and human exploration using nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion.
An artist’s rendering that shows the different components of a fully assembled nuclear electric propulsion system.NASAView the full article
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand Since antiquity, wreaths have symbolized the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is fitting then that one of the best places for astronomers to learn more about the stellar lifecycle resembles a giant holiday wreath itself.
The star cluster NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy. Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger.
This new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.
Meanwhile, X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space. These X-rays are powered by winds flowing from the young, massive stars that are sprinkled throughout the cluster. The extended cloud in the Chandra data likely comes from the overlapping X-ray glow of thousands of young, low-mass stars in the cluster.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Clow, M.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available. Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.) In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, purple, blue, and white) has been combined with optical data (green and violet) captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release includes two composite images, each featuring a star cluster that strongly resembles holiday greenery.
The first image depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.
The image is aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, in blues, golds, whites, oranges, and reds. These lights represent stars within the cluster. Some of the lights gleam with diffraction spikes, while others emit a warm, diffuse glow. Upon closer inspection, many of the glowing specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.
The second image in today’s release is a new depiction of NGC 2264, known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster”. Here, wispy green clouds in a conical shape strongly resemble an evergreen tree. Tiny specks of white, blue, purple, and red light, stars within the cluster, dot the structure, turning the cloud into a festive, cosmic Christmas tree!
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Milky Way pictured from the International Space Station in a long-duration photographCredits: NASA NASA and its commercial partners continue to drive innovation in space exploration, achieving milestones that will ultimately benefit human spaceflight and commercial low Earth orbit efforts. These recent achievements from NASA’s industry partners include completed safety milestones, successful flight tests, and major technological advancements.
“Our commercial partners’ growing capabilities in low Earth orbit underscore NASA’s commitment to advance scientific discovery, pioneering space technology, and support future deep space exploration,” said Angela Hart, manager of the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
As NASA expands opportunities in low Earth orbit, the agency is working with seven U.S. companies to meet future commercial and government needs through the second Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities initiative.
The first and second stages of Blue Origin’s New Glenn test vehicle pictured at the company’s orbital launch vehicle factory in Cape Canaveral, FloridaCredits: Blue Origin Blue Origin
Blue Origin continues to make progress in the development of an integrated commercial space transportation capability that ensures safe, affordable, and high-frequency U.S. access to orbit for crew and other missions.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft pictured approaching the International Space StationCredits: NASA Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman is evolving the company’s Cygnus spacecraft as a foundational logistics and research platform to support NASA’s next generation of low Earth orbit ventures. The company recently completed a project management review with NASA, presenting the roadmap and enhancements to commercialize the spacecraft. Northrop Grumman also continues to make progress toward the implementation of docking capability through a partnership with Starlab Space.
Sierra Space’s LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat following a full-scale ultimate burst pressure test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.Credits: Sierra Space Sierra Space
Sierra Space recently completed two full-scale ultimate burst pressure tests of its LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat structure, an element of a NASA-funded commercial space station for new destinations in low Earth orbit. The company also has selected and tested materials for the habitat’s air barrier, focusing on permeability and flammability testing to meet the recommended safety standards. The inflatable habitat is designed to expand in orbit, creating a versatile living and working area for astronauts with a flexible, durable structure that allows for compact launch and significant expansion upon deployment.
Sierra Space also has advanced in high velocity impact testing and micro-meteoroid and orbital debris configuration and material selection, crucial for ensuring the safety and durability of the company’s space structures, along with advancing radiator designs to optimize thermal management for long-duration missions.
The SpaceX Starship spacecraft, a fully reusable transportation, ahead of a test flight at the company’s Starbase facilities in Boca Chica, Texas.Credits: SpaceX SpaceX
SpaceX continues developing the company’s Starship spacecraft, a fully reusable transportation system designed for missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. SpaceX completed multiple flight tests, launching the spacecraft on the Super Heavy, the launch system’s booster, from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. During the tests, SpaceX demonstrated key capabilities needed for the system’s reusability, including landing burns and reentry from hypersonic velocities.
SpaceX is preparing to launch newer generations of the Starship system, powered by upgraded versions of its reusable methane-oxygen staged-combustion Raptor engines, as it works to operationalize the system ahead of the first crewed lunar landing missions under the agency’s Artemis campaign.
An engineer for Special Aerospace Services tests the company’s Autonomous Maneuvering UnitCredits: Special Aerospace Services Special Aerospace Services
Special Aerospace Services is developing an Autonomous Maneuvering Unit that incorporates in-space servicing, propulsion, and robotic technologies. The company is evaluating customer needs and establishing the details and features for the initial flight unit. Special Aerospace Services also is working on a prototype unit at its Special Projects Research Facility in Arvada, Colorado, and has started construction of a new campus and final assembly facility in Huntsville, Alabama. The application of these technologies is intended for the safer assembly of commercial destinations, servicing, retrieval, and inspection of in-space systems.
Two twin containers hosting the welding experiment developed by ThinkOrbital, validated by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency),Credits: ThinkOrbital ThinkOrbital
ThinkOrbital recently demonstrated autonomous welding in space, validated by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). The company will further test in-space welding, cutting, and X-ray inspection technologies on another mission later this year. ThinkOrbital’s third mission, scheduled for late 2025, will focus on developing commercially viable products, including a robotic arm with advanced end-effector solutions and standalone X-ray inspection capabilities. In-space welding technologies could enable building larger structures for future commercial space stations.
The qualification primary structure of Vast’s Haven-1 commercial space station during final welding stages at the company’s headquarters in Long Beach, California Credits: Vast Vast
Vast continues development progress on the Haven-1 commercial space station, targeted to launch in 2025. The company recently completed several technical milestones, including fabricating key components such as the primary structure pathfinder, hatch, battery module, and control moment gyroscope.
Vast also completed a solar array deployment test and the station’s preliminary design review with NASA’s support. While collaborating with the agency on developing and testing the commercial station’s dome-shaped window, Vast performed rigorous pressure testing to meet safety requirements.
In addition to these efforts, NASA also is collaborating with two businesses through its Small Business Innovation Research Ignite initiative, which focuses on commercially viable technology ideas aligned with the agency’s mission needs. Both companies are developing technologies for potential use on the International Space Station and future commercial space stations.
A ceramic heat shield, or thermal protection system, being developed by Canopy Aerospace Credits: Canopy Aerospace Canopy Aerospace
Canopy Aerospace is developing a new manufacturing system aimed at improving the production of ceramic heat shields, also known as thermal protection systems. The company recently validated the material properties of a low-density ceramic insulator using an alumina-enhanced thermal barrier formulation.
Canopy Aerospace also continues development of a 3D-printed, low-density ablator designed to provide thermal protection during extreme heating. The company also worked on other 3D-printed materials, such as aluminum nitride and oxide ceramic products, which could be useful in various applications across the energy, space, aerospace, and industrial sectors, including electromagnetic thrusters for satellites. Canopy Aerospace also developed standard layups of fiber-reinforced composites and integrated cork onto composite panels.
The Cargo Ferry, a reusable cargo transportation vehicle, prototype during a recent high-altitude flight test to test its recovery system and range capabilities.Credits: Outpost Technologies Outpost Technologies
Outpost Technologies completed a high-altitude flight test of its Cargo Ferry, a reusable cargo transportation vehicle. The company dropped a full-scale prototype from 82,000 feet via weather balloon to test its recovery system and range capabilities. The key innovation is a robotic paraglider that guides the vehicle to a precise landing. The paraglider deployed at a record-setting altitude of 65,000 feet, marking the highest flight ever for such a system.
During the test, the vehicle autonomously flew 165 miles before it was safely recovered at the landing site, demonstrating the system’s reliability. The company’s low-mass re-entry system can protect payload mass and volume for future space cargo return missions and point-to-point delivery.
NASA’s low Earth orbit microgravity strategy builds on the agency’s extensive human spaceflight experience to advance future scientific and exploration goals. As the International Space Station nears the end of operations, NASA plans to transition to a new low Earth orbit model to continue leveraging microgravity benefits. Through commercial partnerships, NASA aims to maintain its leadership in microgravity research and ensure continued benefits for humanity.
Learn more about NASA’s low Earth orbit microgravity strategy at:
https://www.nasa.gov/leomicrogravitystrategy
News Media Contacts
Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The mystery of why life uses molecules with specific orientations has deepened with a NASA-funded discovery that RNA — a key molecule thought to have potentially held the instructions for life before DNA emerged — can favor making the building blocks of proteins in either the left-hand or the right-hand orientation. Resolving this mystery could provide clues to the origin of life. The findings appear in research recently published in Nature Communications.
Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes (catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions). Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acid building blocks in a huge variety of arrangements to make millions of different proteins. Some amino acid molecules can be built in two ways, such that mirror-image versions exist, like your hands, and life uses the left-handed variety of these amino acids. Although life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, the two mirror images are rarely mixed in biology, a characteristic of life called homochirality. It is a mystery to scientists why life chose the left-handed variety over the right-handed one.
A diagram of left-handed and right-handed versions of the amino acid isovaline, found in the Murchison meteorite.NASA DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the molecule that holds the instructions for building and running a living organism. However, DNA is complex and specialized; it “subcontracts” the work of reading the instructions to RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules and building proteins to ribosome molecules. DNA’s specialization and complexity lead scientists to think that something simpler should have preceded it billions of years ago during the early evolution of life. A leading candidate for this is RNA, which can both store genetic information and build proteins. The hypothesis that RNA may have preceded DNA is called the “RNA world” hypothesis.
If the RNA world proposition is correct, then perhaps something about RNA caused it to favor building left-handed proteins over right-handed ones. However, the new work did not support this idea, deepening the mystery of why life went with left-handed proteins.
The experiment tested RNA molecules that act like enzymes to build proteins, called ribozymes. “The experiment demonstrated that ribozymes can favor either left- or right-handed amino acids, indicating that RNA worlds, in general, would not necessarily have a strong bias for the form of amino acids we observe in biology now,” said Irene Chen, of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Samueli School of Engineering, corresponding author of the Nature Communications paper.
In the experiment, the researchers simulated what could have been early-Earth conditions of the RNA world. They incubated a solution containing ribozymes and amino acid precursors to see the relative percentages of the right-handed and left-handed amino acid, phenylalanine, that it would help produce. They tested 15 different ribozyme combinations and found that ribozymes can favor either left-handed or right-handed amino acids. This suggested that RNA did not initially have a predisposed chemical bias for one form of amino acids. This lack of preference challenges the notion that early life was predisposed to select left-handed-amino acids, which dominate in modern proteins.
“The findings suggest that life’s eventual homochirality might not be a result of chemical determinism but could have emerged through later evolutionary pressures,” said co-author Alberto Vázquez-Salazar, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar and member of Chen’s research group.
Earth’s prebiotic history lies beyond the oldest part of the fossil record, which has been erased by plate tectonics, the slow churning of Earth’s crust. During that time, the planet was likely bombarded by asteroids, which may have delivered some of life’s building blocks, such as amino acids. In parallel to chemical experiments, other origin-of-life researchers have been looking at molecular evidence from meteorites and asteroids.
“Understanding the chemical properties of life helps us know what to look for in our search for life across the solar system,” said co-author Jason Dworkin, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and director of Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory.
Dworkin is the project scientist on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which extracted samples from the asteroid Bennu and delivered them to Earth last year for further study.
“We are analyzing OSIRIS-REx samples for the chirality (handedness) of individual amino acids, and in the future, samples from Mars will also be tested in laboratories for evidence of life including ribozymes and proteins,” said Dworkin.
The research was supported by grants from NASA, the Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Origin of Life, and the National Science Foundation. Vázquez-Salazar acknowledges support through the NASA Postdoctoral Program, which is administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA.
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Last Updated Nov 21, 2024 EditorWilliam SteigerwaldContactNancy N. Jonesnancy.n.jones@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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