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NASA Awards $1.25 Million to Three Teams at Deep Space Food Finale
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By NASA
The Soyuz rocket launches to the International Space Station with Expedition 72 crew members: NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner, onboard, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA astronaut Don Pettit, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, arrived at the International Space Station Wednesday, bringing its number of residents to 12 for the 13-day handover period.
After a two-orbit, three-hour journey to the station, the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft automatically docked to the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 3:32 p.m. EDT. The spacecraft launched at 12:23 p.m. EDT (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
NASA’s coverage of hatch opening will stream at 5:30 p.m. on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Hatch opening is scheduled to begin at 5:50 p.m. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Once aboard, the trio will join Expedition 71 crew members, including NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko. Expedition 72 will begin Monday, Sept. 23, upon the departure of Dyson, Chub, and off-going station commander Kononenko, completing a six-month stay for Dyson and a year-long expedition for Chub and Kononenko.
Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner will spend approximately six months aboard the orbital outpost advancing scientific research as Expedition 71/72 crew members before returning to Earth in the spring of 2025. This is Pettit and Ovchinin’s fourth spaceflight and Vagner’s second.
During Expedition 72, two new crews will arrive aboard the space station, including NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 launching in September, followed by Crew-10, scheduled for launch in February 2025.
Follow Pettit on X throughout his mission and get the latest space station crew news on Instagram, Facebook, and X.
Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
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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
Leah Cheshier
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov
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By NASA
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. The mission is targeting an Oct. 10, 2024, launch. NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will host a news conference at 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 17, at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to discuss the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
The briefing will be open to media and will air live on NASA+ and the agency’s website, plus Facebook, X, and YouTube. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Participants in the news conference include:
Gina DiBraccio, acting director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters Jordan Evans, project manager, Europa Clipper, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Bonnie Buratti, deputy project scientist, Europa Clipper, JPL Stuart Hill, propulsion module delivery manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Armando Piloto, senior mission manager, NASA’s Launch Services Program To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to Rexana Vizza at: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov.
Members of the news media from the U.S. and non-designated countries who are interested in covering the event in person at JPL must arrange access in advance by contacting Rexana Vizza at: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov no later than 3 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. PDT) on Thursday, Sept. 12. Media representatives must provide one form of government-issued photo identification. Non-U.S. citizens will need to bring a passport or a green card. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
Questions can be asked on social media during the briefing using the hashtag #AskNASA.
Europa is one of the most promising places in our solar system to find an environment suitable for life beyond Earth. Evidence suggests that the ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface could contain the ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, it will answer key questions about the moon’s potential habitability.
Europa Clipper’s launch period opens on Thursday, Oct. 10. The spacecraft, the largest NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
To learn more about Europa Clipper, visit:
https://europa.nasa.gov
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Val Gratias / Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-318-2141 / 818-393-6215
valerie.m.gratias@jpl.nasa.gov / gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This bar graph shows GISTEMP summer global temperature anomalies for 2023 (shown in yellow) and 2024 (shown in red). June through August is considered meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere. The white lines indicate the range of estimated temperatures. The warmer-than-usual summers continue a long-term trend of warming, driven primarily by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. NASA/Peter Jacobs The agency also shared new state-of-the-art datasets that allow scientists to track Earth’s temperature for any month and region going back to 1880 with greater certainty.
August 2024 set a new monthly temperature record, capping Earth’s hottest summer since global records began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The announcement comes as a new analysis upholds confidence in the agency’s nearly 145-year-old temperature record.
June, July, and August 2024 combined were about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.1 degrees Celsius) warmer globally than any other summer in NASA’s record — narrowly topping the record just set in 2023. Summer of 2024 was 2.25 F (1.25 C) warmer than the average summer between 1951 and 1980, and August alone was 2.34 F (1.3 C) warmer than average. June through August is considered meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
“Data from multiple record-keepers show that the warming of the past two years may be neck and neck, but it is well above anything seen in years prior, including strong El Niño years,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of GISS. “This is a clear indication of the ongoing human-driven warming of the climate.”
NASA assembles its temperature record, known as the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP), from surface air temperature data acquired by tens of thousands of meteorological stations, as well as sea surface temperatures from ship- and buoy-based instruments. It also includes measurements from Antarctica. Analytical methods consider the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heating effects that could skew the calculations.
The GISTEMP analysis calculates temperature anomalies rather than absolute temperature. A temperature anomaly shows how far the temperature has departed from the 1951 to 1980 base average.
New assessment of temperature record
The summer record comes as new research from scientists at the Colorado School of Mines, National Science Foundation, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), and NASA further increases confidence in the agency’s global and regional temperature data.
“Our goal was to actually quantify how good of a temperature estimate we’re making for any given time or place,” said lead author Nathan Lenssen, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
This visualization of GISTEMP monthly temperatures with the seasonal cycle derived from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office’s MERRA-2 model compares 2023 (in red) and 2024 (in purple), with a transparent ribbon around each indicating the confidence intervals from the new GISTEMP uncertainty calculation. The white lines show monthly temperatures from the years 1961 to 2022. June, July, and August 2024 combined were about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.1 degrees Celsius) warmer globally than any other summer in NASA’s record — narrowly topping the record set in 2023.NASA/Peter Jacobs/Katy Mersmann The researchers affirmed that GISTEMP is correctly capturing rising surface temperatures on our planet and that Earth’s global temperature increase since the late 19th century — summer 2024 was about 2.7 F (1.51 C) warmer than the late 1800s — cannot be explained by any uncertainty or error in the data.
The authors built on previous work showing that NASA’s estimate of global mean temperature rise is likely accurate to within a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit in recent decades. For their latest analysis, Lenssen and colleagues examined the data for individual regions and for every month going back to 1880.
Estimating the unknown
Lenssen and colleagues provided a rigorous accounting of statistical uncertainty within the GISTEMP record. Uncertainty in science is important to understand because we cannot take measurements everywhere. Knowing the strengths and limitations of observations helps scientists assess if they’re really seeing a shift or change in the world.
The study confirmed that one of the most significant sources of uncertainty in the GISTEMP record is localized changes around meteorological stations. For example, a previously rural station may report higher temperatures as asphalt and other heat-trapping urban surfaces develop around it. Spatial gaps between stations also contribute some uncertainty in the record. GISTEMP accounts for these gaps using estimates from the closest stations.
Previously, scientists using GISTEMP estimated historical temperatures using what’s known in statistics as a confidence interval — a range of values around a measurement, often read as a specific temperature plus or minus a few fractions of degrees. The new approach uses a method known as a statistical ensemble: a spread of the 200 most probable values. While a confidence interval represents a level of certainty around a single data point, an ensemble tries to capture the whole range of possibilities.
The distinction between the two methods is meaningful to scientists tracking how temperatures have changed, especially where there are spatial gaps. For example: Say GISTEMP contains thermometer readings from Denver in July 1900, and a researcher needs to estimate what conditions were 100 miles away. Instead of reporting the Denver temperature plus or minus a few degrees, the researcher can analyze scores of equally probable values for southern Colorado and communicate the uncertainty in their results.
What does this mean for recent heat rankings?
Every year, NASA scientists use GISTEMP to provide an annual global temperature update, with 2023 ranking as the hottest year to date.
Other researchers affirmed this finding, including NOAA and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. These institutions employ different, independent methods to assess Earth’s temperature. Copernicus, for instance, uses an advanced computer-generated approach known as reanalysis.
The records remain in broad agreement but can differ in some specific findings. Copernicus determined that July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record, for example, while NASA found July 2024 had a narrow edge. The new ensemble analysis has now shown that the difference between the two months is smaller than the uncertainties in the data. In other words, they are effectively tied for hottest. Within the larger historical record the new ensemble estimates for summer 2024 were likely 2.52-2.86 degrees F (1.40-1.59 degrees C) warmer than the late 19th century, while 2023 was likely 2.34-2.68 degrees F (1.30-1.49 degrees C) warmer.
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By NASA
Chile pepper plants growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat aboard the International Space Station bore fruit in the late summer and fall of 2021. Overcoming the challenges of growing fruit in microgravity is important to NASA for long-duration missions during which crew members will need good sources of Vitamin C to supplement their diets.NASA/Megan McArthur In July 2021, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station started growing chile peppers in the Advanced Plant Habitat, as part of the Plant Habitat-04 (PH-04) experiment. The astronauts and a team of researchers at Kennedy worked together to monitor the peppers’ growth before harvesting them. In this image from Sept. 30, 2021, chile flowers and buds can be seen.
PH-04 was one of the longest and most challenging plant experiments attempted aboard the orbital lab. The second harvest resulted in a bumper crop: the 26 chile peppers grown broke the record for feeding the most astronauts from a crop grown in space.
Image credit: NASA/Megan McArthur
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By NASA
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were a national tragedy that resulted in a staggering loss of life and a significant change in American culture. Each year, we pause and remember. Beyond honoring the Americans who died that day, NASA also assisted FEMA in New York in the days afterward, and remembered the victims by providing flags flown aboard the Space Shuttle to their families.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir photographed the New York City area from the International Space Station in March 2020. Credits: NASA European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet photographed the city Washington D.C. and the surrounding area on April 11, 2017, from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station. Credits: ESA/NASA Astronaut Frank Culbertson – The Only American Off the Planet
Expedition 3 Commander Frank Culbertson was aboard the International Space Station at the time of the attacks, and the only American on the crew. As soon as he learned of the attacks, he began documenting the event in photographs because the station was flying over the New York City area. He captured incredible images in the minutes and hours following the event. From his unique vantage point in space, he recorded his thoughts of the world changing beneath him.
Watch Video: Culbertson Remembers 9/11
The following day, he posted a public letter that captured his initial thoughts of the events as they unfolded. “The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked.”
Upon further reflection, Culbertson said, “It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are.”
Read Culbertson’s Full Letter
Video: Station Astronauts Honor 9/11 Victims
Visible from space, a smoke plume rises from the Manhattan area after two planes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center. This photo was taken of metropolitan New York City (and other parts of New York as well as New Jersey) the morning of September 11, 2001. Credits: NASA NASA Science Programs Monitor the Air
NASA science programs were called into action after Sept. 11, 2001, as the agency worked with FEMA to fly sensors over the affected areas on aircraft looking for aerial contaminants and used satellite resources to monitor from above.
Flags for Heroes and Families
View of New York City from orbit on Sept. 11, 2001. Credit: NASA/Frank Culbertson NASA flew nearly 6,000 4 by 6 inch flags on Endeavour’s flight during STS-108 to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Students working at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas assembled the commemorative packages, including the U.S. flags flown in space, to be presented to relatives of the victims. Distribution began on June 14, 2002, National Flag Day, at a ceremony held at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York.
“The ‘Flags for Heroes and Families’ campaign is a way for us to honor and show our support for the thousands of brave men and women who have selflessly contributed to the relief and recovery efforts,” said then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. “The American flags are a patriotic symbol of our strength and solidarity, and our Nation’s resolve to prevail.”
“NASA wanted to come up with an appropriate tribute to the people who lost their lives in the tragic events of September 11,” added Goldin. “America’s space program has a long history of carrying items into space to commemorate historic events, acts of courage and dramatic achievements. ‘Flags for Heroes and Families’ is a natural extension of this ongoing outreach project.”
Read More About ‘Flags for Heroes and Families’→
Commemoration Goes to Mars
View of New York City from orbit on Sept. 11, 2001. Credit: NASA/Frank Culbertson In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building a pair of tools for grinding weathered rinds off rocks on Mars, so that scientific instruments on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity could inspect the rocks’ interiors.
That month’s attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, less than a mile away, shook the lives of the employees and millions of others.
Work on the rock abrasion tools needed to meet a tight schedule to allow thorough testing before launch dates governed by the motions of the planets. The people building the tools could not spend much time helping at shelters or in other ways to cope with the life-changing tragedy of Sept. 11. However, they did find a special way to pay tribute to the thousands of victims who perished in the attack.
An aluminum cuff serving as a cable shield on each of the rock abrasion tools on Mars was made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers. The metal bears the image of an American flag and fills a renewed purpose as part of solar system exploration.
One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environments where they have worked on Mars, the onboard memorials to victims of the Sept. 11 attack could remain in good condition for millions of years.
Read More About the Rovers’ 9/11 Tribute
NASA Kennedy Adds Florida Touch to Sept. 11 Flag
The contributions of NASA and Kennedy Space Center were stitched into the fabric of one of the nation’s most recognizable symbols, when flags from Florida’s Spaceport were sewn into an American Flag recovered near ground zero following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The National 9/11 Flag was raised over the Rocket Garden at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex after Florida’s contribution was added. Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett “A few days after the collapse of the World Trade Center this flag was hanging on a scaffolding at 90 West Street, which was a building directly south of the World Trade Center that was heavily damaged when the south tower collapsed,” said Jeff Parness, director, founder and chairman of the “New York Says Thank You Foundation.”
The flag went on to become one of the most enduring symbols of the recovery from the attack. “The National 9/11 Flag” is a permanent part of the collection of the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site. There, America’s flag can evoke a sense of pride, unity and hunger to keep achieving greatness, just as the nation’s space program has for more than half a century.
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Video: Kennedy Adds Florida Touch to 9/11 Flag
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