Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
Artists Concept of the WASP-77 A b system. A planet swings in front of its star, dimming the starlight we see. Events like these, called transits, provide us with bounties of information about exoplanets–planets around stars other than the Sun. But predicting when these special events occur can be challenging…unless you have help from volunteers.
Luckily, a collaboration of multiple teams of amateur planet-chasers, led by researcher Federico R. Noguer from Arizona State University and researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), has taken up the challenge. This collaboration has published the most precise physical and orbital parameters to date for an important exoplanet called WASP-77 A b. These precise parameters help us predict future transit events and are crucial for planning spacecraft observations and accurate atmospheric modeling.
“As a retired dentist and now citizen scientist for Exoplanet Watch, research opportunities like this give me a way to learn and contribute to this amazingly exciting field of astrophysics,” said Anthony Norris, a citizen scientist working on the NASA-funded Exoplanet Watch project.
The study combined amateur astronomy/citizen science data from the Exoplanet Watch and ExoClock projects, as well as the Exoplanet Transit Database. It also incorporated data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and La Silla Observatory. Exoplanet Watch invites volunteers to participate in groundbreaking exoplanet research, using their own telescopes to observe exoplanets or by analyzing data others have gathered. You may have read another recent article about how the Exoplanet Watch team helped validate a new exoplanet candidate.
WASP-77 A b is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits a Sun-like star. It’s only about 20% larger than Jupiter. But that’s where the similarities to our solar system end. This blazing hot gas ball orbits right next to its star–more than 200 times closer to its star than our Jupiter!
Want a piece of the action? Join the Exoplanet Watch project and help contribute to cutting-edge exoplanet science! Anyone can participate–participation does not require citizenship in any particular country.
Facebook logo @DoNASAScience @DoNASAScience Share
Details
Last Updated Sep 19, 2024 Related Terms
Astrophysics Citizen Science Exoplanet Science Explore More
4 min read NASA’s Webb Provides Another Look Into Galactic Collisions
Article
1 day ago
4 min read NASA’s Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in the Early Universe
Article
2 days ago
2 min read Hubble Examines a Spiral Star Factory
Article
6 days ago
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Swatch has again teamed up with ESA to give space fans a new opportunity to design a custom watch featuring breathtaking images of Earth from space.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Sols 4295-4296: A Martian Moon and Planet Earth
Using an onboard focusing process, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity created this product by merging two to eight images previously taken by the MAHLI, which is located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. Curiosity performed the merge on Sept. 4, 2024, at 06:30:48 UTC — sol 4294, or Martian day 4,294 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. The onboard focus merge is sometimes performed on images acquired the same sol as the merge, and sometimes using pictures obtained earlier. Focus merging is a method to make a composite of images of the same target acquired at different focus positions to bring as many features as possible into focus in a single image. The MAHLI focus merge also serves as a means to reduce the number of images sent back to Earth. Each focus merge produces two images: a color, best-focus product and a black-and-white image that scientists can use to estimate focus position for each element of the best-focus product. So up to eight images can be merged, but the number of images returned to Earth is two. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024
Today’s two-sol plan contains the usual science blocks filled with contact science and remote science to observe and assess the geology surrounding us. However, the Mastcam team is hoping to capture a special celestial event above the Martian skyline as one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, will be in conjunction with Earth on the evening of the first sol of this plan. So everyone look up, and smile for the camera!
Coming back to our beautiful workspace, in this plan there is a focus on targeting the different colors and tones we can see in the bedrock with our suite of instruments. In the image above we can see some of these varying tones — including gray areas, lighter-toned areas, and areas of tan-colored bedrock — with an image from the MAHLI instrument, Curiosity’s onboard hand lens.
APXS is targeting “Campfire Lake,” a lighter-toned area, and “Gemini,” a more gray-toned area situated in front of the rover. MAHLI is taking a suite of close-up images of these targets too. ChemCam is then taking two LIBS measurements of “Crazy Lake” and “Foolish Lake,” both of which appear to have lighter tones. Mastcam is documenting this whole area with a workspace mosaic and an 8×2 mosaic of “Picture Puzzle,” named after the rock in the image above that was taken during the previous plan. Mastcam will also be capturing a 6×3 mosaic of an outcrop named “Outguard Spire” that has an interesting gray rim. Looking further afield, ChemCam has planned a long-distance RMI image of the yardang unit and Navcam is taking a suprahorizon movie and dust-devil survey for our continued observations of the atmosphere to round out this plan.
Written by Emma Harris, Graduate Student at Natural History Museum, London
Share
Details
Last Updated Sep 05, 2024 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
2 min read Sol 4294: Return to McDonald Pass
Article
15 hours ago
3 min read Sols 4291-4293: Fairview Dome, the Sequel
Article
16 hours ago
3 min read Behind the Scenes at the 2024 Mars 2020 Science Team Meeting
The Mars 2020 Science Team meets in Pasadena for 3 days of science synthesis
Article
6 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
By NASA
4 Min Read Eclipses Create Atmospheric Gravity Waves, NASA Student Teams Confirm
In this photo taken from the International Space Station, the Moon passes in front of the Sun casting its shadow, or umbra, and darkening a portion of the Earth's surface above Texas during the annular solar eclipse Oct. 14, 2023. Credits: NASA Student teams from three U.S. universities became the first to measure what scientists have long predicted: eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. The waves’ telltale signature emerged in data captured during the North American annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) sponsored by NASA.
Through NEBP, high school and university student teams were stationed along the eclipse path through multiple U.S. states, where they released weather balloons carrying instrument packages designed to conduct engineering studies or atmospheric science. A cluster of science teams located in New Mexico collected the data definitively linking the eclipse to the formation of atmospheric gravity waves, a finding that could lead to improved weather forecasting.
“Climate models are complicated, and they make some assumptions about what atmospheric factors to take into account.”
Angela Des Jardins
Director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium, which led NEBP.
“Understanding how the atmosphere reacts in the special case of eclipses helps us better understand the atmosphere, which in turn helps us make more accurate weather predictions and, ultimately, better understand climate change.”
Catching Waves in New Mexico
Previous ballooning teams also had hunted atmospheric gravity waves during earlier eclipses, research that was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, an NEBP team stationed in Chile collected promising data, but hourly balloon releases didn’t provide quite enough detail. Attempts to repeat the experiment in 2020 were foiled by COVID-19 travel restrictions in Argentina and a heavy rainstorm that impeded data collection in Chile.
Project leaders factored in these lessons learned when planning for 2023, scheduling balloon releases every 15 minutes and carefully weighing locations with the best potential for success.
“New Mexico looked especially promising,” said Jie Gong, a researcher in the NASA Climate and Radiation Lab at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-investigator of the research on atmospheric gravity waves. “The majority of atmospheric gravity sources are convection, weather systems, and mountains. We wanted to eliminate all those possible sources.”
The project created a New Mexico “supersite” in the town of Moriarty where four atmospheric science teams were clustered: two from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and one each from the State University of New York (SUNY) Albany and SUNY Oswego.
Students began launching balloons at 10 a.m. the day before the eclipse.
“They worked in shifts through the day and night, and then everyone was on site for the eclipse,” said Eric Kelsey, research associate professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP northeast regional lead.
“Our hard work really paid off. The students had a real sense of accomplishment.”
Eric Kelsey
Research Associate Professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP Northeast Regional Lead.
Each balloon released by the science teams carried a radiosonde, an instrument package that measured temperature, location, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed during every second of its climb through the atmosphere. Radiosondes transmitted this stream of raw data to the team on the ground. Students uploaded the data to a shared server, where Gong and two graduate students spent months processing and analyzing it.
Confirmation that the eclipse had generated atmospheric gravity waves in the skies above New Mexico came in spring 2024.
“We put all the data together according to time, and when we plotted that time series, I could already see the stripes in the signal,” Gong said. “I bombarded everybody’s email. We were quite excited.”
Plymouth State University students Sarah Brigandi, left, and Sammantha Boulay release a weather balloon from Moriarty, New Mexico, to collect atmospheric data on Oct. 14, 2023.NASA For Students, Learning Curves Bring Opportunity
The program offered many students their first experience in collecting data. But the benefits go beyond technical and scientific skill.
“The students learned a ton through practicing launching weather balloons,” Kelsey said. “It was a huge learning curve. They had to work together to figure out all the logistics and troubleshoot. It’s good practice of teamwork skills.”
“All of this is technically complicated,” Des Jardins said. “While the focus now is on the science result, the most important part is that it was students who made this happen.”
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Science Activation program funds NEBP, along with contributions from the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project and support from NASA’s Balloon Program Office.
Learn More:
Montana State-led ballooning project confirms hypothesis about eclipse effects on atmosphere
Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
NASA Selects Student Teams for High-Flying Balloon Science
NASA Science Activation
NASA Space Grant
Explore More
2 min read Leveraging Teacher Leaders to Share the Joy of NASA Heliophysics
Many teachers are exceptionally skilled at bridging students’ interests with real-world science. Now for the…
Article 22 hours ago 9 min read Proyecto de la NASA en Puerto Rico capacita a estudiantes en biología marina
Article 2 days ago 2 min read NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative Member Co-Authors Award-Winning Paper in Insects
On August 13, 2024, the publishers of the journal Insects notified authors of three papers…
Article 2 days ago View the full article
-
By NASA
Interstellar Lab, a small business comprised of team members from France, Texas, and Florida, took home the $750,000 grand prize for their food system, NUCLEUS, which uses a multi-pronged approach to growing and harvesting food outputs for astronauts on long-duration human space exploration missions.Credit: OSU/CFAES/Kenneth Chamberlain NASA has awarded a total of $1.25 million to three U.S. teams in the third and final round of the agency’s Deep Space Food Challenge. The teams delivered novel food production technologies that could provide long-duration human space exploration missions with safe, nutritious, and tasty food.
The competitors’ technologies address NASA’s need for sustainable food systems for long-duration habitation in space, including future Artemis missions and eventual journeys to Mars. Advanced food systems also could benefit life on Earth and inspire food production in parts of the world that are prone to natural disasters, food insecurity, and extreme environments.
“The Deep Space Food Challenge could serve as the framework for providing astronauts with healthy and delicious food using sustainable mechanisms,” said Angela Herblet, challenge manager for the Deep Space Food Challenge at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “The challenge has brought together innovative and driven individuals from around the world who are passionate about creating new solutions that support our agency’s future Moon to Mars missions.”
Since the challenge’s launch in 2021, more than 300 teams from 32 countries have participated by submitting innovative food system designs. The competition, conceived and managed by NASA Centennial Challenges at NASA Marshall, is a first-of-its-kind coordinated effort between NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), which ran its own challenge in parallel.
Four American teams competed in Phase 3, which began in September 2023. The Methuselah Foundation partnered with Ohio State University to facilitate the final phase of the challenge, which included a two-month testing and demonstration period held on the university’s campus in Columbus, Ohio. Each U.S. team in Phase 3 was awarded $50,000 and took their technology to Columbus for testing.
Throughout this phase, the teams constructed full-scale food production systems that were required to pass developmental milestones like safety, sensory testing, palatability, and harvesting volumes. Each team worked with four “Simunauts,” a crew of Ohio State students who managed the testing and demonstrations for Phase 3 over the eight-week period. The data gathered from testing was delivered to a judging panel to determine the winner.
The challenge concluded at the Deep Space Food Symposium, a two-day networking and learning summit at the Nationwide and Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center on Aug. 15 and 16. Throughout the event, attendees met the Phase 3 finalists, witnessed demonstrations of the food production technologies, and attended panels featuring experts from NASA, government, industry, and academia. The winners of the challenge were announced at an awards ceremony at the end of the symposium.
The U.S. winner and recipient of the $750,000 grand prize is Interstellar Lab of Merritt Island, Florida. Led by Barbara Belvisi, the small business combines several autonomous phytotrons and environment-controlled greenhouses to support a growth system involving a self-sustaining food production mechanism that generates fresh vegetables, microgreens, and insects necessary for micronutrients.
Two runners-up each earned $250,000 for their food systems’ successes: Nolux of Riverside, California, and SATED of Boulder, Colorado.
Nolux, a university team led by Robert Jinkerson, constructed an artificial photosynthetic system that can create plant and fungal-based foods without the operation of biological photosynthesis.
Standing for Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient & Delicious, SATED is a one-man team of Jim Sears, who developed a variety of customizable food, from pizza to peach cobbler. The product is fire-safe and was developed by long-shelf-life and in-situ grown ingredients.
NASA also selected and recognized one international team as a Phase 3 winner: Solar Foods of Lappeenranta, Finland, developed a food production system through gas fermentation that relies on single-cell protein production.
In April 2024, CSA and Impact Canada awarded the grand prize winner of its parallel challenge to Ecoation, a Vancouver-based small business specializing in greenhouses.
“Congratulations to the winners and all the finalist teams for their many years dedicated to innovating solutions for the Deep Space Food Challenge,” said Amy Kaminski, program executive for NASA’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These food production technologies could change the future of food accessibility on other worlds and our home planet.”
Also present at the symposium was celebrity chef and cookbook author Tyler Florence. After spending time with each finalist team and getting acquainted with their food systems, Florence selected one team to receive the “Tyler Florence Award for Culinary Innovation.” Team SATED of Boulder, Colorado, received the honor for their system that impressed Florence due to its innovative approach to the challenge.
The Deep Space Food Challenge, a NASA Centennial Challenge, is a coordinated effort between NASA and CSA. Subject matter experts at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, supported the competition. NASA’s Centennial Challenges are part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and managed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Methuselah Foundation, in partnership with NASA, oversees the United States and international competitors.
To learn more about the Deep Space Food Challenge, visit:
nasa.gov/spacefoodchallenge
-end-
Jasmine Hopkins
Headquarters, Washington
321-432-4624
jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-932-1940
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Aug 19, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program Centennial Challenges Space Technology Mission Directorate 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.