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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance 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
Persevering Through the Storm
A region-wide seasonal dust storm obscures the Jezero Crater in this image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, acquired using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. Perseverance captured the image on Aug. 20, 2024 (Sol 1244, or Martian day 1,244 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 16:05:34. This image is part of a Mastcam-Z mosaic of the “northern fan,” a part of Jezero Crater that Perseverance never drove through, but is an area that’s thought to have been deposited in a similar way to the delta that the rover did explore. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU It is dust-storm season on Mars! Over the past couple of weeks, as we have been ascending the Jezero Crater rim, our science team has been monitoring rising amounts of dust in the atmosphere. This is expected: Dust activity is typically highest around this time of the Martian year (early Spring in the northern hemisphere). The increased dust has made our views back toward the crater hazier than usual, and provided our atmospheric scientists with a great opportunity to study the way that dust storms form, develop, and spread around the planet.
Perseverance has a suite of scientific instruments well-suited to study the Martian atmosphere. The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) provides regular weather reports, the cadence of which has increased during the storm to maximize our science. We also routinely point our Mastcam-Z imager toward the sky to assess the optical density (“tau”) of the atmosphere.
There are not any signs that this regional dust storm will become planetwide — like the global dust storm in 2018 — but every day we are assessing new atmospheric data. Hopefully the skies will further clear up as we continue to climb in the coming weeks, because we are expecting stunning views of the crater floor and Jezero delta. This will offer the Perseverance team a unique chance to reflect on the tens of kilometers we have driven and years we have spent exploring Mars together.
Written by Henry Manelski, Ph.D. student at Purdue University
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Last Updated Sep 05, 2024 Related Terms
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5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Texas High School Aerospace Scholars get a virtual view of an extravehicular activity (EVA) suit in testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Photo credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas Explore the universe this fall without leaving your classroom through live virtual engagements with NASA space and aviation experts. NASA is offering a new lineup of stellar virtual experiences to spark STEM excitement and connect students with the agency’s missions, science, careers, and more.
The virtual engagements, managed by NASA’s Next Gen STEM project, are free to join and open to both formal and informal education groups. These options are sure to launch your students’ love of STEM:
NASA Back-to-School Career Day (Grades K-12)
On Sept. 26, NASA is hosting a Back-to-School Career Day showcasing a variety of NASA careers with virtual tours of agency facilities, live Q&A with experts, and more.
Open to K-12 formal and informal education organizations, the registration deadline is Thursday, Sept. 5. In addition to the live event, the interactive platform will be available from Monday, Sept. 23, through Friday, Sept. 27.
Europa Clipper Launch Virtual Watch Party (All Grade Levels)
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch no earlier than Oct. 10 on a mission to investigate whether Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, could contain the building blocks needed to support life. The launch window opens on Oct. 10 during the school day at 12:32 p.m. EDT, and your classroom can be part of this pioneering mission. Sign up to watch the launch online, visit Europa Clipper’s Participation Hub for more opportunities, and find additional resources on Europa Clipper’s Kids Resources Hub.
NQuest Virtual Workshops (Grades 6-8)
NQuest offers 45-minute virtual workshops every Monday and Thursday. Available on a first-come, first-served basis, these free workshops include a live presentation, captivating NASA videos, and a hands-on activity to bring STEM concepts to life. All you need is a laptop, projector, and basic classroom supplies. Workshops can be scheduled to fit your school’s bell schedule between 11:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. EDT. Register your class by Oct. 11.
“Astro-Not-Yets” Virtual Classroom Connections (Grades K-4)
Introduce your students to the Astro-Not-Yets, a series of short stories that teach students about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In each of these monthly virtual events, a NASA expert whose job relates to the story will read the book to students, then answer their questions.
Wednesday, Oct. 23: The Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Sound. Students will learn how sound travels and experiment with transmitting sound through a string-cup phone. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Oct. 9. Wednesday, Nov. 20: Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Energy. Students will learn how spacecraft safely bring astronauts home from space, then design and test their own system to safely land an egg on the ground. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Nov. 6. Wednesday, Dec. 11: Astro-Not-Yets! Explore Microgravity. Students will learn all about gravity, microgravity, and the International Space Station. Registration deadline: Wednesday, Nov. 27. “First Women” Virtual Classroom Connections (Grades 5-12)
This series introduces some of the women at NASA who have made significant achievements in STEM. Students get to hear their stories first-hand and ask them questions in a live Q&A.
Wednesday, Oct. 16: Meet NASA’s first female launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. She led the launch team during the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the Moon in 2022. Now, she and her team are preparing for the first crewed Artemis mission, Artemis II. Registration deadline: Monday, Sept. 30. Wednesday, Nov. 6: Meet Laurie A. Grindle and learn about NASA’s first X-43A Guinness world record. Today, Grindle is deputy center director at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, but in 2004, the X-43A aircraft she and her team developed set the Guinness World Record for “the fastest air-breathing aircraft” twice in one year. Registration deadline: Monday, Oct. 21. Wednesday, Dec. 4: Meet Dr. Ruth Jones, NASA’s 2024 Wings of Excellence Awardee. Jones will share her experience as a woman in STEM and tell students what it was like to become the first woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Registration deadline: Monday, Nov. 18. Surprisingly STEM Career Explorations Virtual Events (Grades 5-12)
The Surprisingly STEM video series highlights some of NASA’s many unexpected careers. In these events, experts from the videos discuss their unusual and exciting jobs and share their journeys that led them to NASA.
Thursday, Oct. 24: Soft robotics engineer Jim Neilan explains the importance of soft robotics in human spaceflight and some of the role’s critical skills. Registration deadline: Friday, Oct. 18. Thursday, Nov. 14: Exploration geologist Angela Garcia takes students behind the scenes of her job training NASA astronauts to explore for the “crater” good of humanity. Registration deadline: Thursday, Nov. 7. Thursday, Dec. 12: Memory metal engineer Othmane Benafan explains how he “trains” metal to bend, stretch, and twist when prompted, and how this technology benefits NASA missions. Registration deadline: Thursday, Dec. 5. Bring NASA Experts Into the Classroom (All Grades)
NASA recently launched NASA Engages, a new, database-driven platform designed to connect a wide range of audiences with experts from across the space agency – both virtually and in person. Available to classrooms from preschool to college, informal education organizations such as libraries and science centers, and other eligible groups, NASA Engages enables educators and group leaders to find inspirational guest speakers, knowledgeable science fair judges, and more.
There’s More to Explore
Find student challenges, hands-on activities, and more opportunities on the Learning Resources website managed by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement. Visit How Do I Navigate NASA Learning Resources and Opportunities? to explore additional platforms and offerings to enhance your STEM curriculum. Subscribe to the weekly NASA EXPRESS e-newsletter to discover the latest events, resources, and other opportunities to bring NASA into your classroom. Explore More
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA Life Support Technician Mathew Sechler provides support as the X-59’s ejection seat is installed into the aircraft at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works’ facilities in Palmdale, California. Completion of the seat’s installation marks an integration milestone for the aircraft as it prepares for final ground tests.Lockheed Martin The team preparing NASA’s X-59 continues through testing in preparation for the quiet supersonic aircraft to make its first flight. This includes a trio of important structural tests and critical inspections on the path to flight.
The X-59 is an experimental plane that will fly faster than the speed of sound without a loud sonic boom. It will be the first of its kind to fly, with the goal of gathering sound data for NASA’s Quesst mission, which could open the door to commercial supersonic overland flight in the future.
Because of its unique design, the X-59’s engineering team must do all it can to predict every aspect of it before it ever takes off, including how its fuselage, wings, and the control surfaces will behave together in flight. That means testing on the ground to give the team the data it needs to validate the models they’ve developed.
“The testing not only tells us how structurally sound the aircraft is, but also what kind of forces it can take once it is in the air.
WALT SILVA
Senior Research Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, who serves as structures lead for the X-59.
The X-59’s structural tests provide the team with valuable feedback. From 2022 to –2024 the engineers collected data on the forces that the aircraft will experience in flight and the potential effects of vibrations on the plane.
“You do these tests, you get the data, and things compare well in some areas and in other areas you want to improve them,” Silva said. “So, you figure that all out and then you work towards making it better.”
Lockheed Martin technicians temporarily remove the canopy from the X-59 in preparation for final installation of the ejection seat into the aircraft. Lockheed Martin Earlier this year, the X-59 underwent structural coupling tests that saw its control surfaces, including its ailerons, flaps and rudder, moved by computer. It was the last of three vital structural tests. In 2023, engineers applied “shakers” to parts of the plane to evaluate its response to vibrations, and in early 2022 they conducted a proof test to ensure the aircraft would absorb the forces it will experience during flight. This year the X-59 ejection seat was installed and passed inspection. The ejection seat is an additional safety measure that is critical for pilot safety during all aspects of flight.
With structural tests and ejection seat installation complete, the aircraft will advance toward a new milestone, starting up its engines for a series of test runs on the ground.
Also ahead for the X-59 is testing the airplane’s avionics and extensive wiring for potential electromagnetic interference, imitating flight conditions in a ground test environment, and finally, completing taxi tests to validate ground mobility before first flight.
“First flights are always very intense,” said Natalie Spivey, aerospace engineer at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. “There’s lots of anticipation, but we’re ready to get there and see how the aircraft responds in the air. It’ll be very exciting.”
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Last Updated Aug 13, 2024 EditorLillian GipsonContactKristen Hatfieldkristen.m.hatfield@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, shown where it’s installed aboard the International Space Station, recently demonstrated the use of a tool called an atom interferometer that can precisely measure gravity and other forces — and has many potential applications in space.NASA/JPL-Caltech Future space missions could use quantum technology to track water on Earth, explore the composition of moons and other planets, or probe mysterious cosmic phenomena.
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be used in space. Members of the science team measured subtle vibrations of the space station with one of the lab’s onboard tools — the first time ultra-cold atoms have been employed to detect changes in the surrounding environment in space.
The study, which appeared in Nature Communications on Aug. 13, also reports the longest demonstration of the wave-like nature of atoms in freefall in space.
The Cold Atom Lab science team made their measurements with a quantum tool called an atom interferometer, which can precisely measure gravity, magnetic fields, and other forces. Scientists and engineers on Earth use this tool to study the fundamental nature of gravity and advance technologies that aid aircraft and ship navigation. (Cell phones, transistors, and GPS are just a few other major technologies based on quantum science but do not involve atom interferometry.)
Physicists have been eager to apply atom interferometry in space because the microgravity there allows longer measurement times and greater instrument sensitivity, but the exquisitely sensitive equipment has been considered too fragile to function for extended periods without hands-on assistance. The Cold Atom Lab, which is operated remotely from Earth, has now shown it’s possible.
“Reaching this milestone was incredibly challenging, and our success was not always a given,” said Jason Williams, the Cold Atom Lab project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It took dedication and a sense of adventure by the team to make this happen.”
Power of Precision
Space-based sensors that can measure gravity with high precision have a wide range of potential applications. For instance, they could reveal the composition of planets and moons in our solar system, because different materials have different densities that create subtle variations in gravity.
This type of measurement is already being performed by the U.S.-German collaboration GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on), which detects slight changes in gravity to track the movement of water and ice on Earth. An atom interferometer could provide additional precision and stability, revealing more detail about surface mass changes.
Precise measurements of gravity could also offer insights into the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two major cosmological mysteries. Dark matter is an invisible substance five times more common in the universe than the “regular” matter that composes planets, stars, and everything else we can see. Dark energy is the name given to the unknown driver of the universe’s accelerating expansion.
“Atom interferometry could also be used to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity in new ways,” said University of Virginia professor Cass Sackett, a Cold Atom Lab principal investigator and co-author of the new study. “This is the basic theory explaining the large-scale structure of our universe, and we know that there are aspects of the theory that we don’t understand correctly. This technology may help us fill in those gaps and give us a more complete picture of the reality we inhabit.”
A Portable Lab
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab studies the quantum nature of atoms, the building blocks of our universe, in a place that is out of this world – the International Space Station. This animated explainer explores what quantum science is and why NASA wants to do it in space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech About the size of a minifridge, the Cold Atom Lab launched to the space station in 2018 with the goal of advancing quantum science by putting a long-term facility in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit. The lab cools atoms to almost absolute zero, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273 degrees Celsius). At this temperature, some atoms can form a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which all atoms essentially share the same quantum identity. As a result, some of the atoms’ typically microscopic quantum properties become macroscopic, making them easier to study.
Quantum properties include sometimes acting like solid particles and sometimes like waves. Scientists don’t know how these building blocks of all matter can transition between such different physical behaviors, but they’re using quantum technology like what’s available on the Cold Atom Lab to seek answers.
In microgravity, Bose-Einstein condensates can reach colder temperatures and exist for longer, giving scientists more opportunities to study them. The atom interferometer is among several tools in the facility enabling precision measurements by harnessing the quantum nature of atoms.
Due to its wave-like behavior, a single atom can simultaneously travel two physically separate paths. If gravity or other forces are acting on those waves, scientists can measure that influence by observing how the waves recombine and interact.
“I expect that space-based atom interferometry will lead to exciting new discoveries and fantastic quantum technologies impacting everyday life, and will transport us into a quantum future,” said Nick Bigelow, a professor at University of Rochester in New York and Cold Atom Lab principal investigator for a consortium of U.S. and German scientists who co-authored the study.
More About the Mission
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed and built Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. BPS pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefitting life on Earth.
To learn more about Cold Atom Lab, visit:
https://coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 13, 2024 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers. The change in forest structure could absorb more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, or increase permafrost thawing, resulting in the release of ancient carbon. Millions of data points from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) and Landsat missions helped inform this latest research, which will be used to refine climate forecasting computer models.
Landscape at Murphy Dome fire scar, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Katie Jepson Tundra landscapes are getting taller and greener. With the warming climate, the vegetation of forests in the far north is changing as more trees and shrubs appear. These shifts in the vegetation structure of boreal forests and tundra will continue for at least the next 80 years, according to NASA scientists in a recently published study.
Boreal forests generally grow between 50 and 60 degrees north latitude, covering large parts of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia. The biome is home to evergreens such as pine, spruce, and fir. Farther north, the permafrost and short growing season of the tundra biome have historically made it hard to support large trees or dense forests. The vegetation in those regions has instead been made up of shrubs, mosses, and grasses.
The boundary between the two biomes is difficult to discern. Previous studies have found high-latitude plant growth increasing and moving northward into areas that earlier were sparsely covered in the shrubs and grasses of the tundra. Now, the new NASA-led study finds an increased presence of trees and shrubs in those tundra regions and adjacent transitional forests, where boreal regions and tundra meet. This is predicted to continue until at least the end of the century.
Data from the study depicted on a map of Alaska and Northern Canada highlighting the change in tree canopy cover extending into transitional landscapes. In boreal North America, the largest increases in canopy cover (dark green) have occurred in transitional tundra landscapes. These landscapes are found along the cold, northern extent of the study area and have historically supported mostly shrubs, mosses, and grasses. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Wanmei Liang “The results from this study advance a growing body of work that recognizes a shift in vegetation patterns within the boreal forest biome,” said Paul Montesano, lead author for the paper and research scientist at NASA Goddard’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’ve used satellite data to track the increased vegetation growth in this biome since 1984, and we found that it’s similar to what computer models predict for the decades to come. This paints a picture of continued change for the next 80 or so years that is particularly strong in transitional forests.”
Scientists found predictions of “positive median height changes” in all tundra landscapes and transitional – between boreal and tundra – forests featured in this study. This suggests trees and shrubs will be both larger and more abundant in areas where they are currently sparse.
“The increase of vegetation that corresponds with the shift can potentially offset some of the impact of rising CO2 emissions by absorbing more CO2 through photosynthesis,” said study co-author Chris Neigh, NASA’s Landsat 8 and 9 project scientist at Goddard. Carbon absorbed through this process would then be stored in the trees, shrubs, and soil.
The change in forest structure may also cause permafrost areas to thaw as more sunlight is absorbed by the darker colored vegetation. This could release CO2 and methane that has been stored in the soil for thousands of years.
In their paper published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment in May, NASA scientists described the mixture of satellite data, machine learning, climate variables, and climate models they used to model and predict how the forest structure will look for years to come. Specifically, they analyzed nearly 20 million data points from NASA’s ICESat-2. They then matched these data points with tens of thousands of scenes of North American boreal forests between 1984 to 2020 from Landsat, a joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Advanced computing capabilities are required to create models with such large quantities of data, which are called “big data” projects.
Flight over the boreal landscapes of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the ABoVE field campaign in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Sofie Bates The ICESat-2 mission uses a laser instrument called lidar to measure the height of Earth’s surface features (like ice sheets or trees) from the vantage point of space. In the study, the authors examined these measurements of vegetation height in the far north to understand what the current boreal forest structure looks like. Scientists then modeled several future climate scenarios — adjusting to different scenarios for temperature and precipitation — to show what forest structure may look like in response.
“Our climate is changing and, as it changes, it affects almost everything in nature,” said Melanie Frost, remote sensing scientist at NASA Goddard. “It’s important for scientists to understand how things are changing and use that knowledge to inform our climate models.”
By Erica McNamee
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 06, 2024 EditorKate D. RamsayerContactErica McNameeerica.s.mcnamee@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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