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NASA Establishes New Class of Astrophysics Missions, Selects Studies
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By NASA
Teams at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans move a liquid hydrogen tank for the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket into the factory’s final assembly area on April 22, 2025. The propellant tank is one of five major elements that make up the 212-foot-tall rocket stage. NASA/Steven Seipel NASA completed another step to ready its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for the Artemis III mission as crews at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans recently applied a thermal protection system to the core stage’s liquid hydrogen tank.
Building on the crewed Artemis II flight test, Artemis III will add new capabilities with the human landing system and advanced spacesuits to send the first astronauts to explore the lunar South Pole region and prepare humanity to go to Mars. Thermal protection systems are a cornerstone of successful spaceflight endeavors, safeguarding human life, and enabling the launch and controlled return of spacecraft.
The tank is the largest piece of SLS flight hardware insulated at Michoud. The hardware requires thermal protection due to the extreme temperatures during launch and ascent to space – and to keep the liquid hydrogen at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit on the pad prior to launch.
“The thermal protection system protects the SLS rocket from the heat of launch while also keeping the thousands of gallons of liquid propellant within the core stage’s tanks cold enough. Without the protection, the propellant would boil off too rapidly to replenish before launch,” said Jay Bourgeois, thermal protection system, test, and integration lead at NASA Michoud. “Thermal protection systems are crucial in protecting all the structural components of SLS during launch and flight.”
In February, Michoud crews with NASA and Boeing, the SLS core stage prime contractor, completed the thermal protection system on the external structure of the rocket’s liquid hydrogen propellant fuel tank, using a robotic tool in what is now the largest single application in spaceflight history. The robotically controlled operation coated the tank with spray-on foam insulation, distributing 107 feet of the foam to the tank in 102 minutes. When the foam is applied to the core stage, it gives the rocket a canary yellow color. The Sun’s ultraviolet rays naturally “tan” the thermal protection, giving the SLS core stage its signature orange color, like the space shuttle external tank.
Having recently completed application of the thermal protection system, teams will now continue outfitting the 130-foot-tall liquid hydrogen tank with critical systems to ready it for its designated Artemis III mission. The core stage of SLS is the largest ever built by length and volume, and was manufactured at Michoud using state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. (NASA/Steven Seipel) While it might sound like a task similar to applying paint to a house or spraying insulation in an attic, it is a much more complex process. The flexible polyurethane foam had to withstand harsh conditions for application and testing. Additionally, there was a new challenge: spraying the stage horizontally, something never done previously during large foam applications on space shuttle external tanks at Michoud. All large components of space shuttle tanks were in a vertical position when sprayed with automated processes.
Overall, the rocket’s core stage is 212 feet with a diameter of 27.6 feet, the same diameter as the space shuttle’s external tank. The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks feed four RS-25 engines for approximately 500 seconds before SLS reaches low Earth orbit and the core stage separates from the upper stage and NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
“Even though it only takes 102 minutes to apply the spray, a lot of careful preparation and planning is put into this process before the actual application of the foam,” said Boeing’s Brian Jeansonne, the integrated product team senior leader for the thermal protection system at NASA Michoud. “There are better process controls in place than we’ve ever had before, and there are specialized production technicians who must have certifications to operate the system. It’s quite an accomplishment and a lot of pride in knowing that we’ve completed this step of the build process.”
The core stage of SLS is the largest NASA has ever built by length and volume, and it was manufactured at Michoud using state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. Michoud is a unique, advanced manufacturing facility where the agency has built spacecraft components for decades, including the space shuttle’s external tanks and Saturn V rockets for the Apollo program.
Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
For more information on the Artemis Campaign, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/artemis/
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Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov
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By NASA
Sasha Weston, project support, Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems program, with the Project and Engineering Support Services II contract with NASA, discusses the program with a participant, right, during Ames Partnership Days on April 29, 2025, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Through partnerships, the program advances technologies that enable small spacecraft to achieve NASA missions in faster and more affordable ways.NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete On April 29, more than 90 representatives from industry, U.S. federal labs, government agencies, and academia gathered at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley to learn about the center’s groundbreaking research and development capabilities. The three-day event provided insight into the many ways to collaborate with NASA, including tapping into the agency’s singular subject matter expertise and gaining access to state-of-the-art facilities at NASA Ames and centers across the country. Partnerships help the agency to advance technological innovation, enable science, and foster the emerging space economy.
Terry Fong, senior scientist for autonomous systems at NASA Ames, summed up the objective of the event when he noted, “I don’t believe anyone – government, academia, industry – has a monopoly on good ideas. It’s how you best combine forces to have the greatest effect.”
Terry Fong, senior scientist at NASA Ames, center, discusses the center’s capabilities in intelligent adaptive systems and potential applications with Jessica Nowinski, chief of the Human Systems Integration division, left, and Alonso Vera, senior technologist, right, on April 29, 2025, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete Author: Jeanne Neal
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Last Updated May 13, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Science Activation Take a Tour of the Cosmos with… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
Take a Tour of the Cosmos with New Interactives from NASA’s Universe of Learning
Ready for a tour of the cosmos? NASA’s Universe of Learning has released a new, dynamic way for lifelong learners to explore NASA’s breathtaking images of the universe—ViewSpace interactive Image Tours. ViewSpace has an established track record of providing museums, science centers, libraries, and other informal learning environments with free, web-based videos and digital interactives—like its interactive Image Sliders. These new Image Tours are another unique experience from NASA’s Universe of Learning, created through a collaboration between scientists that operate NASA telescopes and experts well-versed in the most modern methods of learning. Hands-on, self-directed learning resources like these have long been valued by informal learning sites as effective means for engaging and intriguing users with the latest discoveries from NASA’s space telescope missions—while encouraging lifelong learners to continue their passionate exploration of the stars, galaxies, and distant worlds.
With these new ViewSpace Image Tours, visitors can take breathtaking journeys through space images that contain many exciting stories. The “Center of the Milky Way Galaxy” Tour, for example, uses breathtaking images from NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra X-ray telescopes and includes eleven Tour Stops, where users can interact with areas like “the Brick”—a dense, dark cloud of hydrogen molecules imaged by Spitzer. Another Tour Stop zooms toward the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, offering a dramatic visual journey to the galaxy’s core.
In other tours, like the “Herbig-Haro 46/47” Tour, learners can navigate through points of interest in an observation from a single telescope mission. In this case, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides the backdrop where lifelong learners can explore superheated jets of gas and dust being ejected at tremendous speeds from a pair of young, forming stars. The power of Webb turns up unexpected details in the background, like a noteworthy distant galaxy famous for its uncanny resemblance to a question mark. Each Interactive Image Tour allows people to examine unique features through videos, images, or graphical overlays to identify how those features have formed in ways that static images alone can’t convey.
These tours, which include detailed visual descriptions for each Tour Stop, illuminate the science behind the beauty, allowing learners of all ages to develop a greater understanding of and excitement for space science, deepening their engagement with astronomy, regardless of their prior experience. Check out the About the Interactives page on the ViewSpace website for a detailed overview of how to use the Image Tours.
ViewSpace currently offers three Image Tours, and the collection will continue growing:
Center of the Milky Way Galaxy:
Peer through cosmic dust and uncover areas of intense activity near the Milky Way’s core, featuring imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Herbig-Haro 46/47:
Witness how a tightly bound pair of young stars shapes their nebula through ejections of gas and dust in an image from the James Webb Space Telescope.
The Whirlpool Galaxy:
Explore the iconic swirling arms and glowing core of a stunning spiral galaxy, with insights into star formation, galaxy structure, and more in a Hubble Space Telescope image.
“The Image Tours are beautiful, dramatic, informational, and easy to use,” explained Sari Custer, Chief of Science and Curiosity at Arizona Science Center. “I’m excited to implement them in my museum not only because of the incredible images and user-friendly features, but also for the opportunity to excite and ignite the public’s curiosity about space.”
NASA’s Universe of Learning is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
Select views from various Image Tours. Clockwise from top left: The Whirlpool Galaxy, Center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Herbig-Haro 46/47, detail view in the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Share
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Last Updated May 13, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ICON’s next generation Vulcan construction system 3D printing a simulated Mars habitat for NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) missions.ICON One of the keys to a sustainable human presence on distant worlds is using local, or in-situ, resources which includes building materials for infrastructure such as habitats, radiation shielding, roads, and rocket launch and landing pads. NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is leveraging its portfolio of programs and industry opportunities to develop in-situ, resource capabilities to help future Moon and Mars explorers build what they need. These technologies have made exciting progress for space applications as well as some impacts right here on Earth.
The Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology (MMPACT) project, funded by NASA’s Game Changing Development program and managed at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is exploring applications of large-scale, robotic 3D printing technology for construction on other planets. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but demonstrations using simulated lunar and Martian surface material, known as regolith, show the concept could become reality.
Lunar 3D printing prototype.Contour Crafting With its partners in industry and academic institutions, MMPACT is developing processing technologies for lunar and Martian construction materials. The binders for these materials, including water, could be extracted from the local regolith to reduce launch mass. The regolith itself is used as the aggregate, or granular material, for these concretes. NASA has evaluated these materials for decades, initially working with large-scale 3D printing pioneer, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of civil, environmental and astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Khoshnevis developed techniques for large-scale extraterrestrial 3D printing under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. One of these processes is Contour Crafting, in which molten regolith and a binding agent are extruded from a nozzle to create infrastructure layer by layer. The process can be used to autonomously build monolithic structures like radiation shielding and rocket landing pads.
Continuing to work with the NIAC program, Khoshnevis also developed a 3D printing method called selective separation sintering, in which heat and pressure are applied to layers of powder to produce metallic, ceramic, or composite objects which could produce small-scale, more-precise hardware. This energy-efficient technique can be used on planetary surfaces as well as in microgravity environments like space stations to produce items including interlocking tiles and replacement parts.
While NASA’s efforts are ultimately aimed at developing technologies capable of building a sustainable human presence on other worlds, Khoshnevis is also setting his sights closer to home. He has created a company called Contour Crafting Corporation that will use 3D printing techniques advanced with NIAC funding to fabricate housing and other infrastructure here on Earth.
Another one of NASA’s partners in additive manufacturing, ICON of Austin, Texas, is doing the same, using 3D printing techniques for home construction on Earth, with robotics, software, and advanced material.
Construction is complete on a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat that will simulate the challenges of a mission to Mars at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The habitat will be home to four intrepid crew members for a one-year Crew Health and Performance Analog, or CHAPEA, mission. The first of three missions begins in the summer of 2023. The ICON company was among the participants in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which aimed to advance the technology needed to build housing in extraterrestrial environments. In 2021, ICON used its large-scale 3D printing system to build a 1,700 square-foot simulated Martian habitat that includes crew quarters, workstations and common lounge and food preparation areas. This habitat prototype, called Mars Dune Alpha, is part of NASA’s ongoing Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, a series of Mars surface mission simulations scheduled through 2026 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
With support from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, ICON is also developing an Olympus construction system, which is designed to use local resources on the Moon and Mars as building materials.
The ICON company uses a robotic 3D printing technique called Laser Vitreous Multi-material Transformation, in which high-powered lasers melt local surface materials, or regolith, that then solidify to form strong, ceramic-like structures. Regolith can similarly be transformed to create infrastructure capable of withstanding environmental hazards like corrosive lunar dust, as well as radiation and temperature extremes.
The company is also characterizing the gravity-dependent properties of simulated lunar regolith in an experiment called Duneflow, which flew aboard a Blue Origin reusable suborbital rocket system through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program in February 2025. During that flight test, the vehicle simulated lunar gravity for approximately two minutes, enabling ICON and researchers from NASA to compare the behavior of simulant against real regolith obtained from the Moon during an Apollo mission.
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/
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Last Updated May 13, 2025 EditorLoura Hall Related Terms
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By NASA
As NASA partners with American industry to deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon, a dedicated team behind the scenes ensures every mission is grounded in strategy, compliance, and innovation. Leading that effort is Aubrie Henspeter, who advises all aspects of procurement for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative—one of the cornerstone projects supporting the Artemis campaign.
Official portrait of Aubrie Henspeter. NASA/Bill Stafford With 20 years at NASA, Henspeter brings multifaceted experience to her role as CLPS procurement team lead in the Lunar & Planetary Exploration Procurement Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Her job is equal parts problem-solving, mentoring, and strategizing—all focused on enabling commercial partners to deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface faster, more affordably, and more efficient than ever before.
“It’s been a great experience to see the full lifecycle of a project—from soliciting requirements to launching to the Moon,” said Henspeter. “We work to continuously adjust as the lunar industry grows and improve procurement terms and conditions by incorporating lessons learned.”
Henspeter leads a team of six contracting officers and contract specialists, managing workload priorities and supporting the continuity of seven commercial missions currently on contract. She also helps shape upcoming contract opportunities for future lunar deliveries, constantly seeking creative procurement strategies within a commercial firm-fixed-price framework.
NASA launched the CLPS initiative in 2018 to create a faster, more flexible way to partner with commercial companies for lunar deliveries. Thirteen vendors are participating as part of a multi-award contract, each eligible to compete for individual task orders to deliver NASA science and technology payloads to the Moon. These deliveries support Artemis goals by enabling new discoveries, testing key technologies, and preparing for long-term human exploration on the lunar surface.
Aubrie Henspeter receives the 2023 JSC Director’s Commendation Award from NASA Acting Associate Administrator Vanessa Wyche, right, and Johnson Space Center’s Acting Director Steve Koerner, far left, joined by her sons Elijah and Malik Merrick.NASA/James Blair In May 2023, Henspeter received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for her leadership on CLPS from 2018–2023. For her, the recognition reflects the team’s spirit and collaboration.
“I genuinely enjoy working on this project because of its lean, adaptable approach and the amazing team involved,” she said. “When all of us across NASA work together we are the most successful and can achieve our mission.”
That sense of collaboration and adaptability has shaped many of the insights Henspeter has gained throughout her career—lessons she now applies daily to help the team stay aligned and prepared.
One of those key lessons: always keep the contract current.
“It’s all good until it isn’t, and then everyone asks—what does the contract say?” she said. “Open communication and up-to-date documentation, no matter how minor the change, are essential.”
Over the course of her career, Henspeter has learned to prioritize preparation, adaptability, and strong working relationships.
“Preparation in procurement is conducting thorough market research, understanding the regulations, finding the gray areas, and developing a strategy that best meets the customer’s needs,” she said. “Adaptability means staying committed to the goal while remaining open and flexible on how to get there.”
That philosophy has helped her navigate everything from yearlong international contract negotiations with foreign partners to pivoting a customer from a sole-source request to a competitive procurement that ultimately saved costs and expanded opportunity.
“NASA is full of brilliant people, and it can be challenging to present alternatives. But through clear communication and data-driven recommendations, we find solutions that work,” Henspeter said.
NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) team members at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, including Aubrie Henspeter (second from left) and teammates Joshua Smith, LaToya Eaglin, Catherine Staggs, Shayla Martin, Tasha Beasley, Jennifer Ariens, Derek Maggard, and guests. As she looks to the Artemis Generation, Henspeter hopes to pass along a deep respect for teamwork and shared purpose.
“Every contribution matters. Whether it seems big or small, it makes a difference in achieving our mission,” she said. “I take pride in my role and in being part of the NASA team.”
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