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By NASA
Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.
“It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.
Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.
“Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”
Farah Al Fulfulee poses outside the Sonny Carter Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”
Farah Al Fulfulee celebrates her graduation from the University of Baghdad while wearing a spacesuit costume. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”
Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.
Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”
Farah Al Fulfulee participates in a NASA study that evaluated and compared the use of virtual reality and physical mockups to assess space vehicle and systems designs. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.
“I could not be happier,” she declared.
She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”
Farah Al Fulfulee tending to her backyard garden.Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.
She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.
“I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”
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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 3 min read
Sols 4329-4330: Continuing Downhill
A post-drive image from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity showcases the rover’s two front wheels. The right front wheel is parked on top of a rock, which altered the science team’s plan for the day. This image was taken by the Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) aboard Curiosity on sol 4328 — Martian day 4,328 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Oct. 9, 2024, at 02:30:55 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024
Curiosity is continuing to make good progress downhill along the western edge of the Gediz Vallis channel, allowing us to take another look from a different perspective at this area we’ve spent many months exploring. The drive from Monday’s plan executed as expected, positioning us about 30 meters (about 98 feet) north of our last location. Unfortunately, the rover parked with its right front wheel atop an unstable-looking rock, so we decided to keep the arm stowed rather than risk having the wheel slip with the arm unstowed.
As a consequence, our plan today is all remote sensing, kicking off with a LIBS activity on a bedrock target “Sapphire Lake” and long distance RMI mosaics of “Pinnacle Ridge,” which avid readers may remember was a focus of an imaging campaign while we were still in the channel. Mastcam gets its turn on both Sapphire Lake and Pinnacle Ridge, as well as a Mastcam-exclusive target, “Wuksachi,” to document some rover-disturbed regolith and a wheel-scuffed rock surface. This plan’s drive is also in the first sol, which will hopefully bring us nearly 40 meters (about 131 feet) further north, closer to our eventual exit from Gediz Vallis.
The first sol also sees a small collection of environmental science observations, including Navcam images to monitor dust and sand on the rover deck as well as a Navcam movie looking out over the northern horizon to look for clouds. We haven’t been seeing many clouds lately, but we are rapidly approaching the end of the current Mars Year, and the end of the dusty season. (The new year, numbered 38, begins Nov. 12; a Martian year is much longer than one on Earth, taking 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun.) Though the cloudy season won’t really pick up steam until February, the “noctilucent cloud season” will be taking place in December and January, which has produced some spectacular images in the past. Today’s plan also features an “UltraSPENDI,” or “Shunt Prevention ENV Navcam Drop-In.” This activity takes 18 cloud movies and dust devil movies over three hours and serves to prevent the rover’s batteries from remaining fully charged for an extended period of time, which would hurt their long-term health.
The second sol of this plan is pretty simple, featuring a Mastcam tau to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, a ChemCam AEGIS activity, some more Navcam deck monitoring, and a 360-degree Navcam survey for dust devils around the rover. As always, REMS, RAD, and DAN will be continuing with their usual activities.
Written by Conor Hayes, graduate student at York University
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Last Updated Oct 11, 2024 Related Terms
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By USH
The accepted narrative describes the Knights Templar as humble warrior monks protecting Christians on the road to Jerusalem.
The Knights were later betrayed and, ultimately, destroyed.
But there is another story within that story. It's a legend filled with murder, mystery, and buried treasure. And it involves a secret powerful enough to rewrite history and change the world.
Yes, the Templars were in Jerusalem protecting Christians. But that was their cover story.
The real reason they were there was: they were looking for something. Ancient technology.
So as soon as the Knights Templar arrived in the Holy Land, they started digging.
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By NASA
2 min read
Cosmic Companionship Quest Marks Major Milestone
Are we alone in the universe? About 30,000 volunteers want to know! These volunteers visited arewealone.earth to sift through a huge data set from the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope—inspecting it for signals that might indicate intelligent extraterrestrial life. As of this week, this giant team has made ONE MILLION inspections!
“We are thrilled that our volunteers have accomplished so much in the short 10-month period since our launch,” said project PI Jean-Luc Margot.
The Science and Communications team of the “Are we alone in the universe?” project. From left to right: Ella, Jay, Megan, Jeremy, Priscella, Jean-Luc. Not pictured: Liam. It’s a major milestone to be sure. But does that mean this search is over? Not even close. The Green Bank Telescope collects millions of signals per hour! So UCLA graduate student Megan Li is building on the volunteer-submitted data to design and train a machine learning application that will help tackle that enormous data rate. She will present her preliminary results at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society this January.
If you’ve been helping out—thank you! And please come help some more! The 10th batch of UCLA SETI data has now been uploaded to the platform. Moreover, thanks to volunteer translators, the project is now available in French (translated by Louis Verhaeghe) and in Portuguese (translated by Fernando Nogal).
“Are we alone in the universe?” was built by UCLA SETI on the Zooniverse platform with funding from The Planetary Society and the NASA Citizen Science Seed Funding Program.
Facebook logo @DoNASAScience @DoNASAScience Share
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Last Updated Dec 18, 2023 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Cube Quest Concludes: Wins, Lessons Learned from Centennial Challenge
Small satellites, called CubeSats, are shown secured inside NASA’s Orion stage adapter at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 5, 2021. One of these CubeSats belonged to Team Miles, one of the three finalists in the Cube Quest Centennial Challenge. The ring-shaped stage adapter was connected to the Space Launch System’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, with the Orion spacecraft secured on top. The CubeSats’ mission was to detach from the stage adapter, then fly near and beyond the Moon to conduct a variety of science experiments and technology demonstrations to expand our knowledge of the lunar surface during the Artemis I mission.NASA/Cory Huston By Savannah Bullard
Artemis I launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 16, 2022, penning a new era of space exploration and inching the agency closer to sending the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface.
Aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket were 10 small satellites, no bigger than shoeboxes, whose goal was to detach and capably perform operations near and beyond the Moon. One of those satellites was a product of the Cube Quest Challenge, a NASA-led prize competition that asked citizen innovators to design, build, and deliver flight-qualified satellites called CubeSats that could perform its mission independently of the Artemis I mission.
Cube Quest is the agency’s first in-space public prize competition. Opened in 2015, the challenge began with four ground-based tournaments, which awarded almost $500,000 in prizes. Three finalists emerged from the ground competition with a ticket to hitch a ride aboard the SLS as a secondary payload – and win the rest of the competition’s $5 million prize purse, NASA’s largest-ever prize offering to date – in 2022.
Of the three finalists, Team Miles was the sole team to make the trip on Artemis I successfully. Shortly after a successful deployment in space, controllers detected downlink signals and processed them to confirm whether the CubeSat was operational. This remains the latest update for the Team Miles CubeSat.
“We’re still celebrating the many wins that were borne out of Cube Quest,” said Centennial Challenges Program Manager Denise Morris. “The intent of the challenge was to reward citizen inventors who successfully advance the CubeSat technologies needed for operations on the Moon and beyond, and I believe we accomplished this.”
Innovation rarely comes without error, but according to Challenge Manager Naveen Vetcha, who supports Centennial Challenges through Jacobs Space Exploration Group, even after everything goes as expected, there is no guarantee that scientists will reach their desired outcomes.
“Given the magnitude of what we can and do accomplish every day at NASA, it comes with the territory that not every test, proposal, or idea will come out with 100 percent success,” Vetcha said. “We have set ambitious goals, and challenging ourselves to change what’s possible will inevitably end with examples of not meeting our stretch goals. But, with each failure comes more opportunities and lessons to carry forward. In the end, our competitors created technologies that will enable affordable deep space CubeSats, which, to me, is a big win.”
Advancements in Commercial Space Research
Although Team Miles may have made it furthest in the Cube Quest Challenge, having launched its CubeSat as a secondary payload aboard Artemis I, the team continues to participate in the challenge long after launch.
“From Team Miles, Miles Space LLC was created and is still in business,” said Jan McKenna, Team Miles’ project manager and safety lead. “Miles Space is developing and selling the propulsion system designed for our craft to commercial aerospace companies, and we’ve expanded to be able to create hardware for communications along with our CubeSat developments.”
The next steps for Miles Space LLC include seeing through their active patent applications, establishing relationships with potential clients, and continuing to hunt for a connection with their flying CubeSat. Another finalist team, Cislunar Explorers, is currently focused on using their lessons learned to benefit the global small satellite community.
“I utilized the contacts I made through Cube Quest and the other Artemis Secondary Payloads for my thesis research,” said Aaron Zucherman, Cislunar Explorers’ project manager. “This has enabled me to find partnerships and consulting work with other universities and companies where I have shared my experiences learning the best ways to build interplanetary CubeSats.”
Inspiring a Generation of Space Scientists
This challenge featured teams from diverse educational and commercial backgrounds. Several team members credited the challenge as a catalyst in their graduate thesis or Ph.D. research, but one young innovator says Cube Quest completely redirected his entire career trajectory.
Project Selene team lead, Braden Oh, competed with his peers at La Cañada High School in La Cañada, California. Oh’s team eventually caught the attention of Kerri Cahoy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the designs were similar enough that Cahoy invited the two teams to merge. The exposure gained through this partnership was a powerful inspiration for Oh and his peers.
“I originally intended to apply to college as a computer science major, but my experiences in Cube Quest inspired me to study engineering instead,” Oh said. “I saw similar stories unfold for a number of my teammates; one eventually graduated from MIT and another now works for NASA.”
Cube Quest is managed out of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The competition is a part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, which is housed at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Centennial Challenges is a part of NASA’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Learn more about Cube Quest Facebook logo @NASAPrize @NASAPrize Instagram logo @NASAPrize Jonathan Deal
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 16, 2023 Related Terms
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