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NASA Citizen Science and Your Career: Stories of Exoplanet Watch Volunteers
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A team works together on their project during the 2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge event in in Arequipa, Peru. Teams have two days to respond to the challenges and submit their project for the chance to win one of 10 global awards. NASA invites innovators of all ages to register for the NASA Space Apps Challenge, held on Oct. 4-5. The 2025 theme is Learn, Launch, Lead, and participants will work alongside a vibrant community of scientists, technologists, and storytellers at more than 450 events worldwide. Participants can expect to learn skills to succeed in STEM fields, launch ideas that transform NASA’s open data into actionable tools, and lead their communities in driving technological innovation.
During the NASA Space Apps Challenge, participants in the U.S. and around the world gather at hundreds of in-person and virtual events to address challenges authored by subject matter experts across NASA divisions. These challenges range in complexity and topic, tasking participants with everything from creating machine learning models and leveraging artificial intelligence, to improving access to NASA research, to designing sustainable recycling systems for Mars, and to developing tools to evaluate local air quality here on Earth.
Dr. Yoseline Angel Lopez, a former space apps challenge winner and now an assistant research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, can attest that the opportunity to Learn, Launch, Lead goes far beyond the hackathon.
“The NASA Space Apps Challenge gave me and my team a meaningful opportunity to apply science to real-world problems and gain validation from NASA scientists and industry experts,” said Angel.
In 2021, her team’s winning web-app prototype was adopted by Colombia’s Ministry of Agriculture, connecting smallholder farmers with local buyers. The platform also supported agricultural land-use monitoring using satellite imagery.
After the hackathon, project submissions are judged by NASA and space agency experts. Winners are selected for one of 10 global awards.
“Participating in the hackathon is exciting on its own. But when your project can lead to greater opportunities and make a difference in your community, that’s a dream come true,” said Angel. She will return to the 2025 hackathon as a NASA subject matter expert and challenge author, giving a Golden Age of innovators the opportunity to make a difference in their communities through the use of data from NASA and 14 space agency partners.
This year’s partners include: Bahrain Space Agency; Brazilian Space Agency; CSA (Canadian Space Agency); ESA (European Space Agency); ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation); Italian Space Agency; JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency); Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre of the United Arab Emirates; National Space Activities Commission of Argentina; Paraguayan Space Agency; South African National Space Agency; Spanish Space Agency; Turkish Space Agency; and the UK Space Agency.
NASA Space Apps is funded by NASA’s Earth Science Division through a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, Mindgrub, and SecondMuse.
We invite you to register for the 2025 NASA Space Apps Challenge and choose a virtual or in-person event near you at:
https://www.spaceappschallenge.org
Find videos about Space Apps at:
youtube.com/c/NASASpaceAppsChallenge
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Last Updated Jul 17, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Of all the possible entry points to NASA, the agency’s SkillBridge Program has been instrumental in helping servicemembers transition from the military and into civilian careers. Offered in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD), the program enables individuals to spend their final months of military service working with a NASA office or organization. SkillBridge fellows work anywhere from 90 to 180 days, contributing their unique skillsets to the agency while building their network and knowledge.
The Johnson Space Center in Houston hosted NASA’s first SkillBridge fellow in 2019, paving the way for dozens of others to follow. SkillBridge participants are not guaranteed a job offer at the end of their fellowship, but many have gone on to accept full-time positions with NASA. About 25 of those former fellows currently work at Johnson, filling roles as varied as their military experiences.
Miguel Shears during his military service (left) and his SkillBridge fellowship at Johnson Space Center.Images courtesy of Miguel Shears Miguel Shears retired from the Marine Corps in November 2023. He ended his 30 years of service as the administration, academics, and operations chief for the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, where he was also an adjunct professor. Shears completed a SkillBridge fellowship with FOD in the summer and fall of 2023, supporting the instructional systems design team. He was hired as a full-time employee upon his military retirement and currently serves as an instructional systems designer for the Instructor Training Module, Mentorship Module, and Spaceflight Academy. He conducts training needs analysis for FOD, as well.
Ever Zavala as a flight test engineer in the U.S. Air Force (left) and as a capsule communicator in the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center.Images courtesy of Ever Zavala Ever Zavala was very familiar with Johnson before becoming a SkillBridge fellow. He spent the last three of his nearly 24-year Air Force career serving as the deputy director of the DoD Human Spaceflight Payloads Office at Johnson. His team oversaw the development, integration, launch, and operation of payloads hosting DoD experiments on small satellites and the International Space Station. He also became a certified capsule communicator, or capcom, in December 2022, and was the lead capcom for SpaceX’s 28th commercial resupply services mission to the orbiting laboratory.
Zavala’s SkillBridge fellowship was in Johnson’s Astronaut Office, where he worked as a capcom, capcom instructor, and an integration engineer supporting the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. He was involved in developing a training needs analysis and agency simulators for the human landing system, among other projects.
He officially joined the center team as a full-time contractor in August 2024. He is currently a flight operations safety officer within the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) and continues to serve as a part-time capcom.
Carl Johnson with his wife during his first visit to Johnson Space Center (left) and completing some electrical work as part of his SkillBridge fellowship. Images courtesy of Carl Johnson Carl Johnson thanks his wife for helping him find a path to NASA. While she was a Pathways intern — and his girlfriend at the time — she gave him a tour of the center that inspired him to join the agency when he was ready to leave the Army. She helped connect him to one of the center’s SkillBridge coordinators and the rest is history.
Johnson was selected for a SkillBridge fellowship in the Dynamic System Test Branch. From February to June 2023, he supported development of the lunar terrain vehicle ground test unit and contributed to the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS), which simulates reduced gravity for astronaut training.
Johnson officially joined the center team as an electrical engineer in the Engineering Directorate’s Software, Robotics, and Simulation Division in September 2023. He is currently developing a new ARGOS spacewalk simulator and training as an operator and test director for another ARGOS system.
Johnson holds an electrical engineering degree from the United States Military Academy. He was on active duty in the Army for 10 years and concluded his military career as an instructor and small group leader for the Engineer Captains Career Course. In that role, he was responsible for instructing, mentoring, and preparing the next generation of engineer captains.
Kevin Quinn during his Navy service.Image courtesy of Kevin Quinn Kevin Quinn served in the Navy for 22 years. His last role was maintenance senior chief with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31, known as “the Dust Devils.” Quinn managed the operations and maintenance of 33 aircraft, ensuring their readiness for complex missions and contributing to developmental flight tests and search and rescue missions. He applied that experience to his SkillBridge fellowship in quality assurance at Ellington Field in 2024. Quinn worked to enhance flight safety and astronaut training across various aircraft, including the T-38, WB-57, and the Super Guppy. He has continued contributing to those projects since being hired as a full-time quality assurance employee in 2025.
Andrew Ulat during his Air Force career. Image courtesy of Andrew Ulat Andrew Ulat retired from the Air Force after serving for 21 years as an intercontinental ballistic missile launch control officer and strategic operations advisor. His last role in the military was as a director of staff at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. There he served as a graduate-level instructor teaching international security concepts to mid-level officers and civilian counterparts from all branches of the military and various federal agencies.
Ulat started his SkillBridge fellowship as an integration engineer in Johnson’s X-Lab, supporting avionics, power, and software integration for the Gateway lunar space station. Ulat transitioned directly from his fellowship into a similar full-time position at Johnson in May 2024.
Ariel Vargas receives a commendation during his Army service (left) and in his official NASA portrait. Ariel Vargas transitioned to NASA after serving for five years in the Army. His last role in the military was as a signal officer, which involved leading teams managing secure communications and network operations in dynamic and mission-critical environments in the Middle East and the United States.
Vargas completed his SkillBridge fellowship in November 2023, supporting Johnson’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO). During his fellowship, he led a center-wide wireless augmentation project that modernized Johnson’s connectivity.
He became a full-time civil servant in May 2024 and currently serves as the business operations and partnerships lead within OCIO, supporting a digital transformation initiative. In this role, he leads efforts to streamline internal business operations, manage strategic partnerships, and drive cross-functional collaboration.
“My time in the military taught me the value of service, leadership, and adaptability—qualities that I now apply daily in support of NASA’s mission,” Vargas said. “I’m proud to be part of the Johnson team and hope my story can inspire other service members considering the SkillBridge pathway.”
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By NASA
A collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation, NISAR will use synthetic aperture radar to monitor nearly all the planet’s land- and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days.Credit: NASA NASA will host a news conference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, July 21, to discuss the upcoming NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission.
The Earth-observing satellite, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), carries an advanced radar system that will help protect communities by providing a dynamic, three-dimensional view of Earth in unprecedented detail and detecting the movement of land and ice surfaces down to the centimeter.
The NISAR mission will lift off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on India’s southeastern coast. Launch is targeted for no earlier than late July.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will stream the briefing live on its X, Facebook, and YouTube channels. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Participants in the news conference include:
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Karen St. Germain, director, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters Wendy Edelstein, deputy project manager, NISAR, NASA JPL Paul Rosen, project scientist, NISAR, NASA JPL To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Questions can be asked on social media during the briefing using #AskNISAR.
With its two radar instruments — an S-band system provided by ISRO and an L-band system provided by NASA — NISAR will use a technique known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Each system’s signal is sensitive to different sizes of features on Earth’s surface, and each specializes in measuring different attributes, such as moisture content, surface roughness, and motion.
These capabilities will help scientists better understand processes involved in natural hazards and catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, land subsidence, and landslides.
Additionally, NISAR’s cloud penetrating ability will aid urgent responses to communities during weather disasters such as hurricanes, storm surge, and flooding. The detailed maps the mission creates also will provide information on both gradual and sudden changes occurring on Earth’s land and ice surfaces.
Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL leads the U.S. component of the NISAR project and provided the L-band SAR. NASA JPL also provided the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which will receive NISAR’s L-band data.
Multiple ISRO centers have contributed to NISAR. The Space Applications Centre is providing the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. The rocket is from Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, launch services are through Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and satellite mission operations are by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network. The National Remote Sensing Centre is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination.
To learn more about NISAR, visit:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
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Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Andrew Wang / Scott Hulme
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-653-9131
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / scott.d.hulme@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 16, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth Science Division Goddard Space Flight Center Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Space Network Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIT/A. Varga et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk A star is unleashing a barrage of X-rays that is causing a closely-orbiting, young planet to wither away an astonishing rate, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and described in our latest press release. A team of researchers has determined that this planet will go from the size of Jupiter down to a small, barren world.
This graphic provides a visual representation of what astronomers think is happening around the star (known as TOI 1227) and a planet that is orbiting it at a fraction the distance between Mercury and the Sun. This “baby” planet, called TOI 1227 b, is just about 8 million years old, about a thousand times younger than our Sun. The main panel is an artist’s concept that shows the Jupiter-sized planet (lower left) around TOI 1227, which is a faint red star. Powerful X-rays from the star’s surface are tearing away the atmosphere of the planet, represented by the blue tail. The star’s X-rays may eventually completely remove the atmosphere.
The team used new Chandra data — seen in the inset — to measure the amounts of X-rays from TOI 1227 that are striking the planet. Using computer models of the effects of these X-rays, they concluded they will have a transformative effect, rapidly stripping away the planet’s atmosphere. They estimate that the planet is losing a mass equivalent to a full Earth’s atmosphere about every 200 years.
The researchers used different sets of data to estimate the age of TOI 1227 b. One method exploits measurements of how TOI 1227 b’s host star moves through space in comparison to nearby populations of stars with known ages. A second method compared the brightness and surface temperature of the star with theoretical models of evolving stars. The very young age of TOI 1227 b makes it the second youngest planet ever to be observed passing in front of its host star (a so-called transit). Previously the planet had been estimated by others to be about 11 million years old.
Of all the exoplanets astronomers have found with ages less than 50 million years, TOI 1227 b stands out for having the longest year and the host planet with the lowest mass. These properties, and the high dose of X-rays it is receiving, make it an outstanding target for future observations.
A paper describing these results has been accepted publication in The Astrophysical Journal and a preprint is available here. The authors of the paper are Attila Varga (Rochester Institute of Technology), Joel Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology), Alexander Binks (University of Tubingen, Germany), Hans Moritz Guenther (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Simon J. Murphy (University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia).
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release features an artist’s illustration of a Jupiter-sized planet closely orbiting a faint red star. An inset image, showing the star in X-ray light from Chandra, is superimposed on top of the illustration at our upper left corner.
At our upper right, the red star is illustrated as a ball made of intense fire. The planet, slightly smaller than the star, is shown at our lower left. Powerful X-rays from the star are tearing away the atmosphere of the planet, causing wisps of material to flow away from the planet’s surface in the opposite direction from the star. This gives the planet a slight resemblance to a comet, complete with a tail.
X-ray data from Chandra, presented in the inset image, shows the star as a small purple orb on a black background. Astronomers used the Chandra data to measure the amount of X-rays striking the planet from the star. They estimate that the planet is losing a mass equivalent to a full Earth’s atmosphere about every 200 years, causing it to ultimately shrink from the size of Jupiter down to a small, barren world.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 16, 2025 EditorLee MohonContactCorinne M. Beckingercorinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics Chandra X-Ray Observatory Exoplanet Science Exoplanets Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Space Flight Center Science & Research Studying Exoplanets The Universe Explore More
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By NASA
Sylvie Crowell Credit: NASA Sylvie Crowell, a materials researcher at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, has received a NASA Early Career Initiative (ECI) award for a research proposal titled “Lunar Dust Reduction through Electrostatic Adhesion Mitigation (L-DREAM).” The research focuses on developing a passive lunar dust mitigation coating for solar cells and thermal control surfaces.
Operated under the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate, the award will fund Crowell’s research in fiscal year 2026, beginning Oct. 1, 2025.
NASA’s ECI is a unique opportunity for the best and brightest of NASA’s early career researchers to lead hands-on technology development projects. The initiative aims to invigorate NASA’s technological base and best practices by partnering early career NASA leaders with external innovators.
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