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    • By NASA
      5 min read
      Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
      Europa Clipper is seen in the 25-Foot Space Simulator at JPL in February, before the start of thermal vacuum testing. A battery of tests ensures that the NASA spacecraft can withstand the extreme hot, cold, and airless environment of space. NASA/JPL-Caltech A gantlet of tests prepared the spacecraft for its challenging trip to the Jupiter system, where it will explore the icy moon Europa and its subsurface ocean.
      In less than six months, NASA is set to launch Europa Clipper on a 1.6-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) voyage to Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa. From the wild vibrations of the rocket ride to the intense heat and cold of space to the punishing radiation of Jupiter, it will be a journey of extremes. The spacecraft was recently put through a series of hard-core tests at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to ensure it’s up to the challenge.
      Called environmental testing, the battery of trials simulates the environment that the spacecraft will face, subjecting it to shaking, chilling, airlessness, electromagnetic fields, and more.
      NASA’s Europa Clipper is seen being lifted into the Space Simulator at JPL in February. Thermal vacuum testing, which lasted 16 days, ensures that the spacecraft will withstand the harsh conditions of space. NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Europa Clipper is visible in the clean room of High Bay 1 within JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility in January. The tent around the spacecraft was erected to support electromagnetic testing, which was part of a regimen of environmental tests. NASA/JPL-Caltech “These were the last big tests to find any flaws,” said JPL’s Jordan Evans, the mission’s project manager. “Our engineers executed a well-designed and challenging set of tests that put the system through its paces. What we found is that the spacecraft can handle the environments that it will see during and after launch. The system performed very well and operates as expected.”
      The Gantlet
      The most recent environmental test for Europa Clipper was also one of the most elaborate, requiring 16 days to complete. The spacecraft is the largest NASA has ever built for a planetary mission and one of the largest ever to squeeze into JPL’s historic 85-foot-tall, 25-foot-wide (26-meter-by-8-meter) thermal vacuum chamber (TVAC). Known as the 25-foot Space Simulator, the chamber creates a near-perfect vacuum inside to mimic the airless environment of space.
      At the same time, engineers subjected the hardware to the high temperatures it will experience on the side of Europa Clipper that faces the Sun while the spacecraft is close to Earth. Beams from powerful lamps at the base of the Space Simulator bounced off a massive mirror at its top to mimic the heat the spacecraft will endure.
      To simulate the journey away from the Sun, the lamps were dimmed and liquid nitrogen filled tubes in the chamber walls to chill them to temperatures replicating space. The team then gauged whether the spacecraft could warm itself, monitoring it with about 500 temperature sensors, each of which had been attached by hand.
      Watch as engineers and technicians move NASA’s Europa Clipper into the thermal vacuum chamber at JPL in February 2024.
      Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech TVAC marked the culmination of environmental testing, which included a regimen of tests to ensure the electrical and magnetic components that make up the spacecraft don’t interfere with one another.
      The orbiter also underwent vibration, shock, and acoustics testing. During vibration testing, the spacecraft was shaken repeatedly – up and down and side to side – the same way it will be jostled aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket during liftoff. Shock testing involved pyrotechnics to mimic the explosive jolt the spacecraft will get when it separates from the rocket to fly its mission. Finally, acoustic testing ensured that Europa Clipper can withstand the noise of launch, when the rumbling of the rocket is so loud it can damage the spacecraft if it’s not sturdy enough.
      “There still is work to be done, but we’re on track for an on-time launch,” Evans said. “And the fact that this testing was so successful is a huge positive and helps us rest more easily.”
      Looking to Launch
      Later this spring, the spacecraft will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, teams of engineers and technicians will carry out final preparations with eyes on the clock. Europa Clipper’s launch period opens Oct. 10.
      After liftoff, the spacecraft will zip toward Mars, and in late February 2025, it will be close enough to use the Red Planet’s gravitational force for added momentum. From there, the solar-powered spacecraft will swing back toward Earth to get another slingshot boost – from our own planet’s gravitational field – in December 2026.
      Then it’s on to the outer solar system, where Europa Clipper is set to arrive at Jupiter in 2030. The spacecraft will orbit the gas giant while it flies by Europa 49 times, dipping as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the moon’s surface to gather data with its powerful suite of science instruments. The information gathered will tell scientists more about the moon’s watery interior.
      More About the Mission
      Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life. The mission’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its surface interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
      Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
      Find more information about Europa here:
      europa.nasa.gov
      News Media Contacts
      Gretchen McCartney
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      818-393-6215
      gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
      Karen Fox / Charles Blue
      NASA Headquarters, Washington
      301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
      karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov
      2024-032
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      Last Updated Mar 27, 2024 Related Terms
      Europa Clipper Europa Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jupiter The Solar System Explore More
      5 min read ESA, NASA Solar Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet
      On March 25, 2024, a citizen scientist in the Czech Republic spotted a comet in…
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    • By European Space Agency
      Image: A citizen scientist digging through data from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the mission’s 5000th comet.
      The tiny comet – indicated between the vertical lines in the inset – belongs to the ‘Marsden group’, named after the British astronomer Brian Marsden, who first recognised the group based on SOHO observations. Marsden group comets are thought to be pieces shed by the much bigger Comet 96P/Machholz, which SOHO observes as it passes close to the Sun every 5.3 years.
      This 5000th comet was discovered by Hanjie Tan, an astronomy PhD student in Prague, Czechia. Hanjie has been comet hunting since he was just 13 years old, discovering over 200 comets since 2009.
      Hanjie explains how he felt upon spotting this comet in the data: “The Marsden group comets represent only about 1.5% of all SOHO comet discoveries, so finding this one as the 5000th SOHO comet felt incredibly fortunate. It's really exciting to be the first to see comets get bright near the Sun after they've been travelling through space for thousands of years.”
      Launched in 1995, SOHO studies the Sun from its interior to its outer atmosphere, providing unique views and investigating the cause of the solar wind. During the last three decades, SOHO has become the most prolific discoverer of comets in astronomical history.
      The telescope’s prowess as a comet-hunter was unplanned, but turned out to be an unexpected success. With its clear view of the Sun’s surroundings, SOHO can easily spot a special kind of comet called a sungrazer – so-called because of their close approach to the Sun.
      Like most who have discovered comets in SOHO’s data, Hanjie Tan is a volunteer citizen scientist, searching for comets in his free time with the Sungrazer Project. This NASA-funded citizen science project, managed by Karl Battams from the US Naval Research Lab, grew out of the huge number of comet discoveries by citizen scientists early into SOHO’s mission.
      “Prior to the launch of the SOHO mission and the Sungrazer Project, there were only a couple dozen sungrazing comets on record – that’s all we knew existed,” said Karl Battams, who is the principal investigator for the Sungrazer Project. “The fact that we’ve finally reached this milestone – 5000 comets – is just unbelievable to me.”
      SOHO is a cooperative effort between ESA and NASA. Mission control is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment, or LASCO, which is the instrument that provides most of the comet imagery, was built by an international consortium, led by the US Naval Research Lab.
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      SOHO’s 3000th comet
       
      [Image description: A bright orange circle covers almost the whole image, with a smaller disc in the middle. Out of the smaller disc protrude wisps of the Sun's atmosphere. To the upper right of the inner circle, an inset zooms in on a small square, with vertical lines surrounding a faint smudge.]
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    • By European Space Agency
      When it comes to predicting what our climate will be like in the future, vegetation matters. Plants and trees exert a powerful influence over both the energy cycle and the water cycle. And, crucially, it is estimated that vegetation draws down well over three billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year – this is equivalent to a third of greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity.
      Accounting for vegetation growth is clearly important in the complex climate puzzle – and the release of a new satellite dataset is set to help climate modellers with the challenge of evaluating the impacts of climate change.
      View the full article
    • By NASA
      3 Min Read Order Up: High School Students Compete to Launch Their Food into Space with NASA HUNCH Culinary Competition
      High School students in chef jackets line long black tables at NASA's Langley Research Center preparing savory breakfast dishes fit for astronauts onboard the International Space Station. Credits: NASA/Angelique Herring On Monday, Feb. 26, visitors to the Integrated Engineering Services Building at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, were greeted by the mouthwatering smell of roasted garlic, sautéed peppers and onions, fragrant herbs, and the unexpected discovery that the building’s main hallway had been turned into a pop-up kitchen for local high school students.
      These students were participants in NASA HUNCH Culinary. NASA HUNCH (High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware) is a Project Based Learning program where high school students participate in the design and fabrication of real world valued products for NASA. HUNCH has six areas of focus that students may choose to participate in: Precision Machining, Softgoods, Design and Prototype, Food Science, Communications, and Software.
      High School students chop vegetables as they prepare their savory entry for NASA’s HUNCH Culinary Challenge.NASA/Angelique Herring The HUNCH Astronaut Culinary Program provides students the opportunity to create dishes for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Students must create tasty recipes following a specific food processing procedure and meeting certain nutritional requirements. These dishes must meet the standards of the NASA Johnson Space Center Food Lab in Houston, Texas.
      Through this program, students gain culinary experience as well as experience with research and presenting their work in a professional environment. Students spend weeks perfecting their recipes so that on competition day, they can recreate their dishes in person at various NASA centers across the country.
      This year, HUNCH Culinary student teams were tasked with the challenge of creating a savory breakfast dish that included a vegetable. The recipes had to fall between 150 and 350 calories, contain less than 12 grams of fat and 250 milligrams of sodium, have at least one gram of fiber, and “must process well for spaceflight and for use in microgravity” among several other requirements.
      An eager hand reaches for a small serving of eggs scrambled with vegetables and topped with seeds as a larger skillet of the savory breakfast dish sits to the left.NASA/Angelique Herring Several students described challenges around creating a recipe under these guidelines. Nyland Clay, a student at Landstown High School in Virginia Beach, explained his team’s problem solving around the minimal sodium guideline.
      “We were able to work around that by using different types of flavors in order to substitute for the extra sodium,” he said. “One of the ways we did this was with poblano peppers. When seared over a grill, they make a nice smoky flavor that doesn’t add any sodium whatsoever.”
      Nyland’s team additionally chose to use ground turkey in their sweet potato hash recipe instead of ground beef to avoid unnecessary fat.
      Travis Walker, culinary instructor at Phoebus High School in Hampton and former executive catering chef manager for the NASA Langley Exchange, spoke highly of his students as his reason for teaching.
      “The most rewarding part is just watching the growth of the kids,” he said. “From the day you get them and they can’t boil water, to the time they get here and they’re in these competitions and excelling — that’s the most rewarding part.”
      The student groups with the highest scores will be invited to Johnson Space Center in Houston for a final competition where their dishes will be judged by Johnson Food Lab personnel, industry professionals, the ISS program office, and astronauts. The criteria are quality, taste, and the students’ work on the research paper and presentation video. The winning entree will be processed by the Johnson Space Center Food Lab and sent up to the station for the astronauts to enjoy.
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      Last Updated Mar 26, 2024 Related Terms
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    • By NASA
      5 min read
      Early Adopters of NASA’s PACE Data to Study Air Quality, Ocean Health
      From the atmosphere down to the surface of the ocean, data from NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite benefits ecosystems, human health, and underrepresented communities.
      Years before the launch in February 2024, mission leaders from NASA teamed with dozens of applied scientists and environmental professionals to prepare for the many practical uses that could be informed by PACE data. PACE’s Early Adopter program integrates science data into business, environmental management, and decision-making activities to benefit society.
      A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) spacecraft stands vertical at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Feb. 5, 2024. PACE is NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite that will help increase our understanding of Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and climate by delivering hyperspectral observations of microscopic marine organisms called phytoplankton as well new data on clouds and aerosols. SpaceX The researchers specialize in a wide range of topics including water resources, fisheries and aquaculture, air quality and health, climate, and agriculture. These early adopters of the science provide a bridge between the PACE team and local communities and decision-makers who need accessible products for public use. Such work can help connect the new frontier of PACE’s hyperspectral and multi-angular polarimetric data to real-world problems – and find new ways to address challenges.
      Helping Coastal Communities Keep Fisheries Safe
      In coastal communities, knowing the quality of the water is essential for ecosystem health, safe and sustainable seafood, and recreation – not to mention human livelihoods that depend on fisheries.
      Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments. When conditions are right, phytoplankton undergo explosive population growth, creating blooms visible from space. Such a bloom occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Newfoundland in early August 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on Aug. 9, 2010. The paisley pattern of peacock blue owes its color to phytoplankton. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team Marina Marrari, executive director of the Costa Rican Fishing Federation in San José is one of PACE’s early adopters. Marrari and her colleagues developed a mobile app that will pull in data from PACE’s Ocean Color Instrument to help inform the public about harmful algal blooms. Known as pezCA, the app distributes near real-time data about ocean temperature, chlorophyll concentration, and currents as measured by other NASA satellites. Once PACE data is available, the app will be updated to include a product on specific types of harmful algal blooms that can have toxic effects on people and animals.
      Bringing Air Quality Alerts to the Midwest
      Information on air quality and airborne particles (aerosols) is typically available for dense urban areas like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New York. Marcela Loría-Salazar, assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, plans to use data from PACE’s polarimeters and OCI to study air quality in locations in the middle of the United States, where there tend to be fewer ground-based monitors.
      Urban pollution emissions, desert dust, and smoke from wildfires can travel from distant places – across continents or even oceans. (Think of the wildfire smoke that can blow from Alaska and Canada into the central U.S.) PACE gathers global data on this dust and smoke in Earth’s atmosphere every one to two days, and that data is open access – meaning it is available for anyone to find and download free from the Internet.
      Smoke from Canadian wildfires drifts slowly south over the United States’ Midwest. The drifting smoke can be seen in this Terra satellite image taken in December 2017 over Lake Michigan, as well as parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team / Jeff Schmaltz Loría-Salazar and her team can use this information to track aerosols, studying how they change as they move over land, change altitude, and interact with other atmospheric particles. Her goal is to better understand how these aerosols affect human health when they’re inhaled. Her team works with the Oklahoma state government to develop solutions to improve air quality decision-making.
      She also works with tribal nations to help inform air quality decisions in their communities. For example, setting prescribed fires is a traditional activity to preserve ecosystems, but the fires do put smoke into the air. By using satellite data, tribal managers can make better-informed decisions about the potential risk of acute smoke exposure on a given day.
      Tracking Health of Marine Mammal Ecosystems
      Phytoplankton are the center of the marine food web. These microscopic organisms are food for bigger animals like zooplankton, fish, and shellfish – and ultimately whales and dolphins. While PACE can’t directly detect fish or mammals below the surface of the ocean, it can view communities of phytoplankton, which can inform scientists about the ocean ecosystem in which fish and mammals live.
      Liz Ferguson on the coast of the oceans where she studies marine mammals. Courtesy of Liz Ferguson By examining phytoplankton, scientists can gain valuable insights into changes occurring within marine habitats, as these microorganisms often serve as early indicators of regional ecosystem health. Liz Ferguson, CEO and marine ecologist for Ocean Science Analytics, studies marine mammals off the Pacific Coast of North America.
      Monitoring plankton communities enhances scientists’ ability to perceive the intricate dynamics within marine ecosystems. By closely monitoring shifts in environmental variables and the behavior of indicator species such as marine mammals, Ferguson can study the impact of climate change on the California current’s ecosystems.
      Doubling Up Satellite Data
      Some species of phytoplankton produce toxins that can be dangerous for humans, pets, and livestock. When these phytoplankton multiply to large numbers, it’s called a harmful algal bloom.
      Richard Stumpf and Michelle Tomlinson, oceanographers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), use satellite data to study these blooms and help inform communities about their risks. They have been using data from the Ocean and Land Color Instrument on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3 satellite, which captures Earth data by measuring certain wavelengths of light. PACE’s Ocean Color Instrument sensor does the same, but as a hyperspectral instrument, it can detect more than 200 wavelengths – more than five times the number observed by Sentinel-3 and other current instruments.
      Richard Stumpf examines water from plankton net tows in Lake Erie taken in early summer 2023. A net tow concentrates plankton from the water making it easier to identify what is present, particularly when a bloom is developing. The middle jar is the unfiltered lake water, the top one is from an area that has mostly zooplankton (microscopic animals), and the bottom (greenish) one has cyanobacteria. Courtesy of Richard Stumpf PACE data can help Stumpf and Tomlinson continue their research on how the color of harmful algal blooms change over time and space. Choosing specific wavelengths of data from PACE can also help verify the data from Sentinel-3 and extend the long-term data record.
      The hyperspectral capabilities of PACE can allow scientists and environmental managers to not only spot emerging blooms, but also identify the specific communities of phytoplankton that make up the bloom. Detecting these details helps scientists better inform local water managers about the location, timing, and type of harmful algal blooms, which can help mitigate risks to the public.
      About the Author
      Erica McNamee

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      Last Updated Mar 25, 2024 Editor Erica McNamee Contact Erica McNamee erica.s.mcnamee@nasa.gov Related Terms
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