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Wally Funk & the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter Team Awarded Michael Collins Trophies
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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Jeff Renshaw is the lead attorney for procurement law in the Office of the General Counsel for NASA’s Stennis Space Center and the NASA Shared Services Center. NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA attorney Jeff Renshaw’s work has primarily revolved around two things: serving others and solving problems.
The New Orleans native retired as an U.S. Air Force judge advocate following more than two decades of service. Renshaw now has worked for more than eight years as an attorney advisor at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
As the nation’s largest multiuser propulsion test site, NASA Stennis supports and helps power both national and commercial space efforts and missions. Any activity at NASA Stennis is authorized by some form of written agreement. The Office of General Counsel, which Renshaw is a part of, works to ensure that work is conducted appropriately.
“I’m dedicated to being the best public civil servant I can be,” Renshaw said. “In this position, you are representing your client, which is NASA, the federal government, and the taxpayers, so it is important for me to stay updated with the latest legal developments to be the best advocate and advisor I can be.”
As lead attorney for procurement law, the Metairie, Louisiana, resident works alongside the Office of Procurement serving both NASA Stennis and the NASA Shared Services Center.
Some of Renshaw’s work includes reviewing Space Act contract agreements for commercial companies that use NASA Stennis facilities, along with activities for some of the more than 50 federal, state, academic, public, and private aerospace, technology, and research organizations that are part of the NASA Stennis federal city.
Renshaw is motivated to be an expert in his line of work – whether deployed as a U.S. Air Force procurement law attorney to Baghdad, the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan, or working at NASA to help the nation return to the Moon. He spends a lot of time with NASA engineers to understand the in-and-outs of ongoing projects since any activity happening onsite involves the Office of General Counsel.
In addition to the U.S. Air Force, Renshaw has served in other legal profession roles, including as a law clerk for a Louisiana district court judge and a position in the Louisiana State Attorney General’s Office. He said working for NASA gives him the opportunity to focus on his area of expertise, while being involved in the agency’s great mission of exploration and discovery.
“I love NASA, and it is good to feel part of the team and to know that you are contributing to the mission,” he said.
Learn more about the people who work at NASA Stennis View the full article
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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 Mosaics 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 4382-4383: Team Work, Dream Work
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Camera on sol 4373 — Martian day 4,373 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Nov. 24, 2024, at 08:32:59 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Dec. 2, 2024
Today, after a weeklong holiday break, the team was eager to take a look at Curiosity’s new workspace. After driving 51 meters (about 167 feet) alongside Texoli butte (pictured) we had a whole host of new rocks to examine, and it was one of those curiously perfect planning days where everything falls into place. Our team of geologists here on Earth was busy studying the images our Martian geologist had downlinked to Earth prior to planning, and we scheduled 1.5 hours of science activities on the first sol of this plan. An interesting and varied workspace today saw lots of instruments working together to study the rocks in-depth — teamwork really does make the dream work.
To begin, we are targeting a vertical rock face called “Coronet Lake” near the rover. Coronet Lake has a cluster of nodules on show and we are getting information on the composition of these nodules with APXS and a ChemCam LIBS, as well as a close-up image with our MAHLI instrument. We also have a second MAHLI activity scheduled on a flat rock called “Excelsior Mountain.” Our observant team spotted an interesting-looking rock named “Admiration Point.” This rock may have fallen from the nearby Texoli butte, or could be a meteorite. To test these hypotheses further, we are targeting Admiration Point with a Mastcam mosaic and a ChemCam passive. ChemCam and Mastcam work together again on a target named “Olancha,” an area of rocks that could contain evidence of deformation from when the rocks first formed. Olancha will be targeted with a ChemCam long-distance RMI and a Mastcam mosaic.
Mastcam is finishing off the geological observations here with mosaics of “Angels Camp,” a rock containing veins where water may have once flowed, “Bare Island Lake,” a gray rock containing interesting polygonal ridges, and a trough feature close to Coronet Lake. ChemCam is taking another look back at Gediz Vallis channel to see a transition between light- and dark-toned rocks with a long-distance RMI, and we are rounding off this plan with our standard environmental observations.
As the Geology and Mineralogy theme group Keeper of the Plan for today’s planning, I made sure that this sol was packed full of science activities that the team wanted to schedule. After this busy first sol, Curiosity will be driving about 50 meters (about 164 feet), continuing to make our way out of Gediz Vallis, and we are all very excited to see what the rest of the sulfate-bearing unit has to offer us.
Written by Emma Harris, graduate student at Natural History Museum, London
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Last Updated Dec 03, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Scientists find that cometary dust affects interpretation of spacecraft measurements, reopening the case for comets like 67P as potential sources of water for early Earth.
Researchers have found that water on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has a similar molecular signature to the water in Earth’s oceans. Contradicting some recent results, this finding reopens the case that Jupiter-family comets like 67P could have helped deliver water to Earth.
Water was essential for life to form and flourish on Earth and it remains central for Earth life today. While some water likely existed in the gas and dust from which our planet materialized around 4.6 billion years ago, much of the water would have vaporized because Earth formed close to the Sun’s intense heat. How Earth ultimately became rich in liquid water has remained a source of debate for scientists.
Research has shown that some of Earth’s water originated through vapor vented from volcanoes; that vapor condensed and rained down on the oceans. But scientists have found evidence that a substantial portion of our oceans came from the ice and minerals on asteroids, and possibly comets, that crashed into Earth. A wave of comet and asteroid collisions with the solar system’s inner planets 4 billion years ago would have made this possible.
This image, taken by ESA’s Rosetta navigation camera, was taken from a about 53 miles from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on March 14, 2015. The image resolution is 24 feet per pixel and is cropped and processed to bring out the details of the comet’s activity. ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM While the case connecting asteroid water to Earth’s is strong, the role of comets has puzzled scientists. Several measurements of Jupiter-family comets — which contain primitive material from the early solar system and are thought to have formed beyond the orbit of Saturn — showed a strong link between their water and Earth’s. This link was based on a key molecular signature scientists use to trace the origin of water across the solar system.
This signature is the ratio of deuterium (D) to regular hydrogen (H) in the water of any object, and it gives scientists clues about where that object formed. Deuterium is a rare, heavier type — or isotope — of hydrogen. When compared to Earth’s water, this hydrogen ratio in comets and asteroids can reveal whether there’s a connection.
Because water with deuterium is more likely to form in cold environments, there’s a higher concentration of the isotope on objects that formed far from the Sun, such as comets, than in objects that formed closer to the Sun, like asteroids.
Measurements within the last couple of decades of deuterium in the water vapor of several other Jupiter-family comets showed similar levels to Earth’s water.
“It was really starting to look like these comets played a major role in delivering water to Earth,” said Kathleen Mandt, planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mandt led the research, published in Science Advances on Nov. 13, that revises the abundance of deuterium in 67P.
About Kathleen Mandt
But in 2014, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosetta mission to 67P challenged the idea that Jupiter-family comets helped fill Earth’s water reservoir. Scientists who analyzed Rosetta’s water measurements found the highest concentration of deuterium of any comet, and about three times more deuterium than there is in Earth’s oceans, which have about 1 deuterium atom for every 6,420 hydrogen atoms.
“It was a big surprise and it made us rethink everything,” Mandt said.
Mandt’s team decided to use an advanced statistical-computation technique to automate the laborious process of isolating deuterium-rich water in more than 16,000 Rosetta measurements. Rosetta made these measurements in the “coma” of gas and dust surrounding 67P. Mandt’s team, which included Rosetta scientists, was the first to analyze all of the European mission’s water measurements spanning the entire mission.
The researchers wanted to understand what physical processes caused the variability in the hydrogen isotope ratios measured at comets. Lab studies and comet observations showed that cometary dust could affect the readings of the hydrogen ratio that scientists detect in comet vapor, which could change our understanding of where comet water comes from and how it compares to Earth’s water.
What are comets made of? It’s one of the questions ESA’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko wanted to answer. “So I was just curious if we could find evidence for that happening at 67P,” Mandt said. “And this is just one of those very rare cases where you propose a hypothesis and actually find it happening.”
Indeed, Mandt’s team found a clear connection between deuterium measurements in the coma of 67P and the amount of dust around the Rosetta spacecraft, showing that the measurements taken near the spacecraft in some parts of the coma may not be representative of the composition of a comet’s body.
As a comet moves in its orbit closer to the Sun, its surface warms up, causing gas to release from the surface, including dust with bits of water ice on it. Water with deuterium sticks to dust grains more readily than regular water does, research suggests. When the ice on these dust grains is released into the coma, this effect could make the comet appear to have more deuterium than it has.
Mandt and her team reported that by the time dust gets to the outer part of the coma, at least 75 miles from the comet body, it is dried out. With the deuterium-rich water gone, a spacecraft can accurately measure the amount of deuterium coming from the comet body.
This finding, the paper authors say, has big implications not only for understanding comets’ role in delivering Earth’s water, but also for understanding comet observations that provide insight into the formation of the early solar system.
“This means there is a great opportunity to revisit our past observations and prepare for future ones so we can better account for the dust effects,” Mandt said.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Dec 03, 2024 Editor Lonnie Shekhtman Contact Lonnie Shekhtman lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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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 Mosaics 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 4368-4369: The Colors of Fall – and Mars
This image shows all the textures — no color in ChemCam remote-imager images, though — that the Martian terrain has to offer. This image was taken by Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Nov. 18, 2024 — sol 4367, or Martian day 4,367 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 02:55:09 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL Earth planning date: Monday, Nov. 18, 2024
I am in the U.K., where we are approaching the time when trees are just branches and twigs. One tree that still has its full foliage is my little quince tree in my front garden. Its leaves have turned reddish-brown with a hint of orange, fairly dark by now, and when I passed it this afternoon on my way to my Mars operations shift, I thought that these leaves have exactly the colors of Mars! And sure enough, today’s workspace is full of bedrock blocks in the beautiful reddish-brown that we love from Mars. But like that tree, it’s not just one color, but many different versions and patterns, all of many reddish-brown and yellowish-brown colors.
The tree theme continues into the naming of our targets today, with ChemCam observing the target “Big Oak Flat,” which is a flat piece of bedrock with a slightly more gray hue to it. “Calaveras,” in contrast, looks a lot more like my little tree, as it is more reddish and less gray. It’s also a bedrock target, and APXS and MAHLI are observing this target, too. APXS has another bedrock target, called “Murphys” on one of the many bedrock pieces around. MAHLI is of course documenting Murphys, too. Let’s just hope that this target name doesn’t get any additions to it but instead returns perfect data from Mars!
ChemCam is taking several long-distance remote micro-imager images — one on the Gediz Vallis Ridge, and one on target “Mono Lake,” which is also looking at the many, many different textures and stones in our surroundings. The more rocks, the more excited a team of geologists gets! So, we are surely using every opportunity to take images here!
Talking about images… Mastcam is taking documentation images on the Big Oak Flat and Calaveras targets, and a target simply called “trough.” In addition, there are mosaics on “Basket Dome” and “Chilkoot,” amounting to quite a few images of this diverse and interesting terrain! More images will be taken by the navigation cameras for the next drive — and also our Hazcam. We rarely talk about the Hazcams, but they are vital to our mission! They look out from just under the rover belly, forward and backward, and have the important task to keep our rover safe. The forward-looking one is also great for planning purposes, to know where the arm can reach with APXS, MAHLI, and the drill. To me, it’s also one of the most striking perspectives, and shows the grandeur of the landscape so well. If you want to see what I am talking about, have a look at “A Day on Mars” from January of this year.
Of course, we have atmospheric measurements in the plan, too. The REMS sensor is measuring temperature and wind throughout the plan, and Curiosity will be taking observations to search for dust devils, and look at the opacity of the atmosphere. Add DAN to the plan, and it is once again a busy day for Curiosity on the beautifully red and brown Mars. And — hot off the press — all about another color on Mars: yellowish-white!
Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University
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5 Min Read Making Mars’ Moons: Supercomputers Offer ‘Disruptive’ New Explanation
A NASA study using a series of supercomputer simulations reveals a potential new solution to a longstanding Martian mystery: How did Mars get its moons? The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid.
The research team, led by Jacob Kegerreis, a postdoctoral research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, found that an asteroid passing near Mars could have been disrupted – a nice way of saying “ripped apart” – by the Red Planet’s strong gravitational pull.
The team’s simulations show the resulting rocky fragments being strewn into a variety of orbits around Mars. More than half the fragments would have escaped the Mars system, but others would’ve stayed in orbit. Tugged by the gravity of both Mars and the Sun, in the simulations some of the remaining asteroid pieces are set on paths to collide with one another, every encounter further grinding them down and spreading more debris.
Many collisions later, smaller chunks and debris from the former asteroid could have settled into a disk encircling the planet. Over time, some of this material is likely to have clumped together, possibly forming Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos.
To assess whether this was a realistic chain of events, the research team explored hundreds of different close encounter simulations, varying the asteroid’s size, spin, speed, and distance at its closest approach to the planet. The team used their high-performance, open-source computing code, called SWIFT, and the advanced computing systems at Durham University in the United Kingdom to study in detail both the initial disruption and, using another code, the subsequent orbits of the debris.
In a paper published Nov. 20 in the journal Icarus, the researchers report that, in many of the scenarios, enough asteroid fragments survive and collide in orbit to serve as raw material to form the moons.
“It’s exciting to explore a new option for the making of Phobos and Deimos – the only moons in our solar system that orbit a rocky planet besides Earth’s,” said Kegerreis. “Furthermore, this new model makes different predictions about the moons’ properties that can be tested against the standard ideas for this key event in Mars’ history.”
Two hypotheses for the formation of the Martian moons have led the pack. One proposes that passing asteroids were captured whole by Mars’ gravity, which could explain the moons’ somewhat asteroid-like appearance. The other says that a giant impact on the planet blasted out enough material – a mix of Mars and impactor debris – to form a disk and, ultimately, the moons. Scientists believe a similar process formed Earth’s Moon.
The latter explanation better accounts for the paths the moons travel today – in near-circular orbits that closely align with Mars’ equator. However, a giant impact ejects material into a disk that, mostly, stays close to the planet. And Mars’ moons, especially Deimos, sit quite far away from the planet and probably formed out there, too.
“Our idea allows for a more efficient distribution of moon-making material to the outer regions of the disk,” said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at Ames and co-author on the paper. “That means a much smaller ‘parent’ asteroid could still deliver enough material to send the moons’ building blocks to the right place.”
It’s exciting to explore a new option for the making of Phobos and Deimos – the only moons in our solar system that orbit a rocky planet besides Earth’s.
Jacob Kegerreis
Postdoctoral research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center
Testing different ideas for the formation of Mars’ moons is the primary goal of the upcoming Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) sample return mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). The spacecraft will survey both moons to determine their origin and collect samples of Phobos to bring to Earth for study. A NASA instrument on board, called MEGANE – short for Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and Neutrons – will identify the chemical elements Phobos is made of and help select sites for the sample collection. Some of the samples will be collected by a pneumatic sampler also provided by NASA as a technology demonstration contribution to the mission. Understanding what the moons are made of is one clue that could help distinguish between the moons having an asteroid origin or a planet-plus-impactor source.
Before scientists can get their hands on a piece of Phobos to analyze, Kegerreis and his team will pick up where they left off demonstrating the formation of a disk that has enough material to make Phobos and Deimos.
“Next, we hope to build on this proof-of-concept project to simulate and study in greater detail the full timeline of formation,” said Vincent Eke, associate professor at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and a co-author on the paper. “This will allow us to examine the structure of the disk itself and make more detailed predictions for what the MMX mission could find.”
For Kegerreis, this work is exciting because it also expands our understanding of how moons might be born – even if it turns out that Mars’ own formed by a different route. The simulations offer a fascinating exploration, he says, of the possible outcomes of encounters between objects like asteroids and planets. These events were common in the early solar system, and simulations could help researchers reconstruct the story of how our cosmic backyard evolved.
This research is a collaborative effort between Ames and Durham University, supported by the Institute for Computational Cosmology’s Planetary Giant Impact Research group. The simulations used were run using the open-source SWIFT code, carried out on the DiRAC (Distributed Research Utilizing Advanced Computing) Memory Intensive service (“COSMA”), hosted by Durham University on behalf of the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility.
For news media:
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
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Last Updated Nov 20, 2024 Related Terms
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