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By NASA
Crane operator Rebekah Tolatovicz, a shift mechanical technician lead for Artic Slope Regional Corporation at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, operates a 30-ton crane to lift the agency’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft out of the recently renovated altitude chamber to the Final Assembly and Systems Testing, or FAST, cell inside NASA Kennedy’s Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on April 27.
During her most recent lift July 10, Tolatovicz helped transfer Orion back to the FAST cell following vacuum chamber qualification testing in the altitude chamber earlier this month. This lift is one of around 250 annual lifts performed at NASA Kennedy by seven operator/directors and 14 crane operators on the ASRC Orion team.
“At the time of the spacecraft lift, I focus solely on what’s going on in the moment of the operation,” explains Tolatovicz. “Listening for the commands from the lift director, making sure everyone is safe, verifying the vehicle is clear, and ensuring the crane is moving correctly.”
All Orion crane operators are certified after classroom and on-the-job training focusing on areas such as rigging, weight and center of gravity, mastering crane controls, crane securing, assessing safety issues, and emergency procedures. Once certified, they progress through a series of the different lifts required for Orion spacecraft operations, from simple moves to the complex full spacecraft lift.
“It’s not until after the move is complete and the vehicle is secured that I have a moment to think about how awesome it is to be a part of history on the Orion Program and do what I get to do every day with a team of the most amazing people,” Tolatovicz said.
Photo credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson
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By NASA
Augmented reality tools have helped technicians improve accuracy and save time on fit checks for the Roman Space Telescope being assembled at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In one instance, manipulating a digital model of Roman’s propulsion system into the real telescope structure revealed the planned design would not fit around existing wiring. The finding helped avoid a need to rebuild any components. The R&D team at Goddard working on this AR project suggests broader adoption in the future could potentially save weeks of construction time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. In this photograph from Feb. 29, 2024, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Roman Space Telescope’s propulsion system is positioned by engineers and technicians under the spacecraft bus. Engineers used augmented reality tools to prepare for the assembly.NASA/Chris Gunn Technicians armed with advanced measuring equipment, augmented reality headsets, and QR codes virtually checked the fit of some Roman Space Telescope structures before building or moving them through facilities at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“We’ve been able to place sensors, mounting interfaces, and other spacecraft hardware in 3D space faster and more accurately than previous techniques,” said NASA Goddard engineer Ron Glenn. “That could be a huge benefit to any program’s cost and schedule.”
Projecting digital models onto the real world allows the technicians to align parts and look for potential interference among them. The AR heads-up display also enables precise positioning of flight hardware for assembly with accuracy down to thousandths of an inch.
Engineers wearing augmented reality headsets test the placement of a scaffolding design before it is built to ensure accurate fit in the largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.NASA Using NASA’s Internal Research and Development program, Glenn said his team keeps finding new ways to improve how NASA builds spacecraft with AR technology in a project aiding Roman’s construction at NASA Goddard.
Glenn said the team has achieved far more than they originally sought to prove. “The original project goal was to develop enhanced assembly solutions utilizing AR and find out if we could eliminate costly fabrication time,” he said. “We found the team could do so much more.”
For instance, engineers using a robotic arm for precision measuring and 3D laser scanning mapped Roman’s complex wiring harness and the volume within the spacecraft structure.
“Manipulating the virtual model of Roman’s propulsion assembly into that frame, we found places where it interfered with the existing wiring harness, team engineer Eric Brune said. “Adjusting the propulsion assembly before building it allowed the mission to avoid costly and time-consuming delays.”
Roman’s propulsion system was successfully integrated earlier this year.
The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA mission designed to explore dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.
Equipped with a powerful telescope and advanced instruments, it aims to unravel mysteries of the universe and expand our understanding of cosmic phenomena. Roman is scheduled to launch by May 2027.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio Considering the time it takes to design, build, move, redesign, and rebuild, Brune added, their work saved many workdays by multiple engineers and technicians.
“We have identified many additional benefits to these combinations of technologies,” team engineer Aaron Sanford said. “Partners at other locations can collaborate directly through the technicians’ point of view. Using QR codes for metadata storage and document transfer adds another layer of efficiency, enabling quick access to relevant information right at your fingertips. Developing AR techniques for reverse engineering and advanced structures opens many possibilities such as training and documentation.”
The technologies allow 3D designs of parts and assemblies to be shared or virtually handed off from remote locations. They also enable dry runs of moving and installing structures as well as help capture precise measurements after parts are built to compare to their designs.
Adding a precision laser tracker to the mix can also eliminate the need to create elaborate physical templates to ensure components are accurately mounted in precise positions and orientations, Sanford said. Even details such as whether a technician can physically extend an arm inside a structure to turn a bolt or manipulate a part can be worked out in augmented reality before construction.
During construction, an engineer wearing a headset can reference vital information, like the torque specifications for individual bolts, using a hand gesture. In fact, the engineer could achieve this without having to pause and find the information on another device or in paper documents.
In the future, the team hopes to help integrate various components, conduct inspections, and document final construction. Sanford said, “it’s a cultural shift. It takes time to adopt these new tools.”
“It will help us rapidly produce spacecraft and instruments, saving weeks and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Glenn said. “That allows us to return resources to the agency to develop new missions.”
This project is part of NASA’s Center Innovation Fund portfolio for fiscal year 2024 at Goddard. The Center Innovation Fund, within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, stimulates and encourages creativity and innovation at NASA centers while addressing the technology needs of NASA and the nation.
To learn more, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/center-innovation-fund/
By Karl B. Hille
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 20, 2024 EditorRob GarnerContactRob Garnerrob.garner@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Goddard Technology Goddard Space Flight Center Space Technology Mission Directorate Technology View the full article
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By NASA
Conceptualization of the GeoXO constellation.Credits: NOAA NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. of Littleton, Colorado, to build the spacecraft for NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite program.
This cost-plus-award-fee contract is valued at approximately $2.27 billion. It includes the development of three spacecraft as well as four options for additional spacecraft. The anticipated period of performance for this contract includes support for 10 years of on-orbit operations and five years of on-orbit storage, for a total of 15 years for each spacecraft. The work will take place at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Littleton and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The GeoXO constellation will include three operational satellites — east, west and central. Each geostationary, three-axis stabilized spacecraft is designed to host three instruments. The centrally-located spacecraft will carry an infrared sounder and atmospheric composition instrument and can also accommodate a partner payload. Spacecraft in the east and west positions will carry an imager, lightning mapper, and ocean color instrument. They will also support an auxiliary communication payload for the NOAA Data Collection System relay, dissemination, and commanding.
The contract scope includes the tasks necessary to design, analyze, develop, fabricate, integrate, test, evaluate, and support launch of the GeoXO satellites; provide engineering development units; supply and maintain the ground support equipment and simulators; and support mission operations at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
NASA and NOAA oversee the development, launch, testing, and operation of all the satellites in the GeoXO program. NOAA funds and manages the program, operations, and data products. On behalf of NOAA, NASA and commercial partners develop and build the instruments and spacecraft and launch the satellites.
As part of NOAA’s constellation of geostationary environmental satellites to protect life and property across the Western Hemisphere, the GeoXO program is the follow-on to the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R (GOES-R) Series Program.
The GeoXO satellite system will advance Earth observations from geostationary orbit. The mission will supply vital information to address major environmental challenges of the future in support of weather, ocean, and climate operations in the United States. The advanced capabilities from GeoXO will help assess our changing planet and the evolving needs of the nation’s data users. Together, NASA and NOAA are working to ensure GeoXO’s critical observations are in place by the early 2030s when the GOES-R Series nears the end of its operational lifetime.
For more information on the GeoXO program, visit:
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/geoxo
-end-
Liz Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Jeremy Eggers
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
757-824-2958
jeremy.l.eggers@nasa.gov
John Leslie
NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
202-527-3504
nesdis.pa@noaa.gov
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Last Updated Jun 18, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) Earth Observatory Earth Science Division NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By NASA
This image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows China’s Chang’e 6 lander in the Apollo basin on the far side of the Moon on June 7, 2024. The lander is the bright dot in the center of the image. The image is about 0.4 miles wide (650 meters); lunar north is up.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) imaged China’s Chang’e 6 sample return spacecraft on the far side of the Moon on June 7. Chang’e 6 landed on June 1, and when LRO passed over the landing site almost a week later, it acquired an image showing the lander on the rim of an eroded, 55-yard-diameter (about 50 meters) crater.
The LRO Camera team computed the landing site coordinates as about 42 degrees south latitude, 206 degrees east longitude, at an elevation of about minus 3.27 miles (minus 5,256 meters).
This before and after animation of LRO images shows the appearance of the Chang’e 6 lander. The increased brightness of the terrain surrounding the lander is due to disturbance from the lander’s engines and is similar to the blast zone seen around other lunar landers. The before image is from March 3, 2022, and the after image is from June 7, 2024.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University The Chang’e 6 landing site is situated toward the southern edge of the Apollo basin (about 306 miles or 492 km in diameter, centered at 36.1 degrees south latitude, 208.3 degrees east longitude). Basaltic lava erupted south of Chaffee S crater about 3.1 billion years ago and flowed downhill to the west until it encountered a local topographic high, likely related to a fault. Several wrinkle ridges in this region have deformed and raised the mare surface. The landing site sits about halfway between two of these prominent ridges. This basaltic flow also overlaps a slightly older flow (about 3.3 billion years old), visible further west, but the younger flow is distinct because it has higher iron oxide and titanium dioxide abundances.
A regional context map of the Chang’e 6 landing site. Color differences have been enhanced for clarity. The dark area is a basaltic mare deposit; bluer areas of the mare are higher-titanium flows. Contour lines marking 100-meter (about 328 feet) elevation intervals are overlaid to provide a sense of the topography. Image is about 118 miles (190 km) across. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.
More on this story from Arizona State University's LRO Camera website Media Contact:
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 14, 2024 EditorMadison OlsonContactNancy N. Jonesnancy.n.jones@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Earth's Moon Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science The Solar System Explore More
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By NASA
Ed Stone, former director of JPL and project scientist for the Voyager mission, died on June 9, 2024. A friend, mentor, and colleague to many, he was known for his straightforward leadership and commitment to communicating with the public.NASA/JPL-Caltech Known for his steady leadership, consensus building, and enthusiasm for engaging the public in science, Stone left a deep impact on the space community.
Edward C. Stone, former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and longtime project scientist of the agency’s Voyager mission, died on June 9, 2024. He was 88. He was preceded in death by his wife, Alice Stone. They are survived by their two daughters, Susan and Janet Stone, and two grandsons.
Stone also served as the David Morrisroe professor of physics and vice provost for special projects at Caltech in Pasadena, California, which last year established a new faculty position, the Edward C. Stone Professorship.
“Ed Stone was a trailblazer who dared mighty things in space. He was a dear friend to all who knew him, and a cherished mentor to me personally,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Ed took humanity on a planetary tour of our solar system and beyond, sending NASA where no spacecraft had gone before. His legacy has left a tremendous and profound impact on NASA, the scientific community, and the world. My condolences to his family and everyone who loved him. Thank you, Ed, for everything.”
Stone served on nine NASA missions as either principal investigator or a science instrument lead, and on five others as a co-investigator (a key science instrument team member). These roles primarily involved studying energetic ions from the Sun and cosmic rays from the galaxy. He was one of the few scientists involved with both the mission that has come closest to the Sun (NASA’s Parker Solar Probe) and the one that has traveled farthest from it (Voyager).
Ed Stone became project scientist for the Voyager mission in 1972, five years before launch, and served in the role for a total of 50 years. During that time, he also served as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager mission for the agency. NASA/JPL-Caltech “Ed will be remembered as an energetic leader and scientist who expanded our knowledge about the universe — from the Sun to the planets to distant stars — and sparked our collective imaginations about the mysteries and wonders of deep space,” said Laurie Leshin, JPL director and Caltech vice president. “Ed’s discoveries have fueled exploration of previously unseen corners of our solar system and will inspire future generations to reach new frontiers. He will be greatly missed and always remembered by the NASA, JPL, and Caltech communities and beyond.”
From 1972 until his retirement in 2022, Stone served as the project scientist from NASA’s longest-running mission, Voyager. The two Voyager probes took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth on Jupiter’s moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus’ unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune’s moon Triton.
“Becoming Voyager project scientist was the best decision I made in my life,” Stone said in 2018. “It opened a wonderful door of exploration.”
During Stone’s tenure as JPL’s director from 1991 to 2001, the federally funded research and development facility was responsible for more than two dozen missions and science instruments. Among them was NASA’s Pathfinder mission, which landed on Mars in 1996 with the first Red Planet rover, Sojourner. The next year saw the launch of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Cassini/Huygens mission.
JPL also developed six missions for planetary exploration, astrophysics, Earth sciences, and heliophysics under Stone’s leadership.
Journey to Space
The eldest of two sons, Stone was born in Knoxville, Iowa, during the Great Depression and grew up in the nearby commercial center of Burlington. After high school, he studied physics at Burlington Junior College and went on to the University of Chicago for graduate school. Shortly after he was accepted there, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, and the Space Age began. Stone joined a team building instruments to launch into space.
“Space was a brand-new field waiting for discovery,” Stone recalled in 2018.
In 1964, he joined Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow, running the Space Radiation Lab together with Robbie Vogt, who had been a colleague at Chicago. They worked on a number of NASA satellite missions, studying galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles.
Depending on the mission, Stone served as a co-investigator or principal investigator for the missions’ instrument teams, and Vogt could see his leadership potential. “Ed didn’t let emotions get in the way of doing the best possible job,” he said. “His personality is to solve a problem when it arises.” In 1972, Vogt recommended Stone to JPL leadership to be Voyager project scientist.
Among Stone’s many awards is the National Medal of Science from President George H.W. Bush. In 2019, he was presented with the Shaw Prize in Astronomy, with an award of $1.2 million, for his leadership in the Voyager project. Stone was also proud to have a middle school named after him in Burlington, Iowa, as an inspiration to young learners.
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-081
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Last Updated Jun 11, 2024 Related Terms
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