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Saltzman outlines ‘theory of success’ guiding Space Force in fulfilling its essential missions


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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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      Details
      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 NASA
      4 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 an image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which has now been confirmed to be the 5,000th comet discovered using SOHO data. SOHO has achieved this milestone over 28 years in space, even though it was never designed to be a comet hunter.
      The 5,000th comet discovered with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is noted by a small white box in the upper left portion of this image. A zoomed-in inset shows the comet as a faint dot between the white vertical lines. The image was taken on March 25, 2024, by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), which uses a disk to block the bright Sun and reveal faint features around it. NASA/ESA/SOHO The comet is a small body made of ice and rock that takes only a few years to orbit the Sun. It belongs to the “Marsden group” of comets. This group is thought to be related to comet 96P/Machholz (which SOHO observes when Machholz passes near the Sun every 5.3 years) and is named for the late scientist Brian Marsden who first recognized the group using SOHO observations. Only about 75 of the 5,000 comets discovered with SOHO belong to the Marsden group.
      A joint mission of ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA, SOHO launched in December 1995 to study the Sun and the dynamics in its outer atmosphere, called the corona. A science instrument on SOHO, called the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), uses an artificial disk to block the blinding light of the Sun so scientists can study the corona and environment immediately around the Sun.
      This also allows SOHO to do something many other spacecraft cannot – see comets flying close to the Sun, known as “sungrazing” comets or “sungrazers.” Many of these comets only brighten when they’re too close to the Sun for other observatories to see and would otherwise go undetected, lost in the bright glare of our star. While scientists expected SOHO to serendipitously find some comets during its mission, the spacecraft’s ability to spot them has made it the most prolific comet-finder in history – discovering more than half of the comets known today.
      In fact, soon after SOHO launched, people around the world began spotting so many comets in its images that mission scientists needed a way to keep track of them all. In the early 2000s, they launched the NASA-funded Sungrazer Project that allows anyone to report comets they find in SOHO images.
      This animation shows the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory’s 5,000th comet (circled) moving across the field relative to background stars. The images in this sequence were taken with the spacecraft’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. NASA/ESA/SOHO SOHO’s 5,000th comet was found by Hanjie Tan, a Sungrazer Project participant who is originally from Guangzhou, China, and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in astronomy in Prague, Czech Republic. Tan has been participating in the Sungrazer Project since he was 13 years old and is one of the project’s youngest comet discoverers.
      “Since 2009, I’ve discovered over 200 comets,” Tan said. “I got into the Sungrazer Project because I love looking for comets. It’s really exciting to be the first to see comets get bright near the Sun after they’ve been traveling through space for thousands of years.”
      Most of the 5,000 comets discovered using SOHO have been found with the help of an international cadre of volunteer comet hunters – many with no formal scientific training – participating in the Sungrazer Project.
      “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, a space scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., and the principal investigator for the Sungrazer Project. “The fact that we’ve finally reached this milestone – 5,000 comets – is just unbelievable to me.”
      SOHO’s 5,000th comet was discovered with the help of volunteers participating in the NASA-funded Sungrazer Project.
      Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The vast number of comets discovered using SOHO has allowed scientists to learn more about sungrazing comets and groups of comets that orbit the Sun. Comets discovered by the Sungrazer Project have also helped scientists learn more about the Sun, by watching the comets plunge through our star’s atmosphere like small solar probes.
      “The statistics of 5,000 comets, and looking at their orbits and trajectories through space, is a super unique dataset – it’s really valuable science,” Battams said. “It’s a testament to the countless hours the project participants have put into this. We absolutely would never had reached this milestone if it wasn’t for what the project volunteers have done.”
      The Sungrazer Project is one of many opportunities that anyone can get involved with to help make discoveries with NASA during the Heliophysics Big Year, which extends through the end of 2024. Learn more about SOHO, the Sungrazer Project, and other NASA science projects you can participate in:
      NASA SOHO mission website ESA SOHO website The Sungrazer Project Why ESA and NASA’s SOHO Spacecraft Spots So Many Comets 4,000th Comet Discovered by ESA & NASA Solar Observatory NASA Citizen Science by Vanessa Thomas
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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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.
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    • By NASA
      4 min read
      New NASA Software Simulates Science Missions for Observing Terrestrial Freshwater
      A map describing freshwater accumulation (blue) and loss (red), using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. A new Observational System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) will help researchers design science missions dedicated to monitoring terrestrial freshwater storage. Image Credit: NASA Image Credit: NASA From radar instruments smaller than a shoebox to radiometers the size of a milk carton, there are more tools available to scientists today for observing complex Earth systems than ever before. But this abundance of available sensors creates its own unique challenge: how can researchers organize these diverse instruments in the most efficient way for field campaigns and science missions?
      To help researchers maximize the value of science missions, Bart Forman, an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, and a team of researchers from the Stevens Institute of Technology and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, prototyped an Observational System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) for designing science missions dedicated to monitoring terrestrial freshwater storage.
      “You have different sensor types. You have radars, you have radiometers, you have lidars – each is measuring different components of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Bart Forman, an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland. “Different observations have different strengths.”
      Terrestrial freshwater storage describes the integrated sum of freshwater spread across Earth’s snow, soil moisture, vegetation canopy, surface water impoundments, and groundwater. It’s a dynamic system, one that defies traditional, static systems of scientific observation.
      Forman’s project builds on prior technology advancements he achieved during an earlier Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) project, in which he developed an observation system simulation experiment for mapping terrestrial snow. 
      It also relies heavily on innovations pioneered by NASA’s Land Information System (LIS) and NASA’s Trade-space Analysis Tool for Designing Constellations (TAT-C), two modeling tools that began as ESTO investments and quickly became staples within the Earth science community.
      Forman’s tool incorporates these modeling programs into a new system that provides researchers with a customizable platform for planning dynamic observation missions that include a diverse collection of spaceborne data sets.
      In addition, Forman’s tool also includes a “dollars-to-science” cost estimate tool that allows researchers to assess the financial risks associated with a proposed mission.
      Together, all of these features provide scientists with the ability to link observations, data assimilation, uncertainty estimation, and physical models within a single, integrated framework.
      “We were taking a land surface model and trying to merge it with different space-based measurements of snow, soil moisture, and groundwater to see if there was an optimal combination to give us the most bang for our scientific buck,” explained Forman.
      While Forman’s tool isn’t the first information system dedicated to science mission design, it does include a number of novel features. In particular, its ability to integrate observations from spaceborne passive optical radiometers, passive microwave radiometers, and radar sources marks a significant technology advancement.
      Forman explained that while these indirect observations of freshwater include valuable information for quantifying freshwater, they also each contain their own unique error characteristics that must be carefully integrated with a land surface model in order to provide estimates of geophysical variables that scientists care most about.
      Forman’s software also combines LIS and TAT-C within a single software framework, extending the capabilities of both systems to create superior descriptions of global terrestrial hydrology.
      Indeed, Forman stressed the importance of having a large, diverse team that features experts from across the Earth science and modeling communities.
      “It’s nice to be part of a big team because these are big problems, and I don’t know the answers myself. I need to find a lot of people that know a lot more than I do and get them to sort of jump in and roll their sleeves up and help us. And they did,” said Forman.
      Having created an observation system simulation experiment capable of incorporating dynamic, space-based observations into mission planning models, Forman and his team hope that future researchers will build on their work to create an even better mission modeling program.
      For example, while Forman and his team focused on generating mission plans for existing sensors, an expanded version of their software could help researchers determine how they might use future sensors to gather new data.
      “With the kinds of things that TAT-C can do, we can create hypothetical sensors. What if we double the swath width? If it could see twice as much space, does that give us more information? Simultaneously, we can ask questions about the impact of different error characteristics for each of these hypothetical sensors and explore the corresponding tradeoff.” said Forman.
      PROJECT LEAD
      Barton Forman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
      SPONSORING ORGANIZATION
      NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) program, a part of NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), funded this project
      Share








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      Last Updated Mar 25, 2024 Related Terms
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    • By NASA
      3 Min Read Partnerships that Prepare for Success: The Research Institution Perspective on the M-STTR Initiative
      Dr. Darayas Patel (left), professor of mathematics and computer science at Oakwood University, and four Oakwood University students record data related to their NASA STTR research. Credits: Oakwood University Editor’s Notes (March 2024): Oakwood University and its small business partner—SSS Optical Technologies, LLC—were awarded a STTR Phase II in November 2023 to continue their work. Also in 2023, M-STTR awards became part of what is now MPLAN.

      In 2022, Oakwood University, a Historically Black College based in Huntsville, Alabama, became a first-time research institution participant in NASA’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. Partnering with SSS Optical Technologies, LLC (SSSOT) of Huntsville, Alabama, the team received a 2022 Phase I award to develop UV protective coating for photovoltaic solar cells in space. The PANDA (Polymer Anti-damage Nanocomposite Down-converting Armor) technology could be used to protect solar cells, which convert sunlight into energy but can suffer damage from UV rays.

      Prior to this STTR award, Oakwood University and SSSOT prepared for the solicitation by participating in a pilot NASA opportunity. In 2021, NASA launched the M-STTR initiative for Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) to propose for Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) research planning grants. The program is a partnership between NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement’s Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP).

      The 2021 solicitation resulted in 11 selected proposals to receive M-STTR planning grants—six from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and five from Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Oakwood University was among the selected research institution teams; with its grant, the university developed a partnership with SSSOT.

      Dr. Darayas Patel, professor of mathematics and computer science at Oakwood University, shared the university perspective on how the M-STTR program helped the team form a partnership and prepare for the 2022 STTR solicitation. Dr. Patel is supporting the Phase I STTR contract, which is the university’s first time working with the SBIR/STTR program. Prior to the NASA STTR award, Oakwood University has received grants from other government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation. Oakwood University also has past involvement in NASA’s MUREP program, which helps engage, fund, and connect underserved university communities. Learning about opportunities from the MUREP network, the Oakwood University team proposed to the pilot M-STTR program, working together with SSSOT on photovoltaic solar cell technology.
      “M-STTR helped us solidify the collaboration with SSSOT by focusing our team on specific, tangible goals.”
      Dr. Darayas Patel
      Professor at Oakwood University
      Oakwood University and SSSOT formed a partnership based on Dr. Patel’s existing relationship with SSSOT’s founder Dr. Sergey Sarkisov, who was on Dr. Patel’s Ph.D. committee at Alabama A&M University. According to Dr. Patel, the M-STTR grant allowed the team to generate preliminary data about the solar cell technology that would later be proposed for the 2022 STTR award. In addition to providing supplementary data for the STTR solicitation, Dr. Patel said, “M-STTR helped us solidify the collaboration with SSSOT by focusing our team on specific, tangible goals.” The result was a more unified team with a defined action plan for approaching the STTR proposal.

      When asked what advice he had for other research institutions interested in participating in the NASA SBIR/STTR program, Dr. Patel shared, “Keep your eyes wide open and try to reach out to nearby small businesses interested in transferring your technology to the market. And remember: it should line up with what NASA is looking for.” From working with NASA on these initiatives, Dr. Patel says he has broadened his network within the NASA community, which helps him stay informed of future opportunities.
      View the full article
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