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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The LZR Racer reduces skin friction drag by covering more skin than traditional swimsuits. Multiple pieces of the water-resistant and extremely lightweight LZR Pulse fabric connect at ultrasonically welded seams and incorporate extremely low-profile zippers to keep viscous drag to a minimum.Credit: SpeedoUSA A supersonic airplane and a competitive swimmer have much more in common than people might realize; both have to contend with the slowing influence of drag. NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate focuses primarily on improving flight efficiency and fluid dynamics, especially the forces of pressure and drag, which are the same for bodies moving through air as for bodies moving through water. Shortly after the 2004 Olympics, Los Angeles-based SpeedoUSA, also known as Speedo, asked NASA’s Langley Research Center to help design a swimsuit with reduced surface drag. The manufacturer sought a partnership with NASA because of the agency’s expertise in fluid dynamics.
In competitive swimming, where every hundredth of a second counts, achieving the best possible drag reduction is crucially important. Researchers at NASA began flat plate testing of fabrics, using a small wind tunnel developed for earlier research on low-speed viscous drag reduction and collaborated over the next few years with Speedo to design the LZR Racer swimsuit.
Researcher Corey Diebler inspects a model of the supersonic X-59 after a test in Langley Research Center’s 12 foot wind tunnel. Wind tunnel testing at Langley enabled Speedo’s LZR Racer to achieve its excellent underwater performance.NASA/David C. Bowman. NASA and Speedo performed tests on traditionally sewn seams, ultrasonically welded seams, and the fabric alone, which gave Speedo a baseline for reducing drag caused by seams and helped identify problem areas. NASA wind tunnel results helped Speedo create a bonding system that eliminates seams and reduces drag. The results also showed that a low-profile zipper ultrasonically bonded into the fabric inside the suit generated eight percent less drag in wind tunnel tests than a standard zipper. Low-profile seams and zippers were a crucial component in the LZR Racer, because the suit consists of multiple connecting fabric pieces—instead of just a few sewn pieces such as found in traditional suits—that provide extra compression for maximum efficiency.
In March 2008, the LZR Racer made its mark on the world of competitive swimming. Athletes donning this innovative swimsuit shattered 13 world records, a testament to the power of collaboration between NASA and Speedo. While the original LZR Racer is no longer used in competition because of the advantage it gave wearers, its legacy lives on in today’s swimsuits approved by World Aquatics, the governing body for international competitive swimming.
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Last Updated Jul 25, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
HyAxiom’s 440-kilowatt phosphoric acid fuel cell is now its flagship product, and it still builds on technical know-how developed under the Apollo and space shuttle programs.Credit: HyAxiom Inc. NASA’s investment in fuel cells dates to the 1960s when most of the world was still reliant on fossil fuels. A fuel cell generates electricity and heat when hydrogen and oxygen bond through an electrolyte. Because its only by-product is water, it’s an environmentally friendly power source.
The agency’s interest in fuel cells came when NASA needed to fuel missions to the Moon. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston looked to fuel cells because they could provide more energy per pound than batteries could over the course of a long mission. At that time, fuel cells were just a concept that had never been put to practical use.
NASA funded development of the first practical fuel cells because they were necessary to cut weight from the Apollo spacecraft for Moon missions. Three fuel cells in the Apollo service module provided electricity for the capsule containing the astronauts. The division of Pratt & Whitney that made the fuel cells later became UTC Power, now a subsidiary of Doosan Group known as HyAxiom Inc.Credit: NASA NASA funded three companies, including a portion of Pratt & Whitney, to develop prototypes. For Apollo mission fuel cells, NASA selected the Pratt & Whitney group, which soon became UTC Power, as the supplier of all the space shuttle fuel cells. With the agency funding and shaping its technology development, UTC Power eventually started offering commercial fuel cells. The company is now known as HyAxiom Inc. and operates from the same plant in South Windsor, Connecticut, that produced fuel cells for the agency.
The company released its first commercial fuel cell in the mid-1990s and introduced its current product line about a decade later.
“The models they built for these products we use today had a lot of the electrochemistry understanding from the space program,” said Sridhar Kanuri, HyAxiom’s chief technology officer.
HyAxiom now produces around 120 units per year but expects to ramp up as government investments in fuel cells increase. The U.S. government plans to use fuel cells to store energy from renewable sources.
Today’s commercial fuel cell companies received much of their knowledge base from NASA. John Scott, NASA’s principal technologist for power and energy storage said, “All these companies trace their intellectual property heritage, their corporate heritage, even the generations of personnel to those companies NASA funded back in the early 1960s.”
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Last Updated Jul 15, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An aerial view of Palmyra Atoll, where animal tracking data now being studied by NASA’s Internet of Animals project was collected using wildlife tags by partners at The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and several universities.The Nature Conservancy/Kydd Pollock Anchoring the boat in a sandbar, research scientist Morgan Gilmour steps into the shallows and is immediately surrounded by sharks. The warm waters around the tropical island act as a reef shark nursery, and these baby biters are curious about the newcomer. They zoom close and veer away at the last minute, as Gilmour slowly makes her way toward the kaleidoscope of green sprouting from the island ahead.
Gilmour, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, conducts marine ecology and conservation studies using data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from animals equipped with wildlife tags. Palmyra Atoll, a United States marine protected area, provides the perfect venue for this work.
A juvenile blacktip reef shark swims toward researchers in the shallow waters around Palmyra Atoll.The Nature Conservancy/Kydd Pollock A collection of roughly 50 small islands in the tropical heart of the Pacific Ocean, the atoll is bursting with life of all kinds, from the reef sharks and manta rays circling the shoreline to the coconut crabs climbing palm branches and the thousands of seabirds swooping overhead. By analyzing the movements of dolphins, tuna, and other creatures, Gilmour and her collaborators can help assess whether the boundaries of the marine protected area surrounding the atoll actually protect the species they intend to, or if its limits need to shift.
Launched in 2020 by The Nature Conservancy and its partners – USGS, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and several universities – the project team deployed wildlife tags at Palmyra in 2022, when Gilmour was a scientist with USGS.
Now with NASA, she is leveraging the data for a study under the agency’s Internet of Animals project. By combining information transmitted from wildlife tags with information about the planet collected by satellites – such as NASA’s Aqua, NOAA’s GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) satellites, and the U.S.-European Jason-3 – scientists can work with partners to draw conclusions that inform ecological management.
The Palmyra Atoll is a haven for biodiversity, boasting thriving coral reef systems, shallow waters that act as a shark nursery, and rich vegetation for various land animals and seabirds. In the Landsat image above, a small white square marks the research station, where scientists from all over the world come to study the many species that call the atoll home.NASA/Earth Observatory Team “Internet of Animals is more than just an individual collection of movements or individual studies; it’s a way to understand the Earth at large,” said Ryan Pavlick, then Internet of Animals project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, during the project’s kickoff event.
The Internet of Animals at Palmyra
“Our work at Palmyra was remarkably comprehensive,” said Gilmour. “We tracked the movements of eight species at once, plus their environmental conditions, and we integrated climate projections to understand how their habitat may change. Where studies may typically track two or three types of birds, we added fish and marine mammals, plus air and water column data, for a 3D picture of the marine protected area.”
Tagged Yellowfin Tuna, Grey Reef Sharks, and Great Frigatebirds move in and out of a marine protected area (blue square), which surrounds the Palmyra Atoll (blue circle) in the tropical heart of the Pacific. These species are three of many that rely on the atoll and its surrounding reefs for food and for nesting.NASA/Lauren Dauphin Now, the NASA team has put that data into a species distribution model, which combines the wildlife tracking information with environmental data from satellites, including sea surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration, and ocean current speed. The model can help researchers understand how animal populations use their habitats and how that might shift as the climate changes.
Preliminary results from Internet of Animals team show that the animals tracked are moving beyond the confines of the Palmyra marine protected area. The model identified suitable habitats both in and around the protected zone – now and under predicted climate change scenarios – other researchers and decisionmakers can utilize that knowledge to inform marine policy and conservation.
Research scientist Morgan Gilmour checks on a young great frigatebird in its nest. The marine protected area around Palmyra Atoll protects these birds’ breeding grounds.UC Santa Barbara/Devyn Orr Following a 2023 presidential memorandum, NOAA began studying and gathering input on whether to expand the protected areas around Palmyra and other parts of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Analysis from NASA’s Internet of Animals could inform that and similar decisions, such as whether to create protected “corridors” in the ocean to allow for seasonal migrations of wildlife. The findings and models from the team’s habitat analysis at Palmyra also could help inform conservation at similar latitudes across the planet.
Beyond the Sea: Other Internet of Animals Studies
Research at Palmyra Atoll is just one example of work by Internet of Animals scientists.
Claire Teitelbaum, a researcher with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute based at NASA Ames, studies avian flu in wild waterfowl, investigating how their movement may contribute to transmission of the virus to poultry and other domestic livestock.
Teams at Ames and JPL are also working with USGS to create next-generation wildlife tags and sensors. Low-power radar tags in development at JPL would be lightweight enough to track small birds. Ames researchers plan to develop long-range radio tags capable of maximizing coverage and transmission of data from high-flying birds. This could help researchers take measurements in hard-to-reach layers of the atmosphere.
With the technology brought together by the Internet of Animals, even wildlife can take an active role in the study of Earth’s interacting systems, helping human experts learn more about our planet and how best to confront the challenges facing the natural world.
To learn more about the Internet of Animals visit: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-earth-exchange-nex/new-missions-support/internet-of-animals/
The Internet of Animals project is funded by NASA and managed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley is part of the NASA Earth Exchange, a Big Data initiative providing unique insights into Earth’s systems using the agency’s supercomputers at the center. Partners on the project include the U.S. Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Stanford University, University of Hawaii, University of California Santa Barbara, San Jose State University, University of Washington, and the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior.
For Researchers
The research collaboration’s dataset from Palmyra is available in open access: Palmyra Bluewater Research Marine Animal Telemetry Dataset, 2022-2023 Related research from Morgan Gilmour’s team was published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation in June 2022: “Evaluation of MPA designs that protect highly mobile megafauna now and under climate change scenarios.”
Media Contacts
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.
About the Author
Milan Loiacono
Science Communication SpecialistMilan Loiacono is a science communication specialist for the Earth Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center.
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Last Updated Jul 10, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
7 Min Read Spectral Energies is a NASA SBIR/STTR-Funded Tech that Could Change the Way We Fly
City scape of New York City at sunrise with multiple airplanes and other flying vehicles. Credits: NASA SBIR/STTR Editor Note: Article written by Nicholas Mercurio
With $20 million in commercial sales and $15 million in sales to government agencies, minority-owned small business Spectral Energies, based in Beavercreek, Ohio, has found a customer base for its pulse-burst laser systems. NASA has played a significant role in developing the technology through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. With wide-ranging applications including metrology to support commercial aircraft certification, as well as material processing, this technology could pave the way for new forms of passenger aircraft.
The High Cost of Aircraft Certification
Did you know that the Boeing 737 first entered service in 1968? Yet there’s a good chance that, if you’ve flown recently, it was on a Boeing 737. That’s due in large part to the cost of certifying new airplanes, which can range in the hundreds of millions of dollars. One place to look for cost savings is the testing process.
When testing a new design for a space vehicle or commercial aircraft, researchers use wind tunnels to simulate flight conditions. The new aircraft or aircraft component—such as a new wing design—is built, put inside the wind tunnel, and evaluated.
NASA has long sought to develop robust modeling and prediction software to significantly reduce the need for wind tunnel testing and expensive flight testing. Such software would allow initial analysis to be done on a computer model to identify performance improvement opportunities and iterate on designs, saving the actual manufacturing and its associated costs for a design much closer to being final. Innovations in laser measurement systems could finally bring this goal within reach.
The Limitations of Traditional Lasers and Early Pulse-Burst Laser Systems
Entering into use in the 1980s and still widely used today, traditional commercial laser systems operate at 10 Hz, meaning they can fire 10 times per second into the air moving around an aircraft in a wind tunnel. This essentially provides a “photograph” of the air flow at that moment.
But a tenth of a second is a long time, especially when NASA wind tunnels can test vehicles at up to ten times the speed of sound. In a tenth of a second, the pocket of air from the previous image has long since moved on, meaning the second image is capturing something completely different than the first and crucial data is lost.
Why is this data crucial? Because when an aircraft has stalled, it’s the air flow—how the air moves over, under, and around the aircraft—that matters. This air flow changes rapidly in time, leading to effects like stall and buffet; measurement techniques need to be able to capture these rapid changes. Without a complete, data-backed understanding of air flow moment to moment, efforts to develop accurate modeling software have stalled.
In the late 1990s, pulse-burst laser systems came onto the scene and delivered a dramatic increase in measurement speed. These systems—developed in part with support from the NASA SBIR program—went from producing a set of photograph-like images to delivering a movie-like sequence of data. However, these early systems were difficult to transport and operate, significantly limiting their use.
NASA SBIR/STTR phasesCredits: NASA SBIR/STTR Enhancing Usability with Air Force SBIR Funding
By providing funding to develop early-stage technologies, the NASA SBIR/STTR program helps de-risk and develop ideas, maturing them to the point where others can continue innovating. More than a decade after helping to fund some of the earliest pulse-burst laser systems, NASA awarded Phase I SBIR funding to Spectral Energies in 2009 for further advancement of the technology.
The firm went on to receive Phase II and Phase III SBIR funding from the U.S. Air Force, leveraging these awards to create a commercial pulse-burst laser system that was smaller, easier to transport, more resilient and reliable, and simpler to operate due to significant software advancements. Air Force funding also enabled Spectral Energies to demonstrate several new applications of the system in combustion environments.
With this foundational work in place, the technology was ready for further innovation to help NASA pursue its long-held goal of more effective air flow measurement and modeling.
Spectral Energies work with the NASA SBIR/STTR program
Spectral Energies resumed its work with the NASA SBIR/STTR program in 2014 with multiple Phase I awards. Through continuing program awards, including three Phase II Extended (II-E) and three Phase III contracts, the firm added new capabilities to its pulse-burst laser system, such as high-speed two-color thermometry, demonstrated in 2020.
Previously, two-color thermometry was typically done at 10 Hz speeds with two lasers and two cameras. Spectral Energies worked with NASA to develop this capability at high-speed using their single-laser, single-camera system, thereby enabling three- and four-dimensional (i.e., three spatial coordinates and time) temperature measurement of chemical flows, a critical capability when designing new chemical propulsion systems.
Further collaboration with NASA yielded additional capabilities in high-speed picosecond velocimetry and two-dimensional ultraviolet spectroscopy and imaging. Adding these measurement techniques to its technology allowed Spectral Energies to make commercial inroads into hypersonic wind tunnel testing, material processing, and defense applications. Rather than modifying the pulse-burst laser system to deliver these capabilities, each enhancement took the form of an add-on that could be attached to the system, similar to how you can add apps to your smart phone or attach a new lens to your camera. These NASA SBIR-funded add-ons have increased the return on investment (ROI) for each of Spectral Energies’ customers across federal agencies, research universities, and commercial companies.
Growing a Small Business
For small businesses, the hunger to do more is often quelled by the reality of limited resources. As a result, necessity is often the biggest driver of decision-making: What do we need to do today to keep our doors open tomorrow? Funding from the NASA SBIR/STTR program allowed Spectral Energies to move into a different mindset and tap into their creative drive.
“Through the NASA program, we started diversifying in hypersonic test facilities from subsonic combustion facilities,” said Dr. Sukesh Roy, CEO of Spectral Energies, “and that opened many doors for the application of this laser, from detonation to directed energies. Without the funding from NASA, it would have been impossible for us to push for versatile technological enhancements that significantly broadened the application field.” Moving into the research and development of new applications allowed the company to widen its focus and ultimately find a larger customer base.
Spectral Energies’ continued work with the NASA SBIR/STTR program has helped the company further grow and succeed. By providing entry into new industries and new capabilities for existing customers, the add-on technologies developed with NASA SBIR-funding have generated significant commercial revenue for the small business. Additionally, these developments have opened the door for new funding opportunities with the Air Force, Navy, Army, and Missile Defense Agency.
Without the funding from NASA, it would have been impossible for us to push for versatile technological enhancements that significantly broadened the application field.
Dr. Sukesh Roy
CEO of Spectral Energies
Providing Benefit to NASA and Beyond
Dr. Paul Danehy, Senior Technologist for Advanced Measurement Systems at NASA’s Langley Research Center, has worked with Spectral Energies on a number of projects through the program. According to Dr. Danehy, not only did NASA SBIR funding aid the company’s technology growth, program funding also made it possible for NASA researchers to make use of this technology.
As Dr. Danehy explains, SBIR/STTR Post Phase II funding vehicles like Phase II-E and Phase III allow other programs within NASA to pool money together, then receive matching funds from the SBIR/STTR program. This matching funding increases the purchasing power of other NASA programs and has allowed the agency to acquire two of Spectral Energies’ pulse-burst laser systems, complete with add-ons.
Agency researchers are using these pulse-burst laser systems to obtain unique quantitative flow field measurements that will allow them to refine software codes to accurately design and evaluate new aerospace vehicles. In time, these software codes could cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the certification of commercial aircraft, allowing new planes to be developed and made available to passengers faster and cheaper.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Marcia Rieke, a scientist who worked on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, has received the Gruber Foundation’s 2024 Cosmology Prize. Rieke will receive the award and gold laureate pin at a ceremony August 8, 2024, at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Cape Town, South Africa.
Marcia Rieke is Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona and was the principal investigator for the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the Webb telescope.University of Arizona Rieke was awarded the prize “for her pioneering work on astronomical instrumentation to reveal the breadth and details of the infrared universe. Her contributions to flagship space missions have opened new avenues for understanding the history and mechanisms of star and galaxy formation. She enabled the development and delivery of premier instruments providing groundbreaking sensitivity to near-infrared wavelengths to both the Webb and the Hubble telescopes. Through these substantive contributions along with earlier work, Marcia Rieke has had a lasting impact on our understanding of the universe,” according to the Gruber Foundation’s announcement.
The Cosmology Prize honors a leading cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist, or scientific philosopher for theoretical, analytical, conceptual, or observational discoveries leading to fundamental advances in our understanding of the universe. Since 2001, the Cosmology Prize has been cosponsored by the International Astronomical Union. Presented annually, the Cosmology Prize acknowledges and encourages further exploration in a field that shapes the way we perceive and comprehend our universe.
Rieke is Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona and was the principal investigator for the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the Webb telescope.
As principal investigator for the NIRCam, Rieke was responsible for ensuring that the instrument was built and delivered on time and on budget. She worked with the engineers at Lockheed Martin who built NIRCam and helped them decipher and meet the instruments’ requirements.
“As principal investigator of the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam instrument, Dr. Rieke’s vision, dedication, and leadership were inspirational to the entire team and a key contribution to the success of the Webb telescope,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb telescope manager and optics lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Rieke’s research interests include infrared observations of the center of the Milky Way and of other galactic nuclei. She has served as the deputy principal investigator on the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer for the Hubble Space Telescope (NICMOS), and the outreach coordinator for NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
“As a leading scientist on a premiere Hubble Space Telescope science camera, NICMOS, Dr. Rieke’s expertise enabled ground-breaking discoveries on everything from star formation to distant galaxies,” said Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, Hubble Space Telescope senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “Subsequent cameras on Hubble, and infrared space telescopes like Spitzer and Webb, have built upon Dr. Rieke’s pioneering work.”
“Dr. Rieke has also poured herself into wide international scientific leadership, leading countless scientific panels that envision and shape the best instruments for future powerful astronomical discovery,” Wiseman said.
“There’s a story beginning to emerge,” Rieke said about the science Webb has returned in the first two years of its mission. “But we still need some more pieces to the story.” For the duration of Webb’s lifetime, many of those pieces will emerge from the instrument that Rieke led.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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