NASA Transmits Hip-Hop Song to Deep Space for First Time

The stars above and on Earth aligned as an inspirational message and lyrics from the song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” by hip-hop artist Missy Elliott were beamed to Venus via NASA’s DSN (Deep Space Network). The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California sent the transmission at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 12.

As the largest and most sensitive telecommunication service of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, DSN has an array of giant radio antennas that allow missions to track, send commands, and receive scientific data from spacecraft venturing to the Moon and beyond. To date, the system has transmitted only one other song into space, making the transmission of Elliott’s song a first for hip-hop and NASA.

“Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art have been about pushing boundaries,” said Brittany Brown, director, Digital and Technology Division, Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, who initially pitched ideas to Missy’s team to collaborate with the agency. “Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting.”

The song traveled about 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) from Earth to Venus — the artist’s favorite planet. Transmitted at the speed of light, the radio frequency signal took nearly 14 minutes to reach the planet. The transmission was made by the 34-meter (112-foot) wide Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13) radio dish antenna, located at the DSN’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, near Barstow in California. Coincidentally, the DSS-13 also is nicknamed Venus.

Elliott’s music career started more than 30 years ago, and the DSN has been communicating with spacecraft for over 60 years. Now, thanks to the network, Elliott’s music has traveled far beyond her Earth-bound fans to a different world.  

“I still can’t believe I’m going out of this world with NASA through the Deep Space Network when “The Rain” (Supa Dupa Fly) becomes the first ever hip-hop song to transmit to space!,” said Elliott. “I chose Venus because it symbolizes strength, beauty, and empowerment and I am so humbled to have the opportunity to share my art and my message with the universe!”

Two NASA missions, selected in 2021, will explore Venus and send data back to Earth using the DSN. DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging), led out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is slated to launch no earlier than 2029. The VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy), launching no earlier than 2031, is lead out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. NASA and the DSN are also partnering with the European Space Agency’s Venus mission, Envision. A team at JPL is developing the spacecraft’s Venus Synthetic Aperture Radar (VenSAR).

In continuous operations since 1963, NASA SCaN’s DSN is composed of three complexes spaced equidistant from each other — approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude — around the planet. The ground stations are in Goldstone in California, Madrid, and Canberra in Australia.

The Deep Space Network is managed by JPL for the SCaN program within the Space Operations Mission Directorate, based at NASA Headquarters.  

For more information about NASA’s Deep Space Network, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/communicating-with-missions/dsn/

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“The Meatball’ Turns 65

NASA’s official logo, nicknamed the “meatball,” turned 65 on July 15, 2024. The insignia dates back to 1959, when the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) metamorphosed into an agency that would advance both space and aeronautics: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After a NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center illustrator’s design was chosen for the new agency’s official seal, the head of Lewis’ Research Reports Division, James Modarelli, was asked by the executive secretary of NACA to design a logo that could be used for less formal purposes.

In the design, the sphere represents a planet, the stars represent space, the red chevron is a wing representing aeronautics (the latest design in hypersonic wings at the time the logo was developed), and then there is an orbiting spacecraft going around the wing. The red, white, and blue design, which includes elements representing NASA’s space and aeronautics missions, became the official logo of the United States’ new space agency in 1959.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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NASA’s Webb Investigates Eternal Sunrises, Sunsets on Distant World

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NASA’s Webb Investigates Eternal Sunrises, Sunsets on Distant World

Near-infrared spectral analysis of terminator confirms differences in morning and evening atmosphere

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but similar mass to Saturn that orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth, is tidally locked to its parent star. This means it has a constant dayside and a constant nightside—one side of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.

Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the eternal morning and eternal evening on WASP-39 b, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the forever morning portion of the planet being likely cloudier than the evening.

Image A: Artist Concept WASP-39 b

Astronomers analyzed the 2- to 5-micron transmission spectrum of WASP-39 b, a technique that studies the exoplanet’s terminator, the boundary that separates the planet’s dayside and nightside. A transmission spectrum is made by comparing starlight filtered through a planet’s atmosphere as it moves in front of the star, to the unfiltered starlight detected when the planet is beside the star. When making that comparison, researchers can get information about the temperature, composition, and other properties of the planet’s atmosphere.

“WASP-39 b has become a sort of benchmark planet in studying the atmosphere of exoplanets with Webb,” said Néstor Espinoza, an exoplanet researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute and lead author on the study. “It has an inflated, puffy atmosphere, so the signal coming from starlight filtered through the planet’s atmosphere is quite strong.”

Previously published Webb spectra of WASP-39b’s atmosphere, which revealed the presence of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, water vapor, and sodium, represent the entire day/night boundary – there was no detailed attempt to differentiate between one side and the other.

Now, the new analysis builds two different spectra from the terminator region, essentially splitting the day/night boundary into two semicircles, one from the evening, and the other from the morning. Data reveals the evening as significantly hotter, a searing 1,450 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius), and the morning a relatively cooler 1,150 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius).

Image B: Transmission Spectra

“It’s really stunning that we are able to parse this small difference out, and it’s only possible due Webb’s sensitivity across near-infrared wavelengths and its extremely stable photometric sensors,” said Espinoza. “Any tiny movement in the instrument or with the observatory while collecting data would have severely limited our ability to make this detection. It must be extraordinarily precise, and Webb is just that.”

Extensive modeling of the data obtained also allows researchers to investigate the structure of WASP-39 b’s atmosphere, the cloud cover, and why the evening is hotter. While future work by the team will study how the cloud cover may affect temperature, and vice versa, astronomers confirmed gas circulation around the planet as the main culprit of the temperature difference on WASP-39 b.

On a highly irradiated exoplanet like WASP-39 b that orbits relatively close to its star, researchers generally expect the gas to be moving as the planet rotates around its star: Hotter gas from the dayside should move through the evening to the nightside via a powerful equatorial jet stream. Since the temperature difference is so extreme, the air pressure difference would also be significant, which in turn would cause high wind speeds.

Image C: Transit Light Curve

Using General Circulation Models, 3-dimensional models similar to the ones used to predict weather patterns on Earth, researchers found that on WASP-39 b the prevailing winds are likely moving from the night side across the morning terminator, around the dayside, across the evening terminator and then around the nightside. As a result, the morning side of the terminator is cooler than the evening side. In other words, the morning side gets slammed with winds of air that have been cooled on the nightside, while the evening is hit by winds of air heated on the dayside. Research suggests the wind speeds on WASP-39 b can reach thousands of miles an hour!

“This analysis is also particularly interesting because you’re getting 3D information on the planet that you weren’t getting before,” added Espinoza. “Because we can tell that the evening edge is hotter, that means it’s a little puffier. So, theoretically, there is a small swell at the terminator approaching the nightside of the planet.”

The team’s results have been published in Nature.

The researchers will now look to use the same method of analysis to study atmospheric differences of other tidally locked hot Jupiters, as part of  Webb Cycle 2 General Observers Program 3969.

WASP-39 b was among the first targets analyzed by Webb as it began regular science operations in 2022. The data in this study was collected under Early Release Science program 1366, designed to help scientists quickly learn how to use the telescope’s instruments and realize its full science potential.

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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The research results have been published in Nature.

Media Contacts

Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Hannah Braun hbraun@stsci.edu Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Related Information

ARTICLE: What is an Exoplanet?

VIDEO: How do we learn about a planet’s Atmosphere?

VIDEO: Reading the Rainbow of Light from an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

VIDEO: Science Snippets – Exoplanets

BLOG: Reconnaissance of Potentially Habitable Worlds with NASA’s Webb

More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/

More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/

Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/

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Sky High Sustainability: NASA Johnson’s Pocket Prairie Flourishes Atop Building 12

Buzzing with bees, baby birds, and wildflowers, the rooftop garden atop building 12 at Johnson Space Center in Houston reflects NASA’s commitment to environmental stewardship. Originally constructed in 1963, the facility was transformed in 2012, incorporating energy-efficient features that earned it LEED Gold certification. The certification is a globally recognized symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership. Today, the building serves as a testament to NASA’s commitment to ecological innovation.  

Nestled between the Mission Control Center and building 16, this hidden gem is part of a series of pioneering efforts at Johnson to demonstrate how even the most unexpected locations can become vibrant ecosystems. 

Initiated by Joel Walker, director of Center Operations, and designed alongside NASA engineers, the rooftop garden exemplifies green architecture with integrated solar panels, an underfloor air distribution system, and wind turbines.  

“It was something of an experiment to see what worked well and what we might use in future projects,” said Walker. 

The Center Operations team leads sustainability efforts at Johnson, working across multiple directorates and teams. Together, they manage Johnson’s 1,600 acres, which host a diverse array of plants and wildlife.

Building 12’s green roof provides benefits such as reduced potable water and energy usage, better stormwater management, protection from UV rays, and increased stability in high winds. This unique space provides an ideal environment for nesting birds and visiting pollinators and boasts a projected lifespan of 50 years, significantly longer than the 20 to 25 years typical of a conventional roof.  

“I was genuinely surprised by the variety of native species thriving in our rooftop garden,” said Johnson’s wildlife biologist Strausser. “We’ve observed far more species than we ever anticipated, which is both fascinating and encouraging for our conservation efforts.” 

Initially, the project started with non-native ornamental plants that failed in the harsh Houston climate. Replanting the garden yielded mixed results until the team hand-scattered a blend of native grass seed and wildflowers. This method proved to be a successful, at a fraction of the cost estimated for professional planting. 

“Sometimes the easiest way is the best!” said Walker. “It looks great now and is much more durable too.” 

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