NASA Awards Grants for Lunar Instrumentation

NASA has awarded five scientists and engineers Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI) grants to support the development of instruments for potential use in future lunar missions, including the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services and Artemis campaign. 

The awardees were recognized during NASA’s Technology Development Plan plenary session at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) March 13, in The Woodlands, Texas. 

“Supporting innovation and research in science and technology is a central part of NASA’s overall mission,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “These tools must demonstrate new technologies that significantly improve instrument measurement capabilities for addressing high-priority lunar science questions.” 

The goal of DALI is to develop and demonstrate instruments that show promise for use in future NASA flight opportunities. In addition, the instruments are intended to be ready for flight hardware build after the three-year project duration. Each of the selected scientists is granted approximately $1 million per year to develop their instrument. 

The grantees are based at institutions across the country:

DALI grantees: Stuart George, Jason Kriesel, David Stillman, Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, Hao Cao

Stuart George, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston

In this project, Dr. George will develop the Compact Electron Proton Spectrometer (CEPS), a miniaturized space weather and radiation measurement instrument. CEPS will provide long-term, science-quality space environment monitoring specifically targeted at real time forecasting of solar energetic particle events on the lunar surface, as well as radiation monitoring data for crew health and protection. A particular focus of the CEPS instrument is saturation-free measurement of the largest and most extreme solar particle events and high quality discrimination of proton and electron signals.

Jason Kriesel, Opto- Knowledge Systems, Inc (OKSI) in Torrance, California

Jason Kriesel, of OKSI, is teaming with Honeybee Robotics and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to produce a prototype instrument to measure lunar water and other volatiles on the Moon. The instrument will be designed to help answer important specific questions related to the origin, history, and future of water on the Moon, as well as help better understand planetary processes in general. The project will push forward a novel measurement approach using a hollow fiber optic gas cell, called a capillary absorption spectrometer (CAS). The CAS will be paired with a sample handling system optimized for analysis on the Moon. The resulting Lunar CAS (LuCAS) prototype will prove the technology on Earth, paving the way for its use on the Moon.   

David Stillman, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado

The focus of Dr. Stillman’s project is the Synthetic Pulse Artemis Radar for Crustal Imaging (SPARCI; pronounced “sparky”), a novel ground penetrating radar (GPR). SPARCI uses two stationary transmitting antennas and a mobile receiver. This geometry was pioneered by the Apollo 17 Surface Electrical Properties (SEP) experiment. As a robotic or crewed rover traverses away from the transmitter, images of subsurface interfaces or discontinuities are built up. SPARCI uses a much wider bandwidth than the SEP, enabling both deeper and higher-resolution imaging, and its coded signals provide higher signal-to-noise. SPARCI will determine the thickness and density of the regolith (~10 meters), the structure of the upper megaregolith (100s m to kms), and the depth to the lower megaregolith (several km). SPARCI is therefore designed to advance our understanding of impact processes and crustal stratigraphy at the Artemis landing site(s), and eventually elsewhere on the Moon or other planets. 

Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

Dr. Gillis-Davis will lead the effort to develop an instrument to measure the chemistry of lunar materials using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS). Compositional information acquired by LIBS will help identify major lunar rock types as well as determine major element ice compositions, which relate to volatile sources. Knowledge about the chemical composition of these materials is of fundamental importance in lunar science. For instance, determining the proportions of different lunar rock types at exploration sites satisfies key goals of NASA and the lunar community. Further, measurements by this instrument are essential for figuring out how much water or other resources are present in a particular location on the Moon and could provide a necessary step toward better understanding water delivery to the Earth-Moon system. This LIBS system would incorporate cutting-edge technologies while reducing size, weight, and power relative to other LIBS systems. 

Hao Cao, University of California, Los Angeles

In this project, Dr. Cao and team will be developing a miniaturized, low-power, ultra-stable fluxgate magnetometer system for prolonged, uninterrupted operation on the lunar surface. The system incorporates a low-power, magnetically-clean thermal solution to achieve a temperature stability of 0.2 degrees Celsius at two distinct set-point temperatures, one for the lunar day and the other for the lunar night, to minimize fluxgate sensor offset drifts. This instrument will facilitate high-precision monitoring of the lunar magnetic fields across different timescales, enabling survey of the lunar surface magnetic environment and low-frequency electromagnetic sounding of the lunar deep interior. These measurements will provide invaluable insights into the bulk water content of the lunar mantle, characteristics of the partial melt layer above the lunar core, and the physical properties of the iron core of the Moon; thus, placing critical constraints on the formation and evolution of the Earth-Moon system.

The deadline for NASA’s DALI24 Step-1 submissions is April 12, 2024.  

DALI is part of NASA’s Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP), which is managed by Science Mission Directorate’s Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office (ESSIO). ESSIO ensures science is infused into all aspects of lunar exploration and leads lunar science integration within the Science Mission Directorate, with other NASA mission directorates, other government agencies, international partners, and commercial communities.

For more information about NASA’s Exploration Science Strategy Integration Office (ESSIO), visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/lunar-science/

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NASA Armstrong Updates 1960s Concept to Study Giant Planets

NASA researchers are looking at the possibility of using a wingless, unpowered aircraft design from the 1960s to gather atmospheric data on other planets – doing the same work as small satellites but potentially better and more economically.

John Bodylski, a principal investigator at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, hypothesized a lifting body aircraft design NASA tested decades ago could meet the requirements for an atmospheric probe that can collect measurements of giant planets, like Uranus. The design relies on the aircraft’s shape for lift, rather than wings.

Bodylski submitted his idea and earned a NASA Armstrong Center Innovation Fund award to write a technical paper explaining the concept and design. The award also supports construction of models to help people conceptualize his atmospheric probe. Enter the NASA Armstrong Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory.

Robert “Red” Jensen and Justin Hall, two of the lab’s designers, technicians, and pilots, brought Bodylski’s designs to life. Jensen and Hall created a mold, then layered in carbon-fiber and foam that cured for eight hours under vacuum. The parts were removed from the molds, refined, and later joined together.

The first of the two lifting body aircraft, both of which are 27 1/2 inches long, and 24 inches wide, is complete and offers a first look at the concept. The second aircraft is almost ready and includes hinged flight control surfaces. Flight controls systems connected to those surfaces will be mounted inside the structure before the model’s final assembly.

Together, the two models can test Bodylski’s ideas and provide flight data for creating better computer models. In the future, those computer models could help researchers built atmospheric probes based on those designs. Bodylski’s concept called for sending the aircraft on missions attached to satellites. Once in the orbit of a planet, the probe aircraft – about the same size as the models – would separate from the satellite through pyrotechnic bolts, deploying in the atmosphere to collect data for study.

Current atmospheric probes, small satellites known as CubeSats, gather and transmit data for about 40 minutes and can take in approximately 10 data points before their parent satellite is out of range. Bodylski’s design could descend more rapidly and at a steeper angle, collecting the same information in 10 minutes, plus additional data for another 30 minutes from much deeper in a thick atmosphere.

Following a series of technical briefings and flight readiness reviews, the aircraft is expected to fly in March 2024. It will fly as a glider air-launched from a cradle attached to rotorcraft often used by the lab. Future tests could include powered flight depending on what data researchers determine they need.

“We are looking to take an idea to flight and show that a lifting body aircraft can fly as a probe at this scale – that it can be stable, that components can be integrated into the probe, and that the aircraft can achieve some amount of lift,” Bodylski said.

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Evolved Adapter for Future NASA SLS Flights Readied for Testing

A test version of the universal stage adapter for NASA’s more powerful version of its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket arrived to Building 4619 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Feb. 22 from Leidos in Decatur, Alabama. The universal stage adapter will connect the rocket’s upgraded in-space propulsion stage, called the exploration upper stage, to NASA’s Orion spacecraft as part of the evolved Block 1B configuration of the SLS rocket. It will also serve as a compartment capable of accommodating large payloads, such as modules or other exploration spacecraft. The SLS Block 1B variant will debut on Artemis IV and will increase SLS’s payload capability to send more than 84,000 pounds to the Moon in a single launch.

In Building 4619’s Load Test Annex High Bay at Marshall, the development test article will first undergo modal testing that will shake the hardware to validate dynamic models. Later, during ultimate load testing, force will be applied vertically and to the sides of the hardware. Unlike the flight hardware, the development test article has flaws intentionally included in its design, which will help engineers verify that the adapter can withstand the extreme forces it will face during launch and flight. The test article joins an already-rich history of rocket hardware that has undergone high-and-low pressure, acoustic, and extreme temperature testing in the multipurpose, high-bay test facility; it will be tested in the same location that once bent, compressed, and torqued the core stage intertank test article for SLS rocket’s Block 1 configuration. Leidos, the prime contractor for the universal stage adapter, manufactured the full-scale prototype at its Aerospace Structures Complex in Decatur.

NASA is working to land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon under Artemis. SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Orion spacecraft and Gateway in orbit around the Moon and commercial human landing systems, next-generational spacesuits, and rovers on the lunar surface. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch.

News Media Contact

Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov

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NASA-Supported Team Discovers Aurora-Like Radio Bursts Above Sunspot

A NASA-funded team of scientists has discovered long-lasting radio signals emanating from the Sun that are similar to those associated with auroras – northern and southern lights – on Earth.

Detected about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) above a sunspot – a relatively cool, dark, and magnetically active region on the Sun – such radio bursts had previously been observed only on planets and other stars.

“This sunspot radio emission represents the first detection of its kind,” said Sijie Yu of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, who is the lead author of a paper reporting the discovery in the January 2024 issue of Nature Astronomy. The research was first published online in November 2023.

The discovery could help us better understand our own star as well as the behavior of distant stars that produce similar radio emissions.

The Sun often emits short radio bursts that last for minutes or hours. But the radio bursts Yu’s team detected, using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, persisted for over a week.

These sunspot radio bursts also have other characteristics – such as their spectra (or intensity at different wavelengths) and their polarization (the angle or direction of the radio waves) – that are much more like radio emissions produced in the polar regions of Earth and other planets with auroras.

On Earth (and other planets such as Jupiter and Saturn), auroras shimmer in the night sky when solar particles are caught up in the planet’s magnetic field and get pulled toward the poles, where magnetic field lines converge. As they accelerate poleward, the particles generate intense radio emissions at frequencies around a few hundred kilohertz and then smash into atoms in the atmosphere, causing them to emit light as auroras.

The analysis by Yu’s team suggests the radio bursts above the sunspot are likely produced in a comparable way – when energetic electrons get trapped and accelerated by converging magnetic fields above a sunspot. Unlike Earth’s auroras, though, the radio bursts from sunspots occur at much higher frequencies – hundreds of thousands of kilohertz to roughly 1 million kilohertz. “That’s a direct result of the sunspot’s magnetic field being thousands of times stronger than Earth’s,” Yu said.

Similar radio emissions have previously been observed from some types of low-mass stars as well. This discovery introduces the possibility that aurora-like radio emissions may originate from large spots on those stars (called “starspots”) in addition to the previously proposed auroras in their polar regions.

“The discovery excites us as it challenges existing notions of solar radio phenomena and opens new avenues for exploring magnetic activities both in our Sun and in distant stellar systems,” Yu said.

“NASA’s growing heliophysics fleet is well suited to continue to investigate the source regions of these radio bursts,” said Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy, a heliophysicist and solar radio researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “For example, the Solar Dynamics Observatory continually monitors the Sun’s active regions, which likely give rise to this phenomenon.”

In the meantime, Yu’s team plans to reexamine other solar radio bursts to see whether any appear to be similar to the aurora-like radio bursts they found. “We aim to determine if some of the previously recorded solar bursts could be instances of this newly identified emission,” Yu said.

The research by Yu’s team has been supported in part by a NASA Early Career Investigator Program (ECIP) grant awarded to the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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