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NASA Johnson Director to Discuss Exploration Park at ASCENDxTexas

Feb. 13, 2024

MEDIA ADVISORY: J24-002

NASA Johnson Director to Discuss Exploration Park at ASCENDxTexas

Media are invited to attend an event with NASA taking place as part of ASCENDxTexas on Thursday, Feb. 15.

Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, will be in attendance, as will Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp and Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh. They will provide updates on Exploration Park and are available briefly for interviews after the announcement.

NASA sought proposals for use of the undeveloped and underutilized land near Saturn Lane, known as Exploration Park, on June 9, 2023. The parcel is outside of Johnson’s controlled access area and adjacent to its main campus.

ASCENDxTexas, hosted by AIAA, begins on Wednesday, Feb. 14, at South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, League City, Texas. Media check-in will begin at 9:20 a.m. CST, with the event beginning promptly at 9:45 a.m. For ASCENDxTexas media credentialing, visit:

https://www.aiaa.org/events-learning/events/ascend/ascend-press-pass

For more than 60 years, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has led the nation and the world on a continuing adventure of human exploration, discovery, and achievement. Today, Johnson is the hub of human spaceflight, the home of mission control and astronaut training, and leads the International Space Station, Orion, and Gateway programs, while also playing important roles in numerous other advanced human exploration and research projects.

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Kelly Humphries

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-483-5111

kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov

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Kelly O. Humphries

New NASA Mission will Study Ultraviolet Sky, Stars, Stellar Explosions

As NASA explores the unknown in air and space, a new mission to survey ultraviolet light across the entire sky will provide the agency with more insight into how galaxies and stars evolve. The space telescope, called UVEX (UltraViolet EXplorer), is targeted to launch in 2030 as NASA’s next Astrophysics Medium-Class Explorer mission.

In addition to conducting a highly sensitive all-sky survey, UVEX will be able to quickly point toward sources of ultraviolet light in the universe. This will enable it to capture the explosions that follow bursts of gravitational waves caused by merging neutron stars. The telescope also will carry an ultraviolet spectrograph to study stellar explosions and massive stars.

“NASA’s UVEX will help us better understand the nature of both nearby and distant galaxies, as well as follow up on dynamic events in our changing universe,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission will bring key capabilities in near-and far-ultraviolet light to our fleet of space telescopes, delivering a wealth of survey data that will open new avenues in exploring the secrets of the cosmos.”

The telescope’s ultraviolet survey will complement data from other missions conducting wide surveys in this decade, including the Euclid mission led by ESA (European Space Agency) with NASA contributions, and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027. Together, these missions will help create a modern, multi-wavelength map of our universe.

“With the innovative new UVEX mission joining our portfolio, we will gain an important legacy archive of data that will be of lasting value to the science community,” said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “This new telescope will contribute to our understanding of the universe across multiple wavelengths and address one of the major priorities in Astrophysics today: studying fleeting changes in the cosmos.”

NASA selected the UVEX Medium-Class Explorer concept to continue into development after detailed review of two Medium-Class Explorer and two Mission of Opportunity concept proposals by a panel of scientists and engineers, and after evaluation based on NASA’s current astrophysics portfolio coupled with available resources. The UVEX mission was selected for a two-year mission and will cost approximately $300 million, not including launch costs.

The mission’s principal investigator is Fiona Harrison at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Other institutions involved in the mission include University of California at Berkeley, Northrop Grumman, and Space Dynamics Laboratory.

The Explorers Program is the oldest continuous NASA program. The program is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the agency’s astrophysics and heliophysics programs.

Since the launch of Explorer 1 in 1958, which discovered the Earth’s radiation belts, the Explorers Program has launched more than 90 missions, including the Uhuru and Cosmic Background Explorer missions that led to Nobel prizes for their investigators.

The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for the Science Mission Directorate, which conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system, and the universe.

For more information about the Explorers Program, visit:

https://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov

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Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov

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Roxana Bardan

Six NASA Instruments Will Fly to Moon on Intuitive Machines Lander

NASA is gearing up for a commercial robotic flight to the Moon under the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign. Intuitive Machines will launch its Nova-C lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Wednesday, Feb. 14, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission will carry six NASA payloads targeted for the South Polar region.

The group of NASA instruments aboard IM-1 will conduct scientific research and demonstrate technologies to help us better understand the Moon’s environment and improve landing precision and safety in the challenging conditions of the lunar south polar region, paving the way for future Artemis astronaut missions. The payloads will collect data on how the plume of engine gasses interacts with the Moon’s surface and kicks up lunar dust, investigate radio astronomy and space weather interactions with the lunar surface, test precision landing technologies, and measure the quantity of liquid propellant in Nova-C propellant tanks in the zero gravity of space. The Nova-C lander will also carry a retroreflector array that will contribute to a network of location markers on the Moon that will be used as a position marker for decades to come

The Nova-C lander is targeted to land Thursday, Feb. 22, in a relatively flat and safe area near the Malapert A crater, in the south polar region of the Moon.

The six NASA payloads aboard Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission include:

• LN-1 (Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator)
  A small, CubeSat-sized flight hardware experiment that integrates navigation and communication functionality for autonomous navigation to support future surface and orbital operations. Principal investigator: Dr. Evan Anzalone, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

• LRA (Laser Retroreflector Array)
  A collection of eight retroreflectors that enable precision laser ranging, which is a measurement of the distance between an orbiting or landing spacecraft to the reflector on the lander. LRA is a passive optical instrument and will function as a permanent location marker on the Moon for decades to come.
  Principal investigator: Dr. Xiaoli Sun, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

• NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing)
  A Lidar-based (Light Detection and Ranging) descent and landing sensor. This instrument operates on the same principles of radar but uses pulses from a laser emitted through three optical telescopes. NDL will measure vehicle velocity (speed and direction) and altitude (distance to surface) with high precision during descent to touchdown. Principal investigator: Dr. Farzin Amzajerdian, NASA’s Langley Research Center

• RFMG (Radio Frequency Mass Gauge)
  A rocket propellant gauge used to measure the amount of spacecraft propellant in a low-gravity space environment. Using sensor technology, RFMG will measure the amount, or mass, of cryogenic propellants in Nova-C’s tanks, providing data that can help predict propellant usage on future missions. Principal investigator: Dr. Greg Zimmerli, NASA’s Glenn Research Center

• ROLSES (Radio-wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photoelectron Sheath)
  Four antennas and a low-frequency radio receiver system designed to study the dynamic radio energy environment near the lunar surface and determine how natural and human-generated activity near the surface interacts with science investigations. It will also detect radio emissions from the Sun, Jupiter, and Earth, as well as dust impacting the surface of the Moon. Principal investigator: Dr. Nat Gopalswamy, NASA Goddard

• SCALPSS (Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies)
  A suite of four cameras to capture stereo and still images of the dust plume created by the lander’s engine as it begins its descent to the lunar surface until after the engine shuts off. Principal investigator: Michelle Munk, NASA Langley

Intuitive Machines is one of 14 vendors eligible to carry NASA payloads to the Moon through the agency’s CLPS initiative, which began in 2018. CLPS is an innovative approach connecting NASA with commercial solutions from American companies to deliver scientific, exploration, and technology payloads to the Moon’s surface and into lunar orbit. Through CLPS, NASA aims to gain new insights into the lunar environment and expand the lunar economy to support future crewed missions under the Artemis campaign.

Learn more about NASA’s CLPS initiative at:

https://www.nasa.gov/clps/

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Jeffery Rubio