NASA wants you to visualize the future of space exploration! This art challenge is looking for creative, artistic images to represent NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture, the agency’s roadmap for crewed exploration of deep space. With NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives in hand, the agency is developing an architecture for crewed exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Using systems engineering processes, NASA has begun to perform the analyses and studies needed to make informed decisions about a sustained lunar evolution and initial human missions to Mars. NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture currently includes four segments of increasing complexity: Human Lunar Return, Foundational Exploration, Sustained Lunar Evolution, and Humans to Mars. For this competition, NASA is interested in your artistic interpretation of the latter two segments: Sustained Lunar Evolution and Humans to Mars. These depictions could include operations in space, on the surface, or both. Artists may develop and submit a still image for either the lunar and Mars exploration segments.
Award: $10,000 in total prizes
Open Date: September 12, 2024
Close Date: October 31, 2024
For more information, visit: https://nasa.yet2.com/
NASA to Develop Lunar Time Standard for Exploration Initiatives
The Moon is pictured on Dec. 7, 2022, the day before its Full Moon phase from the International Space Station as it orbited above the southern Indian Ocean.
Credit: NASA
NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. The agency’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system.
The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth’s globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon’s surface will appear to ‘tick’ faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time.
To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird’s wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.
“For something traveling at the speed of light, 56 microseconds is enough time to travel the distance of approximately 168 football fields,” said Cheryl Gramling, lead on lunar position, navigation, timing, and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “If someone is orbiting the Moon, an observer on Earth who isn’t compensating for the effects of relativity over a day would think that the orbiting astronaut is approximately 168 football fields away from where the astronaut really is.”
As the agency’s Artemis campaign prepares to establish a sustained presence on and around the Moon, NASA’s SCaN team will establish a time standard at the Moon to ensure the critical time difference does not affect the safety of future explorers. The approach to time systems will also be scalable for Mars and other celestial bodies throughout our solar system, enabling long-duration exploration.
As the commercial space industry grows and more nations are active at the Moon, there is a greater need for time standardization. A shared definition of time is an important part of safe, resilient, and sustainable operations,” said Dr. Ben Ashman, navigation lead for lunar relay development, part of NASA’s SCaN program.
NASA’s SCaN program serves as the office for the agency’s space communications operations and navigation. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on SCaN’s two networks, the Near Space Network and the Deep Space Network, to support astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitor Earth’s weather and the effects of climate change, support lunar exploration, and uncover the solar system and beyond.
Learn more about NASA’s plan to return to the Moon at:
This image shows a portion of the star-forming region, known as Digel Cloud 2S (full image below).
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Ressler (JPL)
Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.)
A team of scientists used Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to image select regions within two molecular clouds known as Digel Clouds 1 and 2. With its high degree of sensitivity and sharp resolution, the Webb data resolved these areas, which are hosts to star clusters undergoing bursts of star formation, in unprecedented detail. Details of this data include components of the clusters such as very young (Class 0) protostars, outflows and jets, and distinctive nebular structures.
These Webb observations, which came from telescope time allocated to Mike Ressler of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, are enabling scientists to study star formation in the outer Milky Way in the same depth of detail as observations of star formation in our own solar neighborhood.
“In the past, we knew about these star forming regions but were not able to delve into their properties,” said Natsuko Izumi of Gifu University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, lead author of the study. “The Webb data builds upon what we have incrementally gathered over the years from prior observations with different telescopes and observatories. We can get very powerful and impressive images of these clouds with Webb. In the case of Digel Cloud 2, I did not expect to see such active star formation and spectacular jets.”
Image A: Extreme Outer Galaxy (NIRCam and MIRI)
Scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine select star-forming areas in the Extreme Outer Galaxy in near- and mid-infrared light. Within this star-forming region, known as Digel Cloud 2S, the telescope observed young, newly formed stars and their extended jets of material. This Webb image also shows a dense sea of background galaxies and red nebulous structures within the region. In this image, colors were assigned to different filters from Webb’s MIRI and NIRCam: red (F1280W, F770W, F444W), green (F356W, F200W), and blue (F150W; F115W).
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Ressler (JPL)
Stars in the Making
Although the Digel Clouds are within our galaxy, they are relatively poor in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This composition makes them similar to dwarf galaxies and our own Milky Way in its early history. Therefore, the team took the opportunity to use Webb to capture the activity occurring in four clusters of young stars within Digel Clouds 1 and 2: 1A, 1B, 2N, and 2S.
For Cloud 2S, Webb captured the main cluster containing young, newly formed stars. This dense area is quite active as several stars are emitting extended jets of material along their poles. Additionally, while scientists previously suspected a sub-cluster might be present within the cloud, Webb’s imaging capabilities confirmed its existence for the first time.
“We know from studying other nearby star-forming regions that as stars form during their early life phase, they start emitting jets of material at their poles,” said Ressler, second author of the study and principal investigator of the observing program. “What was fascinating and astounding to me from the Webb data is that there are multiple jets shooting out in all different directions from this cluster of stars. It’s a little bit like a firecracker, where you see things shooting this way and that.”
The Saga of Stars
The Webb imagery skims the surface of the Extreme Outer Galaxy and the Digel Clouds, and is just a starting point for the team. They intend to revisit this outpost in the Milky Way to find answers to a variety of current mysteries, including the relative abundance of stars of various masses within Extreme Outer Galaxy star clusters. This measurement can help astronomers understand how a particular environment can influence different types of stars during their formation.
“I’m interested in continuing to study how star formation is occurring in these regions. By combining data from different observatories and telescopes, we can examine each stage in the evolution process,” said Izumi. “We also plan to investigate circumstellar disks within the Extreme Outer Galaxy. We still don’t know why their lifetimes are shorter than in star-forming regions much closer to us. And of course, I’d like to understand the kinematics of the jets we detected in Cloud 2S.”
Though the story of star formation is complex and some chapters are still shrouded in mystery, Webb is gathering clues and helping astronomers unravel this intricate tale.
The observations were taken as part of Guaranteed Time Observation program 1237.
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).
Downloads
Right click any image to save it or open a larger version in a new tab/window via the browser’s popup menu.
The spacecraft arrived at the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 3:32 p.m. Sept. 11, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) with NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
The trio will spend approximately six months aboard the orbital laboratory before returning to Earth in the spring of 2025.
The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is seen approaching the station ahead of docking at 3:32 p.m. EDT. Credit: NASA
NASA’s live hatch opening coverage is underway on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms including social media. Hatch opening is scheduled to begin at 5:50 p.m. EDT.
The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft arrived at the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 3:32 p.m. Sept. 11, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) with NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
The trio will spend approximately six months aboard the orbital laboratory before returning to Earth in the spring of 2025.
