Week Begins with Spacewalk Preps, Physics, and Biology Research
The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft by a SpaceX Crew-8 member shortly after undocking on Oct. 23, 2024.
Spacesuits topped the schedule for the Expedition 72 crew on Monday as a pair of cosmonauts get ready for a spacewalk planned for next week. The International Space Station residents also kicked off the workweek focusing their research activities on physics and biology.
Flight Engineers Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos are gearing up for a spacewalk expected to begin at approximately 10:10 a.m. EST on Dec. 19. The duo will open the Poisk module’s hatch and spend about six hours and 40 minutes removing external science experiments and relocating European robotic arm hardware.
Ovchinin and Vagner took turns at the beginning of their shift on Monday assessing their hand grip strength due to the dexterity required to complete their spacewalk tasks inside the pressurized Orlan spacesuits. Afterward, the cosmonauts installed a variety of life support components and other gear on their individual Orlan suits.
Current space station Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Don Pettit, both from NASA, also worked on spacesuit maintenance but on the other side of the space station inside the Quest airlock. The duo scrubbed suit and airlock cooling loops, inspected life support gear, and checked out radio communications hardware ahead of more spacewalks planned for early next year.
Williams and Pettit had more tasks planned Monday including a vision test using a standard eye chart with NASA Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore. Williams also inserted samples of colloids, or particles mixed inside a substance to create a gel, inside a fluorescence microscope for imaging. Pettit with assistance from Wilmore reorganized a variety of orbital plumbing tools relocating them from the Permanent Multipurpose Module and stowing them in the Zarya module. Wilmore earlier photographed a set of CubeSats deployed into Earth orbit outside the Kibo laboratory module for education research.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Aleksandr Gorbunov checked out gas supply valves for the Plasma Kristall-4 space physics experiment that may improve fundamental research methods and spacecraft designs. Gorbunov later explored futuristic spacecraft and robotic piloting techniques future crew members may use on planetary missions.
Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Beyond Visual Line of Sight (UTM BVLOS)
NASA, along with members of the FAA and commercial drone engineers, gathered in the Dallas area May 25, 2024, to view multiple delivery drones operating in a shared airspace beyond visual line of sight using an industry-developed, NASA-originated uncrewed aircraft system traffic management system.
NASA
NASA’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Beyond Visual Line of Sight (UTM BVLOS) subproject aims to support the growing demand for drone flights across the globe.
Uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), or drones, offer an increasing number of services, from package delivery to critical public safety operations, like search and rescue missions. However, without special waivers, these flights are currently limited to visual line of sight – or only as far as the pilot can see – which is roughly no farther than one mile from the operator. As the FAA works to authorize flights beyond this point, NASA is working with industry and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operationalize an uncrewed traffic management system for these operations.
NASA’s UTM Legacy
NASA’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Traffic Management, or UTM, was first developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley in 2013, and enables drones to safely and efficiently integrate into air traffic that is already flying in low-altitude airspace. UTM is based on digital sharing of each user’s planned flight details, ensuring each user has the same situational awareness of the airspace.
NASA performed a series of drone flight demonstrations using UTM concepts in rural areas and densely populated cities under the agency’s previous UTM project . And commercial drone companies have since utilized NASA’s UTM concepts and delivery operations in limited areas.
Several projects supporting NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility or AAM mission are working on different elements to help make AAM a reality and one of these research areas is automation.
NASA / Graphics
UTM Today
NASA research is a driving force in making routine drone deliveries a reality. The agency is supporting a series of commercial drone package deliveries beyond visual line of sight, some of which kicked off in August 2024 in Dallas, Texas. Commercial operators are using NASA’s UTM-based capabilities during these flights to share data and planned flight routes with other operators in the airspace, detect and avoid hazards, and maintain situational awareness. All of these capabilities allow operators to safely execute their operations in a shared airspace below 400 feet and away from crewed aircraft. These drone operations in Dallas are a collaboration between NASA, the FAA, industry drone operators, public safety operators, and others.
These initial flights will help validate UTM capabilities through successful flight operation evaluations and inform the FAA’s rulemaking for safely expanding drone operations beyond visual line of sight.
The agency will continue to work with industry and government partners on more complex drone operations in communities across the country. NASA is also working with partners to leverage UTM for other emerging operations, including remotely piloted air cargo delivery and air taxi flights. UTM infrastructure could also support high-altitude operations for expanded scientific research, improved disaster response, and more.
NASA Awards Contract for NOAA’s Next Generation Space Weather Program
Credit: NASA
NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio to build the Next-Generation Space Weather Magnetometer for the Lagrange 1 Series project as a part of NOAA’s Space Weather Next program.
This cost-plus-fixed-fee contract is valued at approximately $26.1 million and includes the development of two magnetometer instruments. The anticipated period of performance is from December 2024 through January 2034. The work will take place at the awardee’s facility in San Antonio, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The contract scope includes design, analysis, development, fabrication, integration, test, verification, and evaluation of the magnetometer instruments; launch support; supply and maintenance of ground support equipment; and support of post-launch mission operations at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility.
These instruments will measure the interplanetary magnetic field carried by the solar wind. The instruments provide critical data to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which issues forecasts, warnings and alerts that help mitigate space weather impacts, including electric power outages and interruption to communications and navigation systems.
NASA and NOAA oversee the development, launch, testing, and operation of all the satellites in the Lagrange 1 Series project. NOAA is the program owner providing the requirements and funding along with managing the program, operations, data products, and dissemination to users. NASA and its commercial partners develop and build the instruments, spacecraft, and provide launch services on behalf of NOAA.
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NASA’s PACE, US-European SWOT Satellites Offer Combined Look at Ocean
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This animation shows data taken by NASA’s PACE and the international SWOT satellites over a region of the North Atlantic Ocean. PACE captured phytoplankton data on Aug. 8, 2024; layered on top is SWOT sea level data taken on Aug. 7 and 8, 2024. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
One Earth satellite can see plankton that photosynthesize. The other measures water surface height. Together, their data reveals how sea life and the ocean are intertwined.
The ocean is an engine that drives Earth’s weather patterns and climate and sustains a substantial portion of life on the planet. A new animation based on data from two recently launched missions — NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites — gives a peek into the heart of that engine.
Physical processes, including localized swirling water masses called eddies and the vertical movement of water, can drive nutrient availability in the ocean. In turn, those nutrients determine the location and concentration of tiny floating organisms known as phytoplankton that photosynthesize, converting sunlight into food. These organisms have not only contributed roughly half of Earth’s oxygen since the planet formed, but also support economically important fisheries and help draw carbon out of the atmosphere, locking it away in the deep sea.
“We see great opportunity to dramatically accelerate our scientific understanding of our oceans and the significant role they play in our Earth system,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This visualization illustrates the potential we have when we begin to integrate measurements from our separate SWOT and PACE ocean missions. Each of those missions is significant on its own. But bringing their data together — the physics from SWOT and the biology from PACE — gives us an even better view of what’s happening in our oceans, how they are changing, and why.”
A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), the SWOT’ satellite launched in December 2022 to measure the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface. It is providing one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s ocean and its freshwater lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.
Launched in February 2024, NASA’s PACE satellite detects and measures the distribution of phytoplankton communities in the ocean. It also provides data on the size, amount, and type of tiny particles called aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as the height, thickness, and opacity of clouds.
“Integrating information across NASA’s Earth System Observatory and its pathfinder missions SWOT and PACE is an exciting new frontier in Earth science,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, program scientist for SWOT and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA Headquarters.
Where Physics and Biology Meet
The animation above starts by depicting the orbits of SWOT (orange) and PACE (light blue), then zooms into the North Atlantic Ocean. The first data to appear was acquired by PACE on Aug. 8. It reveals concentrations of chlorophyll-a, a vital pigment for photosynthesis in plants and phytoplankton. Light green and yellow indicate higher concentrations of chlorophyll-a, while blue signals lower concentrations.
Next is sea surface height data from SWOT, taken during several passes over the same region between Aug. 7 and 8. Dark blue represents heights that are lower than the mean sea surface height, while dark orange and red represent heights higher than the mean. The contour lines that remain once the color fades from the SWOT data indicate areas of the ocean with the same height, much like the lines on a topographic map indicate areas with the same elevation.
The underlying PACE data then cycles through several groups of phytoplankton, starting with picoeukaryotes. Lighter green indicates greater concentrations of this group. The final two groups are cyanobacteria — some of the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton in the ocean — called Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. For Prochlorococcus, lighter raspberry colors represent higher concentrations. Lighter teal colors for Synechococcus signal greater amounts of the cyanobacteria.
The animation shows that higher phytoplankton concentrations on Aug. 8 tended to coincide with areas of lower water height. Eddies that spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere tend to draw water away from their center. This results in relatively lower sea surface heights in the center that draw up cooler, nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean. These nutrients act like fertilizer, which can boost phytoplankton growth in sunlit waters at the surface.
Overlapping SWOT and PACE data enables a better understanding of the connections between ocean dynamics and aquatic ecosystems, which can help improve the management of resources such as fisheries, since phytoplankton form the base of most food chains in the sea. Integrating these kinds of datasets also helps to improve calculations of how much carbon is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean. This, in turn, can indicate whether regions of the ocean that absorb excess atmospheric carbon are changing.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
The PACE mission is managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which also built and tested the spacecraft and the Ocean Color Instrument, which collected the data shown in the visualization. The satellite’s Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 was designed and built by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration was developed and built by a Dutch consortium led by Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Airbus Defence, and Space Netherlands.
This artist’s concept shows interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) after its discovery in 2017. While itself not a dark comet, ‘Oumuamua’s motion through the solar system has helped researchers better understand the nature of the 14 dark comets discovered so far.
European Southern Observatory / M. Kornmesser
These celestial objects look like asteroids but act like comets now come in two flavors.
The first dark comet — a celestial object that looks like an asteroid but moves through space like a comet — was reported less than two years ago. Soon after, another six were found. In a new paper, researchers announce the discovery of seven more, doubling the number of known dark comets, and find that they fall into two distinct populations: larger ones that reside in the outer solar system and smaller ones in the inner solar system, with various other traits that set them apart.
The findings were published on Monday, Dec. 9, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists got their first inkling that dark comets exist when they noted in a March 2016 study that the trajectory of “asteroid” 2003 RM had moved ever so slightly from its expected orbit. That deviation couldn’t be explained by the typical accelerations of asteroids, like the small acceleration known as the Yarkovsky effect.
“When you see that kind of perturbation on a celestial object, it usually means it’s a comet, with volatile material outgassing from its surface giving it a little thrust,” said study coauthor Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But try as we might, we couldn’t find any signs of a comet’s tail. It looked like any other asteroid — just a pinpoint of light. So, for a short while, we had this one weird celestial object that we couldn’t fully figure out.”
Weird Celestial Objects
Farnocchia and the astronomical community didn’t have to wait long for another piece of the puzzle. The next year, in 2017, a NASA-sponsored telescope discovered history’s first documented celestial object that originated outside our solar system. Not only did 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) appear as a single point of light, like an asteroid, its trajectory changed as if it were outgassing volatile material from its surface, like a comet.
“‘Oumuamua was surprising in several ways,” said Farnocchia. “The fact that the first object we discovered from interstellar space exhibited similar behaviors to 2003 RM made 2003 RM even more intriguing.”
By 2023, researchers had identified seven solar system objects that looked like asteroids but acted like comets. That was enough for the astronomical community to bestow upon them their own celestial object category: “dark comets.” Now, with the finding of seven more of these objects, researchers could start on a new set of questions.
“We had a big enough number of dark comets that we could begin asking if there was anything that would differentiate them,” said Darryl Seligman, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Physics at Michigan State University, East Lansing, and lead author of the new paper. “By analyzing the reflectivity,” or albedo, “and the orbits, we found that our solar system contains two different types of dark comets.”
Two Kinds of Dark Comets
The study’s authors found that one kind, which they call outer dark comets, have similar characteristics to Jupiter-family comets: They have highly eccentric (or elliptical) orbits and are on the larger side (hundreds of meters or more across).
The second group, inner dark comets, reside in the inner solar system (which includes Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), travel in nearly circular orbits, and are on the smaller side (tens of meters or less).
Like so many astronomical discoveries, Seligman and Farnocchia’s research not only expands on our knowledge of dark comets, but it also raises several additional questions: Where did dark comets originate? What causes their anomalous acceleration? Could they contain ice?
“Dark comets are a new potential source for having delivered the materials to Earth that were necessary for the development of life,” said Seligman. “The more we can learn about them, the better we can understand their role in our planet’s origin.”
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