The Digital Information Platform (DIP) Sub-Project of Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) is seeking to make available in the National Airspace System a variety of live data feeds and services built on that data. The goal is to allow external partners to build advanced, data-driven services using this data and to make these services available to flight operators, who will use these capabilities to save fuel and avoid delays. Different wind directions, weather conditions at or near the airport, inoperative runway, etc., affects the runway configurations to be used and impacts the overall arrival throughputs. Knowing the arrival runway and its congestion level ahead of time will enable aviation operators to perform better flight planning and improve the flight efficiency. This competition seeks to make better predictions of runway throughputs using machine learning or other techniques. This competition engages students, faculty members, and other individuals employed by United States universities to develop a machine learning model that provides a short-term forecast of estimated airport runway throughput using simulated real-time information from historical NAS and weather forecast data, as well as other factors such as meteorological conditions, airport runway configuration, and airspace congestion.
NASA’s Artemis II Crew Uses Iceland Terrain for Lunar Training
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NASA’s Artemis II Crew Uses Iceland Terrain for Lunar Training
Credits: NASA/Trevor Graff/Robert Markowitz
Black and gray sediment stretches as far as the eye can see. Boulders sit on top of ground devoid of vegetation. Humans appear almost miniature in scale against a swath of shadowy mountains. At first glance, it seems a perfect scene from an excursion on the Moon’s surface … except the people are in hiking gear, not spacesuits.
Iceland has served as a lunar stand-in for training NASA astronauts since the days of the Apollo missions, and this summer the Artemis II crew took its place in that long history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, along with their backups, NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons, joined geology experts for field training on the Nordic island.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch stands in the desolate landscape of Iceland during a geology field training course. NASA/Robert Markowitz
NASA/Robert Markowitz
“Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training,” said Cindy Evans, Artemis geology training lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It has lunar-like planetary processes – in this case, volcanism. It has the landscape; it looks like the Moon. And it has the scale of features astronauts will both be observing and exploring on the Moon.”
Iceland’s geology, like the Moon’s, includes rocks called basalts and breccias. Basalts are dark, fine-grained, iron-rich rocks that form when volcanic magma cools and crystalizes quickly. In Iceland, basalt lavas form from volcanoes and deep fissures. On the Moon, basalts can form from both volcanoes and lava pooling in impact basins. Breccias are angular fragments of rock that are fused together to create new rocks. In Iceland, volcanic breccias are formed from explosive volcanic eruptions and on the Moon, impact breccias are formed from meteoroids impacting the lunar surface.
Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training.
Cindy Evans
Artemis Geology Training Lead
Along with exploring the geology of Iceland, the astronauts practiced navigation and expeditionary skills to prepare them for living and working together, and gave feedback to instructors, who used this as an opportunity to hone their instruction and identify sites for future Artemis crew training. They also put tools to the test, learning to use hammers, scoops, and chisels to collect rock samples.
Caption: The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and backup crew members NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons trek across the Icelandic landscape during their field geology training.
NASA/Robert Markowitz
“The tools we used during the Apollo missions haven’t changed that much for what we’re planning for the Artemis missions,” said Trevor Graff, exploration geologist and the hardware and testing lead on the Artemis science team at NASA Johnson. “Traditionally, a geologist goes out with just standard tool sets of things like rock hammers and scoops or shovels to sample the world around them, both on the surface and subsurface.”
The Artemis tools have a bit of a twist from traditional terrestrial geology tools, though. Engineers must take into consideration limited mass availability during launch, how easy it is to use a tool while wearing pressurized gloves, and how to ensure the pristine nature of the lunar samples is preserved for study back on Earth.
There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface.
Angela Garcia
Exploration Geologist and Artemis II Science Officer
Caption: Angela Garcia, Artemis II science officer and exploration geologist, demonstrates how to use a rock hammer and chisel to dislodge a rock sample from a large boulder during the Artemis II field geology training in Iceland.
NASA/Robert Markowitz
“There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface,” said Angela Garcia, exploration geologist and an Artemis II science officer at NASA Johnson.
The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under Artemis and will pave the way to land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon on future missions. The crew will travel approximately 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the Moon. While the Artemis II astronauts will not land on the surface of the Moon, the geology fundamentals they develop during field training will be critical to meeting the science objectives of their mission.
These objectives include visually studying a list of surface features, such as craters, from orbit. Astronauts will snap photos of the features, and describe their color, reflectivity, and texture — details that can reveal their geologic history.
The Artemis II crew astronauts, their backups, and the geology training field team pose in a valley in Iceland’s Vatnajökull national park. From front left: Angela Garcia, Jacob Richardson, Cindy Evans, Jenni Gibbons, Jacki Mahaffey, back row from left: Jeremy Hansen, John Ramsey, Reid Wiseman, Ron Spencer, Scott Wray, Kelsey Young, Patrick Whelley, Christina Koch, Andre Douglas, Jacki Kagey, Victor Glover, Rick Rochelle (NOLS), Trevor Graff.
“Having humans hold the camera during a lunar pass and describe what they’re seeing in language that scientists can understand is a boon for science,” said Kelsey Young, lunar science lead for Artemis II and Artemis II science officer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In large part, that’s what we’re training astronauts to do when we take them to these Moon-like environments on Earth.”
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 5668.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo named NGC 5668. It is relatively near to us at 90 million light-years from Earth and quite accessible for astronomers to study with both space- and ground-based telescopes. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a remarkable galaxy. It is around 90,000 light-years across, similar in size and mass to our own Milky Way galaxy, and its nearly face-on orientation shows open spiral arms made of cloudy, irregular patches.
One noticeable difference between the Milky Way galaxy and NGC 5668 is that this galaxy is forming new stars 60% more quickly. Astronomers have identified two main drivers of star formation in NGC 5668. Firstly, this high-quality Hubble view reveals a bar at the galaxy’s center, though it might look more like a slight oval shape than a real bar. The bar appears to have affected the galaxy’s star formation rate, as central bars do in many spiral galaxies. Secondly, astronomers tracked high-velocity clouds of hydrogen gas moving vertically between the disk of the galaxy and the spherical, faint halo which surrounds it. These movements may be the result of strong stellar winds from hot, massive stars, that would contribute gas to new star-forming regions.
The enhanced star formation rate in NGC 5668 comes with a corresponding abundance of supernova explosions. Astronomers have spotted three in the galaxy, in 1952, 1954, and 2004. In this image, Hubble examined the surroundings of the Type II SN 2004G, seeking to study the kinds of stars that end their lives as this kind of supernova.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Enters Quarantine Ahead of Launch
From right to left, NASA SpaceX Crew-9 members Nick Hague, commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, mission specialist, pose for an official crew portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Photo Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarel
Members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission will spend the next two weeks in routine preflight quarantine at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston ahead of their mission to the International Space Station.
NASA and SpaceX have shifted the Crew-9 launch to no earlier than Wednesday, Sept. 25, to complete prelaunch preparations and ensure separation between operations. Liftoff is targeted for 2:28 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft named Freedom. This is the first time a human spaceflight mission will launch from the pad. Additional launch opportunities are available on Thursday, Sept. 26, Friday, Sept. 27, and Saturday, Sept. 28.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague, commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, mission specialist, will remain in isolation to prevent exposure to any illnesses before they join the Expedition 72 crew at the space station. As part of the Crew-9 crew, Hague and Gorbunov will join NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived to the space station in June.
Hague and Gorbunov are set to arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, Sept. 20, where the pair will remain in quarantine at the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building until launch.
Crew-9 is the ninth crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The crew will spend approximately five months at the orbiting laboratory conducting spacewalks, research demonstrations, and experiments before returning in February 2025.
Station Crew Expands to 12 as New Arrivals Work Half-Day
Six Expedition 71 crew members pose for a portrait inside the Rassvet module moments before three Soyuz MS-26 crew members enter the space station.
Three new crewmates joined the International Space Station crew on Wednesday after a three-hour ride that began at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a launch aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft. The new trio including NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner will live and work aboard the orbital outpost until spring 2025.
Following their arrival, the three new space residents entered the Rassvet module’s Earth-facing port and were greeted by the nine Expedition 71 crewmates expanding the orbiting lab’s crew to 12. Next, family members and teams on the ground called up to the space station and congratulated Pettit, Ovchinin, and Wagner as their mission got underway. Finally, the new trio was given a standard station safety orientation before deactivating their Soyuz crew ship, unloading cargo, and going to bed.
On Thursday, their first full day in low-Earth orbit, Pettit, Ovchinin, and Wagner woke up late and worked a half-day. Pettit began his afternoon shift getting familiar with space station systems with assistance from NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick. Pettit was last aboard the space station in 2012 as an Expedition 31 Flight Engineer when the new SpaceX Dragon cargo craft visited the orbital outpost for the first time on a test mission in May of that year. Ovchinin and Wagner continued unpacking cargo packed inside the Soyuz before attaching sensors to themselves monitoring how their circulatory system is adapting to weightlessness.
The six NASA astronauts who have been aboard the space station for a few months had a full day on Thursday studying how plants grow in microgravity, conducting eye exams, and maintaining orbital plumbing systems.
NASA Flight Engineer Jeanette Epps and Mike Barratt harvested plants growing inside the Columbus laboratory module’s Veggie space botany facility throughout the day. The space-grown samples of two types of grasses were then placed inside a science freezer for future analysis back on Earth. Researchers are seeking to understand how space affects photosynthesis and plant metabolism possibly supporting the development of bioregenerative life support systems.
Barratt also peered into the eyes of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams using standard medical imaging gear as ground personnel monitored in real-time. Some astronauts have reported vision issues so doctors continuously monitor the crew’s optic nerve, retina, cornea, and more to maintain crew health and ensure successful long-term space missions.
Earlier, Williams swapped out combustion research hardware in the Kibo laboratory module and worked on cargo transfers inside the Cygnus space freighter that has been attached to the station since Aug. 6. Wilmore checked out power supply components in Columbus then visually analyzed incubation bags containing microbe samples collected for analysis.
NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson joined Dominick during Thursday servicing the space station’s restroom in Tranquility module, also known as the waste and hygiene compartment. The duo removed advanced plumbing components to access and troubleshoot the toilet’s electrical power system.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Alexander Grebenkin also slept in on Thursday following their late-night support of the Soyuz MS-26 crew arrival. The trio spent the afternoon working on electrical and life support maintenance while also assisting their new crewmates.
