NASA Doubles Down, Advances Six Innovative Tech Concepts to New Phase

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) has selected six visionary concept studies for additional funding and development. Each study has already completed the initial NIAC phase, showing their futuristic ideas – like a lunar railway system and fluid-based telescopes – may provide fresh perspectives and approaches as NASA explores the unknown in space.

The NIAC Phase II conceptual studies will receive up to $600,000 to continue working over the next two years to address key remaining technical and budget hurdles and pave their development path forward. When Phase II is complete, these studies could advance to the final NIAC phase, earning additional funding and development consideration toward becoming a future aerospace mission.

“These diverse, science fiction-like concepts represent a fantastic class of Phase II studies,” said John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Our NIAC fellows never cease to amaze and inspire, and this class definitely gives NASA a lot to think about in terms of what’s possible in the future.”  The six concepts chosen for 2024 NIAC Phase II awards are:

Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE): Enabling the Next Generation of Large Space Observatories would create a large optical observatory in space using fluidic shaping of ionic liquids. These in-space observatories could potentially help investigate NASA’s highest priority astrophysics targets, including Earth-like exoplanets, first-generation stars, and young galaxies. The FLUTE study is led by Edward Balaban from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

Pulsed Plasma Rocket: Shielded, Fast Transits for Humans to Mars is an innovative propulsion system that relies on using fission-generated packets of plasma for thrust. This innovative system could significantly reduce travel times between Earth and any destination in the solar system.  This study is led by Brianna Clements with Howe Industries in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths (GO-LoW) could change the way NASA conducts astronomy. This mega constellation low-frequency radio telescope uses thousands of autonomous SmallSats capable of measuring the magnetic fields emitted from exoplanets and the cosmic dark ages. GO-LoW is led by Mary Knapp with MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Radioisotope Thermoradiative Cell Power Generator is investigating new in-space power sources, potentially operating at higher efficiencies than NASA legacy power generators. This technology could enable small exploration and science spacecraft in the future that are unable to carry bulky solar or nuclear power systems. This power generation concept study is from Stephen Polly at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

FLOAT: Flexible Levitation on a Track would be a lunar railway system, providing reliable, autonomous, and efficient payload transport on the Moon. This rail system could support daily operations of a sustainable lunar base as soon as the 2030s. Ethan Schaler leads FLOAT at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

ScienceCraft for Outer Planet Exploration distributes Quantum Dot-based sensors throughout the surface of a solar sail, enabling it to become an innovative imager. Quantum physics would allow NASA to take scientific measurements through studying how the dots absorb light. By leveraging the solar sail’s area, it allows lighter, more cost-effective spacecraft to carry imagers across the solar system. ScienceCraft is led by NASA’s Mahmooda Sultana at the agency’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funds the NIAC program, as it is responsible for developing the agency’s new cross-cutting technologies and capabilities to achieve its current and future missions.

To learn more about NIAC and the 2024 Phase II studies, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/stmd-the-nasa-innovative-advanced-concepts-niac/

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Loura Hall

NASA Selects Students for Europa Clipper Intern Program

NASA has selected 40 undergraduate students for the first year of its Europa ICONS (Inspiring Clipper: Opportunities for Next-generation Scientists) internship program, supporting the agency’s Europa Clipper mission. Europa ICONS matches students with mentors from the mission’s science team for a 10-week program to conduct original scientific research on topics related to the mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. 

The program is planned to run every year until Europa Clipper completes its prime mission in 2034 and is open to applications from all U.S. undergraduate STEM majors, with preference given to students from non-high research activity universities and underserved institutions.

ICONS internships may be in-person at the mentor’s institution, virtual, or hybrid, depending on the research project and needs of the mentor and intern. As part of the program, students and mentors will convene for a two-day meeting at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. The first Europa ICONS internship will run Monday, June 3 through Friday, Aug. 9.

The students selected for the Europa ICONS program in 2024 are:

Sarah Ruetschle, John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio

Cole Anderson, University of California, Santa Cruz

Hamza Ouriour, Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston

Ethan Piacenti, Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois

Jared Bouck, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona

Kayla Blair, Northern Arizona University

Carly Davis, McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Matthew Perkins, Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, Colorado

Angela Zhang, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York

Arianna Rodriguez Ortiz, University of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez

Beverly Malugin Ayala, University of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez

Jeansel Johnson-Ayala, University of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras 

Akemi Takeuchi, University of Maryland, College Park

Sofia Merchant-Dest, University of Maryland–University College in Adelphi

Gradon Robbins, University of Florida in Gainesville

Jason Sioeng, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Tyler Yuen, San Jose State University in San Jose, California

Dallin Nelson, Southern Utah University in Cedar City

Eric Stinemetz, University of Houston–Downtown

Lucas Nerbonne, Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont

Hope Jerris, Middlebury College

Jacob Dietrich, Indiana University, Southeast in New Albany

Jocelyn Mateo, Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio

Samuel Brown, San Diego Mesa College in San Diego

Madison Stanford, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles

Bryce McGimsey, Solano Community College in Fairfield, California

Noah Alayon, CUNY LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York

Trevor Erwin, University of Texas at Austin

Ava Frost, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts

Brianna Casey, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York

Fatima Mendoza, Texas Tech University in Lubbock

Daniel Voyles, Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California

Swaroop Sathyanarayanan, Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta

Jay Patel, Louisiana State University College of Engineering in Baton Rouge

Juliane Keiper, Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts

Emory Long, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee

Scott Chang, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Hayden Ferrell, Arizona State University in Tempe

Isabella Musto, Denison University in Granville, Ohio

Elizabeth Kirby, College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina

The Europa Clipper mission’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its surface interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

The Europa ICONS program is managed by the Planetary Science Division within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington and is part of a larger effort known as Clipper Next Gen, a decade-long strategy using the Europa Clipper mission to train and diversify the next generation of planetary scientists.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.

For more information on the Europa ICONS program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/europa-clipper-icons-internships/

Karen Fox / Charles Blue
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1257 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov

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NASA Mission Strengthens 40-Year Friendship 

As NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore launches aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station Monday, May 6 on its first crewed flight, one of his best friends will have played a key role in getting him there. 

Billy Stover, chief safety officer for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and Wilmore have been friends for more than 40 years. The pair’s friendship began in the 1980s at Tennessee Tech University on the football field. 

“We would do weight training and we would get paired up,” said Stover. “If he did 50 sit-ups, I had to do 55. Or we would see how many sit-ups we could get done in 30 seconds or vice versa – we were not kind to each other.” 

As a representative in the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s technical authority, Stover oversees coordination and integration within NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, enacting quality processes and conducting risk analysis to ensure the safety of crews to and from low Earth orbit. 

Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams will fly Starliner, lifting off aboard United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, for about a one week stay aboard the space station, in support of NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. 

Stover says he gets goosebumps thinking about the years of work and excitement that have gone into the upcoming crew flight test launch. 

“I will tell you that I’m a little bit calmer than I have been for probably the past two years,” Stover said. “The team has been amazing in working through each challenge and test anomalies to get us to the right place to execute the launch. What we do every single day makes history.” 

Both men briefly lost touch after college when their careers took them in different directions, as Wilmore became a Navy pilot and Stover pursued engineering. In 2002, Stover ran into Wilmore walking out of the Launch Control Center during a space shuttle launch campaign at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and reconnected. 

Since then, Stover and Wilmore find the opportunity to speak weekly or as often as they can – even if one of them happens to be off planet. In 2014, Wilmore made time to call Stover at Christmas while aboard the space station for Expedition 41. 

“On my answering machine was a message from Barry calling me from the space station to wish me and my family a ‘Merry Christmas.’” Stover said. “I saved that message for three years. How many people get a call from space?” 

When Wilmore received the 2018 Theodore Roosevelt award at the NCAA Awards Presentation, the association’s highest honor exemplifying the ideals of college sports, Stover attended. Former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn, astronaut Sally Ride, and flight director Christopher C. Kraft Jr. also received the award. 

“He interjected me in his acceptance speech, which was really special,” Stover said. “We’re like brothers.” 

Their 40-year friendship expanded beyond football and space. Now with a son in the Navy, Stover says that Wilmore is more than a friend; he’s also a mentor. 

“We both have a wife and kids, similar backgrounds, and values on how we manage ourselves,” Stover said. “Barry’s turned into a great mentor for my oldest son, who’s an officer in the Navy.” Wilmore is a retired U.S. Navy captain. 

Both men have a love for theme parks and frequently plan trips to them. In fact, Stover’s own travel plans will take him away from Florida and he won’t see NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test launch. Instead, he’ll be on a transatlantic cruise that was booked more than a year ago. 

“It’s a weird feeling that I’m not going to be here physically,” Stover said. “Godspeed to him and Suni. I’m always here for them.” 

Stover and Wilmore no longer use that competitive spirit against each other but still work out from time to time. 

“In his position, he’s a lot more disciplined and in better condition than me, but now he’s nice about it,” Stover said.  

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is working with the American aerospace industry to launch astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil to the International Space Station. This innovative approach is helping the agency maintain a human presence in low Earth orbit and enable exploration to the Moon in preparation for Mars for the benefit of humanity. 

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Elyna N. Niles-Carnes

Orbits and Kepler’s Laws

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Orbits and Kepler’s Laws

Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion

The story of how we understand planetary motion could not be told if it were not for the work of a German mathematician named Johannes Kepler. 

Kepler’s three laws describe how planets orbit the Sun. They describe how (1) planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun as a focus, (2) a planet covers the same area of space in the same amount of time no matter where it is in its orbit, and (3) a planet’s orbital period is proportional to the size of its orbit.

Who Was Johannes Kepler?

Johannes Kepler was born on Dec. 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg, which is now in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

As a rather frail young man, the exceptionally talented Kepler turned to mathematics and the study of the heavens early on. When he was six, his mother pointed out a comet visible in the night sky. When Kepler was nine, his father took him out one night under the stars to observe a lunar eclipse. These events both made a vivid impression on Kepler’s youthful mind and turned him toward a life dedicated to astronomy.

Kepler lived and worked in Graz, Austria, during the tumultuous early 17th century. Due to religious and political difficulties common during that era, Kepler was banished from Graz on Aug. 2, 1600. 

Fortunately, he found work as an assistant to the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (usually referred to by his first name) in Prague. Kepler moved his family from Graz, 300 miles (480 kilometers) across the Danube River to Tycho’s home.

Kepler and the Mars Problem

Tycho was a brilliant astronomer. He is credited with making the most accurate astronomical observations of his time, which he accomplished without the aid of a telescope. He had been impressed with Kepler’s studies in an earlier meeting. 

However, some historians think Tycho mistrusted Kepler, fearing that his bright young intern might eclipse him as the premier astronomer of his day. Because of this, he only let Kepler see part of his voluminous collection of planetary data.

Tycho assigned Kepler the task of understanding the orbit of the planet Mars. The movement of Mars was problematic – it didn’t quite fit the models as described by Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.E.) and Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (about 100 C.E to 170 C.E.). Aristotle thought Earth was the center of the universe, and that the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars revolved around it. Ptolemy developed this concept into a standardized,  geocentric model (now known as the Ptolemaic system) based around Earth as a stationary object, at the center of the universe.

Historians think that part of Tycho’s motivation for giving the Mars problem to Kepler was Tycho’s hope that it would keep Kepler occupied while Tycho worked to perfect his own theory of the solar system. That theory was based on a geocentric model, modified from Ptolemy’s, in which the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all orbit the Sun, which in turn orbits Earth. 

As it turned out, Kepler, unlike Tycho, believed firmly in a model of the solar system known as the heliocentric model, which correctly placed the Sun at its center. This is also known as the Copernican system, because it was developed by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). But the reason Mars’ orbit was problematic was because the Copernican system incorrectly assumed the orbits of the planets to be circular.

Like many philosophers of his era, Kepler had a mystical belief that the circle was the universe’s perfect shape, so he also thought the planets’ orbits must be circular. For many years, he struggled to make Tycho’s observations of the motions of Mars match up with a circular orbit.

Kepler eventually realized that the orbits of the planets are not perfect circles. His brilliant insight was that planets move in elongated, or flattened, circles called ellipses. 

The particular difficulties Tycho had with the movement of Mars were due to the fact that its orbit was the most elliptical of the planets for which he had extensive data. Thus, in a twist of irony, Tycho unwittingly gave Kepler the very part of his data that would enable his assistant to formulate the correct theory of the solar system.

Basic Properties of Ellipses

Since the orbits of the planets are ellipses, it might be helpful to review three basic properties of an ellipse:

1. An ellipse is defined by two points, each called a focus, and together called foci. The sum of the distances to the foci from any point on the ellipse is always a constant. 
2. The amount of flattening of the ellipse is called the eccentricity. The flatter the ellipse, the more eccentric it is. Each ellipse has an eccentricity with a value between zero (a circle), and one (essentially a flat line, technically called a parabola).
3. The longest axis of the ellipse is called the major axis, while the shortest axis is called the minor axis. Half of the major axis is termed a semi-major axis. 

After determining that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, Kepler formulated three laws of planetary motion, which accurately described the motion of comets as well.

Kepler’s Laws

In 1609 Kepler published “Astronomia Nova,” which explained what are now called Kepler’s first two laws of planetary motion. Kepler had noticed that an imaginary line drawn from a planet to the Sun swept out an equal area of space in equal times, regardless of where the planet was in its orbit. If you draw a triangle from the Sun to a planet’s position at one point in time and its position at a fixed time later, the area of that triangle is always the same, anywhere in the orbit. 

For all these triangles to have the same area, the planet must move more quickly when it’s near the Sun, but more slowly when it is farther from the Sun. This discovery became Kepler’s second law of orbital motion, and led to the realization of what became Kepler’s first law: that the planets move in an ellipse with the Sun at one focus point, offset from the center. 

In 1619, Kepler published “Harmonices Mundi,” in which he describes his “third law.” The third law shows that there is a precise mathematical relationship between a planet’s distance from the Sun and the amount of time it takes revolve around the Sun.

Here are Kepler’s Three Laws:

Kepler’s First Law: Each planet’s orbit about the Sun is an ellipse. The Sun’s center is always located at one focus of the ellipse. The planet follows the ellipse in its orbit, meaning that the planet-to-Sun distance is constantly changing as the planet goes around its orbit.

Kepler’s Second Law: The imaginary line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out – or covers – equal areas of space during equal time intervals as the planet orbits. Basically, the planets do not move with constant speed along their orbits. Instead, their speed varies so that the line joining the centers of the Sun and the planet covers an equal area in equal amounts of time. The point of nearest approach of the planet to the Sun is called perihelion. The point of greatest separation is aphelion, hence by Kepler’s second law, a planet is moving fastest when it is at perihelion and slowest at aphelion.

Kepler’s Third Law: The orbital period of a planet, squared, is directly proportional to the semi-major axes of its orbit, cubed. This is written in equation form as p²=a³. Kepler’s third law implies that the period for a planet to orbit the Sun increases rapidly with the radius of its orbit. Mercury, the innermost planet, takes only 88 days to orbit the Sun. Earth takes 365 days, while distant Saturn requires 10,759 days to do the same.  

How We Use Kepler’s Laws Today

Kepler didn’t know about gravity, which is responsible for holding the planets in their orbits around the Sun, when he came up with his three laws. But Kepler’s laws were instrumental in Isaac Newton’s development of his theory of universal gravitation, which explained the unknown force behind Kepler’s third law. Kepler and his theories were crucial in the understanding of solar system dynamics and as a springboard to newer theories that more accurately approximate planetary orbits. However, his third law only applies to objects in our own solar system. 

Newton’s version of Kepler’s third law allows us to calculate the masses of any two objects in space if we know the distance between them and how long they take to orbit each other (their orbital period). What Newton realized was that the orbits of objects in space depend on their masses, which led him to discover gravity.

Newton’s generalized version of Kepler’s third law is the basis of most measurements we can make of the masses of distant objects in space today. These applications include determining the masses of moons orbiting the planets, stars that orbit each other, the masses of black holes (using nearby stars affected by their gravity), the masses of exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our Sun), and the existence of mysterious dark matter in our galaxy and others.

In planning trajectories (or flight plans) for spacecraft, and in making measurements of the masses of the moons and planets, modern scientists often go a step beyond Newton. They account for factors related to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is necessary to achieve the precision required by modern science measurements and spaceflight. 

However, Newton’s laws are still accurate enough for many applications, and Kepler’s laws remain an excellent guide for understanding how the planets move in our solar system.

Johannes Kepler died Nov. 15, 1630, at age 58. NASA’s Kepler space telescope was named for him. The spacecraft launched March 6, 2009, and spent nine years searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our region of the Milky Way. The Kepler space telescope left a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

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