Shocking Spherules!

Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London

Last week the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres… and the team are now working hard to understand their origin. 

It has now been two weeks since Perseverance arrived at Broom Point, situated at the lower slopes of the Witch Hazel Hill area, on the Jezero crater rim. Here, a series of light- and dark- toned bands were visible from orbit, and just last week the rover successfully abraded and sampled one of the light-toned beds. It was from this sampling workspace where Perseverance spied a very strange texture in a nearby rock… 

The rock, named “St. Pauls Bay” by the team, appeared to be comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized, dark gray spheres. Some of these occurred as more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others possessed angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments. Some spheres even possessed tiny pinholes! What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes? 

This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars. In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spotted so-called, “Martian Blueberries” at Meridiani Planum, and since then, the Curiosity rover has observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater. Just a few months ago, Perseverance itself also spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis. In each of these cases, the spherules were interpreted as concretions, features that formed by interaction with groundwater circulating through pore spaces in the rock. Not all spherules form this way, however. They also form on Earth by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets formed in a volcanic eruption, for instance, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact.  

Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin. St. Pauls Bay, however, was float rock — a term used by geologists to describe something that is not in-place. The team are now working to link the spherule-rich texture observed at St. Pauls Bay to the wider stratigraphy at Witch Hazel Hill, and initial observations have provided tantalizing indications that it could be linked to one of the dark-toned layers identified by the team from orbit. Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin, and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and beyond! 

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CAS Discovery and Foresight

Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) Discovery identifies problems worth solving for the benefit of all.

We formulate “convergent” problems—across multiple disciplines and sectors—and build footholds toward potentially transformative opportunities in aeronautics. As aeronautics rapidly advances, it is increasingly intersecting with other sectors like energy, healthcare, emergency response, economic resilience, the space economy, and more.

CAS Discovery builds new innovation tools and methods, a workforce adept at innovation methods, and transdisciplinary teams of researchers within and beyond NASA that conduct regular “Discovery sprints”—expeditions into cross-sector topic areas that could beneficially transform aeronautics and humanity.

WHAT is Discovery?

Participatory

It is difficult to understand and effectively address stakeholders’ needs & capabilities without engaging them. Discovery, in consultation with key NASA offices and other government agencies, has honed mechanisms to lawfully and respectfully engage and invite participation from stakeholders, communities, industry, NGOs and government to collaboratively formulate complex societal challenges tied to aviation. 

Convergent

Typical organizational structures limit convergence across knowledge boundaries. CAS Discovery is intentionally cross-sector and transdisciplinary because the most impactful ideas often lie at the intersection of boundaries, the borderlands where multiple disciplines and communities come together. We work to emerge multi-sector, system-of-systems challenges that integrate political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and ethical trends, needs, and capabilities.

Future-Focused

Organizations have a tendency of being driven by short-term thinking and relatively short time horizons. CAS Discovery uses strategic foresight methods to examine 20 to 50-year time horizons, systematically ingesting and synthesizing signals and trends from aero and non-aero sources to envision a variety of scenarios to uncover opportunities for the future of aeronautics.

Ecosystemic

We study the ecosystems that are part of aeronautics and aerospace. This helps in broadening consideration of impacts while practicing foresight. It enhances our awareness of the environment and gives stakeholders the ability to see ripple effects across technologies, economies, communities, etc. We seek to benefit the wellness of the entire ecosystem while also benefiting the constituents.

WHO is Discovery?

NASA Researchers

They are the engine that propels CAS Discovery. Our cross-center Discovery sprint and foresight teams are composed of researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Virginia.

Researchers from Outside of NASA

They collaborate with us as subject matter experts or Discovery sprint team members to contribute their backgrounds in fields less common within NASA, such as energy, economics, anthropology, and other areas. This collaboration happens through many mechanisms, such as freelancing, crowdsourcing, interviews, webinars, and podcasts.

Stakeholders

They are engaged in various ways and to different degrees, often co-envisioning potential futures, co-formulating problems, and co-designing solutions.

Innovation Architects

They are the glue that holds CAS Discovery together and the anti-glue that keeps our teams from getting stuck. They come from a wide range of experience, each bringing deep expertise in leading transdisciplinary teams and stakeholders through processes and methods from strategic foresight, complex systems design, human-centered design, and more.

CAS Center Integration Leads (CILs)

They work with NASA line management at each Aeronautics center to bring NASA researchers and potential new PIs into CAS. CILs also host annual Wicked Wild idea pitch events to bring new problem areas and solution ideas into CAS Discovery and early Execution phases.

• Ames Research Center CIL: Ty Huang
• Armstrong Flight Research Center CIL: Matt Kearns 
• Glenn Research Center CIL: Jeffrey Chin
• Langley Research Center CIL: Devin Pugh-Thomas

CAS Discovery Leads

They oversee Discovery sprint and strategic foresight teams, topics, and processes; new tools and continuous improvement experiments; and the overall health of the CAS innovation front-end pipeline and related strategic outputs.

• Discovery Lead: Eric Reynolds Brubaker, Langley Research Center
• Foresight Lead: Vikram Shyam, Glenn Research Center

Sample Discovery Publications

COMING SOON: Links to Technical Memorandums and conference papers.

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NASA to Launch Three Rockets from Alaska in Single Aurora Experiment

Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere. 

The experiment’s outcome could upend a long-held theory about the aurora’s interaction with the thermosphere. It may also improve space weather forecasting, critical as the world becomes increasingly reliant on satellite-based devices such as GPS units in everyday life.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located 20 miles north of Fairbanks, and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which is part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The experiment, titled Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events, or AWESOME, features one four-stage rocket and two two-stage rockets all launching in an approximately three-hour period.

Colorful vapor tracers from the largest of the three rockets should be visible across much of northern Alaska. The launch window is March 24 through April 6.

The mission, led by Mark Conde, a space physics professor at UAF, involves about a dozen UAF graduate student researchers at several ground monitoring sites in Alaska at Utqiagvik, Kaktovik, Toolik Lake, Eagle, and Venetie, as well as Poker Flat.  NASA delivers, assembles, tests, and launches the rockets.

“Our experiment asks the question, when the aurora goes berserk and dumps a bunch of heat in the atmosphere, how much of that heat is spent transporting the air upward in a continuous convective plume and how much of that heat results in not only vertical but also horizontal oscillations in the atmosphere?” Conde said.

Confirming which process is dominant will reveal the breadth of the mixing and the related changes in the thin air’s characteristics.

“Change in composition of the atmosphere has consequences,” Conde said. “And we need to know the extent of those consequences.”

Most of the thermosphere, which reaches from about 50 to 350 miles above the surface, is what scientists call “convectively stable.” That means minimal vertical motion of air, because the warmer air is already at the top, due to absorption of solar radiation.

When auroral substorms inject energy and momentum into the middle and lower thermosphere (roughly 60 to 125 miles up), it upsets that stability. That leads to one prevailing theory — that the substorms’ heat is what causes the vertical-motion churn of the thermosphere.

Conde believes instead that acoustic-buoyancy waves are the dominant mixing force and that vertical convection has a much lesser role. Because acoustic-buoyancy waves travel vertically and horizontally from where the aurora hits, the aurora-caused atmospheric changes could be occurring over a much broader area than currently believed.

Better prediction of impacts from those changes is the AWESOME mission’s practical goal.

“I believe our experiment will lead to a simpler and more accurate method of space weather prediction,” Conde said.

Two two-stage, 42-foot Terrier-Improved Malemute rockets are planned to respectively launch about 15 minutes and an hour after an auroral substorm begins. A four-stage, 70-foot Black Brant XII rocket is planned to launch about five minutes after the second rocket. 

The first two rockets will release tracers at altitudes of 50 and 110 miles to detect wind movement and wave oscillations. The third rocket will release tracers at five altitudes from 68 to 155 miles.
Pink, blue, and white vapor traces should be visible from the third rocket for 10 to 20 minutes. Launches must occur in the dawn hours, with sunlight hitting the upper altitudes to activate the vapor tracers from the first rocket but darkness at the surface so ground cameras can photograph the tracers’ response to air movement.

By Rod Boyce
University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute 

NASA Media Contact: Sarah Frazier 

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NASA Reveals Semifinalists of Power to Explore Challenge

NASA selected 45 student essays as semifinalists of its 2024-2025 Power to Explore Challenge, a national competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes. Contestants were challenged to explore how NASA has powered some of its most famous science missions and to dream up how their personal “superpower” would energize their success on their own radioisotope-powered science mission to explore one of the nearly 300 moons of our solar system.

The competition asked students to learn about radioisotope power systems (RPS), a type of “nuclear battery” that NASA uses to explore the harshest, darkest, and dustiest parts of our solar system. RPS have enabled many spacecraft to explore a variety of these moons, some with active volcanoes, methane lakes, and intricate weather patterns similar to Earth. Many of these moons remain a mystery to us.

This year’s submissions to NASA’s Power to Explore Challenge were immensely enthralling, and we’re thrilled that the number of entries reached a record high.

Carl Sandifer II

Program Manager, NASA Radioisotope Power Systems Program

In 275 words or less, students wrote about a mission of their own that would use these space power systems to explore any moon in our solar system and described their own power to achieve their mission goals.

The Power to Explore Challenge offered students the opportunity to learn more about these reliable power systems, celebrate their own strengths, and interact with NASA’s diverse workforce. This year’s contest set a record, receiving 2,051 submitted entries from all 50 states, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Overseas.

“This year’s submissions to NASA’s Power to Explore Challenge were immensely enthralling, and we’re thrilled that the number of entries reached a record high,” said Carl Sandifer II, program manager of the Radioisotope Power Systems Program at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “It was particularly interesting to see which moons the students selected for their individual essays, and the mysteries they hope to unravel. Their RPS-powered mission concepts always prove to be innovative, and it’s a joy to learn about their ‘superpowers’ that exemplify their path forward as the next generation of explorers.” 

Entries were split into three categories: grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Every student who submitted an entry received a digital certificate, and over 4,859 participants who signed up received an invitation to the Power Up with NASA virtual event. Students learned about what powers the NASA workforce utilizes to dream big and work together to explore. Speakers included Carl Sandifer II, Dr. Wanda Peters, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for programs in the Science Mission Directorate and Dr. Zibi Turtle, principal investigator for NASA’s Dragonfly mission from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Fifteen national semifinalists in each grade category (45 semifinalists total) have been selected. These participants also will receive a NASA RPS prize pack. Finalists for this challenge will be announced on April 23.

Grades K-4

• Vihaan Akhoury, Roseland, NJ
• Ada Brolan, Somerville, MA
• Ashwin Cohen, Washington D.C
• Unnathi Chandra Devavarapu, San Marcos, CA
• Levi Fisher, Portland, OR
• Tamanna Ghosh, Orlando, FL
• Ava Goodison, Arnold, MD
• Anika Lal, Pflugerville, TX
• Diya Loganathan, Secaucus, NJ
• Mini M, Ann Arbor, MI
• Mark Porter, Temple Hills, MD
• Rohith Thiruppathy, Canton, MI
• Zachary Tolchin, Guilford CT
• Kavin Vairavan, West Windsor Township, NJ
• Terry Xu, Arcadia, CA

Grades 5-8

• Chowdhury Wareesha Ali, Solon OH
• Caydin Brandes, Los Angeles, CA
• Caleb Braswell, Crestview, FL
• Lilah Coyan, Spokane, WA
• Ashwin Dhondi Kubeer, Phoenix, AZ
• Jonathan Gigi, Cypress, TX
• Gagan Girish, Portland, OR
• Maggie Hou, Snohomish, WA
• Sanjay Koripelli, Louisville, KY
• Isaiah Muniz, South Orange, NJ
• Sarabhesh Saravanakumar, Bothell, WA
• Eliya Schubert, Katonah, NY
• Gabriel Traska, Fort Woth, TX
• Jaxon Verbeck, Riggins, ID
• Krish Vinodhkumar, Monrovia, MD

Grades 9-12

• Samaria Berry, Kinder, LA
• David Cai, Saipan, MP
• Reggie Castro, Saipan, MP
• Ryan Danyow, Rutland City, VT
• Faiz Karim, Jericho, NY
• Sakethram Kuncha, Chantilly, VA
• Katerina Morin, Miami, FL
• Emilio Olivares, Edmond, OK
• Kairat Otorov, Trumbull, CT
• Dev Rai, Herndon, VA
• Shaurya Saxena, Irving, TX
• Saanvi Shah, Bothell, WA
• Niyant Sithamraju, San Ramon, CA
• Anna Swenson, Henderson, NV
• Alejandro Valdez, Orlando, FL

About the Challenge

The Power to Explore Student Challenge is funded by the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program Office and managed and administered by Future Engineers under the direction of the NASA Tournament Lab, a part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.

Kristin Jansen
NASA’s Glenn Research Center

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Making Ripples

A dolphin swims through the water in the Launch Complex 39 Area turn basin at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 6, 2007. The turn basin was carved out of the Banana River when NASA Kennedy was built. Dolphins are a frequent sight in the rivers around Kennedy, which shares a boundary with the Merritt Island Wildlife Nature Refuge.

The refuge was established in 1963 for the protection of migratory birds. Consisting of 140,000 acres, the refuge provides a wide variety of habitats: coastal dunes, saltwater marshes, managed impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks. These habitats provide a home for more than 1,500 species of plants and animals and 15 federally listed species.

Image credit: NASA/George Shelton

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