Team Preps to Study Dark Energy via Exploding Stars With NASA’s Roman

The universe is ballooning outward at an ever-faster clip under the power of an unknown force dubbed dark energy. One of the major goals for NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is to help astronomers gather clues to the mystery. One team is setting the stage now to help astronomers prepare for this exciting science.

“Roman will scan the cosmos a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can while offering Hubble-like image quality,” said Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore county working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-principal investigator of the Supernova Cosmology Project Infrastructure Team preparing for the mission’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey. “We’re going to have an overwhelming amount of data, and we want to make it so scientists can use it from day one.”

Roman will repeatedly look at wide, deep regions of the sky in near-infrared light, opening up a whole new view of the universe and revealing all sorts of things going bump in the night. That includes stars being shredded as they pass too close to a black hole, intense emissions from galaxy centers, and a variety of stellar explosions called supernovae.

Cosmic Radar Guns

Scientists estimate around half a dozen stars explode somewhere in the observable universe every minute. On average, one of them will be a special variety called type Ia that can help astronomers measure the universe.

These explosions peak at a similar intrinsic brightness, allowing scientists to find their distances simply by measuring how bright they appear.

Scientists can also study the light of these supernovae to find out how quickly they are moving away from us. By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time.

Using dozens of type Ia supernovae, scientists discovered that the universe’s expansion is accelerating. Roman will find tens of thousands, including very distant ones, offering more clues about the nature of dark energy and how it may have changed throughout the history of the universe.

“Roman’s near-infrared view will help us peer farther because more distant light is stretched, or reddened, as it travels across expanding space,” said Benjamin Rose, an assistant professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a co-principal investigator of the infrastructure team. “And opening a bigger window, so to speak, will help us get a better understanding of these objects as a whole,” which would allow scientists to learn more about dark energy. That could include discovering new physics, or figuring out the universe’s fate.

The People’s Telescope

Members of the planning team have been part of the community process to seek input from scientists worldwide on how the survey should be designed and how the analysis pipeline should work. Gathering public input in this way is unusual for a space telescope, but it’s essential for Roman because each large, deep observation will enable a wealth of science in addition to fulfilling the survey’s main goal of probing dark energy.

Rather than requiring that many individual scientists submit proposals to reserve their own slice of space telescope time, Roman’s major surveys will be coordinated openly, and all the data will become public right away.

“Instead of a single team pursuing one science goal, everyone will be able to comb through Roman’s data for a wide variety of purposes,” Rose said. “Everyone will get to play right away.”

This Is a Drill

NASA plans to announce the survey design for Roman’s three core surveys, including the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, this spring. Then the planning team will simulate it in its entirety.

“It’s kind of like a recipe,” Hounsell said. “You put in your observing strategy — how many days, which filters — and add in ‘spices’ like uncertainties, calibration effects, and the things we don’t know so well about the instrument or supernovae themselves that would affect our results. We can inject supernovae into the synthetic images and develop the tools we’ll need to analyze and evaluate the data.”

Scientists will continue using the synthetic data even after Roman begins observing, tweaking all aspects of the simulation and correcting unknowns to see which resulting images best match real observations. Scientists can then fine-tune our understanding of the universe’s underlying physics.

“We assume that all supernovae are the same regardless of when they occurred in the history of the universe, but that might not be the case,” Hounsell said. “We’re going to look further back in time than we’ve ever done with type Ia supernovae, and we’re not completely sure if the physics we understand now will hold up.”

There are reasons to suspect they may not. The very first stars were made almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, compared to stars today which contain several dozen elements. Those ancient stars also lived in very different environments than stars today. Galaxies were growing and merging, and stars were forming at a furious pace before things began calming down between about 8 and 10 billion years ago.

“Roman will very dramatically add to our understanding of this cosmic era,” Rose said. “We’ll learn more about cosmic evolution and dark energy, and thanks to Roman’s large deep view, we’ll get to do much more science too with the same data. Our work will help everyone hit the ground running after Roman launches.”

For more information about the Roman Space Telescope visit www.nasa.gov/roman.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

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NASA Selects Three University Teams to Participate in Flight Research 

NASA has selected three university teams to help solve 21^st century aviation challenges that could transform the skies above our communities. 

As part of NASA’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI), both graduate and undergraduate students on faculty-led university teams will contribute directly to real-world flight research while gaining hands-on experience working with partners from other universities and industry. 

By combining faculty expertise, student innovation, and industry experience, these three teams will advance NASA’s vision for the future of 21st century aviation.

koushik datta

NASA Project Manager

This is NASA’s eighth round of annual ULI awards. Research topics include: 

• New aviation systems for safer, more efficient flight operations  

• Improved communications frequency usage for more effective and reliable information transfer 

• Autonomous flight capabilities that could advance research in areas such as NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission 

“By combining faculty expertise, student innovation, and industry experience, these three teams will advance NASA’s vision for the future of 21^st century aviation,” said Koushik Datta, NASA University Innovation project manager at the Agency’s Ames Research Center in California. 

This eighth round of annual ULI selections would lead to awards totaling up to $20.7 million for the three teams during the next three years. For each team, the proposing university will serve as lead. The new ULI selections are: 

Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida 

The team will create a framework for developing trustworthy increasingly autonomous aviation safety systems, such as those that could potentially employ artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

Team members include: The Pennsylvania State University in University Park; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro; University of Florida in Gainesville; Stanford University in California; Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico; and the companies Collins Aerospace of Charlotte in North Carolina; and ResilienX of Syracuse, New York. 

University of Colorado Boulder 

This team will investigate tools for understanding and leveraging the complex communications environment of collaborative, autonomous airspace systems.  

Team members include: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; The University of Texas at El Paso; University of Colorado in Colorado Springs; Stanford University in California; University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis, North Carolina State University in Raleigh; University of California inSanta Barbara; El Paso Community College in Texas; Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina; the Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensing research partnership; the company Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company, in Manassas, Virginia; and the nonprofit Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida 

This team will research continuously updating, self-diagnostic vehicle health management to enhance the safety and reliability of Advanced Air Mobility vehicles.  

Team members include: Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; The University of Texas at Arlington; University of Southern California in Los Angeles; the company Collins Aerospace of Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Argonne National Laboratory. 

NASA’s ULI is managed by the agency’s University Innovation project, which also includes the University Student Research Challenge and the Gateways to Blue Skies competition.

Watch the NASA Aeronautics solicitations page for the announcement of when the next opportunity will be to submit a proposal for consideration during the next round of ULI selections. 

About the Author

John Gould

Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

John Gould is a member of NASA Aeronautics’ Strategic Communications team at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. He is dedicated to public service and NASA’s leading role in scientific exploration. Prior to working for NASA Aeronautics, he was a spaceflight historian and writer, having a lifelong passion for space and aviation.

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About Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles

Remotely piloted aircraft could transform the way we transport people and goods and provide our communities with better access to vital services, like medical supply deliveries and efficient transportation. 

NASA’s Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) subproject is working with partners to safely integrate remote air cargo and air taxi aircraft into our national airspace alongside traditional crewed aircraft.

These new types of vehicles could make air cargo deliveries and air travel more affordable and accessible to communities across the country.  

The Need

The United States large air cargo fleet is expected to grow significantly through 2044 to meet cargo demand, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

However, pilot shortages exacerbated by early retirements and crew reductions implemented during the coronavirus outbreak continue to present a challenge to the air cargo industry.  

In the future, one pilot could potentially manage multiple aircraft remotely. This could help meet the rising demand for air cargo operations, mitigate pilot shortages and costs, and increase the number of daily air cargo deliveries.

Additionally, remotely piloted air taxis could reduce travel time for passengers and alleviate traffic congestion because they could avoid crowded roads and highways.  

Identifying the Technical Challenges 

Commercial companies are investing in autonomous technologies to enable remote air cargo deliveries and air taxi operations.

NASA is working with the industry along the way to identify the unique technical challenges that must be overcome to safely put these new types of aircraft into routine operation.  

The agency has identified several challenges that need to be addressed for safe and scalable remote operations. Among these challenges are airspace integration, avoiding airborne and ground-based hazards, and resilient communication technologies. 

The main difference between conventional crewed aircraft and remotely piloted aircraft is the location of the pilot. Remote pilots operate aircraft from a control station on the ground instead of the cockpit.

This means remote pilots will need new automation and decision support systems for operating the aircraft since they can’t rely on their eyes and view from the cockpit. Since remote pilots are on the ground, they need a reliable communications link that allows remote pilots to interact with the aircraft and maintain command and control.

If the command-and-control capabilities are lost, an autonomous system would need to take over to make sure the uncrewed aircraft can fly and land safely, according to NASA researchers. Adequate software and procedures must be in place to safely manage off-nominal losses of the command-and-control capabilities.

Air Traffic Control may help keep the uncrewed aircraft’s path clear from some traffic during takeoff and landing, while onboard automation technologies would need to avoid all other traffic, fly the aircraft along a known path, and check to ensure the runway is clear to land.  

A significant related challenge is that pilots are typically responsible for looking out the window for nearby aircraft and remaining well clear of them. Since the remote pilot is not in the aircraft, they will need an electronic detect and avoid system. 

Detect and avoid systems rely on information, sensors, and algorithms to help the remotely piloted aircraft remain clear of other aircraft. Some detect and avoid configurations are expected to use ground surveillance systems for detecting nearby air traffic at lower altitudes.

These systems could improve overall situational awareness of traffic near the airport by providing a more comprehensive picture of live traffic. 

Additionally, automation and decision support tools could help remote pilots with other responsibilities that typically require pilot decisions from the cockpit, like integrating with traffic at non-towered airports.  

Implementing Solutions 

To address these challenges and others, NASA researchers are working with industry partners to research and test technologies, concepts, and airspace procedures that will enable remotely piloted operations.  

For example, industry is developing automated taxi, takeoff, and landing capabilities to help integrate remotely piloted aircraft operating at busy airports.

These technologies could enable aircraft to navigate and integrate with other airport traffic autonomously, following standard routes and air traffic control commands for safe sequencing and spacing between other aircraft. 

Automated hazard detection would enable the aircraft to identify potential conflicts or hazards and take corrective actions without input from a remote pilot. This would ensure the aircraft safely navigates the airport environment even if the remote pilot is supervising multiple aircraft or their response is delayed. 

NASA researchers are beginning to test emerging technologies for remotely piloted aircraft operations with commercial partners. The goal is to help mature technical standards and assist in the development of certification requirements anrtd procedures required to integrate remotely piloted operations into the airspace.  

NASA aims to bridge technical and regulatory gaps through these industry partnerships involving research, testing, and development. Ultimately, NASA hopes to enable pilots to remotely fly multiple large aircraft to airports across the country at once, more efficiently transporting people and goods.

This could enable carriers to meet rising air travel and transport demands in a safe, affordable, scalable way and expand access to new communities. 

PAAV is a subproject under NASA’s Air Traffic Management Exploration project within the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

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NASA, Partners to Conduct Space Station Research During Expedition 73

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NASA, Partners to Conduct Space Station Research During Expedition 73

NASA astronauts are gearing up for a scientific mission aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 73 NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will launch in March as part of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will join the crew when he launches aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in April alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.

Read more about some of the microgravity research planned by NASA and its partners:

Subjects for human research

Astronauts often serve as test subjects, submitting blood and other samples for research. NASA astronaut Anne McClain is pictured submitting a sample on a previous mission with assistance from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut David Saint-Jacques. McClain will participate in NASA’s Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research investigation, or CIPHER, a suite of integrated studies on physiological and psychological changes seen in space. Results could provide valuable insights for future deep space missions.

Testing lunar navigation

When Expedition 73 astronauts engage with students worldwide via the ISS Ham Radio program, researchers will use the ham radio hardware to test software for the Navigation and Communication Testbed (NAVCOM) that could help shape future lunar navigation. Researchers from the investigation recently launched a related study to the Moon aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost to help bridge existing Earth navigation with emerging lunar-specific solutions.

Advancing fire safety 

Expedition 73 is scheduled to conduct a Material Ignition and Suppression Test (SoFIE-MIST), testing material flammability in microgravity. This research could improve fire safety on future missions, contributing to models used to select materials for space facilities and helping to determine the best ways to extinguish fires in space.

Keeping blood flowing

Expedition 73 crew members will participate in Drain Brain 2.0, which examines how blood flows from the brain to the heart in microgravity using this plethysmograph, a device that can record the volume of blood drainage from the skull. Results could identify which processes in the body compensate for the lack of gravity, helping to ensure proper blood flow for astronauts on future missions and people with cardiovascular issues on Earth.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology, and human innovation that enables research not possible on Earth. For more than 24 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, through which astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for developing a low Earth economy and NASA’s next great leaps in exploration, including missions to the Moon under Artemis and, ultimately, human exploration of Mars. 

Learn more about the International Space Station, its research, and its crew, at: 

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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40 Years Ago: Space Shuttle Atlantis Makes its Public Debut 

On March 6, 1985, NASA’s newest space shuttle, Atlantis, made its public debut during a rollout ceremony at the Rockwell International manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California. Under construction for three years, Atlantis joined NASA’s other three space-worthy orbiters, Columbia, Challenger, and Discovery, and atmospheric test vehicle Enterprise. Officials from NASA, Rockwell, and other organizations attended the rollout ceremony. By the time NASA retired Atlantis in 2011, it had flown 33 missions in a career spanning 26 years and flying many types of missions envisioned for the space shuttle. The Visitor Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has Atlantis on display. 

On Jan. 25, 1979, NASA announced the names of the first four space-worthy orbiters – Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. Like the other vehicles, NASA named Atlantis after an historical vessel of discovery and exploration – the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s two-masted research ship Atlantis that operated from 1930 to 1966. On Jan. 29, NASA signed the contract with Rockwell International of Downey, California, to build and deliver Atlantis. Construction began in March 1980 and finished in April 1984. Nearly identical to Discovery but with the addition of hardware to support the cryogenic Centaur upper stage then planned to deploy planetary spacecraft in 1986, plans shelved following the Challenger accident. After a year of testing, workers prepared Atlantis for its public debut. 

Three days after the rollout ceremony, workers trucked Atlantis 36 miles overland to NASA’s Dryden, now Armstrong, Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert, for final preparations for its cross-country ferry flight. In the Mate Demate Device, workers placed Atlantis atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing 747, to begin the ferry flight. The duo left Edwards on April 12, the fourth anniversary of the first space shuttle flight. Following an overnight stop at Houston’s Ellington Air Force Base, now Ellington Field, Atlantis arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 13. 

Four months later, on Aug. 12, workers towed Atlantis from the processing facility to the assembly building and mated it to an external tank and twin solid rocket boosters. The entire stack rolled out to Launch Pad 39A on Aug. 30 in preparation for the planned Oct. 3 launch of the STS-51J mission. As with any new orbiter, on Sept. 13 NASA conducted a 20-second Flight Readiness Firing of Atlantis’ three main engines. On Sept. 16, the five-person crew participated in a countdown demonstration test, leading to an on time Oct. 3 launch. Atlantis had joined the shuttle fleet and begun its first mission to space. 

Over the course of its 33 missions spanning more than 26 years, Atlantis flew virtually every type of mission envisioned for the space shuttle, including government and commercial satellite deployments, deploying spacecraft to visit interplanetary destinations, supporting scientific missions, launching and servicing scientific observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, performing crew rotations and resupplying the Mir space station, and assembling and maintaining the International Space Station. Atlantis flew the final mission of the shuttle program, STS-135,  in July 2011. The following year, NASA transported Atlantis to the Kennedy Visitor Center for public display.  

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