NASA to Discuss Firefly’s First Robotic Artemis Moon Flight
As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander will carry 10 NASA science and technology instruments to the Moon’s near side. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, Dec. 17, to discuss the agency science and technology flying aboard Firefly Aerospace’s first delivery to the Moon as part of the NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign.
Audio of the call will livestream on the agency’s website at:
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Ryan Watkins, program scientist, Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office, NASA Headquarters
Jason Kim, chief executive officer, Firefly Aerospace
To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than two hours before the briefing to: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The six-day launch window opens no earlier than mid-January 2025.
The lunar mission, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, will land near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side. The mission will carry 10 NASA instruments and first-of-their-kind demonstrations to further our understanding of the Moon’s environment and help prepare for future human missions to the lunar surface, as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. Science investigations on this flight include testing lunar subsurface drilling, regolith sample collection, global navigation satellite system abilities, radiation tolerant computing, and lunar dust mitigation. The data captured could also benefit humans on Earth by providing insights into how space weather and other cosmic forces impact Earth.
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA is to be one of many customers on future flights.
Scientists Share Early Results from NASA’s Solar Eclipse Experiments
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Scientists Share Early Results from NASA’s Solar Eclipse Experiments
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. This photo was taken from Dallas, Texas.
Credits: NASA/Keegan Barber
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse swept across North America, from the western shores of Mexico, through the United States, and into northeastern Canada. For the eclipse, NASA helped fund numerous research projects and called upon citizen scientists in support of NASA’s goal to understand how our home planet is affected by the Sun – including, for example, how our star interacts with Earth’s atmosphere and affects radio communications.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, Dec. 10, scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C., reported some early results from a few of these eclipse experiments.
“Scientists and tens of thousands of volunteer observers were stationed throughout the Moon’s shadow,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Their efforts were a crucial part of the Heliophysics Big Year – helping us to learn more about the Sun and how it affects Earth’s atmosphere when our star’s light temporarily disappears from view.”
Changes in the Corona
On April 8, the Citizen CATE 2024 (Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse) project stationed 35 observing teams from local communities from Texas to Maine to capture images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, during totality. Their goal is to see how the corona changed as totality swept across the continent.
On Dec. 10, Sarah Kovac, the CATE project manager at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, reported that, while a few teams were stymied by clouds, most observed totality successfully — collecting over 47,000 images in all.
These images were taken in polarized light, or light oriented in different directions, to help scientists better understand the processes that shape the corona.
This preliminary movie from the Citizen CATE 2024 project stitches together polarized images of the solar corona taken from different sites during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
SwRI/Citizen CATE 2024/Dan Seaton/Derek Lamb
Kovac shared the first cut of a movie created from these images. The project is still stitching together all the images into the final, hour-long movie, for release at a later time.
“The beauty of CATE 2024 is that we blend cutting-edge professional science with community participants from all walks of life,” Kovac said. “The dedication of every participant made this project possible.”
Meanwhile, 50,000 feet above the ground, two NASA WB-57 aircraft chased the eclipse shadow as it raced across the continent, observing above the clouds and extending their time in totality to approximately 6 minutes and 20 seconds.
On board were cameras and spectrometers (instruments that analyze different wavelengths of light) built by multiple research teams to study the corona.
This image of the total solar eclipse is a combination of 30 50-millisecond exposures taken with a camera mounted on one of NASA’s WB-57 aircraft on April 8, 2024. It was captured in a wavelength of light emitted by ionized iron atoms called Fe XIV. This emission highlights electrified gas, called plasma, at a specific temperature (around 3.2 million degrees Fahrenheit) that often reveals arch-like structures in the corona.
B. Justen, O. Mayer, M. Justen, S. Habbal, and M. Druckmuller
On Dec. 10, Shadia Habbal of the University of Hawaii, who led one of the teams, reported that their instruments collected valuable data, despite one challenge. Cameras they had mounted on the aircraft’s wings experienced unexpected vibrations, which caused some of the images to be slightly blurred.
However, all the cameras captured detailed images of the corona, and the spectrometers, which were located in the nose of the aircraft, were not affected. The results were so successful, scientists are already planning to fly similar experiments on the aircraft again.
“The WB-57 is a remarkable platform for eclipse observations that we will try to capitalize on for future eclipses,” Habbal said.
Affecting the Atmosphere
On April 8, amateur or “ham” radio operators sent and received signals to one another before, during, and after the eclipse as part of the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science. More than 6,350 amateur radio operators generated over 52 million data points to observe how the sudden loss of sunlight during totality affects their radio signals and the ionosphere, an electrified region of Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Students from Case Western Reserve University operate radios during the 2024 total solar eclipse.
HamSCI/Case Western Reserve University
Radio communications inside and outside the path of totality improved at some frequencies (from 1-7 MHz), showing there was a reduction in ionospheric absorption. At higher frequencies (10 MHz and above), communications worsened.
Results using another technique, which bounced high-frequency radio waves (3-30 MHz) off the ionosphere, suggests that the ionosphere ascended in altitude during the eclipse and then descended to its normal height afterward.
“The project brings ham radio operators into the science community,” said Nathaniel Frissell, a professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania and lead of HamSCI. “Their dedication to their craft made this research possible.”
Also looking at the atmosphere, the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project organized student groups across the U.S. to launch balloons into the shadow of the Moon as it crossed the country in April 2024 and during a solar eclipse in October 2023. Teams flew weather sensors and other instruments to study the atmospheric response to the cold, dark shadow.
The eclipse’s shadow was captured from a camera aboard Virginia Tech’s balloon as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project on April 8, 2024.
This research, conducted by over 800 students, confirmed that eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. Just as waves form in a lake when water is disturbed, these waves also form in the atmosphere when air is disturbed. This project, led by Angela Des Jardins of Montana State University in Bozeman, also confirmed the presence of these waves during previous solar eclipses. Scientists think the trigger for these waves is a “hiccup” in the tropopause, a layer in Earth’s atmosphere, similar to an atmospheric effect that is observed during sunset.
“Half of the teams had little to no experience ballooning before the project,” said Jie Gong, a team science expert and atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But their hard work and research was vital in this finding.”
NASA TechLeap Prize: Space Technology Payload Challenge
The Space Technology Payload Challenge invites individuals, teams, and organizations to submit applications for systems that advance technology to address one or more of NASA’s shortfalls. These shortfalls identify technology areas where further technology development is required to meet future exploration, science, and other mission needs. In addition, technologies to address these select shortfalls are also potentially well suited for a suborbital or hosted orbital flight demonstration to help mature the innovation. The expectation is that the technology will be tested at the end of the challenge aboard a suborbital vehicle, rocket-powered lander, high altitude balloon, aircraft following a reduced gravity profile (i.e., parabolic flight), or orbital vehicle that can host payloads. The shortfalls selected for this challenge are divided into two groups. The first group is derived from the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) civil space shortfall list. The second group is in partnership with NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) Division and is derived from the Commercially Enabled Rapid Space Science Initiative (CERISS) program needs.
Award: $4,500,000 in total prizes
Open Date: December 10, 2024
Close Date: March 4, 2025
For more information, visit: https://www.stpc.nasatechleap.org/
3D Printable Bioreactor for Deep Space Food Production
NASA’s Synthetic Biology Project is turning to the 3D printing experts in the GrabCAD community for ideas and or designs that could lead to the ability to reuse and recycle small scale bioreactors to reduce the mass and volume requirements for deep space missions. Ideally, designs that could be printed using a 3D printer, using recyclable plastics, or a design using cleanable and reusable materials can be created.
Award: $7,000 in total prizes
Open Date: December 2, 2024
Close Date: February 24, 2025
For more information, visit: https://grabcad.com/challenges/3d-printable-bioreactor-for-deep-space-food-production
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on sol 4384 — Martian day 4,384 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — Dec. 5, 2024, at 19:08:43 UTC.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Earth planning date: Friday, Dec. 6, 2024
We successfully arrived in our new exploration quadrangle — the Altadena quad — which is named after a town on Earth very near our own Jet Propulsion Laboratory! The names from this quad will recognize the incredible interaction between Altadena and its surrounding environs with the San Andreas and other major faults, which led to the formation of several major mountain ranges, and with the rich human history of the area. The start of our activities in the Altadena quad was fairly typical, including observations both near to and far from the rover, depending on what catches our eye across the terrain. Today’s observations were no exception, but it strikes me that they fit into fairly neat order of magnitude bins that really crystallize how far-reaching (pun intended) Curiosity’s science is.
The nearest observation is of the rover itself, with MAHLI placed around 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) from its calibration target for a series of images tracking the amount of dust clinging to the target.
One meter (about 39 inches) from the front of the rover, MAHLI and APXS planned an analysis of a small float block, “Icehouse Canyon,” that resembled rocks we saw in Gediz Vallis. MAHLI, APXS, and ChemCam teamed up to analyze the DRT target located on typical bedrock in the workspace at “Sunland,” and ChemCam rastered across one the many veins in the workspace at target “Echo Mountain.” One meter (about one yard) in back of (and underneath) the rover, DAN scheduled multiple analyses that look to provide insight into water in the subsurface.
Tens of meters (tens of yards) from the rover, our interest in recording the many veins of this area continued. Mastcam planned three mosaics covering different collections of these long, linear features, some of which are visible in the lower left corner of the image above, to support study of their orientations.
Hundreds of meters from the rover, ChemCam looked back at Gediz Vallis, planning RMI mosaics of materials on both Gediz Vallis Ridge and within Gediz Vallis itself. The mosaics add more insight to that which we gained as we traversed through Gediz Vallis as the team tries to interpret the formation of the ridge and valley. Mastcam added coverage of this same area and extended their imaging a bit farther to include a small crater, “Grant Lake,” well south of the rover.
Thousands of meters from the rover (five-eighths of a mile, and beyond), ChemCam acquired a mosaic of the wind-sculpted structures that cap Mount Sharp, known as yardangs.
Finally, gazing up into the Martian atmosphere that extends tens of thousands of meters into space (6 miles, and multiples beyond that), Navcam planned early morning and midday imaging to assess the amount of dust in the atmosphere and search for clouds and dust devils. ChemCam planned a passive sky observation to measure certain chemical compounds in the atmosphere, and REMS and RAD included their regular schedule of weather and radiation monitoring, respectively.
The weekend plan is truly science across the scales!
Written by Michelle Minitti, Planetary Geologist at Framework
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