Cleveland High School Students Land STEM Career Exploration Experience
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA Glenn Research Center’s Amber Krauss talks to students about how NASA uses ground integration units to prepare for flight science operations.
Credit:NASA/Jef Janis
This summer, 10 Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) students landed the opportunity to participate in the NASA Glenn High School Career Exploration and Research Experience program at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
High school students were paired with a mentor in their field of study who they shadowed for eight weeks during a hands-on workplace experience exploring their interests. The students prepared presentations to highlight their experiences and discussed how the program will impact their career choices.
NASA Glenn Research Center’s Henry Nahra shares details about Glenn’s ISS Payload Operations Center with Glenn Career Exploration and Research Experience program students.
Credit:NASA/Jef Janis
“This opportunity has substantially helped me develop my soft skills and technical skills,” said CSMD participant JayLeesa Jones. “I have come to realize that I can reach new heights as an intern, team member, and aspiring engineer!”
This unique, paid STEM engagement learning experience is part of a series of NASA Glenn programs focused on attracting and retaining a diverse, skilled workforce. The Glenn Career Exploration and Research Experience program is made possible through a Space Act Agreement between NASA Glenn and Youth Opportunities Unlimited.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
National Cherry Festival visitors line up to explore NASA Glenn’s Journey to Tomorrow traveling exhibit.
Credit:NASA/Heather Brown
NASA’s Glenn Research Center staff traveled across the Midwest to share the NASA mission with visitors at the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan, June 26–29. The team participated in several activities including visiting a Pit Spitters baseball game and showcasing the Journey to Tomorrow traveling exhibit stationed in the center of the Cherry Festival.
Eva the Astronaut mascot and NASA employee Tricia Mack tagged up to share information on NASA exploration with the public during the National Cherry Festival.
Credit:NASA/Heather Brown
Michigan native Tricia Mack, who works in NASA’s Transportation Integration Office within the International Space Station Program, joined the team. Mack taught six crews of astronauts how to perform spacewalks and served as a flight controller and director of the Human Space Flight Program in Russia for six years. During the trip to Michigan, she supported multiple engagements.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Local creators representing food, tourism, apparel, and professional sports industries tour several of NASA Glenn Research Center’s facilities. They stop to pose in the Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory, a world-class facility for conducting aero-propulsion noise reduction research.
Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna
NASA’s Glenn Research Center has made contributions to nearly every NASA mission since the agency’s inception. These contributions go beyond science and engineering to include designing NASA’s iconic logo. Affectionally called the “meatball,” it was created in Cleveland at the lab that would become NASA Glenn by graphic artist James Modarelli.
This timeless brand symbol turned 65 last month. In honor of the occasion, NASA Glenn’s Office of Communications (OCOMM) hosted a Cleveland Creators Tour on July 10 and welcomed creators representing food, tourism, apparel, and professional sports industries to the center. During the event, they learned about NASA Glenn’s work and ways they can appropriately use NASA’s iconic logo. Like Modarelli, their creative interpretations could engage a new generation of creators, explorers, and space lovers.
Local creatives learn about ways they can appropriately use NASA’s iconic logo.
Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna
Deputy Center Director Dawn Schaible provided a welcome and center overview, followed by NASA Merchandising and Branding Manager Aimee Crane, who explained how to work with the agency to use NASA brand symbols. Tours of several Glenn research facilities highlighted how Cleveland is improving flight and exploring space.
Center Director, Eva the Astronaut Join Guardians Game
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
“Mustard,” NASA Glenn Center Director Dr. Jimmy Kenyon, Eva the Astronaut mascot, and “Onion” stop for a photo after the hot dog derby at the Guardians’ game.
Credit:NASA/Kristen Parker
NASA Glenn Research Center’s Director Dr. Jimmy Kenyon threw out the first pitch that started the game between the Cleveland Guardians and San Francisco Giants on July 7. He was joined by Glenn’s Eva the Astronaut mascot, who had a ball hanging out with the Guardians’ Slider mascot during NASA Day at Progressive Field in Cleveland.
Employees, their families, and other Guardians fans enjoyed the first pitch and having Eva represent the center.
NASA Glenn’s Eva the Astronaut mascot and the Guardians’ Slider at NASA Day at Progressive Field in Cleveland.
NASA Demonstrates ‘Ultra-Cool’ Quantum Sensor for First Time in Space
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, shown where it’s installed aboard the International Space Station, recently demonstrated the use of a tool called an atom interferometer that can precisely measure gravity and other forces — and has many potential applications in space.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Future space missions could use quantum technology to track water on Earth, explore the composition of moons and other planets, or probe mysterious cosmic phenomena.
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be used in space. Members of the science team measured subtle vibrations of the space station with one of the lab’s onboard tools — the first time ultra-cold atoms have been employed to detect changes in the surrounding environment in space.
The study, which appeared in Nature Communications on Aug. 13, also reports the longest demonstration of the wave-like nature of atoms in freefall in space.
The Cold Atom Lab science team made their measurements with a quantum tool called an atom interferometer, which can precisely measure gravity, magnetic fields, and other forces. Scientists and engineers on Earth use this tool to study the fundamental nature of gravity and advance technologies that aid aircraft and ship navigation. (Cell phones, transistors, and GPS are just a few other major technologies based on quantum science but do not involve atom interferometry.)
Physicists have been eager to apply atom interferometry in space because the microgravity there allows longer measurement times and greater instrument sensitivity, but the exquisitely sensitive equipment has been considered too fragile to function for extended periods without hands-on assistance. The Cold Atom Lab, which is operated remotely from Earth, has now shown it’s possible.
“Reaching this milestone was incredibly challenging, and our success was not always a given,” said Jason Williams, the Cold Atom Lab project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It took dedication and a sense of adventure by the team to make this happen.”
Power of Precision
Space-based sensors that can measure gravity with high precision have a wide range of potential applications. For instance, they could reveal the composition of planets and moons in our solar system, because different materials have different densities that create subtle variations in gravity.
This type of measurement is already being performed by the U.S.-German collaboration GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on), which detects slight changes in gravity to track the movement of water and ice on Earth. An atom interferometer could provide additional precision and stability, revealing more detail about surface mass changes.
Precise measurements of gravity could also offer insights into the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two major cosmological mysteries. Dark matter is an invisible substance five times more common in the universe than the “regular” matter that composes planets, stars, and everything else we can see. Dark energy is the name given to the unknown driver of the universe’s accelerating expansion.
“Atom interferometry could also be used to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity in new ways,” said University of Virginia professor Cass Sackett, a Cold Atom Lab principal investigator and co-author of the new study. “This is the basic theory explaining the large-scale structure of our universe, and we know that there are aspects of the theory that we don’t understand correctly. This technology may help us fill in those gaps and give us a more complete picture of the reality we inhabit.”
A Portable Lab
NASA’s Cold Atom Lab studies the quantum nature of atoms, the building blocks of our universe, in a place that is out of this world – the International Space Station. This animated explainer explores what quantum science is and why NASA wants to do it in space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
About the size of a minifridge, the Cold Atom Lab launched to the space station in 2018 with the goal of advancing quantum science by putting a long-term facility in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit. The lab cools atoms to almost absolute zero, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273 degrees Celsius). At this temperature, some atoms can form a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which all atoms essentially share the same quantum identity. As a result, some of the atoms’ typically microscopic quantum properties become macroscopic, making them easier to study.
Quantum properties include sometimes acting like solid particles and sometimes like waves. Scientists don’t know how these building blocks of all matter can transition between such different physical behaviors, but they’re using quantum technology like what’s available on the Cold Atom Lab to seek answers.
In microgravity, Bose-Einstein condensates can reach colder temperatures and exist for longer, giving scientists more opportunities to study them. The atom interferometer is among several tools in the facility enabling precision measurements by harnessing the quantum nature of atoms.
Due to its wave-like behavior, a single atom can simultaneously travel two physically separate paths. If gravity or other forces are acting on those waves, scientists can measure that influence by observing how the waves recombine and interact.
“I expect that space-based atom interferometry will lead to exciting new discoveries and fantastic quantum technologies impacting everyday life, and will transport us into a quantum future,” said Nick Bigelow, a professor at University of Rochester in New York and Cold Atom Lab principal investigator for a consortium of U.S. and German scientists who co-authored the study.
More About the Mission
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL designed and built Cold Atom Lab, which is sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. BPS pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefitting life on Earth.
