In this image from April 12, 1981, the first space shuttle, STS-1, launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with NASA astronauts John W. Young, commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, aboard.
STS-1 was meant to demonstrate a safe launch into orbit and a safe return of the orbiter and crew, as well as verify the combined performance of the entire shuttle vehicle – orbiter, solid rocket boosters and external tank.
The first space shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on April 14, 1981, after having successfully tested its major systems.
NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT, Monday, April 15, to discuss the agency’s response to a Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board report from September 2023, including next steps for the program.
Mars Sample Return has been a major long-term goal of international planetary exploration for the past two decades. NASA’s Perseverance rover is collecting compelling science samples that will help scientists understand the geological history of Mars, the evolution of its climate, and prepare for future human explorers. The return of the samples will also help NASA’s search for signs of ancient life.
The media teleconference will share the agency’s recommendations regarding a path forward for Mars Sample Return within a balanced overall science program. The speakers include:
Tech Today: Folding NASA Experience into an Origami Toolkit
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Though the art of origami is centuries old, until the late 20th century it was considered virtually impossible to make insects or other figures with many long, complex protrusions. That changed with the introduction of math-based origami design, which Lang helped pioneer. Today, he’s still drawn to the challenges presented by insects and other arthropods, and they are well-represented in the menagerie of his origami gallery.
After uncovering the mathematical underpinnings of origami, Robert Lang left a 20-year engineering career, including over four years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, to pursue his lifelong passion. However, while he was working at JPL, Lang picked up an important key to computational design, allowing him to turn paper into impossibly intricate 3D forms.
In the center’s Micro Devices Laboratory in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Lang worked on building an optical computer that uses light rather than electricity to carry out calculations. This work introduced him to the concept of nonlinear constrained optimization.
Lang explained that a simple nonlinear constrained optimization problem is like packing different-sized balls into a box. The constraint is that the balls can’t overlap, and the solutions are nonlinear because the balls can be any direction or distance from each other. The optimization is making the box as small as possible.
System design optimization for lasers and other components requires minimizing energy consumption, semiconductor materials, and other costs. In origami, optimization means creating the most extensive form possible using a single sheet of paper.
In the mid-1990s, he took his expertise gain at JPL and created an open-source software called TreeMaker, the first program available to design complex origami figures. Lang’s design software uses an equation to map the points that will become features like a head and limbs. It helps decide exactly how far apart any two points have to be, depending on their location in the final shape.
In 2001, he left his last engineering job to become a full-time origamist, and he remains one of the world’s leading figures at the intersection of math and paper folding. Lang’s work ranges from small paper sculptures to huge public art made from metal and other materials, which he co-creates with other artists.
Since Lang left NASA, the agency has called him back in to consult on a few projects that capitalized on his dual background in engineering and origami. One of those was the Starshade concept, a design for a baseball diamond-sized disk that would fold up tightly to fit in a rocket fairing and then unfurl in space. There, it would block the light from a given star so a space telescope could photograph its planets.
Credit: NASA
The art of folding has even crept into space technology in recent years. Commercial companies now seek out Lang for his origami and engineering backgrounds to consult on folding hardware, including a collapsible radio antenna and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Eyeglassspace telescope. He’s also returned to NASA to help figure out how to fold large objects for launch inside rocket fairings.
“The irony is that, when I was employed full-time at NASA, I was not working on origami, but after I left, I’ve been invited back a couple of times to work on origami-related projects,” he said.
This Hubble image features the spiral galaxy IC 4633.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
The subject of this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity and also hosts an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view, the galaxy is tilted mostly towards us, giving astronomers a fairly good view of its billions of stars.
However, we can’t fully appreciate the features of this galaxy — at least in visible light — because it’s partially concealed by a stretch of dark dust (lower-right third of the image). This dark nebula is part of the Chamaeleon star-forming region, itself located only around 500 light-years from us, in a nearby part of our Milky Way galaxy. The dark clouds in the Chamaeleon region occupy a large area of the southern sky, covering their namesake constellation but also encroaching on nearby constellations, like Apus. The cloud is well-studied for its treasury of young stars, particularly the cloud Cha I, which both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have imaged.
The cloud overlapping IC 4633 lies east of the well-known Cha I, II, and III, and is also known as MW9 and the South Celestial Serpent. Classified as an integrated flux nebula (IFN) — a cloud of gas and dust in the Milky Way galaxy that’s not near to any single star and is only faintly lit by the total light of all the galaxy’s stars — this vast, narrow trail of faint gas that snakes over the southern celestial pole is much more subdued looking than its neighbors. Hubble has no problem making out the South Celestial Serpent, though this image captures only a tiny part of it.
Altitude Chamber Gets Upgrade for Artemis II, Spacecraft Testing Begins
Before the Orion spacecraft is stacked atop NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket ahead of the Artemis II mission, engineers will put it through a series of rigorous tests to ensure it is ready for lunar flight. In preparation for testing, teams at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida have made significant upgrades to the altitude chamber where testing will occur.
Several of the tests take place inside one of two altitude chambers in the high bay of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy. These tests, which began on April 10, include checking out electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility, which demonstrate the capability of the spacecraft when subjected to internally and externally generated electromagnetic energy and verify that all systems perform as they would during the mission.
To prepare for the tests, the west altitude chamber was upgraded to test the spacecraft in a vacuum environment that simulates an altitude of up to 250,000 feet. These upgrades re-activated altitude chamber testing capabilities for the Orion spacecraft at Kennedy. Previous vacuum testing on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis I took place at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. Teams also installed a 30-ton crane in the O&C to lift and lower the Orion crew and service module stack into the chamber, lift and lower the chamber’s lid, and move the spacecraft across the high bay.
On April 4, 2024, a team lifts the Artemis II Orion spacecraft into a vacuum chamber inside the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will undergo electromagnetic compatibility and interference testing.
Photo credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson
On Thursday, April 4, teams loaded the Artemis II spacecraft into the altitude chamber. This event marks the first time, since the Apollo testing, that a spacecraft designed for human exploration of space has entered the chamber for testing. After testing is complete, the spacecraft will return to the Final Assembly and Systems Testing, or FAST, cell in the O&C for further work. Later this summer, teams will lift Orion back into the altitude chamber to conduct a test that simulates as close as possible the conditions in the vacuum of deep space.
Originally used to test environmental and life support systems on the lunar and command modules during the Apollo Program, the interior of each altitude chamber measures 33 feet in diameter and 44 feet high and was designed to simulate the vacuum equivalent of up to 200,000 feet in a deep space environment. Both chambers were rated for astronaut crews to operate flight systems during tests.
View of the Altitude Chambers inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo Credit: ACI/Penny Rogo Bailes
After Apollo, the chambers were used for leak tests on pressurized modules delivered by the Shuttle program for the International Space Station.
View of the Altitude Chambers inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Photo Credit: ACI/Penny Rogo Bailes
Additional upgrades to the west chamber include a new oxygen deficiency monitoring system that provides real-time monitoring of the oxygen levels and a new airflow system. New LED lights replaced the previous lighting system, and equipment from the Apollo days was removed. A pressure control system was added to the chamber that provides precise control of pressure levels. Two new pumps remove the air from the chamber to create a vacuum. New guardrails and service platforms replaced the older platforms inside the chamber.
A new control room overlooks the upgraded chamber. It contains several workstations and communication equipment. The chamber control and monitoring system was upgraded to handle operation of all the remotely controlled hardware and subsystems that make up the vacuum testing capability.
“It was an amazing opportunity to lead a diverse and exceptional team to re-activate a capability for testing the NASA’s next generation spacecraft that will carry humans back to the Moon,” said Marie Reed, West Altitude Chamber Reactivation Project Manager. “The team of more than 70 aerospace professionals, included individuals from NASA, Lockheed Martin, Artic Slope Research Corps, Jacobs Engineering, and every discipline area imaginable. This project required long hours of dedication and exceptional coordination to enable the successful turn-around and activation in time for this Artemis II spacecraft testing.”
Team leads from the west altitude chamber reactivation project are pictured in Artemis gear standing in front of the upgraded vacuum chamber inside the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The team for this project included more than 70 aerospace professionals who received a NASA Silver Group Achievement Award for their efforts. Pictured from left to right: Victor Allpiste (Power & Lighting Systems Electrical Lead) Raymond T. Francois (TQCM System Lead / Mechanical Engineer) Marie Reed (Project Manager), Alfredo Urbina (Controls / Electrical Systems Lead), and Tim Saunders (Mechanical Systems Lead)
Photo credit: NASA
NASA’s Artemis II mission will carry four astronauts aboard the agency’s Orion spacecraft on an approximately 10-day test flight around the Moon and back to Earth, the first crewed flight under Artemis that will test Orion’s life support systems ahead of future missions. Under the Artemis campaign, NASA will return humanity to the lunar surface, this time sending humans to explore the lunar South Pole region.
![A spiral galaxy seen nearly face-on. The disk holds many tightly wound spiral arms. They contain small strands of reddish dust, near the center. On the left side, the disk features glowing patches of star formation. The whole right side, and part of the center, is obscured by a large cloud of dark grey gas which crosses the image.]](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/hubble-ic4633-potw2415a.jpg?w=2048)
