NASA Sets Coverage for Dragon Spacecraft Relocation on Space Station
The SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft pictured from the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA
In preparation for the arrival of NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, four crew members aboard the International Space Station will relocate the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to a different docking port Thursday, May 2, to make way for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.
NASA will provide live coverage of the move beginning at 7:30 a.m. EDT on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’swebsite. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.
NASA astronauts Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, will undock from the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:45 a.m. The spacecraft will then autonomously dock with the module’s space-facing port at 8:28 a.m.
The relocation, supported by flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, will free up Harmony’s forward-facing port for the docking of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft for its first flight with astronauts in May. Starliner will autonomously dock to the forward-facing port of the Harmony module, delivering NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station.
This will be the fourth port relocation of a Dragon spacecraft with crew, following previous relocations during the Crew-1, Crew-2, and Crew-6 missions.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission launched March 3 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and docked to the space station March 5. Crew-8, targeted to return this fall, is the eighth rotational crew mission from NASA and SpaceX as a part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
This coronal mass ejection, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, erupted on the Sun Aug. 31, 2012, traveling over 900 miles per second and sending radiation deep into space. Earth’s magnetic field shields it from radiation produced by solar events like this one, while Mars lacks that kind of shielding.
NASA/GFSC/SDO
The Sun will be at peak activity this year, providing a rare opportunity to study how solar storms and radiation could affect future astronauts on the Red Planet.
In the months ahead, two of NASA’s Mars spacecraft will have an unprecedented opportunity to study how solar flares — giant explosions on the Sun’s surface — could affect robots and future astronauts on the Red Planet.
That’s because the Sun is entering a period of peak activity called solar maximum, something that occurs roughly every 11 years. During solar maximum, the Sun is especially prone to throwing fiery tantrums in a variety of forms — including solar flares and coronal mass ejections — that launch radiation deep into space. When a series of these solar events erupts, it’s called a solar storm.
Earth’s magnetic field largely shields our home planet from the effects of these storms. But Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago, leaving the Red Planet more vulnerable to the Sun’s energetic particles. Just how intense does solar activity get on Mars? Researchers hope the current solar maximum will give them a chance to find out. Before sending humans there, space agencies need to determine, among many other details, what kind of radiation protection astronauts would require.
Learn how NASA’s MAVEN and the agency’s Curiosity rover will study solar flares and radiation at Mars during solar maximum – a period when the Sun is at peak activity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/SDO/MSSS/University of Colorado
“For humans and assets on the Martian surface, we don’t have a solid handle on what the effect is from radiation during solar activity,” said Shannon Curry of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Curry is principal investigator for NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “I’d actually love to see the ‘big one’ at Mars this year — a large event that we can study to understand solar radiation better before astronauts go to Mars.”
Measuring High and Low
MAVEN observes radiation, solar particles, and more from high above Mars. The planet’s thin atmosphere can affect the intensity of the particles by the time they reach the surface, which is where NASA’s Curiosity rover comes in. Data from Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, has helped scientists understand how radiation breaks down carbon-based molecules on the surface, a process that could affect whether signs of ancient microbial life are preserved there. The instrument has also provided NASA with an idea of how much shielding from radiation astronauts could expect by using caves, lava tubes, or cliff faces for protection.
When a solar event occurs, scientists look both at the quantity of solar particles and how energetic they are.
“You can have a million particles with low energy or 10 particles with extremely high energy,” said RAD’s principal investigator, Don Hassler of the Boulder, Colorado, office of the Southwest Research Institute. “While MAVEN’s instruments are more sensitive to lower-energy ones, RAD is the only instrument capable of seeing the high-energy ones that make it through the atmosphere to the surface, where astronauts would be.”
The Radiation Assessment Detector on NASA’s Curiosity is indicated in this annotated image from the rover’s Mastcam. RAD scientists are excited to use the instrument to study radiation on the Martian surface during solar maximum.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) near Mars. The spacecraft observes radiation, solar particles, and more from high above the Red Planet.
NASA/GFSC
When MAVEN detects a big solar flare, the orbiter’s team lets the Curiosity team know so they can watch for changes in RAD’s data. The two missions can even assemble a time series measuring changes down to the half-second as particles arrive at the Martian atmosphere, interact with it, and eventually strike the surface.
The MAVEN mission also leads an early warning system that lets other Mars spacecraft teams know when radiation levels begin to rise. The heads-up enables missions to turn off instruments that could be vulnerable to solar flares, which can interfere with electronics and radio communication.
Lost Water
Beyond helping to keep astronauts and spacecraft safe, studying solar maximum could also lend insight into why Mars changed from being a warm, wet Earth-like world billions of years ago to the freezing desert it is today.
The planet is at a point in its orbit when it’s closest to the Sun, which heats up the atmosphere. That can cause billowing dust storms to blanket the surface. Sometimes the storms merge, becoming global.
While there’s little water left on Mars — mostly ice under the surface and at the poles — some still circulates as vapor in the atmosphere. Scientists wonder whether global dust storms help to eject this water vapor, lofting it high above the planet, where the atmosphere gets stripped away during solar storms. One theory is that this process, repeated enough times over eons, might explain how Mars went from having lakes and rivers to virtually no water today.
If a global dust storm were to occur at the same time as a solar storm, it would provide an opportunity to test that theory. Scientists are especially excited because this particular solar maximum is occurring at the start of the dustiest season on Mars, but they also know that a global dust storm is a rare occurrence.
More About the Missions
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN mission. Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. JPL provides navigation and Deep Space Network support. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder is responsible for managing science operations and public outreach and communications.
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The RAD investigation is supported by NASA’s Heliophysics Division as part of NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory (HSO).
Additional information about the missions can be found at:
NASA Administrator Names New Stennis Space Center Director
John Bailey, director, John C. Stennis Space Center
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday named John Bailey as director of the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, effective immediately. Bailey had been serving as acting director since January.
“John will build on his nearly 35 years of federal service to lead our talented workforce at Stennis,” said Nelson. “So much of NASA runs through Stennis. It is where we hone new and exciting capabilities in aerospace, technology, and deep space exploration. I am confident that John will lead the nation’s largest and premier propulsion test site to even greater success.”
NASA Stennis also is a unique federal city, home to more than 50 resident tenants with a combined workforce of over 5,200. The center tested the SLS (Space Launch System) core stage that helped launch the Artemis I mission. It also is testing all RS-25 engines to help power SLS launches and will conduct flightworthy testing of the agency’s new exploration upper stage prior to its use in space on future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.
The center is a leader in partnering and working with commercial aerospace companies to support their propulsion test projects. It also is expanding as an aerospace and technology hub, and in development of intelligent and autonomous systems needed for deep space exploration.
“This is an exciting time for NASA Stennis, and I am deeply honored to lead its great family of employees who make up this amazing workforce,” Bailey said. “We are dedicated to continuing to provide frontline support to the agency’s missions and initiatives. I look forward to our shared future and success.”
Bailey has more than three decades of federal service with the U.S. Air Force and NASA. As a communications engineer with the U.S. Air Force, Bailey led electronic communications testing worldwide. He joined the NASA Stennis team in 1999 and subsequently served in a variety of roles, managing and leading technical and non-technical organizations and supervising employees with a wide range of skills and backgrounds.
Bailey was tapped in 2015 to lead the NASA Stennis Engineering and Test Directorate, managing critical rocket propulsion test assets exceeding $2 billion in value and projects more than $221 million. He was named NASA Stennis associate director in 2018 and selected as the center’s deputy director in 2021.
An Alabama native, Bailey holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of South Alabama.
The horizon of Mars showing water-ice and dust in the atmosphere, as seen by the NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission on May 9, 2023. To find layers of ice and dust like these in Mars’s atmosphere, participants in the Cloudspotting on Mars project analyze data from a different infrared instrument, the Mars Climate Sounder on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. More information on this image (including an animation) can be found here: https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/27816/odysseys-themis-views-the-horizon-of-mars/?site=msl.
There’s good news from NASA’s Cloudspotting on Mars project! That’s the project that invites you to help identify exotic clouds high in the Martian atmosphere.
Thanks to your help, the Cloudspotting on Mars project reached ahuge milestone. Another full Mars year, Mars Year 30 (Oct 2009 – Sep 2011), has been completed! That’s the second full Mars year of observations that has been analyzed since the project began.
A new project from the Cloudspotting on Mars team has started its beta testing phase! In this new project, you’ll pick out cloud shapes in data from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) Mission. If you’re willing to help beta test this project and provide feedback before it launches, please send an email to the team. We’ll let everyone know when this project officially launches, of course!
Congratulations to the Cloudspotting on Mars team and all the volunteers who have helped spot Martian clouds!
John F. Kennedy set the tone for NASA’s culture in 1961 during his famous speech on going to the Moon, “We choose to go to the Moon not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone…”
That culture has never faded, even across NASA’s diverse spectrum of missions. The continuous challenge to do what is hard or near impossible includes the requirement for innovation. Innovation is the importance of what we do, but also how we do it. With a goal of improving the way NASA’s workforce engineers its systems, the Systems Engineering (SE) Technical Discipline Team (TDT) has partnered with numerous facets of the NASA workforce to better enable innovation in how we work. Over the past year, three diverse teams made progress toward that goal by looking at the way we levy technical standards, improving understanding and integrated risk (cost, schedule, and technical), reducing project risk by better management of mass growth, and moving SE into the model based digital domain. A brief summary of each team’s efforts follows.
a). MBSE is being applied to help architect the ExMC, which is pushing the boundary of space medical systems to care for future astronauts. b). A proposed Mars sample return mission development project would benefit from using the NASA-endorsed ANSI/AIAA standard: Mass Properties Control for Space Systems
ExMC: Systems Analysis and Integration Using MBSE
Via its Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Infusion And Modernization Initiative (MIAMI), the NESC SE TDT partnered with the Human Research Program’s Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element (https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/elements/exmc) at JSC. ExMC has adopted SE principles and tools (MBSE and the Systems Modeling Language) to develop an initial architecture and requirements for a future exploration medical system. MIAMI is assisting the ExMC work by providing an MBSE modeler who is matrixed to ExMC, one NASA MBSE Community of Practice (CoP) meeting per month dedicated to responding to ExMC’s needs, and any available/needed Agency MBSE infrastructure. In return, MIAMI is receiving modeling lessons learned, feedback to the MIAMI Leadership Team on available MBSE resources, and data needed to communicate MBSE successes and challenges to their SE TDT peers.The partnership has been mutually beneficial to ExMC, the SE TDT, and the greater NASA MBSE community. With MIAMI support, ExMC architected their system model, developed a model management plan, better defined their MBSE hiring and training needs, provided guidance to junior modelers, and developed ideas to push the boundaries of model usage.
As a return benefit, the MBSE community received a sample model architecture, an updated model management plan template, and valuable discussions at the MBSE CoP, where the ExMC presented ideas that had not been considered before. Ideas included the characteristics of good system modelers, how to manage model configuration, and using models with non-modeling tools. Notes from all these lively and well-attended CoP discussions are on the NASA Engineering Network MBSE website (https://nen.nasa.gov/web/mbse/). Beyond this, ExMC’s input on what will be necessary to grow NASA’s MBSE community and capability (e.g., modeler skillsets) continues to inform and ground in reality MIAMI’s recommendations to NASA’s Digital Transformation initiative.
NASA/JPL: Enterprise Approach to Mass Properties Control
In August 2019, a team of NESC and NASA subject matter experts (SME) issued a report regarding mass growth. It included recommendations to initiate the development and sustainment of an expanded mass growth database as an Agency resource and reforms in how programs and projects estimate, manage, and report mass properties based on the NASA-endorsed ANSI/AIAA S-120A-2015 [2019] standard, Mass Properties Control for Space Systems. The intent is to reap the benefits of a more common approach across NASA in managing and controlling mass growth and of using a common terminology among NASA Centers and its contractors. Historical mass growth data, consolidated in a single place, will help programs and projects in establishing Mass Growth Allowance (MGA) factors and mass margins above MGA that can reduce the risk of mass issues and potential cost overruns. To date, the NESC recommendations have resulted in major changes in mass management and control requirements and recommended best practices at JPL and other NASA Centers. Beyond Center-level actions, the NESC has engaged with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer to promote the use of the ANSI/AIAA standard’s terminology and calculations in future data collections for NPR 7120.5-mandated Cost Analysis Data Requirements documents.
New approaches to streamlining design and constructions standards will benefit projects like the Gateway Power and Propulsion and Habitation and Logistics Outpost.
HALO: Modernized Application of Design & Construction Standards
The NASA Technical Standards Process Improvement pilot activity initiated by the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) Project seeks to improve the way that NASA levies and manages technical standards by 1) moving from document-centric to data-centric (databases) management of the requirements; 2) incorporating important attributes into the database so that applicability, tailoring, and information management is streamlined; and 3) providing technical recommendations on acceptable approaches for compliance evidence. The effort is a fleet-leader on how to streamline the standards deployment, assessment, and long-term verification process, while also improving the allocation of resources based on mission risk.
NASA Technical Fellows participated in this review and provided important input and support for the assessment of Design and Construction (D&C) standards for the HALO project. The approach “shredded” the requirements documents into a database of individual requirements with fields to populate describing the requirement type and compliance approach. Overall, the pilot activity is an important first step in properly assessing and flowing D&C standards to NASA’s contractors and partners. NESC systems engineering and integration SMEs reviewed the HALO pilot deployment activity for managing and implementing design and construction standards. The SMEs identified advantages and disadvantages of the pilot activity and offered suggestions for improving the standards streamlining effort in the future.
