Carving a Path

These aren’t highways in this picture taken on Aug. 15, 2023; they’re paths carved by glaciers as they move through the Karakoram mountain range north of the Himalayas.

Crew aboard the International Space Station take photos of Earth, recording how the planet changes over time due to human activity and natural events. This allows scientists to monitor disasters and direct response on the ground and study a number of phenomena, from the movement of glaciers to urban wildlife.

Image Credit: NASA/Woody Hoburg

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Monika Luabeya

NASA Receives 13 Nominations for the 28th Annual Webby Awards

Since it began in 1958, NASA has been charged by law with spreading the word about its work “to the widest extent practicable.” From typewritten press releases to analog photos and film, NASA has effectively moved into social media and other online communications. NASA’s broad reach across digital platforms has been recognized by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), which gave NASA 13 nominations for the academy’s Webby Awards this year. 

At NASA, we share the secrets of the universe through every platform and media there is. These nominations—for websites, podcasts, social media, apps and virtual experiences—showcase the breadth and depth of the NASA digital team, as they inspire the next generation to reach for the stars.

Marc Etkind

NASA Associate Administrator for Communications

Public Voting Opportunities

Voting for the Webby People’s Voice Awards—chosen by the public—is open now through Thursday, April 18. Voting links for each category are listed below.

28th Annual Webby Nominees

Apps

Space Images
NASA, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech
Apps & Software-General Apps | Education, Science & Reference

The Space Images app provides stunning new images of space, planets, Mars, asteroids, stars, galaxies, and cutting-edge space technology as they are released each week from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Campaigns

NASA: Message in a Bottle
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Advertising, Media & PR-PR Campaigns | Best Community Engagement

NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invited people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. The poem connects the two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored. The campaign was a special collaboration, uniting art and science, by NASA, the U.S. Poet Laureate, and the Library of Congress.

Podcasts

NASA’s Curious Universe
Podcasts-Shows | Science & Education

As an official NASA podcast, Curious Universe brings you mind-blowing science and space adventures you won’t find anywhere else. Explore the cosmos alongside astronauts, scientists, engineers, and other top NASA experts who are achieving remarkable feats in science, space exploration, and aeronautics. Learn something new about the wild and wonderful universe we share. All you need to get started is a little curiosity. NASA’s Curious Universe is an official NASA podcast hosted by Padi Boyd and Jacob Pinter.

NASA’s Curious Universe: Suiting Up for Space
Podcasts-Individual Episodes | Science & Education

Spacesuits are more than just garments – in the airless vacuum of space or on the freezing surface of the moon, they keep astronauts alive. In this episode of NASA’s Curious Universe podcast, we explore how NASA engineers like Amy Ross and Paromita Mitra contributed to the development of the next generation of spacesuits.

Social

Hubble’s Servicing Mission 1
Social-Social Content Series | Education & Science

Shortly after its 1990 deployment, NASA discovered a flaw in the observatory’s primary mirror that affected the clarity of the telescope’s early images. Fortunately, Hubble’s design allowed astronauts to perform repairs, replace parts, and update its technology with new instruments while in orbit. Servicing Mission 1 was the first opportunity to install corrective optics that counteracted the primary mirror’s flaw, add new instruments, and conduct planned maintenance on the telescope.

NASA Social Media
Social-Features | Best Overall Social Presence, Brand

NASA’s flagship social media accounts host dynamic conversations about what’s new with America’s space agency, and why it matters. Spanning 15 social media platforms, these accounts reach more than 200 million people around the world.

NASA’s First Asteroid Sample Return Mission
Social-Social Campaigns | Education & Science

Science fiction became reality on Sept. 24, 2023 when NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivered rocks older than our own planet to the Utah desert, rocks that contain clues to the early solar system and the origins of life. The accompanying social media campaign and in-person, behind-the-scenes NASA Social event gave the public an inside look into NASA’s first mission to deliver an asteroid sample to Earth.

Annular Solar Eclipse
NASA, ADNET Systems Inc.
Social-Social Campaigns | Events & Live Streams

On Oct. 14, 2023, audiences across the web joined us live as a “ring of fire” eclipse. Visible in parts of the United States, Mexico, and many countries in South and Central America, millions of people in the Western Hemisphere experienced this eclipse.

Video

OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return (Official 4K NASA Live Stream)
Video-General Video | Events & Live Streams

Live coverage of OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, as it returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, to drop off material from asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft didn’t land, but continued on to a new mission, OSIRIS-APEX, to explore asteroid Apophis. Meanwhile, scientists hope the Bennu sample OSIRIS-REx dropped into the Utah desert will offer clues to whether asteroids colliding with Earth billions of years ago brought water and other key ingredients for life here.

Virtual Experiences

NASA’s Immersive Earth
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Metaverse & Virtual-General Virtual Experiences | Science & Education

NASA created the Earth Information Center with founding partners FEMA, EPA, NOAA, USAID, USDA and USGS. The Earth Information Center draws data from research conducted by NASA’s centers and government and industry partners. The interactive physical exhibit is located inside NASA Headquarters in Washington, where visitors are invited to see how our planet is changing in six key areas: sea level rise and coastal impacts, health and air quality, wildfires, greenhouse gases, sustainable energy, and agriculture.

Websites

NASA.gov
Websites and Mobile Sites-General Desktop & Mobile Sites | Government & Associations

The new NASA web experience serves as an ever-expanding yet consolidated homebase for information about the agency’s missions and research, climate data, Artemis updates, and more. The updated nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov websites provide a connected, topic-driven experience, with a common search engine, integrated navigation, and optimized publishing capabilities in a modernized and secure set of web tools.

NASA+ Streaming Service
Websites and Mobile Sites-General Desktop & Mobile Sites | Television, Film & Streaming

Through the ad-free, no cost, and family-friendly streaming service, users gain access to the agency’s Emmy Award-winning live coverage and views into NASA’s missions through collections of original video series, including new series debuting on the streaming service. NASA+ also streams live event coverage, where people everywhere can watch in real-time as the agency launches science experiments and astronauts to space, and ultimately, the first woman and person of color to the Moon.

Hubble’s Inside the Image
NASA, Origin Films
Video-Video Series & Channels | Science & Education

In this ongoing series, astronomers explain the history and high-level science behind some of Hubble’s most beautiful, groundbreaking, and iconic images.

About the Webby Awards

Established in 1996, The Webbys is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS)—a 3000+ member judging body comprised of leading Internet experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities. The Webbys honors excellence in nine major media types: websites and mobile sites, video, advertising, media and public relations, apps and software, social, podcasts, games and Metaverse, virtual and artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Webby Awards presents two honors in every category—The Webby Award and The Webby People’s Voice Award. Members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) select the nominees for both awards in each category, as well as the Winners of The Webby Awards. The Webby People’s Voice is awarded by the voting public.

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Dacia Massengill

Rock Sampled by NASA’s Perseverance Embodies Why Rover Came to Mars

The 24th sample taken by the six-wheeled scientist offers new clues about Jezero Crater and the lake it may have once held.

Analysis by instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover indicate that the latest rock core taken by the rover was awash in water for an extended period of time in the distant past, perhaps as part of an ancient Martian beach. Collected on March 11, the sample is the rover’s 24th – a tally that includes 21 sample tubes filled with rock cores, two filled with regolith (broken rock and dust), and one with Martian atmosphere.

“To put it simply, this is the kind of rock we had hoped to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “Nearly all the minerals in the rock we just sampled were made in water; on Earth, water-deposited minerals are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock can even tell us about Mars climate conditions that were present when it was formed.”

The presence of these specific minerals is considered promising for preserving a rich record of an ancient habitable environment on Mars. Such collections of minerals are important for guiding scientists to the most valuable samples for eventual return to Earth with the Mars Sample Return campaign.

Edge of the Crater’s Rim

Nicknamed “Bunsen Peak” for the Yellowstone National Park landmark, the rock – about 5.6 feet wide and 3.3 feet high (1.7 meters by 1 meter) – intrigued Perseverance scientists because the outcrop stands tall amid the surrounding terrain and has an interesting texture on one of its faces. They were also interested in Bunsen Peak’s vertical rockface, which offers a nice cross-section of the rock and, because it’s not flat-lying, is less dusty and therefore easier for science instruments to investigate.

Before taking the sample, Perseverance scanned the rock using the rover’s SuperCam spectrometers and the X-ray spectrometer PIXL, short for Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry. Then the rover used the rotor on the end of its robotic arm to grind (or abrade) a portion of the surface and scanned the rock again. The results: Bunsen Peak looks to be composed of about 75% carbonate grains cemented together by almost pure silica.

“The silica and parts of the carbonate appear microcrystalline, which makes them extremely good at trapping and preserving signs of microbial life that might have once lived in this environment,” said Sandra Siljeström, a Perseverance scientist from the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) in Stockholm. “That makes this sample great for biosignature studies if returned to Earth. Additionally, the sample might be one of the older cores collected so far by Perseverance, and that is important because Mars was at its most habitable early in its history.” A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.

The Bunsen Peak sample is the third that Perseverance has collected while exploring the “Margin Unit,” a geologic area that hugs the inner edge of Jezero Crater’s rim.

“We’re still exploring the margin and gathering data, but results so far may support our hypothesis that the rocks here formed along the shores of an ancient lake,” said Briony Horgan, a Perseverance scientist from Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. “The science team is also considering other ideas for the origin of the Margin Unit, as there are other ways to form carbonate and silica. But no matter how this rock formed, it is really exciting to get a sample.”

The rover is working its way toward the westernmost portion of the Margin Unit. At the base of Jezero Crater’s rim, a location nicknamed “Bright Angel” is of interest to the science team because it may offer the first encounter with the much older rocks that make up the crater rim. Once it’s done exploring Bright Angel, Perseverance will begin an ascent of several months to the rim’s top.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

News Media Contacts

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Charles Blue
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-802-5345
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / charles.e.blue@nasa.gov

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Naomi Hartono

How NASA Spotted El Niño Changing the Saltiness of Coastal Waters

New findings have revealed a coastal realm highly sensitive to changes in runoff and rainfall on land.

After helping stoke record heat in 2023 and drenching major swaths of the United States this winter, the current El Niño is losing steam this spring. Scientists have observed another way that the climate phenomenon can leave its mark on the planet: altering the chemistry of coastal waters.

A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used satellite observations to track the dissolved salt content, or salinity, of the global ocean surface for a decade, from 2011 to 2022. At the sea surface, salinity patterns can tell us a lot about how freshwater falls, flows, and evaporates between the land, ocean, and atmosphere – a process known as the water cycle.

The JPL team showed that year-to-year-variations in salinity near coastlines strongly correlate with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the collective term for El Niño and its counterpart, La Niña. ENSO affects weather around the world in contrasting ways. El Niño, linked to warmer-than-average ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, can lead to more rain and snowfall than normal in the southwestern U.S., as well as drought in Indonesia. These patterns are somewhat reversed during La Niña.

During the exceptional El Niño event of 2015, for example, the scientists traced a particularly distinct global water cycle effect: Less precipitation over land led to a decrease in river discharge on average, which in turn led to notably higher salinity levels in areas as far as 125 miles (200 kilometers) from shore.

At other times, the opposite was found: Areas with higher-than-normal rainfall over land saw increased river discharge, reducing salinity near those coasts.

“We’re able to show coastal salinity responding to ENSO on a global scale,” said lead author Severine Fournier, an ocean physicist at JPL.

The team found that salinity is at least 30 times more variable in these dynamic zones near coasts than in the open ocean. The link between rain, rivers, and salt is especially pronounced at the mouths of large river systems such as the Mississippi and Amazon, where freshwater plumes can be mapped from space as they gush into the ocean.

Salt as Signal

With global warming, researchers have been observing changes in the water cycle, including increases in extreme precipitation events and runoff. At the intersection of land and sea, coastal waters may be where the impacts are most detectable.

“Given the sensitivity to rainfall and runoff, coastal salinity could serve as a kind of bellwether, indicating other changes unfolding in the water cycle,” Fournier said.

She noted that some of the world’s coastal waters are not well studied, despite the fact that about 40% of the human population lives within about 60 miles (100 kilometers) of a coastline. One reason is that river gauges and other on-sitemonitors can be costly to maintain and cannot provide coverage of the whole planet, especially in more remote regions.

That’s where satellite instruments come in. Launched in 2011, the Aquarius mission made some of the first space-based global observations of sea surface salinity using extremely sensitive radiometers to detect subtle changes in the ocean’s microwave radiation emissions. Aquarius was a collaboration between NASA and Argentina’s space agency, CONAE (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales).

Today, two higher-resolution tools – the ESA (European Space Agency) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission and NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission – allow scientists to zoom to within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of coastlines.

Using data from all three missions, the researchers found that surface salinity in coastal waters reached a maximum global average (34.50 practical salinity units, or PSU) each March and fell to a minimum global average (34.34 PSU) around September. (PSU is roughly equal to parts per thousand grams of water.) River discharge, especially from the Amazon, drives this timing.

In the open ocean, the cycle is different, with surface salinity reaching a global average minimum (34.95 PSU) from February to April and a global average maximum (34.97 PSU) from July to October. The open ocean does not show as much variability between seasons or years because it contains a significantly larger volume of water and is less sensitive to river discharge and ENSO. Instead, changes are governed by planet-scale precipitation minus total global evaporation, plus other factors like large-scale ocean circulation.

The study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

News Media Contacts

Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Sally Younger

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Naomi Hartono

NASA Invites Media to Annual FIRST Robotics Competition in Rocket City

The Rocket City Regional – Alabama’s annual For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition – is scheduled for Friday, April 5, through Saturday, April 6, at the Von Braun Center South Hall in Huntsville, Alabama, known as the Rocket City. This event is free for the public.

FIRST Robotics is a global robotics competition for students in grades 9-12. Teams are challenged to raise funds, design a team brand, hone teamwork skills, and build and program industrial-sized robots to play a difficult field game against competitors.

More than 1,000 high school students on 47 teams from 10 states and 4 countries will compete in a new robotics game called, “CRESCENDO.”

Opening ceremonies begin at 8:30 a.m. CDT followed by qualification matches on April 5 and April 6. The Friday awards ceremony will begin at 6 p.m., while the Saturday awards ceremony will begin at 2:30 p.m.

District and regional competitions – such as the Rocket City Regional – are held across the country during March and April, providing teams a chance to qualify for the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition Championship events held in late April in Houston.

NASA and its Robotics Alliance Project provide grants for high school teams and support for FIRST Robotics competitions to address the critical national shortage of students pursuing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers. This FIRST Robotics Competition, The Rocket City Regional, is supported by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement.

News media interested in covering this event should respond no later than 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 4 by contacting Taylor Goodwin at 256-544-0034 or taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov.

Learn more about the Rocket City Regional event.

Find more information about Marshall’s support for education programs:

https://www.nasa.gov/marshall/marshall-stem-engagement/

Taylor Goodwin
256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov

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