Notícies d'astronomia

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
A newly-built high-altitude simulation test stand in Northwest China's Shaanxi province has successfully completed its test run, according to a report from China Space News on Wednesday. The test stand, designed to simulate the operating conditions for the main deceleration engine of China's manned lunar landing spacecraft, is seen as a significant achievement in the country's ongoing lunar expl

Elche, Spain (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Primary, secondary, and vocational schools now have the chance to launch their projects into space through PLD Space's new SPARK Program. This initiative offers students, teachers, and researchers the opportunity to send experiments into space on the first two flights of the MIURA 5 rocket, planned for late 2025 and early 2026 - at no cost to participating institutions. The SPARK Program i

London, UK (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Astroscale UK, the British arm of Astroscale Holdings Inc., has been awarded a GBP 1.95 million contract by the UK Space Agency to further develop its Cleaning Outer Space Mission through Innovative Capture (COSMIC) spacecraft. The COSMIC mission aims to remove two inactive UK satellites from orbit as part of a national Active Debris Removal (ADR) effort. This phase of the mission will con

Columbus OH (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Mold can survive the harshest of environments, so to stop harmful spores from growing on future space stations, a new study suggests a novel way to prevent its spread. Researchers created a predictive approach for modeling unintended microbial growth in critical spaces and applied it to life on the International Space Station. An analysis of dust samples obtained from the space stati

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 11, 2024
BlackSky Technology Inc. (NYSE: BKSY) has been chosen by NASA to supply high-frequency, time-diverse satellite imaging data for Earth observation projects under NASA's Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program (CSDAP). This contract, which could reach a total value of $476 million, will run through November 2028 for participating contractors. "Adding BlackSky's space-based intelligence

Wurzburg, Germany (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
An enormous canyon stretches across Mars: Valles Marineris is 3,000 kilometres long, 600 kilometres wide and on average eight kilometres deep. Its Latin name goes back to the Mars orbiter "Mariner", which discovered the valley in the early 1970s. Since 2012, this largest known canyon in the solar system has received special attention from the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Cen

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft has successfully finished the rigorous series of environmental tests designed to ensure it can withstand the challenges of launch and space. With these tests complete, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, is now conducting software tests simulating key phases of the mission, including launch, orbital maneuvers, and its science o

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 12, 2024
NASA said Thursday its Space Communication and Navigation program is taking the lead on an effort to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time standard as humans prepare to return to the moon. The program, also known as SCaN, will coordinate with various stakeholders on a timekeeping effort to "enable a future lunar ecosystem" that could also be extended to Mars and other locations in solar sy

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 11, 2024
Typically, electrons are free agents that can move through most metals in any direction. When they encounter an obstacle, the charged particles experience friction and scatter randomly like colliding billiard balls. But in certain exotic materials, electrons can appear to flow with single-minded purpose. In these materials, electrons may become locked to the material's edge and flow in one

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
MDA Space Ltd. (TSX: MDA), a key partner in global space missions, has been awarded a contract by SWISSto12 to supply antenna systems for three HummingSat geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. These satellites are part of the Inmarsat-8 program, which will deliver vital safety services and enhance emergency tracking capabilities. Under this contract, MDA Space will design and build L-Band

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 11, 2024
An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts successfully launched Wednesday for a six-month mission to the International Space Station and the transition from one mission crew to another. Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner departed Earth in a live-streamed event with NASA astronaut Don Pettit on time at 12:23 p.m. EDT aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft atop a Soy

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
NASA's contributions to technological innovation and its ability to inspire future STEM leaders are at risk due to critical issues related to infrastructure, budgetary mismatches, and a focus on short-term goals, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Commissioned by Congress as part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, the report highlight

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Sols 4304-4006: 12 Years, 42 Drill Holes, and Now… 1 Million ChemCam Shots! In celebration of ChemCam’s milestone, here is a stunning image from its remote micro imager, showing details in the landscape far away. This image was taken by Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4302 — Martian day 4,302 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 12, 2024, at 09:20:51 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 13, 2024

Today, I need to talk about ChemCam, our laser and imaging instrument on the top of Curiosity’s mast. It one of the instruments in the “head” that gives Curiosity that cute look as if it were looking around tilting its head down to the rocks at the rover’s wheels. On Monday, 19th August the ChemCam team at CNES in France planned the 1 millionth shot and Curiosity executed it on the target Royce Lake on sol 4281 on Mars. Even as an Earth scientist used to really big numbers, this is a huge number that took me a while to fully comprehend. 1 000 000 shots! Congratulations, ChemCam, our champion for getting chemistry from a distance – and high-resolution images, too. If you are now curious how Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument works, here is the NASA fact sheet. And, of course, the team is celebrating, which is expressed by those two press releases, one from CNES in France and one from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the two institutions who collaborated to develop and build ChemCam and are now running the instrument for over 12 years! And the PI, Dr Nina Lanza from Los Alamos informs me that the first milestone – 10000 shots was reached as early as Sol 42, which was the sol the DAN instrument used its active mode for the first time. But before I am getting melancholic, let’s talk about today’s plan!

The drive ended fairly high up in the terrain, and that means we see a lot of the interesting features in the channel and generally around us. So, we are on a spot a human hiker would probably put the backpack down, take the water bottle out and sit down with a snack to enjoy the view from a nice high point in the landscape. Well, no such pleasures for Curiosity – and I am pretty sure sugar, which we humans love so much, wouldn’t be appreciated by rover gears anyway. So, let’s just take in the views! And that keeps Mastcam busy taking full advantage of our current vantage point. We have a terrain with lots of variety in front of us, blocks, boulders, flatter areas and the walls are layered, beautiful geology. Overall there are 11 Mastcam observations in the plan adding up to just about 100 individual frames, not counting those taken in the context of atmospheric observations, which are of course also in the plan. The biggest mosaics are on the targets “Western Deposit,” “Balloon Dome,” and “Coral Meadow.” Some smaller documentation images are on the targets “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.”

ChemCam didn’t have long to dwell on its milestone, as it’s busy again today. Of course, it will join Mastcam in taking advantage of our vantage point, taking three remote micro imager images on the landscape around us. LIBS chemistry investigations are targeting “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.” APXS is investigating two targets, “College Rock” and “Wales Lake,” which will also come with MAHLI documentation. With all those investigations together, we’ll be able to document the chemistry of many targets around us. There is such a rich variety of dark and light toned rocks, and with so much variety everywhere, it’s hard to choose and the team is excited about the three targeted sols … and planning over 4 hours of science over the weekend!

The next drive is planned to go to an area where there is a step in the landscape. Geologists love those steps as they give insights into the layers below the immediate surface. If you have read the word ‘outcrop’ here, then that’s what that means: access to below the surface. But there are also other interesting features in the area, hence we will certainly have an interesting workspace to look at! But getting there will not be easy as the terrain is very complex, so we cannot do it in just one drive. I think there is a rule of thumb here: the more excited the geo-team gets, the more skills our drivers need. Geologists just love rocks, but of course, no one likes driving offroad in a really rocky terrain – no roads on Mars. And right now, our excellent engineers have an extra complication to think about: they need to take extra care where and how to park so Curiosity can actually communicate with Earth. Why? Well, we are in a canyon, and those of you liking to hike, know what canyons mean for cell phone signals… yes, there isn’t much coverage, and that’s the same for Curiosity’s antenna. This new NASA video has more information and insights into the planning room, too! So, we’ll drive halfway to where we want to be but I am sure there will be interesting targets in the new workspace, the area is just so, so complex, fascinating and rich!

And that’s after Mars for you, after 12 years, 42 drill holes, and now 1 Million ChemCam shots. Go Curiosity go!!!

Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University

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Credit: NASA

NASA has awarded the NASA Academic Mission Services 2 (NAMS-2) contract to Crown Consulting Inc., of Arlington, Virginia, to provide the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, aeronautics and exploration technology research and development support.

NAMS-2 is a single award hybrid cost-plus-fixed-fee indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of $121 million. The contract begins Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, with a 60-day phase-in period, followed by a two-year base period, and options to extend performance through November 2029.

Under this contract, the company will support a broad scope of scientific research and development of new and emerging capabilities and technologies associated with air traffic management, advanced technology, nanoelectronics, and prototype software in support of the Aeronautics Directorate and the Exploration Technology Directorate at NASA Ames. The work also will focus on the improvement of aircraft and airspace safety, as well as the transition of advanced aeronautics technologies into future air vehicles.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Roxana Bardan
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
roxana.bardan@nasa.gov

Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, Calif.
rachel.hoover@nasa.gov
650-604-4789

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Details Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 LocationAmes Research Center

The waxing gibbous Moon is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 265 miles above the U.S. state of Minnesota on Dec. 17, 2021.

NASA, ESA/Matthias Maurer

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this picture of the Moon as the station orbited 265 miles above the U.S. state of Minnesota on Dec. 17, 2021.

Astronauts aboard the orbital lab take images using handheld digital cameras, usually through windows in the station’s cupola, for Crew Earth Observations. Crew members have produced hundreds of thousands of images of the Moon and Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere.

On Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, International Observe the Moon Night, everyone on Earth is invited to learn about lunar science, participate in celestial observations, and honor cultural and personal connection to the Moon. Find an event to join in the celebration.

Image credit: NASA, ESA/Matthias Maurer

The Sun rises above the Flight Research Building at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.Credit: NASA

Editor’s note: This media advisory was updated Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, with a correct phone number for the media contact at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

NASA‘s Watts on the Moon Challenge, designed to advance the nation’s lunar exploration goals under the Artemis campaign by challenging United States innovators to develop breakthrough power transmission and energy storage technologies that could enable long-duration Moon missions, concludes on Friday, Sept. 20, at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland.

“For astronauts to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon during Artemis missions, they will need continuous, reliable power,” said Kim Krome-Sieja, acting program manager, Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “NASA has done extensive work on power generation technologies. Now, we’re looking to advance these technologies for long-distance power transmission and energy storage solutions that can withstand the extreme cold of the lunar environment.”

The technologies developed through the Watts on the Moon Challenge were the first power transmission and energy storage prototypes to be tested by NASA in an environment that simulates the extreme cold and weak atmospheric pressure of the lunar surface, representing a first step to readying the technologies for future deployment on the Moon. Successful technologies from this challenge aim to inspire, for example, new approaches for helping batteries withstand cold temperatures and improving grid resiliency in remote locations on Earth that face harsh weather conditions.

Media and the public are invited to attend the grand finale technology showcase and awards ceremony for the $5 million, two-phase competition. U.S. and international media interested in covering the event should confirm their attendance with Lane Figueroa by 3 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Sept. 17, at: lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Members of the public may register as an attendee by completing this form, also by Friday, Sept. 17.

During the final round of competition, finalist teams refined their hardware and delivered a full system prototype for testing in simulated lunar conditions at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The test simulated a challenging power system scenario where there are six hours of solar daylight, 18 hours of darkness, and the user is three kilometers from the power source.

“Watts on the Moon was a fantastic competition to judge because of its unique mission scenario,” said Amy Kaminski, program executive, Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Each team’s hardware was put to the test against difficult criteria and had to perform well within a lunar environment in our state-of-the-art thermal vacuum chambers at NASA Glenn.”

Each finalist team was scored based on Total Effective System Mass (TESM), which determines how the system works in relation to its mass. At the awards ceremony, NASA will award $1 million to the top team who achieves the lowest TESM score, meaning that during testing, that team’s system produced the most efficient output-to-mass ratio. The team with the second lowest mass will receive $500,000. The awards ceremony stream live on NASA Glenn’s YouTube channel and NASA Prize’s Facebook page.

The Watts on the Moon Challenge is a NASA Centennial Challenge led by NASA Glenn. NASA Marshall manages Centennial Challenges, which are part of the agency’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA has contracted HeroX to support the administration of this challenge.

For more information on NASA’s Watts on the Moon Challenge, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/wattson

-end- 

Jasmine Hopkins
Headquarters, Washington
321-432-4624
jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov

Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-932-1940
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov

Brian Newbacher
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-469-9726
brian.t.newbacher@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Sep 13, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

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Sols 4302-4303: West Side of Upper Gediz Vallis, From Tungsten Hills to the Next Rocky Waypoint This photo taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity of ‘Balloon Dome’ covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks. This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera aboard Curiosity on Sol 4301 — Martian day 4,301 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 11, 2024, at 09:14:42 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth planning date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024

The rover is on its way from the Tungsten Hills site to the next priority site for Gediz Vallis channel exploration, in which we plan to get in close enough for arm science to one of the numerous large dark-toned “float” blocks in the channel and also to one of the light-toned slabs.  We have seen some dark blocks in the channel that seem to be related to the Stimson formation material that the rover encountered earlier in the mission, but some seem like they could be something different. We don’t think any of them originated in the channel so they have to come from somewhere higher up that the rover hasn’t been, and we’re interested in how they were transported down into the channel.

We aren’t there yet, but the 4302-4303 plan’s activities include some important longer-range characterization of the dark-toned and light-toned materials via imaging. Context for the future close-up science on the dark-toned blocks will be provided by the Mastcam mosaics named “Bakeoven Meadow” and “Balloon Dome.”  The broad Balloon Dome mosaic also covers a low dome-like structure formed by the light-toned slab-like rocks (pictured).  Smaller mosaics will cover a pair of targets that include contacts where other types of light-toned and dark-toned material occur next to each other in the same block: “Rattlesnake Creek” which appears to be in place, and “Casa Diablo Hot Springs,” which is a float.

The rover’s arm workspace provided an opportunity for present-day aeolian science on the sandy-looking ripple, Sandy Meadow. Mastcam stereo imaging will document the shape of the ripple, while a suite of high-resolution MAHLI images will tell us something about the particle size of the grains in it.  The modern environment will also be monitored via a suprahorizon observation, a dust devil survey, and imaging of the rover deck to look for dust movement.

The workspace included small examples of the dark float blocks, so the composition of one of them will be measured by both APXS and ChemCam LIBS as targets “Lucy’s Foot Pass” and “Colt Lake” respectively.

In the meantime, the Mastcam Boneyard Meadow mosaic will provide a look back at the Tungsten Hills dark rippled block along its bedding plane to try to narrow down the origin of the ripples and the potential roles of water vs. wind in their formation.

Communication remains a challenge for the rover in this location. During planning, the rover’s drive was shifted from the second sol to the first sol in order to increase the downlink data volume available for the post-drive imaging, thereby enabling better planning at the science waypoint we expect to reach in the weekend plan. However, maintaining communications will require the rover to end its drive in a narrow range of orientations, which could make approaching our next science target a bit tricky.  We’ll find out on Friday!

Written by: Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Edited by: Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Image Credit: BitGrit

The Digital Information Platform (DIP) Sub-Project of Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) is seeking to make available in the National Airspace System a variety of live data feeds and services built on that data. The goal is to allow external partners to build advanced, data-driven services using this data and to make these services available to flight operators, who will use these capabilities to save fuel and avoid delays. Different wind directions, weather conditions at or near the airport, inoperative runway, etc., affects the runway configurations to be used and impacts the overall arrival throughputs. Knowing the arrival runway and its congestion level ahead of time will enable aviation operators to perform better flight planning and improve the flight efficiency. This competition seeks to make better predictions of runway throughputs using machine learning or other techniques. This competition engages students, faculty members, and other individuals employed by United States universities to develop a machine learning model that provides a short-term forecast of estimated airport runway throughput using simulated real-time information from historical NAS and weather forecast data, as well as other factors such as meteorological conditions, airport runway configuration, and airspace congestion.

Award: $120,000 in total prizes

Open Date: September 13, 2024

Close Date: December 8, 2024

For more information, visit: https://bitgrit.net/competition/23

4 Min Read NASA’s Artemis II Crew Uses Iceland Terrain for Lunar Training

Credits:
NASA/Trevor Graff/Robert Markowitz

Black and gray sediment stretches as far as the eye can see. Boulders sit on top of ground devoid of vegetation. Humans appear almost miniature in scale against a swath of shadowy mountains. At first glance, it seems a perfect scene from an excursion on the Moon’s surface … except the people are in hiking gear, not spacesuits.

Iceland has served as a lunar stand-in for training NASA astronauts since the days of the Apollo missions, and this summer the Artemis II crew took its place in that long history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, along with their backups, NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons, joined geology experts for field training on the Nordic island.

NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch stands in the desolate landscape of Iceland during a geology field training course. NASA/Robert Markowitz NASA/Robert Markowitz

“Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training,” said Cindy Evans, Artemis geology training lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It has lunar-like planetary processes – in this case, volcanism. It has the landscape; it looks like the Moon. And it has the scale of features astronauts will both be observing and exploring on the Moon.”

Iceland’s geology, like the Moon’s, includes rocks called basalts and breccias. Basalts are dark, fine-grained, iron-rich rocks that form when volcanic magma cools and crystalizes quickly. In Iceland, basalt lavas form from volcanoes and deep fissures. On the Moon, basalts can form from both volcanoes and lava pooling in impact basins. Breccias are angular fragments of rock that are fused together to create new rocks. In Iceland, volcanic breccias are formed from explosive volcanic eruptions and on the Moon, impact breccias are formed from meteoroids impacting the lunar surface.

Apollo astronauts said Iceland was one of the most lunar-like training locations that they went to in their training.

Cindy Evans

Artemis Geology Training Lead

Along with exploring the geology of Iceland, the astronauts practiced navigation and expeditionary skills to prepare them for living and working together, and gave feedback to instructors, who used this as an opportunity to hone their instruction and identify sites for future Artemis crew training. They also put tools to the test, learning to use hammers, scoops, and chisels to collect rock samples.

Caption: The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and backup crew members NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons trek across the Icelandic landscape during their field geology training. NASA/Robert Markowitz

“The tools we used during the Apollo missions haven’t changed that much for what we’re planning for the Artemis missions,” said Trevor Graff, exploration geologist and the hardware and testing lead on the Artemis science team at NASA Johnson. “Traditionally, a geologist goes out with just standard tool sets of things like rock hammers and scoops or shovels to sample the world around them, both on the surface and subsurface.”

The Artemis tools have a bit of a twist from traditional terrestrial geology tools, though. Engineers must take into consideration limited mass availability during launch, how easy it is to use a tool while wearing pressurized gloves, and how to ensure the pristine nature of the lunar samples is preserved for study back on Earth.

There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface.

Angela Garcia

Exploration Geologist and Artemis II Science Officer

Caption: Angela Garcia, Artemis II science officer and exploration geologist, demonstrates how to use a rock hammer and chisel to dislodge a rock sample from a large boulder during the Artemis II field geology training in Iceland. NASA/Robert Markowitz

“There’s really transformational science that we can learn by getting boots back on the Moon, getting samples back, and being able to do field geology with trained astronauts on the surface,” said Angela Garcia, exploration geologist and an Artemis II science officer at NASA Johnson.

The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under Artemis and will pave the way to land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon on future missions. The crew will travel approximately 4,600 miles beyond the far side of the Moon. While the Artemis II astronauts will not land on the surface of the Moon, the geology fundamentals they develop during field training will be critical to meeting the science objectives of their mission.

These objectives include visually studying a list of surface features, such as craters, from orbit. Astronauts will snap photos of the features, and describe their color, reflectivity, and texture — details that can reveal their geologic history.

The Artemis II crew astronauts, their backups, and the geology training field team pose in a valley in Iceland’s Vatnajökull national park. From front left: Angela Garcia, Jacob Richardson, Cindy Evans, Jenni Gibbons, Jacki Mahaffey, back row from left: Jeremy Hansen, John Ramsey, Reid Wiseman, Ron Spencer, Scott Wray, Kelsey Young, Patrick Whelley, Christina Koch, Andre Douglas, Jacki Kagey, Victor Glover, Rick Rochelle (NOLS), Trevor Graff.

“Having humans hold the camera during a lunar pass and describe what they’re seeing in language that scientists can understand is a boon for science,” said Kelsey Young, lunar science lead for Artemis II and Artemis II science officer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In large part, that’s what we’re training astronauts to do when we take them to these Moon-like environments on Earth.”

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