NASAWORLD

These are our explorers. They're the people who will get us to the Moon, collect Moon rocks, deliver them to Earth safely, and ensure that we can study them for years to come. On episode one of “NASA Explorers: Artemis Generation," meet astronaut Jessica Watkins, engineer Adam Naids, Moon rock curator Julie Mitchell, and astrobiologist Jose Aponte. They each had a different path to NASA, from conducting hazardous kitchen chemistry experiments in Lima, Peru, to exploring the Louisiana Bayou, to dissecting a cow’s eye in a science program in Colorado. Each person is a vital part of NASA’s goal to conduct science on the Moon’s surface.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature. So outside of its sheer magnitude, what makes this eruption so unique? Well, it’s really a matter of our ability to see it through NASA and ESA satellites.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has arrived at an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, one of the best places on the Red Planet to search for potential signs of ancient life. The delta is an area where scientists surmise that a river once flowed billions of years ago into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape. Rachel Kronyak, a member of the Perseverance science operations team, guides the viewer through this Martian panorama and its intriguing sedimentary rocks. It’s the most detailed view ever returned from the Martian surface, consisting of 2.5 billion pixels and generated from 1,118 individual Mastcam-Z images. Those images were acquired on June 12, 13, 16, 17, and 20, 2022 (the 466th, 467th, 470th, 471st, and 474th Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance’s mission). In this panorama, an area called Hogwallow Flats is visible, as is Skinner Ridge, where two rock core samples were taken. The color enhancement in this image improves the visual contrast and accentuates color differences. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape.

NASA’s InSight lander detected seismic waves from a meteoroid and was able to capture the sound of the space rock striking the surface of Mars for the first time. The meteoroid – the term used for incoming space rocks before they hit the ground – entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left craters behind. Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s, allowing far more meteoroids to pass through and impact the Red Planet’s surface. This event marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact were detected on the Red Planet. Why does this meteoroid impact sound like a “bloop” in the video? It has to do with a peculiar atmospheric effect that’s also observed in deserts on Earth. After sunset, the atmosphere retains some heat accumulated during the day. Sound waves travel through this heated atmosphere at different speeds, depending on their frequency. As a result, lower-pitched sounds arrive before high-pitched sounds. An observer close to the impact would hear a “bang,” while someone many miles away would hear the bass sounds first, creating a “bloop.” NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters. Because HiRISE sees wavelengths the human eye can’t detect, scientists change the camera’s filters to enhance the color of the image. The areas that appear blue around the craters are where dust has been removed or disturbed by the blast of the impact. Martian dust is bright and red, so removing it makes the surface appear relatively dark and blue.

The DART mission deployed a kinetic impactor to smack the small moon Dimorphos of the asteroid Didymos on the evening of Sept. 26. This was an on-orbit demonstration of asteroid deflection, a key test of NASA's kinetic impactor technology, designed to impact an asteroid to adjust its speed and path. This particular asteroid moon is NOT a threat to Earth, but is technology being explored to use for when we DO find a potentially hazardous asteroid. The Hubble Space Telescope captured these extraordinary views of the asteroid moon soon after the successful impact.

Meet NASA’s rock detectives. Using tiny samples of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts, these NASA Explorers are looking into the origins of our Moon, our planet, and ourselves. They might be among the first scientists to study samples from the Moon’s South Pole that will be delivered to Earth by Artemis astronauts. In episode 2 of “NASA Explorers: Artemis Generation,” we’re joining scientists like Natalie Curran and Jose Aponte, who are looking at clues buried in Moon rocks.

There may not be any humans aboard NASA's #Artemis I flight test, but there will be a special canine: Snoopy! Learn why Astronaut Snoopy is flying to space when Artemis launches on its historic mission around the Moon and back. Artemis I is the first integrated flight test of the Space Launch System rocket that will send the uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back to Earth. The mission will check out all spacecraft systems for the first time before crew fly aboard Artemis II. It's one more step toward taking the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.

A new NASA and Durham University simulation puts forth a different theory of the Moon’s origin – the Moon may have formed in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and a Mars sized-body were launched directly into orbit after the impact. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts.

Before Jessica Watkins was an astronaut, she was a geologist. Now working on the International Space Station, Jessica and her fellow astronauts are preparing to explore the Moon and beyond. But collecting and investigating rocks on other worlds is very different from digging dirt here on Earth. That’s where tools engineer Adam Naids comes in. Tools designed for Earth geologists may not work in the lower gravity and extreme temperatures of the Moon, and that’s before you bring in the bulky spacesuits! NASA Explorers come together at space school to train astronauts to conduct science on the Moon.

After months aboard the International Space Station, the astronauts of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission are returning home. Traveling back to Earth inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, along with ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. During their time aboard the orbiting laboratory, these crew members contributed to ongoing and new scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, work that is helping to prepare humans for future space exploration missions and generating innovations and benefits for humanity on Earth.

An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars located about 5,300 light-years from Earth. Each ring was created when the stars came close together and their colliding stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) caused some of the gas to compress into dust. Collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140, the stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years, so just like the growth rings of a tree trunk, these dusty loops mark the passage of time: The 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions. And while other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, no other pair is known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140. Because the stars’ orbits are elliptical rather than circular, the distance between the stars changes constantly, and dust forms only when they are close. The amount of dust produced by this interaction varies, so the system doesn’t form a perfect bullseye. One of the densest regions of dust production creates the bright feature repeating at 2 o’clock.

When Artemis astronauts land on the Moon, they’ll travel to sites never before visited by humans. Namely, they'll explore the South Pole region, home to the Moon’s largest crater, areas of near-constant light and deep shadows, and some of the coldest temperatures in the solar system. Exploring the South Pole will teach us more about the Moon’s history, as well as the history of our solar system. It's home to frozen water, which is crucial for living sustainably on the lunar surface and exploring deeper into the solar system. Artemis astronauts will explore the Moon on behalf of all of us and bring back lunar rocks and soil for analyses by generations of scientists who will help us gain unimaginable insights into our cosmic history.

In order to slow down spacecraft quickly and safely as they land, we get some help from an unexpected source: the planet’s atmosphere! To use the air around a planet to our advantage, we use heat shields, which have an air-resistant design. Learn more about heat shields, like LOFTID, and how they may help us land on Mars!

The 18th Northrop Grumman commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station carries scientific investigations of topics such as 3D printing of knee cartilage, plant mutations, and mudflow structure—along with a demonstration of camera technology and small satellites from Japan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The Cygnus spacecraft carrying these investigations to the orbiting laboratory is scheduled for liftoff no earlier than Nov. 6, 2022 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

New time-lapse movies from NASA’s NEOWISE mission give astronomers the opportunity to see objects, like stars and black holes, as they move and change over time. The videos include previously hidden brown dwarfs, a feeding black hole, a dying star, a star-forming region, and a brightening star. They combine more than 10 years of NEOWISE observations and 18 all-sky images, enabling a long-term analysis and a deeper understanding of the universe. 0:44 – NEOWISE all-sky scan animation 1:03 – Feeding black hole 1:14 – Pulsing star reaches the end of its life 1:21 – Protostars in star-forming region 1:34 – Brown dwarf moves across the sky 2:00 – Unexplained stellar brightening The NEOWISE mission uses a space telescope to hunt for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. Launched in December 2009 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space. WISE did so successfully until completing its primary mission in February 2011. Observations resumed in December 2013, when the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets.

How do spacecraft slow down? Rigid heat shields and retropropulsion have been the favorites of engineers for years. Now NASA is testing a new inflatable heat shield technology that could allow us to carry even larger payloads to worlds with atmospheres. Launching on Nov. 1 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket along with NOAA’s JPSS-2 mission, the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, will demonstrate the heat shield’s ability to slow down and survive atmospheric entry

Are hurricanes getting stronger? Although we’ll never see a Category 6 hurricane, data does show that more hurricanes are becoming more severe. Hurricane and climate expert Mara Cordero-Fuentes of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center tells us more about the connection between climate change and tropical cyclones.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is filling sample tubes with rocky material on the Red Planet as the agency works on the next steps to get them safely back to Earth. The Mars Sample Return campaign would bring samples collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth for detailed study. The campaign involves an international interplanetary relay team, including the European Space Agency (ESA). These samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Aaron Yazzie, who works on the Mars Sample Return campaign, explains the work being done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to ensure the safe return of the sample tubes.

A new Earth science mission, led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), will help communities plan for a better future by surveying the planet’s salt and freshwater bodies. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will measure the height of water in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the oceans. As climate change accelerates the water cycle, more communities around the world will be inundated with water while others won’t have enough. SWOT data will be used to improve flood forecasts and monitor drought conditions, providing essential information to water management agencies, civil engineers, universities, the U.S. Department of Defense, disaster preparedness agencies, and others who need to track water in their local areas. In this video, examples of how SWOT data will be used in these communities are shared by a National Weather Service representative in Oregon, an Alaska Department of Transportation engineer, researchers from the University of Oregon and University of North Carolina, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist working with the Department of Defense, and a JPL scientist working with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency. :30 - Flood Watches & Warnings - Portland, Oregon 1:08 - Water Management - Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon 2:05 - Protecting Infrastructure - Alaska 2:54 - National Security - Department of Defense 3:24 - Coastal Protection - Mississippi River Delta SWOT is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in December 2022. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project.

NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans – two swarms of primitive asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit that may hold clues to the formation of the planets. Lucy launched on October 16, 2021. After a year in orbit around the Sun, it is returning home on its launch anniversary for the first of three Earth gravity assists. On October 16, 2022, Lucy will fly by the Earth like a partner in a swing dance, boosting its speed and elongating its orbit around the Sun. At 7:04 am, Eastern Time, Lucy will make its closest approach at just 219 miles above the planet: lower than the International Space Station. This exceptionally close shave will increase its velocity by four-and-a-half miles per second, setting Lucy on track to gain even more speed when it returns to Earth for its second gravity assist in December 2024.