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How on Earth did Cindy Schmidt transition from an urban planner to an associate program manager for NASA’s Earth Science Applied Sciences Program? Hear that and more as Schmidt answers the questions below about her career in remote sensing and geographic information systems. Chapters: 00:00 Cindy Schmidt - Applied Sciences 00:16 How did you get into this work? 01:24 How has the work changed? 02:36 How did you get involved with the Indigenous Peoples Pilot program? 04:52 How do you share your knowledge with others? 06:01 What early projects interested you in NASA Applied Sciences? 07:34 Where has your work taken you? 08:55 What advice do you have for early career scientists?

In this time lapse, you’ll see NASA’s X-59 undergo final installation of its lower empennage, better known as the tail assembly. This time lapse was taken at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. The installation allows the team to continue final wiring and system checkouts on the aircraft as it prepares for integrated ground testing, which will include engine runs and taxi tests. The X-59 aircraft is designed to demonstrate the ability to fly supersonic while reducing the loud sonic boom to a quiet sonic thump and is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission.

This is PACE’s solar array deploying in the cleanroom at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. PACE is NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission, currently in the design phase of mission development. It is scheduled to launch in 2024, extending and improving NASA's over 20-year record of satellite observations of global ocean biology, aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere), and clouds.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos. Astronomers think most occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole, as illustrated in this animation. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star at nearly the speed of light. These jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays (magenta) as they stream into space. They then plow into material surrounding the doomed star and produce a multiwavelength afterglow that gradually fades away. The closer to head-on we view one of these jets, the brighter it appears.

In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you’ll meet Rose Blomquist, the power distribution lead for the Quesst mission. Rose loves to explore new places and try new things, whether it's scaling Mount Whitney, snowboarding, or visiting national parks. She is part of the crew on a mission to transform aviation as NASA and communities in the U.S. work together to verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.

This movie captures the breakup of the asteroid Dimorphos when it was deliberately hit by NASA's 1,200-pound Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission spacecraft on September 26, 2022. The Hubble Space Telescope had a ringside view of the space demolition derby. The Hubble movie starts at 1.3 hours before impact. The first post-impact snapshot is 2 hours after the event. Debris flies away from the asteroid in straight lines, moving faster than four miles per hour (fast enough to escape the asteroid's gravitation pull, so it does not fall back onto the asteroid). The ejecta forms a largely hollow cone with long, stringy filaments. At about 17 hours after the impact the debris pattern entered a second stage. The dynamic interaction within the binary system started to distort the cone shape of the ejecta pattern. The most prominent structures are rotating, pinwheel-shaped features. The pinwheel is tied to the gravitational pull of the companion asteroid, Didymos. Hubble next captures the debris being swept back into a comet-like tail by the pressure of sunlight on the tiny dust particles. This stretches out into a debris train where the lightest particles travel the fastest and farthest from the asteroid. The mystery is compounded later when Hubble records the tail splitting in two for a few days.

In the future, the complete picture of air flow will need to be accurately measured in detail, so vehicle designs can minimize the effects of unsteady air. NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Portfolio Office (AETC) is addressing this challenge. AETC together with industry stakeholders, have developed the Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint System. This system utilizes state of the art technology to measure and visualize unsteady air flows, in near-real time, for wind tunnel vehicle tests. Additionally, this method allows for increased accuracy and data to be processed 10, 000 times faster.

Listen to the sounds of space! Join the HARP citizen science team to explore audified measurements from NASA's THEMIS mission. With every feature you identify, you'll help scientists better understand the connection between Earth and the Sun!

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will deliver a capsule with fragments of asteroid Bennu to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. The spacecraft briefly touched down on Bennu in October 2020 and gathered an estimated cupful of material. Seven months later, it departed Bennu on a 1.2-billion-mile cruise back to Earth. OSIRIS-REx will release the capsule above Earth’s atmosphere for a landing in Utah’s West Desert and continue flying past Earth. After delivering the sample, the spacecraft will adopt a new name for an extended mission to asteroid Apophis: OSIRIS-APEX. It will spend 5.5 years in an elliptical orbit of the Sun and rendezvous with Apophis in 2029. It will orbit and study Apophis for 1.5 years and then venture close to its surface to stir up loose material. This visualization depicts a portion (July 2022 – October 2023) of the spacecraft’s return cruise from Bennu to Earth.

This mosaic combines more than 900 images from all 24-by-90-degree sectors surveyed by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) through October 2022. The mosaic covers 93% of the sky and builds up in chronological order, illustrating the mission's progress over the past five years. TESS has discovered 329 new worlds and thousands more candidates, and provided new insights into a variety of cosmic phenomena. A prominent feature in the mosaic is the Milky Way, a glowing U-shaped band that represents the bright central plane of our galaxy.

NASA invites YOU to be a virtual guest at launches and milestone events. As a virtual guest, you have access to curated resources, schedule changes, and mission specific information straight to your inbox. Following each activity, guests are sent a stamp for your virtual guest passport! Over a million virtual guests have participated so far! Will you be our guest?

In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you’ll meet Ray Castner, NASA's propulsion lead for the Quesst mission. Ray has been with NASA 32 years and has worked on every X-59 research project at NASA Glenn Research Center. As a child, Ray loved to take things apart. These days, he likes to spend his time vacationing out west with his family or building and flying RC airplanes. He is part of the crew on a mission to transform aviation as NASA and communities work together to verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.

The aviation industry could not be more important to our nation's economic engine and our inner connectedness to the world. The research and development community has helped make the U.S. a leader in aviation thanks in part to their force and angle measurement capability. Force and angle measurement is the heart of any aeronautics research project and provides the fundamental information needed to govern flight to help support this effort. NASA formed a nationwide partnership called the National Force Measurement Technology Capability (NFMTC). Together the NFMTC helps develop the force and angle technology needed to perform cutting-edge research to characterize aerodynamic forces. Researchers use an internal balance and an angle of attack package to meet a variety of research requirements. New capabilities are also being developed including miniaturized angle of attack packages and additively manufactured wind tunnel balances. The NFMTC has recently contributed to a variety of aero and space projects including a performance characterization of next generation turbo fans, new open rotor engine concepts, and the supersonic retro propulsion forces of the Mars human lander. The NFMTC provides the fundamental support NASA and its partners need to advance aeronautic discovery.

The X-59 research aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA's Quesst mission. It is designed to fly supersonic without creating a loud sonic boom to people on the ground. In this edition of Inside the Quesst see the latest assembly update, life support system research, and recent STEM news.

Are you interested in advancing the future of NASA’s space communications and navigation? Join the SCaN Internship Project.

When beavers build dams, the changes they make to their habitat can improve everything from biodiversity to drought resilience. Researchers at Boise State University and Utah State University, in collaboration with NASA’s Applied Sciences Ecological Conservation program area, are adding remote sensing data to a suite of tools to measure what happens when beaver are reintroduced to an area. For people managing water resources and conservation efforts, predicting which streams can support beavers and monitoring how water and vegetation change once they return is critical. Using satellite data makes it possible to monitor large areas and track changes over time.

We're making our software available to the public! Our 2023 edition of the NASA Software Catalog is here.

The Suborbital Imaging Spectrograph for Transition region Irradiance from Nearby Exoplanet host stars, or SISTINE, mission launched aboard a NASA sounding rocket from the Arnhem Space Center in Northern Australia on July 6, 2022, at 9:47 a.m. EDT (11:17 p.m. ACST). The mission helped astronomers understand how starlight influences a planet’s atmosphere, possibly making or breaking its ability to support life as we know it.

In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you’ll meet Stephanie Simerly, a wind tunnel test engineer supporting the Quesst mission. Stephanie grew up in the foothills of east Tennessee and has always aspired to work at NASA. She loves her work and is passionate about travel, family, and caring for her two dogs. She is part of the crew on a mission to transform aviation as NASA and communities work together to verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.

In the future, the complete picture of air flow will need to be accurately measured in detail, so vehicle designs can minimize the effects of unsteady air. NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Portfolio Office (AETC) is addressing this challenge. AETC together with industry stakeholders, have developed the Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint System. This system utilizes state of the art technology to measure and visualize unsteady air flows, in near-real time, for wind tunnel vehicle tests. Additionally, this method allows for increased accuracy and data to be processed 10, 000 times faster.

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio of NASA discussed life and work aboard the orbital outpost during an in-flight interview May 18 with students at the National Museum of the American Latino in Washington, D.C. Rubio is in the midst of a long-duration mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos. Astronomers think most occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole, as illustrated in this animation. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star at nearly the speed of light. These jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays (magenta) as they stream into space. They then plow into material surrounding the doomed star and produce a multiwavelength afterglow that gradually fades away. The closer to head-on we view one of these jets, the brighter it appears. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12102. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12102. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines.

Loaded with experiments and hardware, the unpiloted SpaceX-26 cargo ship undocked from the Harmony module of the International Space Station Jan. 9, headed for a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The resupply vehicle arrived at the orbital complex in late November to deliver several tons of food, science experiments and hardware for station maintenance, science investigations and upgrades.

This animation follows the gravitational wave and density changes in a simulated neutron star merger and compares them to measurements of a short gamma-ray burst observed by NASA's Compton mission on July 11, 1991. Dark purple colors represent the lowest-density material, while yellow-white shows the highest. An audible tone and a visual frequency scale (at left) track the steady rise in the frequency of gravitational waves as the neutron stars close. When the objects merge at 19 seconds, the gravitational waves suddenly jump to frequencies of thousands of hertz and bounce between two primary tones. A magenta line appears at left to illustrate how quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) found in the gamma-ray emission correlate to those of the simulated gravitational waves. At the same time, a graph at upper right traces the changes in gamma-ray brightness observed during the same burst. To symbolize the ultimate formation of a black hole, a dot has been added at the center. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and STAG Research Centre/Peter Hammond Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle) - Lead Producer Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park) - Lead Science Writer Cecilia Chirenti (University of Maryland, College Park) - Scientist

NASA Wind Tunnels: AETC Portfolio 2022 Year in Review - A highlight of The Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities Portfolio (AETC) annual review featuring NASA's aerospace ground testing, wind tunnel facilities, mission accomplishments, new capabilities, and sustainability of the portfolio's test facilities in 2022.