NEW FROM NASA

NEW FROM NASA NEWS

It was Forty Years Today [Sgt. Pepper and I wrote this note on 1/24]: The first DoD secret Shuttle mission, STS -51C, launched on January 24, 1985. The mission commander was Tom Mattingly, the astronaut bumped off Apollo 13 but was Command Module Pilot on Apollo 16. Four others were aboard, including Ellison Onizuka. Most of the information about this flight of Discovery are still secret. But one important fact is not. The SRBs (solid rocket booster) for this flight were recovered, as they were for most Shuttle missions, for refurbishment and reuse. Significant erosion was found on the O-rings that separated the segments of the SRBs. STS-51C’s launch was at the coldest weather of any prior, and it was determined at the time to be the cause or major contributor to the observed erosion.

Just over one year later, on 1/28/86, the Space Shuttle Challenger was launched (STS-51-L), carrying Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe. She was to conduct classes from Earth orbit, and many schoolchildren watched the launch in real-time, in numbers not seen since the Mercury program. It was a cold morning after a cold night, and the O-rings on the SRB didn’t just erode, they failed, blowtorching the external fuel tank and downing the mission, with the loss of the crew.

One of them was Ellison Onizuka.

Busy Year for JPL: 2025 will be a busy year for NASA, and JPL in particular. The Lab is busy preparing a total of six missions, and will oversee the gravity assist the already-launched Europa Clipper at Mars while on its way to Jupiter in 2030. The missions to be launched are:

• Sentinel-6B, a collaboration between NASA and ESA, will provide global sea surface height measurement of unprecedented accuracy. Such data will facilitate the improvement of climate models and hurricane tracking. Sentinel-6B is a follow-on mission, Sentinel-6 Micheal Freilich, launched in 2020, still in operation.
• NISAR, a collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization, will fly a synthetic-aperture radar system utilizing both L-band and S-band wavelengths. Their data will help support investigations of volcanoes, earthquakes, ice movements, deforestation, and much more.
• CADRE: Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration, a tech demonstration mission, comprises three suitcase-sized autonomous rovers that will be delivered to the lunar surface via a commercial lander. Their goal is to make simultaneous measurements from different locations to show how multi-robot missions could support other surface operations.
• SEAQUE: Space Entanglement and Annealing QUantum Experiment, is a test of communications using “entangled photons between two quantum systems.” It’s already on the ISS, having launched last November, but its data collection will get underway this year.
• SPHEREx: The goal of the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer mission will be to create 3-D maps of the entire sky, which can be used to study the conditions in the Universe soon after the Big Bang, and more.
• Lunar Trailblazer is a small orbiter that will map the abundance, location, form, and change-with-time of water in the lunar surface environment.

For more information on these 2025 missions, see: https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/nasa-jpl-prepping-for-full-year-of-launches-mission-milestones.

President Biden Names ~400 Presidential Early Career Awards: “The PECASE awards were created to highlight the importance of science and technology for America’s future. These early career awards foster innovative developments in science and technology, increase awareness of careers in science and engineering, provide recognition to the scientific missions of participating agencies, and enhance connections between research and challenges facing the nation.” Nineteen were given to researches who contribute to NASA’s mission in some way. Three are based at NASA’s Ames Research Center, two are from NASA’s Glenn Research Center, and two are from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The award recognizes recipients’ potential to advance the frontiers of scientific knowledge and their commitment to community service, as demonstrated through professional leadership, education or community outreach.” Congratulations to all concerned! For the full quotes, and more information, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-scientists-engineers-receive-presidential-early-career-awards- .

NEW FROM NASA FYI

Sustainable Business Model Challenge: NASA is Looking for “entrepreneurs, startups, and researchers to leverage the agency’s publicly available Earth system science data to develop commercial solutions for climate challenges.” NASA is looking for ways to “foster a new set of sustainable enterprises capable of turning climate insights into tangible market-ready services, ultimately contributing to a more resilient future for vulnerable communities, businesses, and ecosystems.” A fuller treatment from the quoted source can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-opens-new-challenge-to-support-climate-minded-business-models.

Earth’s Recent Visitor Came from the Moon: A small (~10 m) near-Earth object, 2024 PT5, caused a stir last year when it was discovered lingering around the Earth, but not orbiting it. Its orbit suggests it was a piece knocked off the Moon by an impact event, and its reflection spectra shows a great similarity with that of Apollo samples, and not like “normal” asteroids. It may not have been the first asteroid discovered with a lunar origin; asteroid 469219 Kamo’oalewa, found in 2016, has a similar orbit. 2024 PT5 was first detected by one of the telescopes comprising NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), the same program that discovered the two comets that made their recent appearance. 

ATLAS is part of NASA’s Planetary Protection effort. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), is too. CNEOS team analyzed the orbit of 2024 PT5, is too, and it showed that it wasn’t human-made debris from the early Space Program, and NASA’s Infra-Red Telescope Facility at the Mauna Kea Observatory acquired the spectrum that showed 2024 PT5 to be lunar-like. Speaking of Planetary Defense and Defenders…

Planetary Defenders at Sundance: NASA made a documentary program showcasing how NASA would attempt to protect Earth if an asteroid on a collision course were detected. The program’s premiere will be at the Sundance Film Festival, with a number of NASA people attending. NASA will conduct a pre-screening panel discussion on its streaming service, showcasing the elements of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Both NASA and the Festival are extremely pleased to have this event! For more, see: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-planetary-defenders-head-to-the-sundance-film-festival.

NASA Results at AAS: Several annual science conferences are showcases for NASA science. The American Geophysical Union meeting last month, reported on here, is one of them. The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the spring is another. An important third is the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, coming up this week. You can find out more about it at: https://science.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/astrophysics-division/nasa-research-to-be-featured-at-american-astronomical-society-meeting!

NASA Puts Three on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions List: For the past two decades, TIME Magazine selects 200 new inventions in a wide variety of fields to promote as the “best” inventions of the year. NASA placed three of the seven selected inventions in the “Aerospace” category!

NASA Deep Space Optical Communications: A test version of this device was installed on the Psyche spacecraft now en route to the asteroid Psyche. When tested last year, it achieved a data transmission rate of 267 megabits/second, in the same ballpark as internet broadband. For an example of how much of an improvement the new system could be, it could deliver ultra-high-definition video from Mars, rather than the one or two large images per day now being delivered! But wait, there’s more! Psyche uses a new type of thruster, where solar panels generate electricity which will create a strong electromatic field that accelerates xenon ions to provide thrust, rather than use a chemical reaction. It’s been tested before in Earth orbit, but Psyche’s will be the first use beyond the Moon. For more about Psyche’s new communications system, see: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/deep-space-optical-communications-dsoc and for TIME’s entry on it see: https://time.com/7094951/nasa-deep-space-optical-communications. BTW: DSOC was designed and built at JPL…!

NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: Using sunlight to propel a spacecraft has been a staple of old-time science fiction for decades. NASA recently conducted a small-scale test of concept to make a solar sail-powered spacecraft a reality. Last April, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail spacecraft was launched conventionally. In August, the spacecraft, about the size of a bank box, unfurled its 860 square-foot sail and off it went. Managing a sail of that size was no mean feat, but its success paves the way for CubeSats to ply the Solar System without conventional power. Concept proved! See TIME’s Best Invention entry here: https://time.com/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system.

HST and Quasar 3C 273: The very first quasar, 3C 273, was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt. It looked like a star, but its red shift indicated it was extremely far away. Its apparent brightness, combined with its distance, means it was much brighter than any star, or any entire galaxy for that matter. Schmidt called it a ‘quasi-stellar object,’ or quasar for short. Fast-forward 60+ years to today. Even though the JWST gets the lion’s share of attention to Space-borne telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope is still in productive operation, as evidenced by its recent high-resolution image of 3C 273. The key instrument involved is HST’s coronagraph, which can create the artificial eclipse of a very bright object in order to observe much fainter items nearby. We now know that the source of a quasar’s huge energy output is a gigantic galactic-core black hole assimilating a galactic-sized mass. For more information, and a look at the HST image mentioned, see: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-takes-the-closest-ever-look-at-a-quasar . See also a previous Item of the Week about two Schmidts, one the type of a telescopic camera, the other the afore-mentioned Maarten; see here.

Apollo 12 Graphic Novel Updated! Tuesday (11/19) was the 55^th anniversary of the landing on the Moon of Apollo 12’s LM, Intrepid, with astronauts Pete Conrad and Al Bean aboard. Celebrate this milestone two ways: See the two previous Items of the Week that spotlight the mission here and my personal hero, Al Bean, here. Also, check out the NASA graphic novel of the Apollo 12 mission augmented by info about Artemis (The NASA links to it are dead, but I downloaded it from Wikipedia Commons, and it is listed as being fully in the public domain; you can find it in the “Archive: Other Stuff” section of my website at: https://www.airandspacethisweek.com/otherstuff. 

NEW FROM NASA LINKS AND OTHER INFORMATION

JPL’s Theodore von Kármán Lecture Series is an outstanding educational resource. One recent lecture was “Shake & Bake: How Spacecraft Are Tested to Handle the Harsh Environment of Space,” mentioned below. JPL has posted 115 past von Kármán lectures, covering a wide range of topics; see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jpl-and-the-community/lecture-series. Their lecture archive is up and running, but there are no lectures posted for 2025 as of yet, no doubt due to the disruption at JPL caused by the recent fires.

Preparing for Space: Space is hostile to people and equipment alike. Have you ever wondered about how NASA makes sure its spacecraft can survive and operate successful in interplanetary Space and on other planets? NASA recently streamed one of the JPL von Kármán Lecture Series entitled “Shake & Bake: How Spacecraft are Tested to Handle the Harsh Environment of Space.” The featured lecturers are Brad Kinter, a Group Supervisor in JPL’s Environmental Thermal Testing unit at JPL and Pete Landry, Systems Integration and Test Engineer at JPL. The lecture is now available on YouTube at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jpl-and-the-community/lecture-series/the-von-karman-lecture-series-2024/may-2024-shake-bake-how-spacecraft-are-tested-to-handle-the-harsh-environment-of-space.

Theodore von Kármán was an aerodynamics expert who came to the USA in 1930, fleeing rising tide of Nazism. He was a member of the National Academy of Science and one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lecture series named for him routinely offers a number of interesting Space-related lectures, “Shake and Bake,” being one of the most recent. For more information on von Kármán, see: https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/von-karman-theodore.pdf.

Did you know that NASA has an entire Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center? The data they make relatable is really terrific, check it out at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov.

Introducing NASA On-Demand Streaming Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrlDv-ts2f0&ab_channel=NASA! As only NASA can.

Latest News Releases: https://www.nasa.gov/news/releases/latest/index.html

Media Contact Info: https://www.nasa.gov/news/media/info/index.html

JPL News: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news