TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Apr 7 2023
Rigel Wide
Brilliant, blue, supergiant star Rigel marks the foot of Orion the Hunter in planet Earth's night. Designated Beta Orionis, it's at the center of this remarkably deep and wide field of view. Rigel's blue color indicates that it is much hotter than its rival supergiant in Orion the yellowish Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), though both stars are massive enough to eventually end their days as core collapse supernovae. Some 860 light-years away, Rigel is hotter than the Sun too and extends to about 74 times the solar radius. That's about the size of the orbit of Mercury. In the 10 degree wide frame toward the nebula rich constellation, the Orion Nebula is at the upper left. To the right of Rigel and illuminated by its brilliant blue starlight lies the dusty Witch Head Nebula. Rigel is part of a multiple star system, though its companion stars are much fainter.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
UFO Spotted Flying Near Russian Nuclear Plant Spooks Local Authorities
April 6 2023
An unidentified flying object was located near a nuclear power plant close to Russia's second city, St. Petersburg, according to new reports.
An alert signal was sounded around the Leningrad nuclear power plant in the Russian town of Sosnovy Bor, local and state media reported on Wednesday. The object was moving at around 200 kilometers per hour (124 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 10,000 meters (33,000 feet), Russian sources reported.
The alert triggered a "special response status," a military officer told Russian online newspaper, Lenta.ru. Reserve colonel Andrey Koshkin then suggested to state media there was "nothing unusual here, this is a regular situation."
"It is possible that this is a weather balloon," he added, which could be of "Russian or foreign origin." However, Russian authorities have not yet provided an explanation for the unidentified object.
The object was monitored by the Russian military, state news agency Tass reported.
The unknown object was "moving at the speed of wind," Tass reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed security source. "This means that it does not have engines, that is, it is not a drone, not an aircraft," the source continued, adding there was "no reason" for the alert signal.
However, "our air defense system is fully ready for action if necessary," the source said, according to state media.
Tass then cited a Russian regional official as dismissing the reports.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's defense ministry for comment via email.
In late February, Russian authorities temporarily closed the airspace above St. Petersburg after unconfirmed reports of an unidentified object circulated. All flights were briefly suspended from Pulkovo, the city's main airport.
An unidentified aerial object was also reported in the skies above Russia's Rostov Oblast in early January, according to local officials. The area's regional governor, Vasily Golubev, said authorities had made the decision to "liquidate" it.
Air defense systems were alerted to a "small object in the form of a ball" flying at an altitude of one and a half miles, Golubev said in a post on Telegram. It was located near the village of Sultan Sala and was flying "freely in the wind," he added.
"The sky is covered by anti-aircraft defenses," Golubev wrote, urging members of the local community to "remain calm."
"To ensure security, all forces and means are involved," he continued.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ufo-nuclear-power-plant-sighting-st-petersburg-1792868
He don't need a dam, he can walk on water
Space Force hosts inaugural Guardian Field Forum
April 06, 2023
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. – The Space Force hosted its first-ever Guardian Field Forum at the Gen. Jacob E. Smart Conference Center at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, March 21-24, 2023.
The four-day professional development forum allowed competitively selected Guardians made up of company grade officers, non-commissioned officers or civilians to provide feedback, recommendations and innovative ideas directly to their peers and senior leaders.
“Fifty-nine Guardians and Airmen participated in the first Guardian Field Forum,” said Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. “I was incredibly impressed and inspired with their recommendations.”
At this forum, teams nominated by their respective Deltas, presented their most important issues or recommendations to the other Deltas. The group voted to determine the top themes that had the most overlap throughout the 31 briefings they exchanged with each other. The three themes that the teams selected were: Building Guardians, Personnel Management, and Holistic Approach to Operations.
Some of the topics discussed included:
An approach to streamline administrative support for Guardians stationed at geographically separated units;
A proposal for actions to improve the transparency and prioritization of assignment opportunities; and,
Initiatives to strengthen the connection between operations, readiness, and lifecycle sustainment.
The teams collaboratively incorporated their recommendations into three briefings that were then presented to leaders during the Space Force Senior Leader Summit. The three Guardians who presented will act as mentors for next year’s Guardian Field Forum, passing the torch to the next group of Guardians.
“The Guardian Field Forum was an amazing opportunity to present ideas to senior Space Force leadership,” said Master Sgt. Christopher Mullens, who presented for Space Operations Command’s Space Delta 7. “To be given the chance to speak directly with senior leadership is lifechanging. I can’t wait to come back next year to mentor Guardians to innovate, cultivate and inspire ideas that will benefit our force for years to come.”
During the forum, Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno, Space Force director of staff and senior Guardian mentor, spent an hour with the Guardians, providing mentorship and answering questions.
"Mentorship is my passion," Armagno said. "Having the opportunity to speak with these junior Guardians is a chance to give them examples of things I have learned in my career, like pushing the boundaries to innovate. Embracing a creative and innovative spirit is important for Guardians as we move forward as a service."
In a note to all Guardians, Saltzman reiterated the importance of “unleashing the creativity” of the work force, not just during events like this forum, but through everyday feedback at all levels of leadership.
“Our efforts to amplify the Guardian spirit must be continuous,” Saltzman said. “This is the type of connection and engagement that will catalyze innovation in our service.”
https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article/3353206/space-force-hosts-inaugural-guardian-field-forum/
NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus
Apr 6, 2023
Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere. The Webb data demonstrates the observatory’s unprecedented sensitivity for the faintest dusty rings, which have only ever been imaged by two other facilities: the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew past the planet in 1986, and the Keck Observatory with advanced adaptive optics.
The seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus is unique: It rotates on its side, at roughly a 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit. This causes extreme seasons since the planet’s poles experience many years of constant sunlight followed by an equal number of years of complete darkness. (Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun.) Currently, it is late spring for the northern pole, which is visible here; Uranus’ northern summer will be in 2028. In contrast, when Voyager 2 visited Uranus it was summer at the south pole. The south pole is now on the ‘dark side’ of the planet, out of view and facing the darkness of space.
This infrared image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) combines data from two filters at 1.4 and 3.0 microns, which are shown here in blue and orange, respectively. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image.
When Voyager 2 looked at Uranus, its camera showed an almost featureless blue-green ball in visible wavelengths. With the infrared wavelengths and extra sensitivity of Webb we see more detail, showing how dynamic the atmosphere of Uranus really is.
On the right side of the planet there’s an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap. This polar cap is unique to Uranus – it seems to appear when the pole enters direct sunlight in the summer and vanish in the fall; these Webb data will help scientists understand the currently mysterious mechanism. Webb revealed a surprising aspect of the polar cap: a subtle enhanced brightening at the center of the cap. The sensitivity and longer wavelengths of Webb’s NIRCam may be why we can see this enhanced Uranus polar feature when it has not been seen as clearly with other powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.
At the edge of the polar cap lies a bright cloud as well as a few fainter extended features just beyond the cap’s edge, and a second very bright cloud is seen at the planet’s left limb. Such clouds are typical for Uranus in infrared wavelengths, and likely are connected to storm activity.
This planet is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of its interior. Most of its mass is thought to be a hot, dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane, and ammonia – above a small rocky core.
Uranus has 13 known rings and 11 of them are visible in this Webb image. Some of these rings are so bright with Webb that when they are close together, they appear to merge into a larger ring. Nine are classed as the main rings of the planet, and two are the fainter dusty rings (such as the diffuse zeta ring closest to the planet) that weren’t discovered until the 1986 flyby by Voyager 2. Scientists expect that future Webb images of Uranus will reveal the two faint outer rings that were discovered with Hubble during the 2007 ring-plane crossing.
Webb also captured many of Uranus’ 27 known moons (most of which are too small and faint to be seen here); the six brightest are identified in the wide-view image. This was only a short, 12-minute exposure image of Uranus with just two filters. It is just the tip of the iceberg of what Webb can do when observing this mysterious planet. In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified Uranus science as a priority in its 2023-2033 Planetary Science and Astrobiology decadal survey. Additional studies of Uranus are happening now, and more are planned in Webb’s first year of science operations.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-scores-another-ringed-world-with-new-image-of-uranus
NASA Administrator Names New Goddard Center Director
Apr 6, 2023
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has named Dr. Makenzie Lystrup director of the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, effective immediately. She will make history as the first female center director at Goddard.
Lystrup succeeds Dave Mitchell, who has served as Goddard’s acting center director since January 2023, and now resumes his duties as the agency’s chief program management officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“Makenzie is a natural leader, bringing to Goddard a scientist’s drive for discovery along with a wealth of industry experience and knowledge. As center director, she will lead a world-renowned team of scientists, engineers, and technologists focused on Earth and space science. Under her leadership, the Goddard workforce will continue to inspire, innovate, and explore the unknown for the benefit of all,” said Nelson. “I’d also like to thank Dave Mitchell for serving as acting center director since January and ensuring a seamless transition. We look forward to Dave resuming his role at headquarters.”
Goddard Space Flight Center is one of NASA’s largest field centers. Its sites include the primary campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, as well as Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas. Goddard is responsible for the oversight and execution of a $4 billion portfolio and is home to the nation's largest concentration of scientists, engineers and technologists dedicated to Earth and space science. Its workforce consists of more than 10,000 employees, both civil servants and contractors.
“Goddard is an incredible center and true national asset with the best and brightest minds in science and engineering – I’m humbled and honored to lead such an amazing and diverse world-renowned team,” said Lystrup. “To build upon our legacy, I’m keenly focused on growing the next generation of innovators along with ensuring our team has the resources and tools to advance technologies and make new discoveries that boost the space economy and benefit us all.”
Prior to joining NASA, Lystrup was vice president and general manager of civil space at Ball Aerospace, where she was responsible for the company’s portfolio of civil space systems that span across all science fields, operational weather and Earth observation, as well as advanced technologies development objectives. In this role, she led Ball’s contributions to several missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), Landsat 9, and the Roman Space Telescope.
Lystrup has also served as senior director for Ball’s Civil Space Advanced Systems and Business Development, where she managed new business activities for NASA, NOAA, and other civilian U.S. government agencies as well as for academia and other science organizations.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-names-new-goddard-center-director
They put that in a separate link
Dr. Makenzie B. Lystrup is the director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center guiding the direction and management of one of NASA’s major field installations. Goddard’s sites include the primary campus in Maryland, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginian, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas. Goddard is responsible for the oversight and execution of a $4 billion portfolio and is home to the nation’s largest concentration of scientists, engineers and technologists dedicated to Earth and space science. Its workforce consists of more than 10,000 employees, both civil servant and contractor.
Prior to joining NASA, Dr. Lystrup was vice president and general manager of Ball Aerospace’s Civil Space Strategic Business Unit, where she was responsible for the company’s portfolio of civil space systems spanning across all science fields, operational weather and Earth observation, as well as advanced technologies development objectives. In this role, she led Ball’s contributions to several missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), Landsat 9, and the Roman Space Telescope.
Dr. Lystrup has also served as senior director for Ball’s Civil Space Advanced Systems and Business Development, where she managed new business activities for NASA, NOAA, and other civilian U.S. government agencies as well as for academia and other science organizations. In addition, she served in the company’s Strategic Operations organization, based in Washington D.C., where she led Ball’s space sciences portfolio. Prior to joining Ball, Dr. Lystrup worked as an American Institute of Physics – Acoustical Society of American (AIP-ASA) Congressional Fellow from 2011 to 2012 in the office of U.S. Representative Edward Markey, where she managed a portfolio including technology, national defense, nuclear energy, and nuclear nonproliferation.
Dr. Lystrup has served on boards and committees for several organizations to include the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), the University of Colorado, and the American Astronomical Society (AAS), where she also served as chair of the Committee on Planetary Science Policy. In 2023, she was named an SPIE fellow for her work in optics along with being named an AAS fellow. She was named an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in 2019 for her distinguished record in the fields of planetary science and infrared astronomy, science policy and advocacy, and aerospace leadership. Dr. Lystrup also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer focusing on STEM education.
Dr. Lystrup holds a bachelor’s in physics from Portland State University and attended graduate school at University College London earning a Ph.D in astrophysics. She was a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellow spending time at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, and University of Liege in Belgium. As a planetary scientist and astronomer, Dr. Lystrup’s scientific work has been in using ground- and space-based astronomical observatories to understand the interactions and dynamics of planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres – the relationships between planets and their surrounding space environments.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/dr-makenzie-lystrup-center-director-goddard-space-flight-center/
NASA’s High-Resolution Air Quality Control Instrument Launches
Apr 6, 2023
A NASA instrument to provide unprecedented resolution of monitoring major air pollutants – down to four square miles – lifted off on its way to geostationary orbit at 12:30 a.m. EDT Friday. The Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument will improve life on Earth by revolutionizing the way scientists observe air quality from space.
"The TEMPO mission is about more than just studying pollution – it's about improving life on Earth for all. By monitoring the effects of everything from rush-hour traffic to pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, NASA data will help improve air quality across North America and protect our planet,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
NASA’s TEMPO launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The instrument is a payload on the satellite Intelsat 40E, which separated from the rocket approximately 32 minutes after launch. Signal acquisition occurred at 1:14 a.m. TEMPO commissioning activities will begin in late May or early June.
From a fixed geostationary orbit above the equator, TEMPO will be the first space-based instrument to measure air quality over North America hourly during the daytime and at spatial regions of several square miles – far better than existing limits of about 100 square miles in the U.S. TEMPO data will play an important role in the scientific analysis of pollution, including studies of rush hour pollution, the potential for improved air quality alerts, the effects of lightning on ozone, the movement of pollution from forest fires and volcanoes, and even the effects of fertilizer application.
“NASA makes data from instruments like TEMPO easily accessible to everyone,” said Karen St. Germain, division director for NASA’s Earth Sciences Division. “Which means that everyone from community and industry leaders to asthma sufferers are going to be able to access air quality information at a higher level of detail – in both time and location - than they’ve ever been able to before. And that also provides the information needed to start addressing one of the most pressing human health challenges.”
TEMPO’s observations will dramatically improve the scientific data record on air pollution – including ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde – not only over the continental United States, but also Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Bahamas, and part of the island of Hispaniola.
"Our TEMPO slogan is 'It's about time,' which hints at TEMPO's ability to provide hourly air pollution data," said Xiong Liu, deputy principal investigator for TEMPO at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "After working on the TEMPO for more than 10 years, it is about time to launch TEMPO to produce real TEMPO data and start the new era of air quality monitoring over North America."
From its geostationary orbit – a high Earth orbit that allows satellites to match Earth's rotation – TEMPO also will form part of an air quality satellite virtual constellation that will track pollution around the Northern Hemisphere. South Korea's Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer, the first instrument in the constellation, launched into space in 2020 on the Korean Aerospace Research Institute GEO-KOMPSAT-2B satellite, and is measuring pollution over Asia. The ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-4 satellite, scheduled to launch in 2024, will make measurements over Europe and North Africa.
“This marks a new era in our ability to observe air pollution over North America, including the entire continental United States,” said Barry Lefer, TEMPO program scientist and tropospheric composition program manager for NASA. “It’s also opening the door for us to work more closely with our international partners to better understand global air quality and its transport.”
The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace and integrated onto Intelsat 40E by Maxar.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-high-resolution-air-quality-control-instrument-launches
Nasa Broadcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js6ffqHnZeA
SpaceX Broadcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyWpP0fCxy8
Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars
Apr 6, 2023
There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It's likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.
Rather than gobbling up stars ahead of it, like a cosmic Pac-Man, the speedy black hole is plowing into gas in front of it to trigger new star formation along a narrow corridor. The black hole is streaking too fast to take time for a snack. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, but it was captured accidentally by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
"We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," said Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "What we're seeing is the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship we're seeing the wake behind the black hole." The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to.
The black hole lies at one end of the column, which stretches back to its parent galaxy. There is a remarkably bright knot of ionized oxygen at the outermost tip of the column. Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole hitting the gas, or it could be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole. "Gas in front of it gets shocked because of this supersonic, very high-velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas. How it works exactly is not really known," said van Dokkum.
"This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it," van Dokkum added. He was looking for globular star clusters in a nearby dwarf galaxy. "I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak. I immediately thought, 'oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.' When we eliminated cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didn't look like anything we've seen before."
Because it was so weird, van Dokkum and his team did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. He describes the star trail as "quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual." This led to the conclusion that he was looking at the aftermath of a black hole flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole.
Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy. The original binary may have remained intact, or the new interloper black hole may have replaced one of the two that were in the original binary, and kicked out the previous companion.
When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite direction. There is a feature seen on the opposite side of the host galaxy that might be the runaway binary black hole. Circumstantial evidence for this is that there is no sign of an active black hole remaining at the galaxy’s core. The next step is to do follow-up observations with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the black hole explanation.
NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a wide-angle view of the universe with Hubble's exquisite resolution. As a survey telescope, the Roman observations might find more of these rare and improbable "star streaks" elsewhere in the universe. This may require machine learning using algorithms that are very good at finding specific weird shapes in a sea of other astronomical data, according to van Dokkum.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/hubble-sees-possible-runaway-black-hole-creating-a-trail-of-stars
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/acba86
NASA Awards Innovative Concept Studies for Science, Exploration
Apr 6, 2023
Technology in development today could radically change the future of air and space exploration. Nearly silent electric aircraft could ferry people and packages around cities, a sprawling radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon could reveal new secrets about the universe, and astronauts on long-duration missions could grow their own medicines to protect their health.
These concepts are among six selected for continued study under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The new round of Phase II awards fund six researchers to continue work on futuristic concepts designed to shape air and space travel decades in the future.
“NASA’s story is one of barriers broken and technologies transformed to support our missions and benefit all of humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The concepts selected under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program will help empower researchers to usher in new technologies that could revolutionize exploration in the heavens and improve daily life here on Earth.”
NIAC nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions by funding early-stage technology concept studies. The Phase II awards continue work on concept studies initiated under Phase I NIAC awards. During Phase II, fellows continue to develop their concepts and explore potential infusion options within and beyond NASA.
"These new awards showcase the breadth of how NIAC-supported concepts can change exploration," said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). "From revolutionary propulsion systems for deep-space missions to advances in aviation to change how we travel here on Earth, these technologies would radically expand our capabilities in air and space."
Each of the six fellows will receive up to $600,000 over two years to develop their concepts. The researchers selected to receive NIAC Phase II grants in 2023 are:
Darmindra Arumugam, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California: Quantum Rydberg Radar for Surface, Topography, and Vegetation
This concept would use next-generation dynamically tunable quantum radar technology to improve remote sensing studies of Earth and other worlds, using reflected ground signals from other orbiting spacecraft to eliminate the need for large antenna deployments.
Steven Barrett, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Silent, Solid-State Propulsion for Advanced Air Mobility Vehicles
This concept aims to develop nearly silent electroaerodynamic thrusters for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that could be used to transport cargo and eventually passengers over short distances in urban areas.
Philip Lubin, University of California, Santa Barbara, California: PI – Planetary Defense
This concept could provide Earth with a rapid response capability to mitigate a disastrous impact from an asteroid or comet by pulverizing the object into pieces small enough to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
Christopher Morrison, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation in Seattle: The Nyx Mission to Observe the Universe from Deep Space – Enabled by EmberCore, a High Specific Power Radioisotope Electric Propulsion System
This concept would use the nuclear decay of a radioactive material in a radioisotope electric propulsion system to propel a spacecraft to extremely high speeds, enabling the intercept and study of distant and fast-moving objects in the solar system on relatively short timeframes.
Ronald Polidan, Lunar Resources, Inc. in Houston: FarView Observatory – A Large, In-Situ Manufactured, Lunar Far Side Radio Array
This concept would create a massive radio telescope array on the Moon's far side – autonomously constructed using resources extracted from the Moon's regolith – that could make unprecedented observations of the early universe.
Lynn Rothschild, NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley: A Flexible, Personalized, On-Demand Astropharmacy
This concept would use bacteria to create medical drugs on demand during extended spaceflight missions, including a class of drugs that could be used to treat radiation exposure or help protect astronauts' bone health in space.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-innovative-concept-studies-for-science-exploration
Circle gets the square