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NASA Creates In-Space Servicing, Assembly, Manufacturing Consortium
Apr 19, 2023
NASA announced Wednesday a new consortium focused on making in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities a routine part of space architectures and mission lifecycles.
Through a range of capabilities, ISAM can enable new mission paradigms and extend the life of spacecraft. In-space servicing encompasses activities including spacecraft repair, refueling, relocation, and retrofitting, while assembly and manufacturing includes abilities like 3D printing and assembling components in space. Together, these capacities can enable a more sustainable, robust, and enduring space ecosystem.
NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) formulated and funds the COnsortium for Space Mobility and ISAM Capabilities (COSMIC). In February 2023, the agency selected The Aerospace Corporation to operate the group. A kickoff meeting is planned for fall 2023.
“We’re looking to foster a nationwide alliance across government, industry, nonprofit research institutions, and academia to ensure the United States is the global leader in ISAM,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for STMD at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This new consortium provides a place for all parties to coordinate and collaborate on capability development, business cases, and mission applications.”
The consortium aligns with the ISAM National Strategy and National ISAM Implementation Plan released in 2022, providing an opportunity for collaboration among government, industry, and academia to pursue common goals in ISAM capability development.
“NASA, government agencies, and industry have invested in robotic ISAM technologies for decades,” said STMD’s Technology Demonstrations Director Trudy Kortes. “Still, it is rare for modern satellites to be designed and built with things like grappling, refueling, and other robotic repairs in mind. We want to change that.”
The consortium builds upon technology maturation and demonstration efforts across sectors, including NASA's On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing missions, the joint Defense Aerospace Projects Research Agency, and SpaceLogistics effort Robotic Servicing of Geostationary Satellites/Mission Robotic Vehicle (RSGS/MRV), SpaceLogistics' Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) and other related efforts.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-creates-in-space-servicing-assembly-manufacturing-consortium
NASA To Expand Cutting-Edge Science At Emerging Research Institutions
Apr 19, 2023
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is announcing two major initiatives to support, enhance, and enable cutting-edge science at emerging research institutions. The initiatives – NASA’s Research Initiation Awards and the NASA SMD Bridge Seed Funding Program – are responsive to NASA’s 2022 Equity Action Plan to advance opportunities, access, and representation for US institutions that have not historically been part of the NASA science research enterprise.
Such institutions – which include primarily undergraduate institutions, community colleges, minority-serving institutions, such as historically black colleges and universities, hispanic serving institutions, and tribal colleges and universities, – enroll approximately 75 percent of undergraduate students across the United States yet have relatively little participation in NASA-sponsored research. Partnering with these institutions is therefore critical to building a more robust and innovative research base across the country.
“These initiatives will provide an on-ramp for emerging research institutions to the vast constellation of NASA science,” said Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for Science. “At NASA, there is space for everyone, and it starts with making research opportunities more open for all.”
The Research Initiation Awards program aims to broaden the base of investigators involved in NASA’s Science ecosystem. The program enables investigators at emerging research institutions to initiate activities to provide catalyzing funding support for a competitive, sustainable and productive research program. It will also make it possible for undergraduate students affiliated with the successful teams to perform cutting-edge research. NASA expects to award approximately one to two million dollars per year as part of this initiative.
NASA’s Bridge Seed Funding program is designed to enable new partnerships between emerging research institutions and NASA Centers and Facilities. In so doing, the Bridge Seed Funding program aims to boost research capacity across a broader range of institutions, and to forge enduring collaborations between these institutions and NASA. NASA expects to award up to four million dollars per year to successful NASA Bridge Seed Funding teams.
“NASA understands that innovation and discovery are accelerated by the involvement of a diverse and inclusive team of researchers from across the Nation. These initiatives are first steps to broadening the community of NASA researchers to address some of the most profound questions in science,” said Michael New, Science Mission Directorate deputy associate administrator for research at NASA headquarters. “I am excited to see the proposals that are submitted for both initiatives.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-to-expand-cutting-edge-science-at-emerging-research-institutions
Martian Milestone for Ingenuity
Apr 19, 2023
This April 16, 2023, enhanced color image of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is the clearest view of the rotorcraft since its first flight. Ingenuity completed its 50th flight on April 13, 2023; the helicopter's first flight on Mars was two years ago on April 19, 2021.
This picture was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard the Perseverance rover. At the time the image was taken, the rover was about 75 feet (23 meters) away.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/martian-milestone-for-ingenuity
NASA's New 3D-Printed Superalloy Can Take the Heat
Apr 20, 2023
NASA has demonstrated a breakthrough in 3D printable high-temperature materials that could lead to stronger, more durable parts for airplanes and spacecraft.
A team of innovators from NASA and The Ohio State University detailed the characteristics of the new alloy, GRX-810, in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Nature.
“This superalloy has the potential to dramatically improve the strength and toughness of components and parts used in aviation and space exploration,” said Dr. Tim Smith of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, lead author of the Nature paper. Smith and his Glenn colleague Christopher Kantzos invented GRX-810.
Smith and his team employed time-saving computer modeling, as well as a laser 3D printing process that fused metals together, layer-by-layer, to create the new alloy. They used this process to produce the NASA logo pictured above.
GRX-810 is an oxide dispersion strengthened alloy. In other words, tiny particles containing oxygen atoms spread throughout the alloy enhance its strength. Such alloys are excellent candidates to build aerospace parts for high-temperature applications, like those inside aircraft and rocket engines, because they can withstand harsher conditions before reaching their breaking points.
Current state-of-the-art 3D printed superalloys can withstand temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared to those, GRX-810 is twice as strong, over 1,000 times more durable, and twice as resistant to oxidation.
“This new alloy is a major achievement,” said Dale Hopkins, deputy project manager of NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies project. “In the very near future, it may well be one of the most successful technology patents NASA Glenn has ever produced.”
A team of contributors from Glenn, NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and The Ohio State University co-authored the Nature paper.
GRX-810 was developed under NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies project, with support from the agency’s Game Changing Development Program.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasas-new-3d-printed-superalloy-can-take-the-heat
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05893-0
Balloon-Borne SuperBIT Telescope Releases 1st Research Images
Apr 20, 2023
The Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) that launched on a scientific super pressure balloon April 16, 2023, local time from Wānaka, New Zealand, captured its first research images from this flight of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae Galaxies. These images were captured on a balloon-borne telescope floating at 108,000 feet above Earth’s surface, allowing scientists to view these scientific targets from a balloon platform in a near-space environment.
The advantage of balloon-based versus space telescopes is the reduced cost of not having to launch a large telescope on a rocket. A super pressure balloon can circumnavigate the globe for up to 100 days to gather scientific data. The balloon also floats at an altitude above most of the Earth’s atmosphere, making it suitable for many astronomical observations.
The SuperBIT telescope captures images of galaxies in the visible-to-near ultraviolet light spectrum, which is within the Hubble Space Telescope’s capabilities, but with a wider field of view. The goal of the mission is to map dark matter around galaxy clusters by measuring the way these massive objects warp the space around them, also called “weak gravitational lensing.”
The Tarantula Nebula is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and its turbulent clouds of gas and dust appear to swirl between the region’s bright, newly formed stars. The Tarantula Nebula has previously be captured by both the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.
The Antennae galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, are two large galaxies colliding 60 million light-years away toward the southerly constellation Corvus. The galaxies have previously been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. A composite image of the galaxies combines data taken by all three telescopes.
SuperBIT’s first research images from this flight were released by Durham University here. The SuperBIT team is a collaboration among NASA; Durham University, United Kingdom; the University of Toronto, Canada; and Princeton University in New Jersey.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/superpressureballoon/2023/04/20/balloon-borne-superbit-telescope-releases-1st-research-images/
Hubble Celebrates 33rd Anniversary With a Peek Into Nearby Star-Forming Region
Apr 20, 2023
Astronomers are celebrating NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's 33rd launch anniversary with an ethereal photo of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and located approximately 960 light-years away.
Hubble's colorful view, showcased through its unique capability to obtain images from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, unveils an effervescent cauldron of glowing gasses and pitch-black dust stirred up and blown around by several hundred newly forming stars embedded within the dark cloud. Hubble just scratches the surface because most of the star birthing firestorm is hidden behind clouds of fine dust – essentially soot – that are thicker toward the bottom of the image. The blackness in the image is not empty space, but filled with obscuring dust.
To capture this image, Hubble peered through a veil of dust on the edge of a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen – the raw material for fabricating new stars and planets under the relentless pull of gravity. The image underscores the fact that star formation is a messy process in our rambunctious universe.
Ferocious stellar winds, likely from the bright blue star at the top of the image, are blowing through a curtain of dust. The fine dust scatters the starlight at blue wavelengths.
Farther down, another bright, super-hot star shines through filaments of obscuring dust, looking like the Sun shining through scattered clouds. A diagonal string of fainter accompanying stars looks reddish because dust is filtering starlight, allowing more of the red light to get through.
The bottom of the picture presents a keyhole peek deep into the dark nebula. Hubble captures the reddish glow of ionized hydrogen. It looks like a fireworks finale, with several overlapping events. This is caused by pencil-thin jets shooting out from newly forming stars outside the frame of view. These stars are surrounded by circumstellar disks, which may eventually produce planetary systems, and powerful magnetic fields that direct two parallel beams of hot gas deep into space, like a double light saber from science fiction films. They sculpt patterns on the hydrogen cocoon, like laser-light-show tracings. The jets are a star's birth announcement.
This view offers an example of the time when our Sun and planets formed inside such a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun didn't form in isolation but was instead embedded inside a mosh pit of frantic stellar birth, perhaps even more energetic and massive than NGC 1333.
Hubble was deployed into orbit around Earth on April 25, 1990, by NASA astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. To date, the legendary telescope has taken approximately 1.6 million observations of nearly 52,000 celestial targets. This treasure trove of knowledge about the universe is stored for public access in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-celebrates-33rd-anniversary-with-a-peek-into-nearby-star-forming-region
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qatNSVppqAw
New Stellar Danger to Planets Identified by NASA's Chandra
Apr 20, 2023
Astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have identified a new threat to life on planets like Earth: a phase during which intense X-rays from exploded stars can affect planets over 100 light-years away. This result, as outlined in our latest press release, has implication for the study of exoplanets and their habitability.
This newly found threat comes from a supernova’s blast wave striking dense gas surrounding the exploded star, as depicted in the upper right of our artist’s impression. When this impact occurs it can produce a large dose of X-rays that reaches an Earth-like planet (shown in the lower left, illuminated by its host star out of view to the right) months to years after the explosion and may last for decades. Such intense exposure may trigger an extinction event on the planet.
A new study reporting this threat is based on X-ray observations of 31 supernovae and their aftermath — mostly from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift and NuSTAR missions, and ESA’s XMM-Newton — show that planets can be subjected to lethal doses of radiation located as much as about 160 light-years away. Four of the supernovae in the study (SN 1979C, SN 1987A, SN 2010jl, and SN 1994I) are shown in composite images containing Chandra data in the supplemental image.
Prior to this, most research on the effects of supernova explosions had focused on the danger from two periods: the intense radiation produced by a supernova in the days and months after the explosion, and the energetic particles that arrive hundreds to thousands of years afterward.
If a torrent of X-rays sweeps over a nearby planet, the radiation could severely alter the planet's atmospheric chemistry. For an Earth-like planet, this process could wipe out a significant portion of ozone, which ultimately protects life from the dangerous ultraviolet radiation of its host star. It could also lead to the demise of a wide range of organisms, especially marine ones at the foundation of the food chain, leading to an extinction event.
After years of lethal X-ray exposure from the supernova’s interaction, and the impact of ultraviolet radiation from an Earth-like planet’s host star, a large amount of nitrogen dioxide may be produced, causing a brown haze in the atmosphere, as shown in the illustration. A “de-greening” of land masses could also occur because of damage to plants.
A separate artist’s impression (panel #1) depicts the same Earth-like planet as having been abundant with life at the time of the nearby supernova, years before most of the X-ray’s impacts are felt (panel #2).
Among the four supernovae in the set of images, SN 2010jl has produced the most X-rays. The authors estimate it to have delivered a lethal dose of X-rays for Earth-like planets less than about 100 light-years away.
There is strong evidence — including the detection in different locations around the globe of a radioactive type of iron — that supernovae occurred close to Earth between about 2 million and 8 million years ago. Researchers estimate these supernovae were between about 65 and 500 light-years away from Earth.
Although the Earth and the Solar System are currently in a safe space in terms of potential supernova explosions, many other planets in the Milky Way are not. These high-energy events would effectively shrink the areas within the Milky Way galaxy, known as the Galactic Habitable Zone, where conditions would be conducive for life as we know it.
Because the X-ray observations of supernovae are sparse, particularly of the variety that strongly interact with their surroundings, the authors urge follow-up observations of interacting supernovae for months and years after the explosion.
The paper describing this result appears in the April 20, 2023 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, and is available here. The other authors of the paper are Ian Brunton, Connor O’Mahoney, and Brian Fields (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Adrian Melott (University of Kansas), and Brian Thomas (Washburn University in Kansas).
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/new-stellar-danger-to-planets-identified-by-nasas-chandra.html
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/acc728