The four members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission move their Dragon Endeavour spacecraft between docking ports on the International Space Station. Aboard are: NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg, UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
The crew will undock from the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, then dock at the station’s forward Harmony port. Endeavour is relocating to make room for SpaceX’s 28th cargo resupply mission, currently scheduled to arrive in June.
A new study using the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has pieced together the first detailed, wide-area map of water distribution on the Moon. The new map covers about one-quarter of the Earth-facing side of the lunar surface below 60 degrees latitude and extends to the Moon’s South Pole. In this data visualization, SOFIA’s lunar water observations are indicated using color, with blue representing areas of higher water signal, and brown lower.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright
Over the past few years, machine learning techniques have been increasingly used to analyze the vast amount of data collected by the Landsat mission, which has been circling the globe for over 50 years. The data has been used to classify different types of land cover, detect changes to landscapes over time, and map the impact of human activity on the environment. With the field constantly evolving, researchers are developing new deep learning models to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the analysis and extract even more information from the data. Here are just a few examples of how the combination of Landsat data and machine learning is providing a better understanding of our planet’s past, present, and future.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/Chris Burns [KBRWyle]: Lead Producer/Chris Burns [KBRWyle]: Lead Writer
Ingenuity, also called Ginny, is a small robotic helicopter operating on Mars. It is part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, along with the Perseverance rover, which landed with Ingenuity attached to its underside on February 18, 2021. The helicopter was deployed to the surface on April 3, 2021. On April 19, it successfully made the first powered controlled extraterrestrial flight by an aircraft, taking off vertically, hovering, and landing for a flight duration of 39.1 seconds. As of its 51st flight on April 23, 2023, the helicopter has been flightworthy for 734 days.
Ingenuity was designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center. Other prominent contributors were Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero. Its rotors measure 4 ft (121 cm), and its entire body is 49 cm (19 in) tall. Its rectangular fuselage measures 136 mm × 195 mm × 163 mm (5.4 in × 7.7 in × 6.4 in), with four landing legs of 384 mm (15.1 in) each. It is operated by solar-charged batteries that power dual counter-rotating rotors mounted coaxially one above the other.
The helicopter was intended to perform a 30-day technology demonstration, making five flights at altitudes ranging 3–5 m (10–16 ft) for up to 90 seconds each. The expected lateral range was exceeded in the third flight, and the flight duration was exceeded in the fourth. The flights demonstrated the helicopter’s ability to fly in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, over a hundred million miles from Earth, without direct human control. Because radio signals take 5 to 20 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars depending on planetary positions, Ingenuity must operate autonomously, performing maneuvers planned, scripted and transmitted to it by JPL.
After the brief demonstration phase, JPL began more operational flights, showing how aerial scouting could aid in the exploration of Mars and other worlds. In its operational role, Ingenuity is observing areas of interest for possible examination by Perseverance. The helicopter’s performance and resilience greatly exceeded expectations, enabling it to make flights for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022. In March 2022, NASA announced that it would continue to fly Ingenuity through at least September.
The spacecraft arrived on Mars at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site in the 28 mi (45 km) wide Jezero crater. Before Ingenuity’s first flight, Perseverance drove approximately 100 m (330 ft) away to create a safe flying zone. Flight success was confirmed three hours later by JPL, which livestreamed a view of mission control receiving the data. On its fourth flight, on April 30, 2021, Ingenuity became the first interplanetary spacecraft whose sound was recorded by another interplanetary spacecraft, Perseverance.
Plasma (from Ancient Greek πλάσμα (plásma) ‘moldable substance’) is one of four fundamental states of matter, characterized by the presence of a significant portion of charged particles in any combination of ions or electrons. It is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the universe, being mostly associated with stars, including the Sun. Extending to the rarefied intracluster medium and possibly to intergalactic regions, plasma can be artificially generated by heating a neutral gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field.
The presence of charged particles makes plasma electrically conductive, with the dynamics of individual particles and macroscopic plasma motion governed by collective electromagnetic fields and very sensitive to externally applied fields. The response of plasma to electromagnetic fields is used in many modern devices and technologies, such as plasma televisions or plasma etching.
Depending on temperature and density, a certain number of neutral particles may also be present, in which case plasma is called partially ionized. Neon signs and lightning are examples of partially ionized plasmas. Unlike the phase transitions between the other three states of matter, the transition to plasma is relatively not well defined and is a matter of interpretation and context. Whether a given degree of ionization suffices to call a substance ‘plasma’ depends on the specific phenomenon being considered.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Beth Anthony (KBRwyle): Producer/Mara Johnson-Groh (Telophase): Writer/Barbara Giles (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/Genna Duberstein (ADNET): Writer/Music: “Artificial Intelligence†by Matteo Pagamici [SUISA], Max Molling [SUISA] via Universal Production Music
Tropical Cyclone Freddy lasted more than five weeks. Once a very powerful Category 5 cyclone, Freddy first made landfall along the east coast of Madagascar on February 21st, 2023 just north of the town of Mananjary as a Category 3 cyclone with average winds reported at 130 km/h (~81 mph) with gusts up to 180 km/h (~112 mph). After crossing over Madagascar, Freddy continued westward over the Mozambique Channel before making landfall again and for the first time along the east coast of Mozambique just south of Vilankulos as a moderate tropical storm with sustained winds estimated at 50 mph. However, despite being weaker at landfall, Freddy has resulted in widespread flooding across parts of Mozambique due to the storm stalling out near the coast after making landfall. Incredibly, Freddy then drifted back out over the Mozambique Channel, nearly making landfall again along the southwest coast of Madagascar, before changing direction, re-intensifying, weakening, re-intensifying one last time, and making landfall for the 2nd time in Mozambique as a Category 1 cyclone near Quelimane with sustained winds reported at 90 mph on the 11th of March.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Ryan Fitzgibbons (KBRwyle): Lead Producer, Lead Editor/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/George Huffman (NASA/GSFC): Lead Scientist, Lead Narrator/B. Jason West (ADNET): Lead Visualizer/Stephen Lang (SSAI): Lead Writer/Music: “Enlightenment,†Universal Production Music
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