Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) Award to the NASA ATM-X Digital Information Platform (DIP) Team
In November 2024, the Digital Information Platform (DIP) team received the prestigious Industry Award from the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) at the annual ATCA Connect Conference in Washington, DC. The award recognized the team’s efforts in supporting NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP), which aims for net-zero carbon emissions from aviation by 2050.  The DIP sub-project focuses on increasing access to digital aviation information to enable efficient and sustainable airspace operations.  DIP team has been conducting live operational demonstrations in North Texas Metroplex environment since 2022 with commercial airlines on the Collaborative Digital Departure Reroute (CDDR) tool that applies machine learning to make predictions on runway availability, departure times, and arrival times. DIP has signed Space Act Agreements with five major US airlines to carryout operational evaluation of CDDR in complex metroplex environments and is now deploying the CDDR capability to Houston. CDDR machine learning algorithm intelligently provides re-routing options to the operators by using real time weather and operational data reducing delays, fuel burn and carbon emissions. DIP is part of the Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) project, which is focused on transforming the air traffic management system to accommodate new air vehicles.  More information on the ATCA award is at: https://www.atca.org/detail-pages/news/2024/11/15/atca-presents-annual-awards-at-atca-connect-recognizing-exceptional-efforts-made-to-the-worldwide-air-traffic-control-and-airspace-system.

NASA selected 15 visionary ideas for its NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) program which develops concepts to transform future missions for the benefit of all. Chosen from companies and institutions across the United States, the 2025 Phase I awardees represent a wide range of aerospace concepts.

The NIAC program nurtures innovation by funding early-stage technology concept studies for future consideration and potential commercialization. The combined award for the 2025 concepts is a maximum of $2.625M in grants to evaluate technologies that could enable future aerospace missions.

“Our next steps and giant leaps rely on innovation, and the concepts born from NIAC can radically change how we explore deep space, work in low Earth orbit, and protect our home planet” said Clayton Turner, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. “From developing small robots that could swim through the oceans of other worlds to growing space habitats from fungi, this program continues to change the possible.”

The newly selected concepts include feasibility studies to explore the Sun’s influence on our solar system, build sustainable lunar habitats from glass, explore Saturn’s icy moon, and more. All NIAC studies are in the early stages of conceptual development and are not considered official NASA missions.

Ryan Weed, Helicity Space LLC in Pasadena, California, proposes a constellation of spacecraft powered by the Helicity Drive, a compact and scalable fusion propulsion system, that could enable rapid, multi-directional exploration of the heliosphere and beyond, providing unprecedented insights on how the Sun interacts with our solar system and interstellar space. Demonstrating the feasibility of fusion propulsion could also benefit deep space exploration including crewed missions to Mars.

Martin Bermudez, Skyeports LLC in Sacramento, California, presents the concept of constructing a large-scale, lunar glass habitat in a low-gravity environment. Nicknamed LUNGS (Lunar Glass Structure), this approach involves melting lunar glass compounds to create a large spherical shell structure. This idea offers a promising solution for establishing self-sustaining, large-scale habitats on the lunar surface.

Justin Yim, University of Illinois in Urbana, proposes a jumping robot appropriately named LEAP (Legged Exploration Across the Plume), as a novel robotic sampling concept to explore Enceladus, a small, icy moon of Saturn that’s covered in geysers, or jets. The LEAP robots could enable collection of pristine, ocean-derived material directly from Enceladus’s jets and measurement of particle properties across multiple jets by traveling from one to another.

“All advancements begin as an idea. The NIAC program allows NASA to invest in unique ideas enabling innovation and supporting the nation’s aerospace economy,” said John Nelson, program executive for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts in Washington.

The NIAC researchers, known as fellows, will investigate the fundamental premise of their concepts, identify potential challenges, and look for opportunities to bring these concepts to life.

In addition to the projects mentioned above, the following selectees received 2025 NIAC Phase I grants:

• Michael Hecht, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge: EVE (Exploring Venus with Electrolysis)
• Selim Shahriar, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois: SUPREME-QG: Space-borne Ultra-Precise Measurement of the Equivalence Principle Signature of Quantum Gravity
• Phillip Ansell, University of Illinois, Urbana: Hy2PASS (Hydrogen Hybrid Power for Aviation Sustainable Systems)
• Ryan Benson, ThinkOrbital Inc., Boulder, Colorado: Construction Assembly Destination
• Gyula Greschik, Tentguild Engineering Co, Boulder, Colorado: The Ribbon: Structure Free Sail for Solar Polar Observation
• Marco Quadrelli, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California: PULSAR: Planetary pULSe-tAkeR
• Ben Hockman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California: TOBIAS: Tethered Observatory for Balloon-based Imaging and Atmospheric Sampling
• Kimberly Weaver, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland: Beholding Black Hole Power with the Accretion Explorer Interferometer
• John Mather NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland: Inflatable Starshade for Earthlike Exoplanets
• Robert Hinshaw, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley: MitoMars: Targeted Mitochondria Replacement Therapy to Boost Deep Space Endurance
• Christine Gregg, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley: Dynamically Stable Large Space Structures via Architected Metamaterials
• Saurabh Vilekar, Precision Combustion, North Haven, Connecticut: Thermo-Photo-Catalysis of Water for Crewed Mars Transit Spacecraft Oxygen Supply

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funds the NIAC program, as it is responsible for developing the agency’s new cross-cutting technologies and capabilities to achieve its current and future missions.

To learn more about NIAC, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/niac

-end-

Jasmine Hopkins
Headquarters, Washington
321-432-4624
jasmine.s.hopkins@nasa.gov

NASA recently began a series of flight tests with partners to answer an important aviation question: What will it take to integrate remotely piloted or autonomous planes carrying large packages and cargo safely into the U.S. airspace? Researchers tested new technologies in Hollister, California, that are helping to investigate what tools and capabilities are needed to make these kinds of flights routine.  

The commercial industry continues to make advancements in autonomous aircraft systems aimed at making it possible for remotely operated aircraft to fly over communities – transforming the way we will transport people and goods. As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) develops standards for this new type of air transportation, NASA is working to ensure these uncrewed flights are safe by creating the required technological tools and infrastructure. These solutions could be scaled to support many different remotely piloted aircraft – including air taxis and package delivery drones – in a shared airspace with traditional crewed aircraft. 

“Remotely piloted aircraft systems could eventually deliver cargo and people to rural areas with limited access to commercial transportation and delivery services,” said Shivanjli Sharma, aerospace engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “We’re aiming to create a healthy ecosystem of many different kinds of remotely piloted operations. They will fly in a shared airspace to provide communities with better access to goods and services, like medical supply deliveries and more efficient transportation.”  

During a flight test in November, Reliable Robotics, a company developing an autonomous flight system, remotely flew its Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft through pre-approved flight paths in Hollister, California. 

Although a safety pilot was aboard, a Reliable Robotics remote pilot directed the flight from their control center in Mountain View, more than 50 miles away.

Congressional staffers from the United States House and Senate’s California delegation joined NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, Carol Caroll, Ames Aeronautics Director, Huy Tran, and other Ames leadership at Reliable Robotics Headquarters to view the live remote flight.

Researchers evaluated a Collins Aerospace ground-based surveillance system’s ability to detect nearby air traffic and provide the remote pilot with information in order to stay safely separated from other aircraft in the future. 

Initial analysis shows the ground-based radar actively surveilled the airspace during the aircraft’s taxi, takeoff, and landing. The data was transmitted from the radar system to the remote pilot at Reliable Robotics. In the future, this capability could help ensure aircraft remain safely separated across all phases of fight.   

While current FAA operating rules require pilots to physically see and avoid other aircraft from inside the cockpit, routine remotely piloted aircraft will require a suite of integrated technologies to avoid hazards and coordinate with other aircraft in the airspace.  

A radar system for ground-based surveillance offers one method for detecting other traffic in the airspace and at the airport, providing one part of the capability to ensure pilots can avoid collision and accomplish their desired missions. Data analysis from this testing will help researchers understand if ground-based surveillance radar can be used to satisfy FAA safety rules for remotely piloted flights. 

NASA will provide analysis and reports of this flight test to the FAA and standards bodies. 

“This is an exciting time for the remotely piloted aviation community,” Sharma said. “Among other benefits, remote operations could provide better access to healthcare, bolster natural disaster response efforts, and offer more sustainable and effective transportation to both rural and urban communities. We’re thrilled to provide valuable data to the industry and the FAA to help make remote operations a reality in the near future.”  

Over the next year, NASA will work with additional aviation partners on test flights and simulations to test weather services, communications systems, and other autonomous capabilities for remotely piloted flights. NASA researchers will analyze data from these tests to provide a comprehensive report to the FAA and the community on what minimum technologies and capabilities are needed to enable and scale remotely piloted operations. 

This flight test data analysis is led out of NASA Ames under the agency’s Air Traffic Management Exploration project. This effort supports the agency’s Advanced Air Mobility mission research, ensuring the United States stays at the forefront of aviation innovation. 

A small business called Near Earth Autonomy developed a time-saving solution using drones for pre-flight checks of commercial airliners through a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and a partnership with The Boeing Company.

Before commercial airliners are deemed safe to fly before each trip, a pre-flight inspection must be completed. This process can take up to four hours, and can involve workers climbing around the plane to check for any issues, which can sometimes result in safety mishaps as well as diagnosis errors.

With NASA and Boeing funding to bolster commercial readiness, Near Earth Autonomy developed a drone-enabled solution, under their business unit Proxim, that can fly around a commercial airliner and gather inspection data in less than 30 minutes. The drone can autonomously fly around an aircraft to complete the inspection by following a computer-programmed task card based on the Federal Aviation Administration’s rules for commercial aircraft inspection. The card shows the flight path the drone’s software needs to take, enabling aircraft workers with a new tool to increase safety and efficiency.

“NASA has worked with Near Earth Autonomy on autonomous inspection challenges in multiple domains,” says Danette Allen, NASA senior leader for autonomous systems. 

“We are excited to see this technology spin out to industry to increase efficiencies, safety, and accuracy of the aircraft inspection process for overall public benefit.”

The photos collected from the drone are shared and analyzed remotely, which allows experts in the airline maintenance field to support repair decisions faster from any location. New images can be compared to old images to look for cracks, popped rivets, leaks, and other common issues.

The user can ask the system to create alerts if an area needs to be inspected again or fails an inspection. Near Earth Autonomy estimates that using drones for aircraft inspection can save the airline industry an average of $10,000 per hour of lost earnings during unplanned time on the ground.

Over the last six years, Near Earth Autonomy completed several rounds of test flights with their drone system on Boeing aircraft used by American Airlines and Emirates Airlines.

NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research / Small Business Technology Transfer program, managed by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, aims to bolster American ingenuity by supporting innovative ideas put forth by small businesses to fulfill NASA and industry needs. These research needs are described in annual SBIR solicitations and target technologies that have significant potential for successful commercialization. 

Small business concerns with 500 or fewer employees, or small businesses partnering with a non-profit research institution such as a university or a research laboratory can apply to participate in the NASA SBIR/STTR program.

When Madhavi Latha Balijepalle noticed that her morning commute took her past NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, she set a new career goal for herself: working for NASA. 

“I started manifesting it, thinking about it every day as I drove by. When I started looking for a new job, I saw an opening and decided to apply,” said Balijepalle, a senior database administrator working at the Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) at NASA Ames.  

Eight and a half years later, she supports the researchers and developers who research next-generation solutions to advance aircraft technology and air traffic management. 

A journey into the unknown 

Balijepalle’s journey to NASA started thousands of miles away. She grew up in a small town in southern India, studying electrical engineering in college and establishing a career in information technology, working in C++ and Python. 

When her husband found a job opportunity in the United States, Balijepalle’s life took an unexpected turn. 

“I never planned to move to America,” said Balijepalle. “It was not easy to come here, even though my husband had a job. I stayed in India for almost nine months, before he found a different job that would help us with my visa and documentation.” 

After settling into her new country, growing her family, and developing in her new career, Balijepalle began to ponder her dream job at NASA. She and her younger daughter, a fellow space fan, enjoyed talking about the agency’s work in space, and when a Linux administrator position opened up, she jumped at the chance. 

A dream job becomes reality 

At the AOL, Balijepalle was initially responsible for managing the lab’s Linux servers and applications. Today, she also supports researchers and developers with development, automation, and deployment of their work. 

“Latha is the lifeblood of the lab,” said Jeff Homola, co-lead of the Airspace Operations Laboratory at NASA Ames. “Without her unwavering dedication to making sure our systems are safe, secure, up to date, and running smoothly, we would not be able to do what we do in the lab.” 

One of Balijepalle’s proudest achievements during her NASA career is her language skills. Growing up, she spoke Telugu and Hindi, and learned English, but communication was still a challenge when she arrived at NASA. 

“I spoke English when I came to America, but not as well, and not using the technical language we use at NASA,” said Balijepalle. “I’m proud that I’ve improved my communications skills.” 

“Step outside your comfort zone” 

Looking back on the commute that changed her life, Balijepalle says she owes it all to being up to the challenge. 

“I wasn’t a risk taker, I didn’t think about stepping outside my comfort zone, but as I drove by NASA Ames each day, I started to think about astronauts. They step outside their comfort zone and leave the planet, so maybe I could take a risk, too.” 

For those who also dream of working at NASA one day, Balijepalle has some advice: try doing it her way. 

“Start thinking about it and manifesting your dream. Maybe it will come true, and maybe it won’t, but you might as well try.” 

2024 Year in Review – Highlights from NASA in Silicon Valley

by Tiffany Blake

As NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley enters its 85^th year since its founding, join us as we take a look back at some of our highlights of science, engineering, research, and innovation from 2024.

Ames Arc Jets Play Key Role in Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield Findings 

Researchers at Ames were part of the team tasked to better understand and identify the root cause of the unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA Ames. 

Starling Swarm Completes Primary Mission

After ten months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission’s key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations in low Earth orbit, including distributing and sharing important information and autonomous decision making. 

Another Step Forward for BioNutrients 

NASA’s BioNutrients entered its fifth year in its mission to investigate how microorganisms can produce on-demand nutrients for astronauts during long-duration space missions. Keeping astronauts healthy is critical and as the project comes to a close, researchers have processed production packs on Earth on the same day astronauts processed production packs in space on the International Space Station to demonstrate that NASA can produce nutrients after at least five years in space, providing confidence it will be capable of supporting crewed missions to Mars.  

Hyperwall Upgrade Helps Scientists Interpret Big Data

Ames upgraded its powerful hyperwall system, a 300-square foot wall of LCD screens with over a billion pixels to display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall is just one way researchers can utilize NASA’s high-end computing technology to better understand their data and advance the agency’s missions and research. 

Ames Contributions to NASA Artificial Intelligence Efforts 

Ames contributes to the agency’s artificial intelligence work through ongoing research and development, agencywide collaboration, and communications efforts. This year, NASA announced David Salvagnini as its inaugural chief artificial intelligence officer and held the first agencywide town hall on artificial intelligence sharing how the agency is safely using and developing artificial intelligence to advance missions and research. 

Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Successfully Launches, Deploys Sail

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System successfully launched from Māhia, New Zealand, in April, and successfully deployed its sail in August to begin mission operations. The small satellite represents a new future in solar sailing, using lightweight composite booms to support a reflective polymer sail that uses the pressure of sunlight as propulsion. 

Understanding Our Planet 

In 2024, Ames researchers studied Earth’s oceans and waterways from multiple angles – from supporting NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, mission to bringing students in Puerto Rico experiences in oceanography and the preservation of coral reefs. Working with multiple partners, our scientists and engineers helped inform ecosystem management by joining satellite measurements of Earth with animal tracking data. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, a NASA team continued testing a specialized instrument package to stay in-the-know about changes in river flow rates. 

Revealing the Mysteries of Asteroids in Our Solar System 

Ames researchers used a series of supercomputer simulations to reveal a potential new explanation for how the moons of Mars may have formed: The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid. 

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, another Ames scientist helped reveal the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt. 

Ames Helps Emerging Space Companies ‘Take the Heat’

A heat shield material invented and made at Ames helped to safely return a spacecraft containing the first product processed on an autonomous, free-flying, in-space manufacturing platform. February’s re-entry of the spacecraft from Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, in partnership with Rocket Lab USA of Long Beach, California, marked the first time a NASA-manufactured thermal protection material, called C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), ever returned from space. 

Team Continues to Move Forward with Mission to Learn More about Our Star

HelioSwarm’s swarm of nine spacecraft will provide deeper insights into our universe and offer critical information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals such as GPS. The mission team continues to work toward launching in 2029. 

CAPSTONE Continues to Chart a New Path Around the Moon 

The microwave sized CubeSat, CAPSTONE, continues to fly in a cis-lunar near rectilinear halo orbit after launching in 2022. Flying in this unique orbit continues to pave the way for future spacecraft and Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, as the team continues to collect data. 

NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality 

NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area. 

NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area. 

NASA Technologies Streamline Air Traffic Management Systems 

Managing our busy airspace is a complex and important issue, ensuring reliable and efficient movement of commercial and public air traffic as well as autonomous vehicles. NASA, in partnership with AeroVironment and Aerostar, demonstrated a first-of-its-kind air traffic management concept that could pave the way for aircraft to safely operate at higher altitudes. The agency also saw continued fuel savings and reduction in commercial flight delays at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, thanks to a NASA-developed tool that allows flight coordinators to identify more efficient, alternative takeoff routes.

Small Spacecraft Gathers Big Solar Storm Data from Deep Space 

BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting our Sun. After launching aboard NASA’s Artemis I more than two years ago, BioSentinel continues to collect valuable information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense. In May 2024, the satellite was exposed to a coronal mass ejection without the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and gathered measurements of hazardous solar particles in deep space during a solar storm. 

NASA, FAA Partner to Develop New Wildland Fire Technologies

NASA researchers continued to develop and test airspace management technologies to enable remotely-piloted aircraft to fight and monitor wildland fires 24 hours a day.  

The Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project seeks to use drones and advanced aviation technologies to improve wildland fire coordination and operations. 

NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate

The Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology is a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland fires. Providing cellular communication from above can improve firefighter safety and firefighting efficiency.

A Fully Reimagined Visitor Center 

The NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California includes a fully reimagined 360-degree experience, featuring new exhibits, models, and more. An interactive exhibit puts visitors in the shoes of a NASA Ames scientist, designing and testing rovers, planes, and robots for space exploration. 

Ames Collaborations in the Community

NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4. During the visit with patients, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space. 

Ames and the University of California, Berkeley, expanded their partnership, organizing workshops to exchange on their areas of technical expertise, including in Advanced Air Mobility, and to develop ideas for the Berkeley Space Center, an innovation hub proposed for development at Ames’ NASA Research Park. Under a new agreement, NASA also will host supercomputing resources for UC Berkeley, supporting the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.

NASA’s Ames Research Center Celebrates 85 Years of Innovation

by Rachel Hoover

Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley pre-dates a lot of things. The center existed before NASA – the very space and aeronautics agency it’s a critical part of today. And of all the marvelous advancements in science and technology that have fundamentally changed our lives over the last 85 years since its founding, one aspect has remained steadfast; an enduring commitment to what’s known by some on-center simply as, “an atmosphere of freedom.” 

Years before breaking ground at the site that would one day become home to the world’s preeminent wind tunnels, supercomputers, simulators, and brightest minds solving some of the world’s toughest challenges, Joseph Sweetman Ames, the center’s namesake, described a sentiment that would guide decades of innovation and research: 

“My hope is that you have learned or are learning a love of freedom of thought and are convinced that life is worthwhile only in such an atmosphere,” he said in an address to the graduates of Johns Hopkins University in June 1935.

That spirit and the people it attracted and retained are a crucial part of how Ames, along with other N.A.C.A. research centers, ultimately made technological breakthroughs that enabled humanity’s first steps on the Moon, the safe return of spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere, and many other discoveries that benefit our day-to-day lives.

“In the context of my work, an atmosphere of freedom means the freedom to pursue high-risk, high-reward, innovative ideas that may take time to fully develop and — most importantly — the opportunity to put them into practice for the benefit of all,” said Edward Balaban, a researcher at Ames specializing in artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced mission concepts.

Balaban’s career at Ames has involved a variety of projects at different stages of development – from early concept to flight-ready – including experimenting with different ways to create super-sized space telescopes in space and using artificial intelligence to help guide the path a rover might take to maximize off-world science results. Like many Ames researchers over the years, Balaban shared that his experience has involved deep collaborations across science and engineering disciplines with colleagues all over the center, as well as commercial and academic partners in Silicon Valley where Ames is nestled and beyond. This is a tradition that runs deep at Ames and has helped lead to entirely new fields of study and seeded many companies and spinoffs.

“In the fields of aeronautics and space exploration the cost of entry can be quite high. For commercial enterprises and universities pursuing longer term ideas and putting them into practice often means partnering up with an organization such as NASA that has the scale and multi-disciplinary expertise to mature these ideas for real-world applications,” added Balaban.

“Certainly, the topics of inquiry, the academic freedom, and the benefit to the public good are what has kept me at Ames,” reflected Ross Beyer, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute at Ames. “There’s not a lot of commercial incentive to study other planets, for example, but maybe there will be soon. In the meantime, only with government funding and agencies like NASA can we develop missions to explore the unknown in order to make important fundamental science discoveries and broadly share them.”

For Beyer, his boundary-breaking moment came when he searched – and found – software engineers at Ames capable and passionate about open-source software to generate accurate, high-resolution, texture-mapped, 3D terrain models from stereo image pairs. He and other teams of NASA scientists have since applied that software to study and better understand everything from changes in snow and ice characteristics on Earth, as well as features like craters, mountains, and caves on Mars or the Moon. This capability is part of the Artemis campaign, through which NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon for scientific exploration with commercial and international partners. The mission is to learn how to live and work away from home, promote the peaceful use of space, and prepare for future human exploration of Mars. 

“As NASA and private companies send missions to the Moon, they need to plan landing sites and understand the local environment, and our software is freely available for anyone to use,” Beyer said. “Years ago, our management could easily have said ‘No, let’s keep this software to ourselves; it gives us a competitive advantage.’ They didn’t, and I believe that NASA writ large allows you to work on things and share those things and not hold them back.” 

When looking forward to what the next 85 years might bring, researchers shared a belief that advancements in technology and opportunities to innovate are as expansive as space itself, but like all living things, they need a healthy atmosphere to thrive. Balaban offered, “This freedom to innovate is precious and cannot be taken for granted. It can easily fall victim if left unprotected. It is absolutely critical to retain it going forward, to ensure our nation’s continuing vitality and the strength of the other freedoms we enjoy.”

Announcing the Retirement of the Astrogram Newsletter

by Astrid Albaugh

For 66 years, the Astrogram has told the story of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Over those six-plus decades, the newsletter has documented hundreds of missions led by Ames, the progression of Hangar One’s reclamation, space shuttle launches with Ames’ payloads aboard them, countless VIP visits, and everything in between.

Ames published the first edition of the Astrogram in October 1958, coinciding with the transition of the center from its original incarnation as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Ames Aeronautical Laboratory to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research center.

The newsletter has evolved over time, alongside the center. From October 1958 through January 2016, the Astrogram was published in print, before a digital edition was developed. In January 2016, the Astrogram transitioned to a digital-only format. The number of pages for each edition varied, sometimes 10 pages up to 24 pages in length. Below are examples of some of the Astrogram issues from over the years.

I have served as the editor of the Astrogram since February 1998. I had quite the busy schedule back then, as I was working full time, raising two young children, and attending school on the week nights, twice a week as well as on Saturdays to complete my BS degree in behavioral sciences. In my present position at the time, I worked in the educational publications area within the Office of External Affairs, now the Office of Communications. In that position, I had to ensure that all educational requests from teachers, students, and the general public, both domestic and foreign. I also was the editor of the monthly “Parents at Ames” newsletter, which provided parents of young children on center with insight and suggestions from contributing employees and myself on how to better meet the challenges of work and family life. The newsletter offered information on parenting issues, such as daycare, balancing work schedules, and related topics.

Over the past quarter century, it has been an interesting, and sometimes quite challenging, task for me to capture the breadth and depth of Ames’ story and ensure that we always published the newsletter on time. I still remember trekking over to the center’s imaging office to review the physical negatives and images that the Ames photographers had taken of events onsite and select the most compelling photos. I used a very early version of visual design software to craft the layout. When the paper was completed, I would file it onto a CD and then hand it to the courier who had driven from the San Francisco printshop to pick it up from me. Once in awhile, someone would request to have an additional feature added, requiring multiple trips up Highway 101 and back. Sometimes I’d come in on the weekends to work on the paper, due to late submissions, much to the chagrin of my kids.

It has been a pleasure serving as the editor over the past quarter century, almost as many years as my kids are old. A person once asked me if I had changed my name to Astrid since it’s so like the word Astrogram. Any relationship between the newsletter and my name is simply serendipity. I have enjoyed being behind the scenes, mostly working diligently at my computer. Many at Ames know my name because of the newsletter but may have never met me in person. It’s been amusing sometimes when I encounter someone who can’t put a finger as to why they knew my name but didn’t recognize me in person. Their usual response when they realized why they know me was, “Ah, Astrid of the Astrogram.” Here are some additional Astrogram front pages from 1998 and before.

Just as NASA innovates, the content of the Astrogram has to innovate as well. Many of the stories that you used to read in the Astrogram, you can now find here on our NASA Ames Research Center web page. If you would like to access past, archived issues of the Astrogram, going back to 1958, please consult the Ames Research Center Archives. I will continue to help tell Ames’s story, just using new platforms.

Whether this is your first issue or you have been an Astrogram supporter for decades, thank you for reading!

– Astrid of the Astrogram officially signing off

💾

Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley pre-dates a lot of things. The center existed before NASA – the very space and aeronautics agency it’s a critical part of today. And of all the marvelous advancements in science and technology that have fundamentally changed our lives over the last 85 years since its founding, one aspect has remained steadfast; an enduring commitment to what’s known by some on-center simply as, “an atmosphere of freedom.” 

Years before breaking ground at the site that would one day become home to the world’s preeminent wind tunnels, supercomputers, simulators, and brightest minds solving some of the world’s toughest challenges, Joseph Sweetman Ames, the center’s namesake, described a sentiment that would guide decades of innovation and research: 

“My hope is that you have learned or are learning a love of freedom of thought and are convinced that life is worthwhile only in such an atmosphere,” he said in an address to the graduates of Johns Hopkins University in June 1935.

That spirit and the people it attracted and retained are a crucial part of how Ames, along with other N.A.C.A. research centers, ultimately made technological breakthroughs that enabled humanity’s first steps on the Moon, the safe return of spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere, and many other discoveries that benefit our day-to-day lives.

“In the context of my work, an atmosphere of freedom means the freedom to pursue high-risk, high-reward, innovative ideas that may take time to fully develop and — most importantly — the opportunity to put them into practice for the benefit of all,” said Edward Balaban, a researcher at Ames specializing in artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced mission concepts.

Balaban’s career at Ames has involved a variety of projects at different stages of development – from early concept to flight-ready – including experimenting with different ways to create super-sized space telescopes in space and using artificial intelligence to help guide the path a rover might take to maximize off-world science results. Like many Ames researchers over the years, Balaban shared that his experience has involved deep collaborations across science and engineering disciplines with colleagues all over the center, as well as commercial and academic partners in Silicon Valley where Ames is nestled and beyond. This is a tradition that runs deep at Ames and has helped lead to entirely new fields of study and seeded many companies and spinoffs.

“In the fields of aeronautics and space exploration the cost of entry can be quite high. For commercial enterprises and universities pursuing longer term ideas and putting them into practice often means partnering up with an organization such as NASA that has the scale and multi-disciplinary expertise to mature these ideas for real-world applications,” added Balaban.

“Certainly, the topics of inquiry, the academic freedom, and the benefit to the public good are what has kept me at Ames,” reflected Ross Beyer, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute at Ames. “There’s not a lot of commercial incentive to study other planets, for example, but maybe there will be soon. In the meantime, only with government funding and agencies like NASA can we develop missions to explore the unknown in order to make important fundamental science discoveries and broadly share them.”

For Beyer, his boundary-breaking moment came when he searched – and found – software engineers at Ames capable and passionate about open-source software to generate accurate, high-resolution, texture-mapped, 3D terrain models from stereo image pairs. He and other teams of NASA scientists have since applied that software to study and better understand everything from changes in snow and ice characteristics on Earth, as well as features like craters, mountains, and caves on Mars or the Moon. This capability is part of the Artemis campaign, through which NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon for scientific exploration with commercial and international partners. The mission is to learn how to live and work away from home, promote the peaceful use of space, and prepare for future human exploration of Mars. 

“As NASA and private companies send missions to the Moon, they need to plan landing sites and understand the local environment, and our software is freely available for anyone to use,” Beyer said. “Years ago, our management could easily have said ‘No, let’s keep this software to ourselves; it gives us a competitive advantage.’ They didn’t, and I believe that NASA writ large allows you to work on things and share those things and not hold them back.” 

When looking forward to what the next 85 years might bring, researchers shared a belief that advancements in technology and opportunities to innovate are as expansive as space itself, but like all living things, they need a healthy atmosphere to thrive. Balaban offered, “This freedom to innovate is precious and cannot be taken for granted. It can easily fall victim if left unprotected. It is absolutely critical to retain it going forward, to ensure our nation’s continuing vitality and the strength of the other freedoms we enjoy.”

NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope includes asteroids on its list of objects studied and secrets revealed. 

A team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge repurposed Webb’s observations of a distant star to reveal a population of small asteroids — smaller than astronomers had ever detected orbiting the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The 138 new asteroids range from the size of a bus to the size of a stadium — a size range in the main belt that has not been observable with ground-based telescopes. Knowing how many main belt asteroids are in different size ranges can tell us something about how asteroids have been changed over time by collisions. That process is related to how some of them have escaped the main belt over the solar system’s history, and even how meteorites end up on Earth.  

“We now understand more about how small objects in the asteroid belt are formed and how many there could be,” said Tom Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and co-author on the paper presenting the results. “Asteroids this size likely formed from collisions between larger ones in the main belt and are likely to drift towards the vicinity of Earth and the Sun.”

Insights from this research could inform the work of the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project at Ames. ATAP works across disciplines to support NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office by studying what would happen in the case of an Earth impact and modeling the associated risks. 

“It’s exciting that Webb’s capabilities can be used to glean insights into asteroids,” said Jessie Dotson, an astrophysicist at Ames and member of ATAP. “Understanding the sizes, numbers, and evolutionary history of smaller main belt asteroids provides important background about the near-Earth asteroids we study for planetary defense.”

The team that made the asteroid detections, led by research scientist Artem Burdanov and professor of planetary science Julien de Wit, both of MIT, developed a method to analyze existing Webb images for the presence of asteroids that may have been inadvertently “caught on film” as they passed in front of the telescope. Using the new image processing technique, they studied more than 10,000 images of the star TRAPPIST-1, originally taken to search for atmospheres around planets orbiting the star, in the search for life beyond Earth. 

Asteroids shine more brightly in infrared light, the wavelength Webb is tuned to detect, than in visible light, helping reveal the population of main belt asteroids that had gone unnoticed until now. NASA will also take advantage of that infrared glow with an upcoming mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor. NEO Surveyor is the first space telescope specifically designed to hunt for near-Earth asteroids and comets that may be potential hazards to Earth.

The paper presenting this research, “Detections of decameter main-belt asteroids with JWST,” was published Dec. 9 in Nature.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

For news media:

Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.

It’s the holiday season — which means many are taking to the skies to join their loved ones.

If you’ve ever used an app to navigate on a road trip, you’ve probably noticed how it finds you the most efficient route to your destination, even before you depart. To that end, NASA has been working to make flight departures out of major international airports more efficient — thereby saving fuel and reducing delays — in close collaboration with the aviation industry and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

The savings are possible thanks to a NASA-developed tool called Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting. 

This tool determines where potential time savings could be gained by slightly altering a departure route, based on existing data about delays. The software presents its proposed more-efficient route in real time to an airline, who can then decide whether or not to use it and coordinate with air traffic control through a streamlined digital process. 

The capability is being tested thoroughly at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Love Field Airport in Texas in collaboration with several major air carriers, including American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United. 

Now, these capabilities are expanding out of the Dallas area to other major airports in Houston for further research. 

“We’re enabling the use of digital services to greatly improve aviation efficiency,” said Shivanjli Sharma, manager of NASA’s Air Traffic Management — eXploration project which oversees the research on aviation services. “Streamlining airline operations, reducing emissions, and saving time are all part of making an efficient next-generation airspace system.” 

The animation above shows the savings Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting is responsible for at just a single airport. As the tool is expanded to be used at other airports, the savings begin to add up even more. 

It’s all part of NASA’s vision for transforming the skies above our communities to be more sustainable, efficient, safer, and quieter. 

Collaborative Digital Departure Rerouting is one of a series of new cloud-based digital air traffic management tools NASA and industry plan to develop and demonstrate as part of the agency’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership. These new flight management capabilities will contribute to the partnership’s goal of accelerating progress towards aviation achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

Lee esta historia en español aquí.

NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be “tipped over,” rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it. That galaxy, called NGC 5084, has been known for years, but the sideways secret of its central black hole lay hidden in old data archives. The discovery was made possible by new image analysis techniques developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley to take a fresh look at archival data from the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Using the new methods, astronomers at Ames unexpectedly found four long plumes of plasma – hot, charged gas – emanating from NGC 5084. One pair of plumes extends above and below the plane of the galaxy. A surprising second pair, forming an “X” shape with the first, lies in the galaxy plane itself. Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present.

The method revealing such unexpected characteristics for galaxy NGC 5084 was developed by Alejandro Serrano Borlaff, a research scientist with Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and based at Ames, and colleagues to detect low-brightness X-ray emissions in data from the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope. What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories.

The surprising second set of plumes was a strong clue this galaxy housed a supermassive black hole, but there could have been other explanations. Archived data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile then revealed another quirk of NGC 5084: a small, dusty, inner disk turning about the center of the galaxy. This, too, suggested the presence of a black hole there, and, surprisingly, it rotates at a 90-degree angle to the rotation of the galaxy overall; the disk and black hole are, in a sense, lying on their sides.

The follow-up analyses of NGC 5084 allowed the researchers to examine the same galaxy using a broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum – from visible light, seen by Hubble, to longer wavelengths observed by ALMA and the Expanded Very Large Array of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico.

“It was like seeing a crime scene with multiple types of light,” said Borlaff, who is also the first author on the paper reporting the discovery. “Putting all the pictures together revealed that NGC 5084 has changed a lot in its recent past.”

“Detecting two pairs of X-ray plumes in one galaxy is exceptional,” added Pamela Marcum, an astrophysicist at Ames and co-author on the discovery. “The combination of their unusual, cross-shaped structure and the ‘tipped-over,’ dusty disk gives us unique insights into this galaxy’s history.”

Typically, astronomers expect the X-ray energy emitted from large galaxies to be distributed evenly in a generally sphere-like shape. When it’s not, such as when concentrated into a set of X-ray plumes, they know a major event has, at some point, disturbed the galaxy.

Possible dramatic moments in its history that could explain NGC 5084’s toppled black hole and double set of plumes include a collision with another galaxy and the formation of a chimney of superheated gas breaking out of the top and bottom of the galactic plane.

More studies will be needed to determine what event or events led to the current strange structure of this galaxy. But it is already clear that the never-before-seen architecture of NGC 5084 was only discovered thanks to archival data – some almost three decades old – combined with novel analysis techniques.

The paper presenting this research was published Dec. 18 in The Astrophysical Journal. The image analysis method developed by the team – called Selective Amplification of Ultra Noisy Astronomical Signal, or SAUNAS – was described in The Astrophysical Journal in May 2024.

For news media:

Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.

As NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley enters its 85^th year since its founding, join us as we take a look back at some of our highlights of science, engineering, research, and innovation from 2024.

Ames Arc Jets Play Key Role in Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield Findings 

Researchers at Ames were part of the team tasked to better understand and identify the root cause of the unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA Ames. 

Starling Swarm Completes Primary Mission 

After ten months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission’s key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations in low Earth orbit, including distributing and sharing important information and autonomous decision making. 

Another Step Forward for BioNutrients 

NASA’s BioNutrients entered its fifth year in its mission to investigate how microorganisms can produce on-demand nutrients for astronauts during long-duration space missions. Keeping astronauts healthy is critical and as the project comes to a close, researchers have processed production packs on Earth on the same day astronauts processed production packs in space on the International Space Station to demonstrate that NASA can produce nutrients after at least five years in space, providing confidence it will be capable of supporting crewed missions to Mars.  

Hyperwall Upgrade Helps Scientists Interpret Big Data

Ames upgraded its powerful hyperwall system, a 300-square foot wall of LCD screens with over a billion pixels to display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall is just one way researchers can utilize NASA’s high-end computing technology to better understand their data and advance the agency’s missions and research. 

Ames Contributions to NASA Artificial Intelligence Efforts 

Ames contributes to the agency’s artificial intelligence work through ongoing research and development, agencywide collaboration, and communications efforts. This year, NASA announced David Salvagnini as its inaugural chief artificial intelligence officer and held the first agencywide town hall on artificial intelligence sharing how the agency is safely using and developing artificial intelligence to advance missions and research. 

Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Successfully Launches, Deploys Sail

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System successfully launched from Māhia, New Zealand, in April, and successfully deployed its sail in August to begin mission operations. The small satellite represents a new future in solar sailing, using lightweight composite booms to support a reflective polymer sail that uses the pressure of sunlight as propulsion. 

Understanding Our Planet 

In 2024, Ames researchers studied Earth’s oceans and waterways from multiple angles – from supporting NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, mission to bringing students in Puerto Rico experiences in oceanography and the preservation of coral reefs. Working with multiple partners, our scientists and engineers helped inform ecosystem management by joining satellite measurements of Earth with animal tracking data. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, a NASA team continued testing a specialized instrument package to stay in-the-know about changes in river flow rates. 

Revealing the Mysteries of Asteroids in Our Solar System 

Ames researchers used a series of supercomputer simulations to reveal a potential new explanation for how the moons of Mars may have formed: The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid. 

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, another Ames scientist helped reveal the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt. 

Ames Helps Emerging Space Companies ‘Take the Heat’

A heat shield material invented and made at Ames helped to safely return a spacecraft containing the first product processed on an autonomous, free-flying, in-space manufacturing platform. February’s re-entry of the spacecraft from Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, in partnership with Rocket Lab USA of Long Beach, California, marked the first time a NASA-manufactured thermal protection material, called C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), ever returned from space. 

Team Continues to Move Forward with Mission to Learn More about Our Star

HelioSwarm’s swarm of nine spacecraft will provide deeper insights into our universe and offer critical information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals such as GPS. The mission team continues to work toward launching in 2029. 

CAPSTONE Continues to Chart a New Path Around the Moon 

The microwave sized CubeSat, CAPSTONE, continues to fly in a cis-lunar near rectilinear halo orbit after launching in 2022. Flying in this unique orbit continues to pave the way for future spacecraft and Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, as the team continues to collect data. 

NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality 

NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area. 

NASA Technologies Streamline Air Traffic Management Systems 

Managing our busy airspace is a complex and important issue, ensuring reliable and efficient movement of commercial and public air traffic as well as autonomous vehicles. NASA, in partnership with AeroVironment and Aerostar, demonstrated a first-of-its-kind air traffic management concept that could pave the way for aircraft to safely operate at higher altitudes. The agency also saw continued fuel savings and reduction in commercial flight delays at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, thanks to a NASA-developed tool that allows flight coordinators to identify more efficient, alternative takeoff routes.

Small Spacecraft Gathers Big Solar Storm Data from Deep Space 

BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting our Sun. After launching aboard NASA’s Artemis I more than two years ago, BioSentinel continues to collect valuable information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense. In May 2024, the satellite was exposed to a coronal mass ejection without the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and gathered measurements of hazardous solar particles in deep space during a solar storm. 

NASA, FAA Partner to Develop New Wildland Fire Technologies

NASA researchers continued to develop and test airspace management technologies to enable remotely-piloted aircraft to fight and monitor wildland fires 24 hours a day.  

The Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project seeks to use drones and advanced aviation technologies to improve wildland fire coordination and operations. 

NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate

The Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology is a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland fires. Providing cellular communication from above can improve firefighter safety and firefighting efficiency.

A Fully Reimagined Visitor Center 

The NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California includes a fully reimagined 360-degree experience, featuring new exhibits, models, and more. An interactive exhibit puts visitors in the shoes of a NASA Ames scientist, designing and testing rovers, planes, and robots for space exploration. 

Ames Collaborations in the Community

NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4. During the visit with patients, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space. 

Ames and the University of California, Berkeley, expanded their partnership, organizing workshops to exchange on their areas of technical expertise, including in Advanced Air Mobility, and to develop ideas for the Berkeley Space Center, an innovation hub proposed for development at Ames’ NASA Research Park. Under a new agreement, NASA also will host supercomputing resources for UC Berkeley, supporting the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.

NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is celebrating 85 years of cutting-edge research and development in space, life sciences, supercomputing, aeronautics, and more for the benefit of humanity. Ames was founded as an aeronautical laboratory in December 1939, and has since contributed to many of NASA’s flagship missions from Apollo to Artemis. 

NASA Ames experts are available for interviews Thursday, Dec. 19, and Friday, Dec. 20. To request an interview about the center’s legacy in space, science, technology, and aeronautics, email the Ames newsroom at: arc-dl-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

NASA Ames experts include: 

• James Anderson, NASA Ames historian;
• Lynn Harper, lead of integrative studies in the NASA Space Portal, working to propel U.S. industry toward the development of a sustainable, scalable, and profitable non-NASA demand for services and products manufactured in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit;
• Shivanjli Sharma, aerospace research engineer, working to enable advanced aviation technologies for new methods of air cargo and passenger transportation in urban, suburban, rural, and regional communities;
• Dave Alfano, chief of the Ames Intelligent Systems Division, working to produce ground and flight software systems and data architectures for data mining, analysis, integration, and management; integrated health management, and more for missions across the agency.

Ames has established itself as a leader in the aeronautics industry, developing foundational technologies for advanced air vehicles, including air taxis and remotely piloted aircraft. On the International Space Station, Ames researchers have tested a method to develop nutrients off-Earth and on-demand. Cube-shaped robots have been delivered to the station to assist astronauts with routine duties. Ames engineers have developed and are testing a heat shield for the Orion crew capsule that will safely return astronauts home to Earth as part of the agency’s Artemis missions to the Moon.

For more information on Ames’ history and contributions, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/reference/ames-history

-end-

Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, Calif.
650-604-4789
rachel.l.hoover@nasa.gov

Package delivery drones are coming to our doorsteps in the future, and NASA wants to make sure that when medication or pizza deliveries take to the skies, they will be safe.

In July, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the first time authorized multiple U.S. companies to fly commercial drones in the same airspace without their operators being able to see them the entire flight. Getting to this important step on the way to expanding U.S. commercial drone usage required considerable research into the concept known as flight that is Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) – and NASA helped lead the way.

For BVLOS flights to become routine, trusted automation technology needs to be built into drone and airspace systems, since pilots or air traffic controllers won’t be able to see all the drones operating at once.

To address these challenges, NASA developed several key technologies, most notably Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM), which allows for digital sharing of each drone user’s planned flight details.

“NASA’s pioneering work on UTM, in collaboration with the FAA and industry, set the stage for safe and scalable small drone flights below 400 feet,” said Parimal Kopardekar, NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission integration manager. “This technology is now adopted globally as the key to enabling Beyond Visual Line of Sight drone operations.”

With UTM, each drone user can have the same situational awareness of the airspace where drones are flying. This foundation of technology development, led by NASA’s UTM project, allows drones to fly BVLOS today with special FAA approval.

Drones can fly BVLOS today at the FAA test site and at some other selected areas with pre-approval from the FAA based on the risks. However, the FAA is working on new regulation to allow BVLOS operations to occur without exemptions and waivers in the future.

The NASA UTM team invented a new way to handle the airspace — a style of air traffic management where multiple parties, from government to commercial industry, work together to provide services. These include flight planning, strategic deconfliction before flights take off, communication, surveillance and other focus areas needed for a safe flight.

This technology is now being used by the FAA in approved parts of the Dallas area, allowing commercial drone companies to deliver packages using the NASA-originated UTM research.

UTM allows for strategic coordination among operators so each company can monitor their own drone flight to ensure that each drone is where it should be along the planned flight path. Test sites like Dallas help the FAA identify requirements needed to safely enable small drone operations nationwide.

NASA is also working to ensure that public safety drones have priority when operating in the same airspace with commercial drones. In another BVLOS effort, NASA is using drones to test technology that could be used on air taxis. Each of these efforts brings us one step closer to seeing supplies or packages routinely delivered by drone around the U.S.

Drone Package Delivery Video

NASA supercomputers are shedding light on what causes some of the Sun’s most complex behaviors. Using data from the suite of active Sun-watching spacecraft currently observing the star at the heart of our solar system, researchers can explore solar dynamics like never before. 

The animation shows the strength of the turbulent motions of the Sun’s inner layers as materials twist into its atmosphere, resembling a roiling pot of boiling water or a flurry of schooling fish sending material bubbling up to the surface or diving it further down below. 

“Our simulations use what we call a realistic approach, which means we include as much as we know to-date about solar plasma to reproduce different phenomena observed with NASA space missions,” said Irina Kitiashvili, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley who helped lead the study. 

Using modern computational capabilities, the team was able for the first time to reproduce the fine structures of the subsurface layer observed with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

“Right now, we don’t have the computational capabilities to create realistic global models of the entire Sun due to the complexity,” said Kitiashvili. “Therefore, we create models of smaller areas or layers, which can show us structures of the solar surface and atmosphere – like shock waves or tornado-like features measuring only a few miles in size; that’s much finer detail than any one spacecraft can resolve.”

Scientists seek to better understand the Sun and what phenomena drive the patterns of its activity. The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts, auroras and many other phenomena. Space weather predictions are critical for exploration of space, supporting the spacecraft and astronauts of NASA’s Artemis campaign. Surveying this space environment is a vital part of understanding and mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation and keeping our spacecraft and instruments safe.

This has been a big year for our special star, studded with events like the annular eclipse, a total eclipse, and the Sun reaching its solar maximum period. In December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission – which is helping researchers to understand space weather right at the source – will make its closest-ever approach to the Sun and beat its own record of being the closest human-made object to reach the Sun. 

“The Sun keeps surprising us,” said Kitiashvili. “We are looking forward to seeing what kind of exciting events will be organized by the Sun.”

These simulations were run on the Pleaides supercomputer at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility at NASA Ames over several weeks of runtime, generating terabytes of data. 

NASA is showcasing 29 of the agency’s computational achievements at SC24, the international supercomputing conference, Nov. 17-22, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. For more technical information, visit: ​

https://www.nas.nasa.gov/sc24

For news media: Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated Nov. 20, 2024 shortly after BioSentinel’s mission marked two years of operation in deep space.

Astronauts live in a pretty extreme environment aboard the International Space Station. Orbiting about 250 miles above the Earth in the weightlessness of microgravity, they rely on commercial cargo missions about every two months to deliver new supplies and experiments. And yet, this place is relatively protected in terms of space radiation. The Earth’s magnetic field shields space station crew from much of the radiation that can damage the DNA in our cells and lead to serious health problems. When future astronauts set off on long journeys deeper into space, they will be venturing into more perilous radiation environments and will need substantial protection. With the help of a biology experiment within a small satellite called BioSentinel, scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley, are taking an early step toward finding solutions.

To learn the basics of what happens to life in space, researchers often use “model organisms” that we understand relatively well. This helps show the differences between what happens in space and on Earth more clearly. For BioSentinel, NASA is using yeast – the very same yeast that makes bread rise and beer brew. In both our cells and yeast cells, the type of high-energy radiation encountered in deep space can cause breaks in the two entwined strands of DNA that carry genetic information. Often, DNA damage can be repaired by cells in a process that is very similar between yeast and humans.                             

BioSentinel set out to be the first long-duration biology experiment to take place beyond where the space station orbits near Earth. BioSentinel’s spacecraft is one of 10 CubeSats that launched aboard Artemis I, the first flight of the Artemis program’s Space Launch System, NASA’s powerful new rocket. The cereal box-sized satellite traveled to deep space on the rocket then flew past the Moon in a direction to orbit the Sun.  Once the satellite was in position beyond our planet’s protective magnetic field, the BioSentinel team triggered a series of experiments remotely, activating two strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to grow in the presence of space radiation. Samples of yeast were activated at different time points throughout the six- to twelve-month mission.

One strain is the yeast commonly found in nature, while the other was selected because it has trouble repairing its DNA. By comparing how the two strains respond to the deep space radiation environment, researchers will learn more about the health risks posed to humans during long-term exploration and be able to develop informed strategies for reducing potential damage.

During the initial phase of the mission, which began in December 2022 and completed in April 2023, the BioSentinel team successfully operated BioSentinel’s BioSensor hardware –a miniature biotechnology laboratory designed to measure how living yeast cells respond to long-term exposure to space radiation – in deep space. The team completed four experiments lasting two-weeks each but did not observe any yeast cell growth. They determined that deep space radiation was not the cause of the inactive yeast cells, but that their lack of growth was likely due to the yeast expiring after extended storage time of the spacecraft ahead of launch. 

Although the yeast did not activate as intended to gather observations on the impact of radiation on living yeast cells, BioSentinel’s onboard radiation detector – that measures the type and dose of radiation hitting the spacecraft – continues to collect data in deep space.

NASA extended BioSentinel’s mission in 2023 by up to an additional 18 months, or as late as November 2024, and again in 2024 by up to an additional 10 months, or as late as September 2025, to continue collecting valuable deep space radiation data in the unique, high-radiation environment beyond low Earth orbit.

Solar activity is expected to increase as we head into a solar maximum period in the Sun’s 11-year cycle. Activity on the Sun,  involving solar flares and giant eruptions called coronal mass ejections are predicted to peak in 2025. These events send powerful bursts of energy, magnetic fields and plasma into space which causes the aurora, interferes with satellite signals.  Solar radiation events from particles accelerated to high speeds can also pose a threat to astronauts in space.

Built on a history of small-satellite biology

The BioSentinel project builds on Ames’ history of carrying out biology studies in space using CubeSats – small satellites built from individual units each about four inches cubed. BioSentinel is a six-unit spacecraft weighing about 30 pounds. It houses the yeast cells in tiny compartments inside microfluidic cards – custom hardware that allows for the controlled flow of extremely small volumes of liquids that will activate and sustain the yeast. Data about radiation levels and the yeast’s growth and metabolism will be collected and stored aboard the spacecraft and then transmitted to the science team back on Earth.

A reserve set of microfluidic cards containing yeast samples will be activated if the satellite encounters a solar particle event, a radiation storm coming from the Sun that is a particularly severe health risk for future deep space explorers. 

Multiple BioSentinels will compare various gravity and radiation environments

In addition to the pioneering BioSentinel mission that will traverse the deep space environment, identical experiments take place under different radiation and gravity conditions. One ran on the space station, in microgravity that is similar to deep space, but with comparatively less radiation. Other experiments took place on the ground, for comparison with Earth’s gravity and radiation levels. These additional versions show scientists how to compare Earth and space station-based science experiments – which can be conducted much more readily – to the fierce radiation that future astronauts will encounter in space.

Taken together, the BioSentinel data will be critical for interpreting the effects of space radiation exposure, reducing the risks associated with long-term human exploration, and confirming existing models of the effects of space radiation on living organisms. 

Milestones

• December 2021: The BioSentinel ISS Control experiment launched to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s 24th commercial resupply services mission.
• January 2022: The BioSentinel ISS Control experiment began science operations aboard the International Space Station.
• February 2022: The BioSentinel ISS Control experiment began ground control science operations at NASA Ames.
• June 2022: The BioSentinel ISS Control experiment completed science operations. The hardware was returned to Earth in August aboard SpaceX’s CRS-25 Dragon.
• October 2022: The BioSentinel ISS Control experiment completed ground control science operations at NASA Ames. 
• Nov. 16, 2022: BioSentinel launched to deep space aboard Artemis I.
• Dec. 5, 2022: BioSentinel began science operations in deep space.
• Dec. 19, 2022: BioSentinel began ground control science operations at NASA Ames.
• Nov. 16, 2024: BioSentinel marks two years of continuous radiation observations in deep space, now more than 30 million miles from Earth.

Partners:

• NASA Ames leads the science, hardware design and development of the BioSentinel mission.
• Partner organizations include NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 
• BioSentinel is funded by the Mars Campaign Development (MCO) Division within the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
• BioSentinel’s extended mission is supported by the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington, the MCO, and the NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging Program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Learn more:

• NASA story: NASA’s BioSentinel Studies Solar Radiation as Earth Watches Aurora (Sept. 2024)
• NASA story: NASA Extends BioSentinel’s Mission to Measure Deep Space Radiation, Aug. 2023
• NASA story: First Deep Space Biology Experiment Begins, Follow Along in Real-Time, Dec. 2022
• NASA story: BioSentinel Underway After Successful Lunar Flyby, Nov. 2022
• NASA story: Artemis I to Launch First-of-a-Kind Deep Space Biology Mission, Aug. 2022
• NASA video: Why NASA is Sending Yeast to Deep Space, Feb. 2022
• NASA podcast: “Houston We Have a Podcast,” Deep Space Biology, Jan. 2022
• NASA blog: All Artemis I Secondary Payloads Installed in Rocket’s Orion Stage Adapter, Oct. 2021
• NASA blog; NASA Prepares Three More CubeSat Payloads for Artemis I Mission. Jul. 2021
• NASA story: NASA’s BioSentinel Team Prepares CubeSat For Deep Space Flight, Apr. 2021
• NASA in Silicon Valley podcast episode: Sharmila Bhattacharya on Studying How Biology Changes in Space, Mar. 2018
• NASA story: For Holiday Celebrations and Space Radiation, Yeast is the Key, Dec. 2018

For researchers: 

• NASA Space Station Research Explorer: BioSentinel ISS Control Experiment
• NASA technical webpage: BioSentinel

For news media:

• Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom. 

A NASA study using a series of supercomputer simulations reveals a potential new solution to a longstanding Martian mystery: How did Mars get its moons? The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid. 

The research team, led by Jacob Kegerreis, a postdoctoral research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, found that an asteroid passing near Mars could have been disrupted – a nice way of saying “ripped apart” – by the Red Planet’s strong gravitational pull.

The team’s simulations show the resulting rocky fragments being strewn into a variety of orbits around Mars. More than half the fragments would have escaped the Mars system, but others would’ve stayed in orbit. Tugged by the gravity of both Mars and the Sun, in the simulations some of the remaining asteroid pieces are set on paths to collide with one another, every encounter further grinding them down and spreading more debris. 

Many collisions later, smaller chunks and debris from the former asteroid could have settled into a disk encircling the planet. Over time, some of this material is likely to have clumped together, possibly forming Mars’ two small moons, Phobos and Deimos.

To assess whether this was a realistic chain of events, the research team explored hundreds of different close encounter simulations, varying the asteroid’s size, spin, speed, and distance at its closest approach to the planet. The team used their high-performance, open-source computing code, called SWIFT, and the advanced computing systems at Durham University in the United Kingdom to study in detail both the initial disruption and, using another code, the subsequent orbits of the debris.

In a paper published Nov. 20 in the journal Icarus, the researchers report that, in many of the scenarios, enough asteroid fragments survive and collide in orbit to serve as raw material to form the moons. 

“It’s exciting to explore a new option for the making of Phobos and Deimos – the only moons in our solar system that orbit a rocky planet besides Earth’s,” said Kegerreis. “Furthermore, this new model makes different predictions about the moons’ properties that can be tested against the standard ideas for this key event in Mars’ history.”

Two hypotheses for the formation of the Martian moons have led the pack. One proposes that passing asteroids were captured whole by Mars’ gravity, which could explain the moons’ somewhat asteroid-like appearance. The other says that a giant impact on the planet blasted out enough material – a mix of Mars and impactor debris – to form a disk and, ultimately, the moons. Scientists believe a similar process formed Earth’s Moon.

The latter explanation better accounts for the paths the moons travel today – in near-circular orbits that closely align with Mars’ equator. However, a giant impact ejects material into a disk that, mostly, stays close to the planet. And Mars’ moons, especially Deimos, sit quite far away from the planet and probably formed out there, too. 

“Our idea allows for a more efficient distribution of moon-making material to the outer regions of the disk,” said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at Ames and co-author on the paper. “That means a much smaller ‘parent’ asteroid could still deliver enough material to send the moons’ building blocks to the right place.”

Testing different ideas for the formation of Mars’ moons is the primary goal of the upcoming Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) sample return mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). The spacecraft will survey both moons to determine their origin and collect samples of Phobos to bring to Earth for study. A NASA instrument on board, called MEGANE – short for Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and Neutrons – will identify the chemical elements Phobos is made of and help select sites for the sample collection. Some of the samples will be collected by a pneumatic sampler also provided by NASA as a technology demonstration contribution to the mission. Understanding what the moons are made of is one clue that could help distinguish between the moons having an asteroid origin or a planet-plus-impactor source.

Before scientists can get their hands on a piece of Phobos to analyze, Kegerreis and his team will pick up where they left off demonstrating the formation of a disk that has enough material to make Phobos and Deimos. 

“Next, we hope to build on this proof-of-concept project to simulate and study in greater detail the full timeline of formation,” said Vincent Eke, associate professor at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and a co-author on the paper. “This will allow us to examine the structure of the disk itself and make more detailed predictions for what the MMX mission could find.”  

For Kegerreis, this work is exciting because it also expands our understanding of how moons might be born – even if it turns out that Mars’ own formed by a different route. The simulations offer a fascinating exploration, he says, of the possible outcomes of encounters between objects like asteroids and planets. These events were common in the early solar system, and simulations could help researchers reconstruct the story of how our cosmic backyard evolved. 

This research is a collaborative effort between Ames and Durham University, supported by the Institute for Computational Cosmology’s Planetary Giant Impact Research group. The simulations used were run using the open-source SWIFT code, carried out on the DiRAC (Distributed Research Utilizing Advanced Computing) Memory Intensive service (“COSMA”), hosted by Durham University on behalf of the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility.

For news media:

Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.