5 New Competitions For The Artemis Generation!

Vision & Microgravity...Can We See the Connection?

What do nutrition and genetics have in common? They could all be linked to vision problems experienced by some astronauts. We see people going up to space with perfect vision, but need glasses when the return home to Earth.

Why Does This Study Matter?

We want to be able to send astronauts to Mars, but losing vision capability along the way is a BIG problem. Discovering the cause and possible treatments or preventions will help us safely send astronauts deeper into space than ever before. 

It’s Like Solving a Mystery

We already have an idea of why vision changes occur, but the real mystery remains...why do some astronauts have these issues, and other’s don’t?

Now, let’s break it down:

Nutrition is more than just what you eat. It includes how those things work inside your body. The biochemistry behind how your muscles make energy, how your brain utilizes glucose and how vitamins help with biochemical functions...it’s all part of nutrition.

Genetics also play a part in the vision changes we’re seeing in space. Data shows that there are differences in blood chemistry between astronauts that had vision issues and those that did not. We found that individuals with vision issues had different blood chemistries even before their flight to space. That means that some astronauts could be predisposed to vision issues in space.

Just in January 2016, scientists discovered this possible link between genetics, nutrition and vision changes in astronauts. It makes it clear that the vision problem is WAY more complex than we initially thought. 

While we still don’t know exactly what is causing the vision issues, we are able to narrow down who to study, and refine our research. This will help find the cause, and hopefully lead to treatment and prevention of these problems.

Fluid Shifts

The weightless environment of space also causes fluid shifts to occur in the body. This normal shift of fluids to the upper body in space causes increased inter-cranial pressure which could be reducing visual capacity in astronauts. We are currently testing how this can be counteracted by returning fluids to the lower body using a “lower body negative pressure” suit, also known as Chibis.

Benefits on Earth

Research in this area has also suggested that there may be similarities between astronaut data and individuals with a clinical syndrome affecting 10-20% of women, known as polycystic ovary syndrome. Studying this group may provide a way to better understand vision and cardiovascular system effects, which could also advance treatment and prevention for both astronauts and humans on Earth with this disease.

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It’s Women in Engineering Day

Today, June 23 is International Women in Engineering Day. We have many talented women across NASA that contribute to our success to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind.

Happy Int'l Women in Engr Day! Love working @nasa to plan spacewalks, train astronauts, & flight control! #INWED17 #IAmANASAEngineer #nasa pic.twitter.com/pasndXB8sS

— Grier Wilt (@grierlauren)

June 23, 2017

Hearing from them illuminates the vibrant community of dedicated women who play a vital role at the agency. These women have pushed to pursue their dreams and make a difference everyday at NASA. 

Happy International Women in Engineering Day! #INWED17 #IAmANASAEngineer pic.twitter.com/yvhhAzGUYv

— ~Alexandria~ (@DOPECHICKBEATS)

June 23, 2017

We hope that these stories will inspire girls everywhere to reach for the stars and explore the myriad of opportunities available to them through pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Proud to call these awesome @NASA_Johnson women engineers my friends! Happy Int'l Women in Engineering Day! #INWED17 #IAmANASAEngineer @NASA pic.twitter.com/qGSiR2xVFo

— Jenny On Console (@JennyOnConsole)

June 23, 2017

Join us as we celebrate the achievements of our outstanding women engineers.

Happy International Women in Engineering Day!#IAmANASAEngineer #INWED17 #INWED2017 #KSC @NASA_LSP @NASA @NASAKennedy @kelleyjoooones pic.twitter.com/RRCt75ff5g

— Laura P. Rose (@lauraprose)

June 23, 2017

Learn more and hear stories from the Women at NASA community by visiting http://women.nasa.gov.

We are the smart, incredible women of @LockheedMartin that are building @NASA_Orion at @NASAKennedy ! #INWED17 #IAmANASAEngineer pic.twitter.com/HurWOvhYIn

— Chelsea (@Queen_Of_Quarks)

June 23, 2017

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Water, Water Everywhere; We Track Drops to Drink!

When we think about what makes a planet habitable, we’re often talking about water. With abundant water in liquid, gas (vapor) and solid (ice) form, Earth is a highly unusual planet. Almost 70% of our home planet’s surface is covered in water!

But about 97% of Earth’s water is salty – only a tiny amount is freshwater: the stuff humans, pets and plants need to survive.

Water on our planet is constantly moving, and not just geographically. Water shifts phases from ice to water to vapor and back, moving through the planet’s soils and skies as it goes.

That’s where our satellites come in.

Look at the Midwestern U.S. this spring, for example. Torrential rain oversaturated the soil and overflowed rivers, which caused severe flooding, seen by Landsat.

Our satellites also tracked a years-long drought in California. Between 2013 and 2014, much of the state turned brown, without visible green.  

It’s not just rain. Where and when snow falls – and melts – is changing, too. The snow that falls and accumulates on the ground is called snowpack, which eventually melts and feeds rivers used for drinking water and crop irrigation. When the snow doesn’t fall, or melts too early, communities go without water and crops don’t get watered at the right time.

Even when water is available, it can become contaminated by blooms of phytoplankton, like cyanobacteria . Also known as blue-green algae, these organisms can make humans sick if they drink the water. Satellites can help track algae from space, looking for the brightly colored blooms against blue water.

Zooming even farther back, Earth’s blue water is visible from thousands of miles away. The water around us makes our planet habitable and makes our planet shine blue among the darkness of space.

Knowing where the water is, and where it’s going, helps people make better decisions about how to manage it. Earth’s climate is changing rapidly, and freshwater is moving as a result. Some places are getting drier and some are getting much, much wetter. By predicting droughts and floods and tracking blooms of algae, our view of freshwater around the globe helps people manage their water.

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3, 2, 1 LIFTOFF! Astronaut Kate Rubins is here answering your questions during this Tumblr Answer Time. Tune in and enjoy. 🚀👩‍🚀

Exploring an Asteroid Without Leaving Earth

This 45 day mission – which begins Feb. 1, 2018 – will help our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. This study at our Johnson Space Center prepares us for long duration space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.

The Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) that the crew members will be living in is one compact, science-making house. But unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 45 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to internet. So no checking social media, kids!

The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.

The HERA XVI crew is made up of 2 men and 2 women, selected from the Johnson Space Center Test Subject Screening (TSS) pool. The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including criteria similar to what is used for astronaut selection. The four would-be astronauts are:

Kent Kalogera

Jennifer Yen

Erin Hayward

Gregory Sachs

What will they be doing?

The crew are going on a simulated journey to an asteroid, a 715-day journey that we compress into 45 days. They will fly their simulated exploration vehicle around the asteroid once they arrive, conducting several site surveys before 2 of the crew members will participate in a series of virtual reality spacewalks.

They will also be participating in a suite of research investigations and will also engage in a wide range of operational and science activities, such as growing and analyzing plants and brine shrimp, maintaining and “operating” an important life support system, exercising on a stationary bicycle or using free weights, and sharpening their skills with a robotic arm simulation. 

During the whole mission, they will consume food produced by the Johnson Space Center Food Lab – the same food that the astronauts enjoy on the International Space Station – which means that it needs to be rehydrated or warmed in a warming oven.

This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 5 minutes each way.

A few other details:

The crew follows a timeline that is similar to one used for the space station crew.

They work 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday. This includes time for daily planning, conferences, meals and exercise.

Mission: February 1, 2018 - March 19, 2018

But beware! While we do all we can to avoid crises during missions, crews need to be able to respond in the event of an emergency. The HERA crew will conduct a couple of emergency scenario simulations, including one that will require them to respond to a decrease in cabin pressure, potentially finding and repairing a leak in their spacecraft.

Throughout the mission, researchers will gather information about living in confinement, teamwork, team cohesion, mood, performance and overall well-being. The crew members will be tracked by numerous devices that each capture different types of data.

Learn more about the HERA mission HERE. 

Explore the HERA habitat via 360-degree videos HERE.

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Cosmic Couples and Devastating Breakups

Relationships can be complicated — especially if you’re a pair of stars. Sometimes you start a downward spiral you just can’t get out of, eventually crash together and set off an explosion that can be seen 130 million light-years away.

For Valentine’s Day, we’re exploring the bonds between some of the universe’s peculiar pairs … as well as a few of their cataclysmic endings.

Stellar Couples

When you look at a star in the night sky, you may really be viewing two or more stars dancing around each other. Scientists estimate three or four out of every five Sun-like stars in the Milky Way have at least one partner. Take our old north star Thuban, for example. It’s a binary, or two-star, system in the constellation Draco.

Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, is actually a stellar triangle. Two Sun-like stars, Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, form a pair (called Alpha Centauri AB) that orbit each other about every 80 years. Proxima Centauri is a remote red dwarf star caught in their gravitational pull even though it sits way far away from them (like over 300 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune).

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Davide De Martin/Mahdi Zamani

Sometimes, though, a stellar couple ends its relationship in a way that’s really disastrous for one of them. A black widow binary, for example, contains a low-mass star, called a brown dwarf, and a rapidly spinning, superdense stellar corpse called a pulsar. The pulsar generates intense radiation and particle winds that blow away the material of the other star over millions to billions of years.

Black Hole Beaus

In romance novels, an air of mystery is essential for any love interest, and black holes are some of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe. They also have very dramatic relationships with other objects around them!

Scientists have observed two types of black holes. Supermassive black holes are hundreds of thousands to billions of times our Sun’s mass. One of these monsters, called Sagittarius A* (the “*” is pronounced “star”), sits at the center of our own Milky Way. In a sense, our galaxy and its black hole are childhood sweethearts — they’ve been together for over 13 billion years! All the Milky-Way-size galaxies we’ve seen so far, including our neighbor Andromeda (pictured below), have supermassive black holes at their center!

These black-hole-galaxy power couples sometimes collide with other, similar pairs — kind of like a disastrous double date! We’ve never seen one of these events happen before, but scientists are starting to model them to get an idea of what the resulting fireworks might look like.

One of the most dramatic and fleeting relationships a supermassive black hole can have is with a star that strays too close. The black hole’s gravitational pull on the unfortunate star causes it to bulge on one side and break apart into a stream of gas, which is called a tidal disruption event.

The other type of black hole you often hear about is stellar-mass black holes, which are five to tens of times the Sun’s mass. Scientists think these are formed when a massive star goes supernova. If there are two massive stars in a binary, they can leave behind a pair of black holes that are tied together by their gravity. These new black holes spiral closer and closer until they crash together and create a larger black hole. The National Science Foundation’s LIGO project has detected many of these collisions through ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.

Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle

Here’s hoping your Valentine’s Day is more like a peacefully spiraling stellar binary and less like a tidal disruption! Learn how to have a safe relationship of your own with black holes here.

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Black Scientists and Engineers Past and Present Enable NASA Space Telescope

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission, set to launch by May 2027. We’re currently integrating parts of the spacecraft in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center clean room.

Once Roman launches, it will allow astronomers to observe the universe like never before. In celebration of Black History Month, let’s get to know some Black scientists and engineers, past and present, whose contributions will allow Roman to make history.

Dr. Beth Brown

The late Dr. Beth Brown worked at NASA Goddard as an astrophysicist. in 1998, Dr. Brown became the first Black American woman to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Michigan. While at Goddard, Dr. Brown used data from two NASA X-ray missions – ROSAT (the ROentgen SATellite) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory – to study elliptical galaxies that she believed contained supermassive black holes.  

With Roman’s wide field of view and fast survey speeds, astronomers will be able to expand the search for black holes that wander the galaxy without anything nearby to clue us into their presence.

Dr. Harvey Washington Banks 

In 1961, Dr. Harvey Washington Banks was the first Black American to graduate with a doctorate in astronomy. His research was on spectroscopy, the study of how light and matter interact, and his research helped advance our knowledge of the field. Roman will use spectroscopy to explore how dark energy is speeding up the universe's expansion.

NOTE - Sensitive technical details have been digitally obscured in this photograph. 

Sheri Thorn 

Aerospace engineer Sheri Thorn is ensuring Roman’s primary mirror will be protected from the Sun so we can capture the best images of deep space. Thorn works on the Deployable Aperture Cover, a large, soft shade known as a space blanket. It will be mounted to the top of the telescope in the stowed position and then deployed after launch. Thorn helped in the design phase and is now working on building the flight hardware before it goes to environmental testing and is integrated to the spacecraft.

Sanetra Bailey 

Roman will be orbiting a million miles away at the second Lagrange point, or L2. Staying updated on the telescope's status and health will be an integral part of keeping the mission running. Electronics engineer Sanetra Bailey is the person who is making sure that will happen. Bailey works on circuits that will act like the brains of the spacecraft, telling it how and where to move and relaying information about its status back down to Earth.  

 Learn more about Sanetra Bailey and her journey to NASA. 

Dr. Gregory Mosby 

Roman’s field of view will be at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's, even though the primary mirrors are the same size. What gives Roman the larger field of view are its 18 detectors. Dr. Gregory Mosby is one of the detector scientists on the Roman mission who helped select the flight detectors that will be our “eyes” to the universe.

Dr. Beth Brown, Dr. Harvey Washington Banks, Sheri Thorn, Sanetra Bailey, and Dr. Greg Mosby are just some of the many Black scientists and engineers in astrophysics who have and continue to pave the way for others in the field. The Roman Space Telescope team promises to continue to highlight those who came before us and those who are here now to truly appreciate the amazing science to come. 

To stay up to date on the mission, check out our website and follow Roman on X and Facebook.

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Sixty Years of Exploration, Innovation, and Discovery!

Exactly sixty years ago today, we opened our doors for the first time. And since then, we have opened up a universe of discovery and innovation. 

There are so many achievements to celebrate from the past six decades, there’s no way we can go through all of them. If you want to dive deeper into our history of exploration, check out NASA: 60 Years and Counting. 

In the meantime, take a moonwalk down memory lane with us while we remember a few of our most important accomplishments from the past sixty years!

In 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which effectively created our agency. We officially opened for business on October 1. 

To learn more about the start of our space program, watch our video: How It All Began. 

Alongside the U.S. Air Force, we implemented the X-15 hypersonic aircraft during the 1950s and 1960s to improve aircraft and spacecraft. 

The X-15 is capable of speeds exceeding Mach 6 (4,500 mph) at altitudes of 67 miles, reaching the very edge of space. 

Dubbed the “finest and most productive research aircraft ever seen,” the X-15 was officially retired on October 24, 1968. The information collected by the X-15 contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs. 

To learn more about how we have revolutionized aeronautics, watch our Leading Edge of Flight video. 

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon. The crew of Apollo 11 had the distinction of completing the first return of soil and rock samples from beyond Earth. 

Astronaut Gene Cernan, during Apollo 17, was the last person to have walked on the surface of the moon. (For now!)

The Lunar Roving Vehicle was a battery-powered rover that the astronauts used during the last three Apollo missions. 

To learn more about other types of technology that we have either invented or improved, watch our video: Trailblazing Technology.

Our long-term Earth-observing satellite program began on July 23, 1972 with the launch of Landsat 1, the first in a long series (Landsat 9 is expected to launch in 2020!) We work directly with the U.S. Geological Survey to use Landsat to monitor and manage resources such as food, water, and forests. 

Landsat data is one of many tools that help us observe in immense detail how our planet is changing. From algae blooms to melting glaciers to hurricane flooding, Landsat is there to help us understand our own planet better. 

Off the Earth, for the Earth.

To learn more about how we contribute to the Earth sciences, watch our video: Home, Sweet Home. 

Space Transportation System-1, or STS-1, was the first orbital spaceflight of our Space Shuttle program. 

The first orbiter, Columbia, launched on April 12, 1981. Over the next thirty years, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour would be added to the space shuttle fleet. 

Together, they flew 135 missions and carried 355 people into space using the first reusable spacecraft.

On January 16, 1978, we selected a class of 35 new astronauts--including the first women and African-American astronauts. 

And on June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to enter space on board Challenger for STS-7. 

To learn more about our astronauts, then and now, watch our Humans in Space video.

Everybody loves Hubble! The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on April 24, 1990, and has been blowing our minds ever since. 

Hubble has not only captured stunning views of our distant stars and galaxies, but has also been there for once-in-a-lifetime cosmic events. For example, on January 6, 2010, Hubble captured what appeared to be a head-on collision between two asteroids--something no one has ever seen before.

In this image, Hubble captures the Carina Nebula illuminating a three-light-year tall pillar of gas and dust. 

To learn more about how we have contributed to our understanding of the solar system and beyond, watch our video: What’s Out There?

Cooperation to build the International Space Station began in 1993 between the United States, Russia, Japan, and Canada. 

The dream was fully realized on November 2, 2000, when Expedition 1 crew members boarded the station, signifying humanity’s permanent presence in space!

Although the orbiting lab was only a couple of modules then, it has grown tremendously since then! 

To learn more about what’s happening on the orbiting outpost today, visit the Space Station page.

We have satellites in the sky, humans in orbit, and rovers on Mars. Very soon, we will be returning humankind to the Moon, and using it as a platform to travel to Mars and beyond.

And most importantly, we bring the universe to you. 

What are your favorite NASA moments? We were only able to share a few of ours here, but if you want to learn about more important NASA milestones, check out 60 Moments in NASA History or our video, 60 Years in 60 Seconds. 

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Mars in a Box: How a Metal Chamber on Earth Helps us do Experiments on Mars

Inside this metal box, it’s punishingly cold. The air is unbreathable. The pressure is so low, you’d inflate like a balloon. This metal chamber is essentially Mars in a box — or a near-perfect replica of the Martian environment. This box allows scientists to practice chemistry experiments on Earth before programming NASA’s Curiosity rover to carry them out on Mars. In some cases, scientists use this chamber to duplicate experiments from Mars to better understand the results. This is what’s happening today.

The ladder is set so an engineer can climb to the top of the chamber to drop in a pinch of lab-made Martian rock. A team of scientists is trying to duplicate one of Curiosity’s first experiments to settle some open questions about the origin of certain organic compounds the rover found in Gale Crater on Mars. Today’s sample will be dropped for chemical analysis into a tiny lab inside the chamber known as SAM, which stands for Sample Analysis at Mars. Another SAM lab is on Mars, inside the belly of Curiosity. The SAM lab analyzes rock and soil samples in search of organic matter, which on Earth is usually associated with life. Mars-in-a-box is kept at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

This is Goddard engineer Ariel Siguelnitzky. He is showing how far he has to drop the sample, from the top of the test chamber to the sample collection cup, a small capsule about half an inch (1 centimeter) tall (pictured right below). On Mars, there are no engineers like Siguelnitzky, so Curiosity’s arm drops soil and rock powder through small funnels on its deck. In the photo, Siguelnitzky’s right hand is pointing to a model of the tiny lab, which is about the size of a microwave. SAM will heat the soil to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) to extract the gases inside and reveal the chemical elements the soil is made of. It takes about 30 minutes for the oven to reach that super high temperature.

Each new sample is dropped into one of the white cups set into a carousel inside SAM. There are 74 tiny cups. Inside Curiosity’s SAM lab, the cups are made of quartz glass or metal. After a cup is filled, it’s lifted into an oven inside SAM for heating and analysis.

Amy McAdam, a NASA Goddard geochemist, hands Siguelnitzky the sample. Members of the SAM team made it in the lab using Earthly ingredients that duplicate Martian rock powder. The powder is wrapped in a nickel capsule (see photo below) to protect the sample cups so they can be reused many times. On Mars, there’s no nickel capsule around the sample, which means the sample cups there can’t be reused very much.

SAM needs as little as 45 milligrams of soil or rock powder to reveal the secrets locked in minerals and organic matter on the surface of Mars and in its atmosphere. That’s smaller than a baby aspirin!

Siguelnitzky has pressurized the chamber – raised the air pressure to match that of Earth – in order to open the hatch on top of the Mars box.

Now, he will carefully insert the sample into SAM through one of the two small openings below the hatch. They’re about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) across, the same as on Curiosity. Siguelnitzky will use a special tool to carefully insert the sample capsule about two feet down to the sample cup in the carousel.

Sample drop.

NASA Goddard scientist Samuel Teinturier is reviewing the chemical data, shown in the graphs, coming in from SAM inside Mars-in-a-box. He’s looking to see if the lab-made rock powder shows similar chemical signals to those seen during an earlier experiment on Mars.

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Moon Mountain Named After Melba Roy Mouton, NASA Mathematician

Award-winning NASA mathematician and computer programmer Melba Mouton is being honored with the naming of a mountain at the Moon’s South Pole. Mouton joined NASA in 1959, just a year after the space agency was established. She was the leader of a team that coded computer programs to calculate spacecraft trajectories and locations. Her contributions were instrumental to landing the first humans on the Moon.

She also led the group of "human computers," who tracked the Echo satellites. Roy and her team's computations helped produce the orbital element timetables by which millions could view the satellite from Earth as it passed overhead.

The towering lunar landmark now known as “Mons Mouton” stands at a height greater than 19,000 feet. The mountain was created over billions of years by lunar impacts. Huge craters lie around its base—some with cliff-like edges that descend into areas of permanent darkness. Mons Mouton is the future landing site of VIPER, our first robotic Moon rover. The rover will explore the Moon’s surface to help gain a better understanding of the origin of lunar water. Here are things to know:

Mons Mouton is a wide, relatively flat-topped mountain that stretches roughly 2,700 square miles

The mountain is the highest spot at the Moon’s South Pole and can be seen from Earth with a telescope

Our VIPER Moon rover will explore Mons Mouton over the course of its 100-day mission

VIPER will map potential resources which will help inform future landing sites under our Artemis program

The VIPER mission is managed by our Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The approximately 1,000-pound rover will be delivered to the Moon by a commercial vendor as part of our Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, delivering science and technology payloads to and near the Moon.

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