Category Archives: Space Exploration

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The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said he would pursue justice without fear or favor in his decision on whether to charge Donald Trump with crimes related to the Capitol attack and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as news reports indicate the justice departments investigation is heating up.

The department is conducting a criminal investigation into the events surrounding and preceding the January 6 insurrection, an effort that Garland speaking to NBCs Lester Holt yesterday called the most wide-ranging investigation in its history.

News reports suggested the inquiry is homing in on Trumps role. The Washington Post reported citing sources who spoke on condition of anonymity that investigators had specifically questioned witnesses about Trumps involvement in schemes to overturn the vote. The New York Times also reported that federal investigators had directly questioned witnesses about Trumps efforts, signaling an escalation.

Meanwhile, Trump returned to Washington yesterday with a plea for police to be given the respect that they deserve.

Can the House January 6 committee make a criminal referral? It can, but whether it should, or will, and whether it has presented sufficient evidence to do so, is a matter of extensive debate around the US and on the committee itself.

Yosemite national parks dramatic vistas were shrouded by a thick grey haze this week as smoke from the fiercely burning Oak fire hung over its granite peaks. Along the road winding toward the valley, skeletal trees told the story of the Washburn fire that tore through weeks earlier.

The blazes the two largest to ignite in California so far this year have besieged Yosemite during one of its busiest months, causing entrance closures and cancellations, and cloaking the landmark in hazardous air.

But many visitors, some of whom had traveled to see the sights from across the US and around the world, were determined not to let the conditions slow them down. On Monday afternoon, as the air quality index (AQI) pushed past 250, a level categorised as very unhealthy, cars zigzagged through the park carrying bikes and inner tubes, ready for the day.

Under a fiery orange glow, visitors could be seen picnicking, trekking, and floating in the river despite the strong scorched scent that filled the air as ash danced in the breeze.

Is the fire under control? Firefighters battling an explosive blaze near Yosemite significantly slowed the spread of the flames, but thousands of residents from mountain communities remained under evacuation

Portland is facing another grueling heatwave with temperatures in the normally temperate Pacific north-west city expected to climb as high as 102F on Tuesday.

The Oregon city is one of the least air-conditioned in the US and officials have declared an emergency in response to the severe heat, opening cooling centers in public buildings, including emergency overnight shelters, and installing misting stations in parks.

Much of the region is facing extreme heat this week, with parts of Oregon and Washington state under excessive heat warnings. In Seattle, temperatures set a new all-time high for a 26 July day of 94F (34.4C), breaking the previous record of 92F (33.3C) from 2018, according to the National Weather Service.

Elsewhere in Washington state, record temperatures were also registered in Bellingham and in the capital, Olympia, which experienced 90F (32.2C) and 97F (36.1C) respectively.

Is there evidence that the heatwaves are caused by climate change? A detailed scientific analysis found that last summers heatwave, which killed about 900 people in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, would have been nearly impossible without human-caused climate change.

Property sales in China could fall by one-third this year, spelling more trouble for the countrys housing sector as people lose faith in the market and pressure increases on struggling developers to complete presold apartments. Experts at the rating agency S&P have concluded that the fall in sales will be twice as bad as they had originally forecast for this year.

The EU has agreed a plan to ration gas this winter in an attempt to avoid an energy crisis generated by Russian cuts to supply. All except Hungary backed a voluntary 15% reduction in gas usage over the winter, a target that could become mandatory if the Kremlin orders a complete shutdown of gas to Europe.

The jacket worn by Buzz Aldrin on his first mission to the moon has become the most valuable American space artefact ever sold at auction, fetching $2.77m (2.3m). It was sold by Sothebys yesterday as part of the most valuable single sale of space exploration items ever staged, which achieved a total of $8.2m.

There are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in New York City, which continues to be a hotspot for the virus, health officials have said. New York reached 1,040 cases as of Monday, accounting for about a quarter of all confirmed cases in the US. The US leads the world in confirmed cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). There were 3,846 confirmed cases in the US and 18,095 globally, the CDC said.

Mena Suvaris shocking memoir tells how shame and denial prevented her from telling anyone she was raped when she was 12, which led to another abusive relationship with an older man and years of drug addiction. She tells Emine Saner that modelling and acting gave her a way to express her feelings, but also taught her that the only thing that mattered was the way she looked, and that if she looked sexy, that was even better. At her first modelling shoot, she says, everyone was raving about how I looked 18. But I was 12. Her voice rises in anger.

More human remains have been found as the shoreline of Lake Mead recedes in the face of a drought gripping the western United States. The National Park Service said the unidentified remains were spotted at Swim Beach in the Lake Mead national recreation area late on Monday afternoon. As the lakes surface area has shrunk, various grim discoveries have been made at the popular recreation spot formed by the building of the Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.

A US$6,250 artwork consisting of a single slice of pickle plucked from a McDonalds cheeseburger and flung on to the ceiling of an Auckland art gallery is a deliberately provocative gesture designed to question what has value, the artists gallery says. The work, titled Pickle, belongs to the Sydney-based Australian artist Matthew Griffin. Some fans are relishing in the work, calling it genius and brilliant; others have called it moronic.

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First Thing: DoJ investigators dig into Trumps role in January 6 - The Guardian US

A new lunar rover is under development by Lockheed Martin and Goodyear as NASA gears up for a return to the moon.

Unlike the rover first used during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, built to last only a few days and for short trips, the new lunar vehicle is being built for extended use. And this time, its not just for NASA.

Were developing this new generation of lunar mobility vehicle to be available to NASA and for commercial companies and even other space agencies to support science and human exploration, said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lunar Exploration at Lockheed Martin. This approach exemplifies NASAs desire for industry to take the lead with commercial efforts that enable the agency to be one of many customers.

Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the moons surface on this day in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Goodyear, which was also involved in NASAs Apollo missions, will employ the airless tire technology it uses here for autonomous shuttles and other passenger vehicles. Lockheed Martin, based in Fort Worth, Texas, has worked with NASA for more than 50 years, including NASAs Orion exploration-class spaceship for Artemis and numerous Mars planetary spacecraft.

The lunar vehicles will need to withstand extreme conditions on the moons surface, where temperatures drop to -250 degrees Fahrenheit (-156.67 degrees Celsius) at night and rise to over 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121.11 degrees Celsius) during the day.

Aside from Goodyear, based in Akron, Ohio, and Lockheed Martin, MDA of Canada will provide its commercial robotic arm technology for the vehicles.

The companies anticipate having their first vehicle on the moons surface at the same time as NASAs mission, planned for 2025.

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New lunar rover in the works as NASA moon mission advances - The Associated Press - en Espaol

The Webb Space Telescopes image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 includes thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects observed in infrared to date. The light in this image is 4.6 billion years old. Credit NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.

By Anne W. Semmes

It is a momentous moment with the extraordinary success of the James Webb Space Telescope bringing us images from so deep in the universe, it appears capable of looking back nearly to the beginning of time! With its mirrors, if they stay safe from cosmic detritus, it will surely stretch our understanding of the cosmos, with images of near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.

Watching the making of this telescope on Nova, I rejoiced along with the scientists seeing their joyful exuberance as they saw the success of their telescope unfold a million miles away, with some of those first images so colorful and strange they were likening them to the art of Salvador Dali!

But that was last week and now the Webb Space Telescope has fallen off the radar. In for a haircut over the weekend I asked the hairdresser what she thought of those images. What telescope, she asked. Its my guess that its only humans walking on the moon or Mars that will get that hairdressers attention.

And this year marks 53 years as of this July 20 that the first two men walked on the moon, in 1969. In the three years following 10 other men did so. And in 2025 more humans may well walk on the moon as part of NASAs $93 billion Artemis project. Well named as Artemis in Greek was Apollos sister, and this time women will be a part of the crew.

Thanks to the Retired Mens Association speaker series I was introduced to a marvelous book, The Mission of a Lifetime Lessons from the Men Who Went to The Moon, that explores the reflections from 50-years of lunar hindsight from some of those 12 moon walkers, and 12 others who have seen Earth from the moon from their orbiting spaceship. From that mystical perch, writes author Basil Hero, their minds were rebooted with an altered view of happiness, and the value of time, and above all, a newfound esteem for our home planet.

And now a favorite quote by British scientist Fred Hoyle, dated 1948: Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes plain a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

Such a photograph is Earthrise, taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 as crew member of Apollo 8, While circling the moon 10 times he took the iconic Earthrise photograph that he says changed his life.

But its the reflection of astronaut Jim Lovell, also orbiting on that Apollo 8 mission, that is the most mind-blowing for me, thank you author Hero. Seeing that earthrise, Lovell had concluded, We dont go to heaven when we die, we go to heaven when were born.Its a powerful formulation, and I dont know anyone who has articulated Lovells sentiment in those words, responded Yale Divinity School Dean and Professor of New Testament Greg Sterling. There was a sense he had of already being in heaven in his life in a way that other human beings were not

It was another quote that led me to some fascinating reflections from a group of scholars gathered soon after that first moon walk in the book, Men in Space The Impact on Science, Technology and International Cooperation. The quote is by the late physicist Freeman Dyson I was privileged to know. He writes, I foresee a time, a few centuries from now, when the bulk of heavy industry is space-borne, with the majority of mining operations perhaps transferred to the moon, and the earth preserved for the enjoyment of its inhabitants as a green and pleasant land.

Dyson was an environmentalist afeared of the three great forces of technology, the forces of weaponry, population growth, and pollution, We are in danger of ruining all that is beautiful on this planet through our accumulations of poisonous mess. He adds For 24 years the nuclear physicists have been saying One world, or noneThe Earth has grown too small for bickering tribes and city-states to exist on it.

Dyson foresaw that, The emigration into distant parts of the solar system of a substantial number of people would make our species as a whole invulnerable. But he adds, I do not think planets will play the major role in mans future. For one thing, they are mostly uninhabitable. For another thing, even if they are habitable, they will not increase our living-space very much. If we succeed in colonizing Mars, Mars will soon resemble the Earth, complete with parking lots, income tax forms, and all the rest of it.

Certainly not an acceptable view to Elon Musk who is featured in Basil Heros book as drawn to Mars, with a long-held dream to air-drop a miniature experimental greenhouse containing food and crops to see how it would adapt to the Martian environment. To get there, Musk developed the Space-X rocket. Whats been driving Musk is that humanitys time on Earth was running out.

The late physicist Stephen Hawking is revealed as a kindred spirit who believed, With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics, and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious.

Remarkably, I found another man I knew in that book, Man in Space Sidney Hyman. Sidney lived across the street from my young family in our year in Washington, DC. Hes listed in the book as a Fellow of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, but he was author, professor, and sometime presidential speechwriter for JFK and knew well Kennedys role in launching the space race to put a man on the moon.

In the book Sidney writes of Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean, having discovered five islands in 1492, not knowing of that continental land mass that would become America. Could any man then alive, he writes, foresee how the discovery of the New World would profoundly change virtually all existing relationships in Europe that virtually nothing would ever be the same again That the consequences of that Columbian discovery included the poetic fact that it was the American children of the New Worldwho would first succeed in putting a man on the moon.

Sidney believed it was an open question whether the Earths population pressures can be eased by rocket immigrations on celestial Mayflowers which will colonize the moon, Mars, Venus, or points beyondIt is thus natural for imaginative and deeply concerned men to invoke other planets of the solar system as the New World was invoked to redress population problems of the Old World.

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On my watch: Looking forward and backward on how we value space exploration - Greenwich Sentinel

The popularity of every Star Wars and Star Trek spin-off imaginable on TV streaming services shows how much Americans remain intrigued by the possibility to boldly go where no man has gone before. But 53 years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, our excitement waxes and wanes with the ups and downs of real-world space exploration orchestrated by NASA. Consider a spate of recent news stories, which have alternately grabbed brief snatches of our attention or been mostly greeted by yawns.

Earlier this month, NASA released the first batch of images from the James Webb Space Telescope photographs that widely impressed viewers (although there were more than a few who compared the latest views of these celestial bodies to upholstery swaths). The price tag for those photos? Close to $11 billion and counting, and Americans are split over whether it was money well spent. In a recent poll, 60% of respondents said the telescope was a good investment, while about 40% were either unsure or thought it wasnt worth it.

The possibility that aliens might have dumped junk on the moon raised eyebrows last month when NASA released photographs of an unusual double crater left behind by something that had smashed into the far side of the moon in March. The ho-hums came when it was later explained that the craters most likely were created by part of a Chinese rocket launched in 2014. It eventually fell from space and crashed on the moon instead of burning up in the Earths atmosphere as planned. Of course, China denies this, but does China ever admit a mistake?

Barely making the news was the June 28 launch of a spacecraft called CAPSTONE that was built by several NASA contractors and is operated by a private company, Advanced Space. After a four-month journey, CAPSTONE will orbit the moon for six months gathering information useful to future moon missions. The $30 million project reminds us that even with the private sector doing more and more of what NASA used to do on its own, space exploration still isnt cheap.

READ MORE: 52 years after the moon landing, Republicans reject science and America is unraveling | Will Bunch

The Trump administration commanded NASA to return to the moon by 2024, but a number of funding and development delays have made that goal fluid. SpaceX, owned by Tesla founder Elon Musk, won the $2.9 billion contract to develop the Artemis lunar landing system that NASA hopes will put humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. The space agency has defended Artemis cost, saying the lunar landers it built for the Apollo program would cost $23 billion each in todays dollars.

NASA contractors are also building separate units of a lunar space station that its calling Gateway. It will have docking ports for visiting spacecraft and areas for crews to live and work. The space agency is paying Northrop Grumman $935 million to build Gateways living area and Maxar $375 million to build its propulsion unit. However, some estimates say almost $4 billion may be spent on Gateway before the project is finished.

Taxpayers footing the bill should continue asking if manned space exploration is still too expensive.

Whether that kind of money stays with NASA or is beamed to Musks SpaceX or Jeff Bezos Blue Origin, taxpayers footing the bill should continue asking if manned space exploration is still too expensive. NASA has many missions in which the only human involvement is by long distance from Earth. Should it continue paying steep prices to send humans when expendable machines could travel for much less? In most cases, automated probes and other calibrated machines might do the job.

The moon has not been a manned space flight destination for 50 years because the expense of a return didnt seem worth it. Even now, renewed interest in the moon is based on using it as a base to send humans to Mars. The red planet has become the bauble dangled before Congress each year to entice NASAs budget approvals. Stretching its spending across more years doesnt mean space exploration would end. It might take more time, but as Einstein explained, time is relative.

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Counting the cost of Americas fickle fascination with space travel | Editorial - The Philadelphia Inquirer

BOISE, Idaho Clusters of galaxies, the birth and death of stars and new data on the make-up of celestial bodies. The NASA James Webb Space Telescope started sending back amazing images of deep space earlier this month. They are the most detailed look ever at the origins of the universe.

The NASA team stresses this is just the beginning of a new era in astrophysics and space exploration.

Boise State University Associate Professor of Physics Brian Jackson has been watching these developments closely. His research interests include extrasolar planets, Mars and planetary geoscience. On this edition of Viewpoint he explained where the telescope is in space.

"JWST orbits the sun about a million miles from the Earth," Professor Jackson said. "Hubble Telescope actually orbits the Earth. So it's always circling around the Earth. But because JWST is an infrared telescope it needs to be far away from sources of heat, like the Earth. So it's out on its own orbit in space around the sun about a million miles from Earth."

Professor Jackson also explains what the telescope's images show in deep space and discusses its importance for science, research and for all of us here on Earth.

Viewpoint airs Sunday mornings at 9 o'clock on KTVB.

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Viewpoint: The importance of the James Webb Space Telescope - KTVB.com

July 20, 2022

TRANSCRIPT

(music)

Narrator: On a cold and wind-swept December day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew a powered, controlled aircraft for 12 seconds the first such flight in the history of the world.

sound effect: aircraft flight

Narrator: More than a hundred years later, in April 2021, another world saw its first powered, controlled aircraft flight when NASAs Ingenuity helicopter lifted up into the skies of Mars.

sound effect: helicopter rise

Narrator: Teddy Tzanetos, team lead for the Ingenuity mission, says the trickier nature of helicopters made the first flight on Mars even more perilous.

Teddy Tzanetos: Helicopters, in general, you're beating the air into submission from microsecond to microsecond. You have these tiny mechanical parts spinning at 2,500 revolutions per minute. Just take a moment and think about that. It's incredibly fast, which means that when things go wrong, they go wrong catastrophically.

sound effect: helicopter

[1:04] sound effect: whoosh

Teddy Tzanetos: If there's some imbalance in your rotor system, because something broke or fell off, your entire rotor system will explode. That's just true of all helicopters, right? All helicopters are precisely and carefully balanced pieces of art. And the fact that helicopters work to begin with is a testament to just engineering in general, and the beauty behind it.

Narrator: The Ingenuity helicopter was a technology demonstration meant to test whether it was possible to fly a rotorcraft on Mars. Ingenuity hitched a ride with NASAs Mars 2020 mission, which sent the Perseverance rover to collect rock samples and look for evidence of ancient life. Ingenuity was strapped to the belly of Perseverance during the journey to Mars, and so had to be small enough to fit easily beneath the SUV-sized rover.

[1:54] Teddy Tzanetos: In terms of the dimensions, we have two counter-rotating coaxial rotor blades. The blades themselves are 1.2 meters from tip to tip. The electronics box, which is that silvery-colored box underneath the rotor blade system, that's where our computers are, that's where our battery resides. That's where all of our critical electronic components exist on Ingenuity. It's about the size of a tissue box. The legs come off from that central structure, and then, of course, our solar panel on top. It's a very compact design. On the surface, when we were fully deployed on the ground, Perseverance was able to clearly drive over Ingenuity.

Narrator: A fixed-wing aircraft, like the Wright Brothers Flyer and most planes on Earth today, wasnt a practical design for the first flight on Mars.

Teddy Tzanetos: With most aircraft, you need a runway. But unless Perseverance was going to spend a couple of weeks paving a pebble-free runway for us, that was going to be a challenge.

Fixed-wing can be a lot more efficient, right? You can glide. You don't have to spend as much energy going from point A to point B. And if you have an anomaly in an aircraft and your motor kicks out, you could glide to safety. But you can't also just stop and hover. On the helicopter side, though, you spend a lot more energy just to hover, but now you can hover. And you can do precision landing precisely where you'd like to land.

[3:14] Narrator: Ingenuity was built to be as lightweight as possible, and yet the team added one extra item, under the helicopters solar panel, to provide an inspirational lift to their mission: a postage-stamp-sized bit of muslin fabric that had once covered a wing of the Wright Brothers 1903 aircraft. Members of the Wright family and Carillon Historical Park, home to the Wright Brothers National Museum in Dayton Ohio, provided the fabric.

This isnt the first time Wright Brothers fabric has flown into space. Neil Armstrong brought some of the fabric, as well as a small piece of wood from the propeller, to the Moon in 1969. In 1998, nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn carried a swatch of the fabric when he flew on Space Shuttle Discovery. Heres Bob Balaram, chief engineer of the Ingenuity mission.

[4:11] Bob Balaram: I was looking for an artifact to put on the helicopter, and we had considered perhaps putting an American penny there's one where it has the Wright Brothers Flyer on one side. But then once we realized we could actually get to the real Wright Brothers fabric, we jumped on it.

So, it presented its own challenges. We had to sterilize it just right, and we had to make sure that it wouldn't contaminate the spacecraft. My contamination control and planetary protection engineers went to, I think, JoAnn Fabrics and got some samples so that they could try their heat-sterilization process on the samples first, before actually trying it on the piece of the real Wright Brothers fabric.

And this is the perfect thing to take, not only for me, but for the team as a whole. There's that connection to the past which is always inspiring.

[5:00] (intro music)

Narrator: Welcome to On a Mission, a podcast of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Im Leslie Mullen, and in this fourth season of the podcast, were following in the tracks of rovers on Mars. This is episode seven: Flying with Ingenuity: the Mars Helicopter.

(music)

[5:57] Narrator: The Ingenuity helicopter is of course not a traditional rover: a remotely-controlled wheeled vehicle that roves on the ground. Ingenuity represents a new generation of robotic explorers, but, in a way, its repeating Mars rover history. Sojourner, the first Mars rover in 1997, was a technology demonstration added to the Pathfinder lander mission to test whether we could drive a vehicle on Mars from millions of miles away.

Tech demos are always risky, with high odds for failure, so not everyone at NASA was on board with either Ingenuity or Sojourner. Bob Balaram didnt work directly on Sojourner like he did for Ingenuity, but as a member of JPLs robotics group, he helped develop the necessary technology to make the first Mars rover possible.

Bob Balaram: In terms of being a first-of-a-kind system that had skeptics and needed to prove itself, and there wasn't quite the textbook as to how to do it, yeah, a lot of similarities. For its time, it had its challenges and naysayers. We had ours.

[7:07] We are in some ways a tougher problem. A helicopter is inherently an unstable vehicle so that it needs everything to work to keep it in the air. Sojourner had the advantage that if something had failed, it's at least not going to topple out of the sky and smash into pieces. So you could wait and call home if there was an issue.

Narrator: The success of the microwave-oven-sized Sojourner rover got people thinking about more audacious Mars exploration vehicles, including ones that could lift up into the thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere.

Bob Balaram: The idea of a Mars helicopter was quite prevalent in certain communities back in the 1990s. The American Helicopter Society ran a student competition to say, Take something like Pathfinder, but instead of carrying Sojourner, imagine that if you could carry a helicopter in the same technology, and get it to Mars, what would be your design?

[8:03] So around the same time was a talk being presented by Stanford professor Ilan Kroo, on some of the challenges of flying in a low-density atmosphere. And I attended his talk, and then got to thinking that flying a small thing on Earth which is what he was trying to do, tiny little micro-helicopters is the same as flying something larger on Mars, because that's the way the physics scales with the thinner atmosphere you have on Mars.

So Ilan and I wrote a proposal, and a small company in Simi Valley, called AeroVironment, was going to build us a small helicopter. Remember back in the 1990s, you didn't have all these drones that you could just buy, even to just play around with. And so, we were the three legs of that initial research proposal, but it didn't go anywhere.

We got actually favorable reviews from the review people, and we thought we would have had one year of funding. But it was also the year where NASAs budget was under a lot of pressure. You know, that's always the background story at NASA. So they barely funded anything that year in this particular area. So my little proposal sat on a shelf for about 14 or 15 years.

[9:15] Narrator: In his more than 37 years of working at JPL, Bob is used to working on projects that are so far ahead of their time, they end up taking a lot of space on a shelf.

Bob Balaram: This is the robotics section at JPL where we basically do mobility in all kinds of environments, whether it's rovers or crawlers or walking machines or some flying machines, too. We're always looking to the future, to see what kinds of new mobility technology can we bring?

So along the way, I've worked on things like Mars balloons and Venus balloons. There was even a short-lived NASA idea to go and grab an asteroid and bring it back. Again, there is a (laughs) final report gathering dust somewhere on that one. The ratio of super cool missions to feasible missions is probably 10 to 1. But of those feasible ones, the ones that actually make it all the way to the end is probably like 100 to 1. We do let a thousand flowers bloom, but only one of them gets to the end point.

[10:17] Narrator: The seed of the Mars helicopter idea germinated while NASA was developing the Mars 2020 mission. The team designing the helicopter knew they couldnt be a burden on the planned rover, but getting Perseverance to adopt Ingenuity wasnt easy.

Bob Balaram: There were a lot of naysayers, like, What do you mean, Mars helicopter? That doesn't make sense. You won't be able to fly. The airs too thin. It took a lot of courageous people to back us up. There was resistance correctly so, I think from the mission that had been asked to accommodate us. That was not something that they wanted to do, so it took some persuasion. And it had to pass all its tests to the satisfaction of the Perseverance folks. So every step of the way, we could have been abandoned.

[11:05] In fact, the way the rover did its belly pan, which is where we are located, there is a version of the belly pan somewhere that doesn't have Ingenuity on it. In other words, it doesn't have all the hooks and things for Ingenuity. Let's say the flight unit had failed a structural test before launch. They would have probably put this other alternative little belly pan onto the rover and flown without us.

So it was every step of the way. First-of-a-kind system you don't know whats going to work, whats not going to work. How much time do you spend refining a design, or is it good enough? How do you make that judgment call? So the metaphor that this is a Wright Brothers moment is not just in the sense that it's the first flight on another planet which is pretty cool by itself but the fact that you're going into the unknown.

Our first scale vehicle was unstable, and it took a lot of engineering and analysis of the physics of flying in thin atmospheres for us to understand that instability and work around it. Even our NASA helicopter experts were surprised by that. So they had to also go back to the textbooks, so to speak, to understand the fundamental physics, just to make sure we even have stability in the air.

[12:12] So, it's just across the board exploring a completely new terrain. Nothing was a given. Literally there was a crisis and I use the word without too much hyperbole there was a crisis on the project every week for the seven years that it took to get this going. But I got used to that, and kind of thrive on it, actually, because any time there's a problem, there's something fun to solve, right? That's what made it exciting.

(music)

Narrator: One of the biggest pressures of the mission was the lack of air pressure on Mars. Air pressure is the collective force of air molecules pushing against a planet, drawn there by gravity. On Earth, our thicker atmosphere and stronger gravity results in an average surface air pressure of over 1,000 millibars. The 6 millibars of surface air pressure on Mars is a mere whisp in comparison.

[13:07] For a helicopter to fly, it needs enough air for the fast-spinning blades to push against, and because atmospheres get less dense the farther you rise from the surface, helicopters on Earth are limited in how high they can fly. So how could a helicopter ever fly on Mars?

Bob Balaram: Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere it's equivalent to flying at 100,000 feet here on Earth. If you had a block of air let's say you spread your arms out wide and made a big cube here on the surface of the Earth it would be about 2 pounds or so. That same cube of Martian air would only weigh an ounce. Which means that if you want to fly, you have to move that air, which means your blades have to be special for that thin air. And theyve got to move quite fast in order to push enough air downwards so that you get the lift upwards.

[14:00] Then, even if you build the system that would produce lift, it has to produce more lift than its weight. And not just the weight of the rotor, but everything else you need to carry with it, right? You're carrying batteries and computers and solar panels and radios and wiring and all those things that have nothing to do with flying, but you've got to carry that with you. So basically 4 pounds was pretty much the upper limit. As I've joked, it's very easy to build a Mars helicopter of the same size as Ingenuity and have it weigh 5 pounds, and it would sit on the surface of Mars and spin its blades, but it wouldn't go anywhere.

And so, I was managing the mass on the design down to the gram and sub-gram level. So if my computer guy said, Hey, I really want 6 grams for this processor, and there was another processor that was only 4 grams, he and I would have a long discussion before I relinquished 2 grams to him to let him implement a slightly larger processor.

Narrator: Such a lightweight aircraft could be at the mercy of high winds. Because of the thin atmosphere, the winds on Mars arent as powerful as winds on Earth, but Ingenuity still needed to be tested to see how it would perform in even the gentlest of Mars breezes.

[15:16] Bob Balaram: When it came time to test how our helicopter interacts with the winds, guess what? There is no wind tunnel that simultaneously does the thin air density of Mars and the low velocities that we were testing. We're not testing winds that are tens of miles per hour. We are testing winds that are a few miles per hour, right? There is no facility in the country that can do that.

And so, yours truly and his team (laughs) built a wind tunnel that we installed in our JPL 25-foot chamber. And it used about 900 CPU fans from your desktop computers to arrange in a square array to basically be a wind tunnel that we could blow air sideways on the helicopter, as it spun its blades up.

[16:02] Narrator: JPLs 25-foot Space Simulator is a stainless-steel cylinder 25 feet wide and 85 feet high. Normally, spacecraft placed in this chamber are subjected to extreme cold, airless vacuum, and simulated solar radiation to make sure they can survive a trip in outer space. The Ingenuity team turned the chamber into a one-of-a-kind Mars testbed.

Bob Balaram: That facility has the ability to pump down this big chamber to vacuum. In our case, we said, Please fill it back with carbon dioxide to the same density that's there on Mars. So we got the atmosphere right, and we did most of the testing at room temperature because that was the cheap and easy thing to do. But we did do a few critical tests where we cooled down that air in the cylinder to Mars temperatures, and so we made sure that nothing funny was happening as the temperatures dropped.

[16:58] Now, of course, the gravity is almost 2.5 times more gravity here on Earth than it is on Mars. So what we did is we basically built an offload device. Think of it as a high-tech fishing line that we attach to the top of the helicopter, and it pulls with an exact constant force equal to the weight difference that we want, so that we get the Mars versus Earth gravity. And it does that regardless of whether the helicopters flying up or down. And so, that allowed us to basically understand the behavior without the extra gravity that we get here on Earth, and making Ingenuity think that it was flying on Mars.

We used various fishing line types of cord material and all kinds of very interesting knots to hold that safely. I think we had three reviews on knots, from climbing experts to top mechanical engineers here on Lab and knot experts, to make sure that there were other safety knots and back-up knots. Literally we were hanging the entire project by a thread, right?

[17:57] Ingenuity test: Spin up. (sound of helicopter flying) Steady.

Bob Balaram: So we did many, many, many months of testing in the 25-foot chamber. And once you bump down the chamber and you put on the carbon dioxide, it's not like you can say, Oh, okay, let's break for the weekend. No, you're going to test right through the weekend. So there was an entire year where every weekend there was testing nonstop. And the testing would be there late.

And my wife, who's a super awesome baker, she'd bake all these wonderful foods. Any time we were testing, she'd bake for the entire test team. And that's what sustained many of us. So she got an official title on this project called CMO, Chief Morale Officer, working to keep the test team happy.

Narrator: After the well-nourished team developed a helicopter that could fly on a simulated Mars, the aircraft had to go through other tests to make sure it could survive the journey to an alien planet.

[19:06] Bob Balaram: It's not only an aircraft, but it's also a spacecraft. You normally don't think of spacecraft design and aircraft design in the same breath. We had to. So we had to survive launch, which has vibrational G-forces where things get really rattled by the very loud noise that the rockets make, and it just shakes the whole structure up.

(sound effect: NASA rocket launch rumble)

Bob Balaram: And so, theres structural requirements. You have to be strong in a certain way to withstand entry, descent and landing forces. You have to survive the radiation of space and continue to operate. We had to survive the vacuum of space, and not just survive, but we had to be a good passenger.

In the vacuum of space, gas likes to travel and condense. A lot of materials like adhesives and glues or plastics, you know, if you leave something on your car on a hot day, and sometimes youll notice an oily film that may have coated the glass that's called outgassing, and its just like little organics in your system that condense on the coldest thing. Anything sent to space cannot have any of those kinds of things, because you don't want your goo to go and land on this camera lens of this wonderful science instrument that is three feet away.

[20:19] Since we were hitching a ride, we had to be extraordinarily safe to the rest of the mission. It's an astrobiology mission looking for signs of past life. We had to be super-duper clean so that we didn't carry, you know, spores and stuff. So we had to be treated like every other instrument that's on the spacecraft.

Narrator: The space capsule carrying the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter was ready to leave Earth on July 30, 2020. During the launch coverage, a 4.2 magnitude earthquake hit Southern California.

Announcer Raquel Villanueva: Ingenuitys project manager MiMi Aung joins us now to talk about the set of milestones Ingenuity needs to hit in order to take flight on Mars.[21:03] Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung: Hi by the way, we just had an earthquake in this room! But anyway, with that, Mars helicopter demo is motivated.

Narrator: Since the mission was launching from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the quake only rattled those speaking from JPL. After enduring the tremors of a rocket launch and a seven-months-long spaceflight, the mission landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

Announcer Raquel Villanueva: Weve just heard the news that Perseverance is alive on the surface of Mars, congratulations to the mission (applause)

Narrator: Now that Perseverance had arrived safely, the Ingenuity team had their own, second Mars landing to worry about. Ingenuity was still tucked under the rovers belly like a baby kangaroo, and needed to hop out. Heres Teddy Tzanetos again.

Teddy Tzanetos: Right after entry, descent and landing, and Perseverances arrival to the surface, the game was on. There were a handful of weeks where the rover was first trying to go through some systems checks. And on the helicopter side, we were confirming that all systems were green across the board, and looking for our first good airfield to fly in.

[22:15] Thankfully, where Perseverance landed in Jezero crater, there were a lot of good locations right nearby where the rover would drop off the helicopter and we would begin our mission. What we were looking for was effectively a parking lot on Mars. We wanted a nice flat surface that the rover could drive to, and would be free of rock hazards. If one of our feet gets stuck on a rock, we'd be landing on a tilt. Or if we landed directly over a rock, a rock could actually puncture our thermal shroud and cause us to have an early end to our mission.

Narrator: Once Ingenuitys landing spot in Jezero Crater was selected, Perseverance drove over to the center of the area, nicknamed Wright Brothers Field. Ingenuity now was ready to be born.

Teddy Tzanetos: She's our little baby and she's very tough, but we needed to make sure we took good care of her all the way through delivery to Mars. As soon as Ingenuity is finally separated from Perseverance, there's no way to go back. That umbilical is a one-time separation.

[23:13] We were located under the belly of Perseverance. We had a debris shield, so the first step was dropping the debris shield. Then the rover drove up a little bit. Second step was starting our leg releases, and our launch-lock releases. What those mean are different mechanical restraints that were holding the helicopter in a folded config. And we started our multi-step process to, one by one, unfold the legs, rotate the helicopter to its vertical orientation. During our deployments leading up to the final drop, we were using Perseverances camera there's a camera on its arm that it could look underneath the belly. And that helped us determine, yes, deployments were going well.

[23:57] That final separation, there's effectively just a single bolt holding Ingenuity to Perseverances belly. When that bolt snaps, gravity does the rest and Ingenuity falls a handful of inches to the surface. A single circuit, a single wire on the umbilical interface between Perseverance and Ingenuity, went from being a closed circuit to an open circuit. That gave us the indication on the engineering side that, yup, Ingenuity has successfully separated from Perseverance. And from that moment on, Ingenuity is on her own.

And Ingenuity is solar powered. Unlike Perseverance, which has a nuclear-powered energy source, Ingenuity needs photons on its panel. It was critical that soon after Perseverance dropped Ingenuity, Perseverance needed to drive to expose Ingenuitys solar panel to the Sun.

As soon as Ingenuity was deployed, we're on a clock. The timing is dictated by, A: how much energy you have inside of Ingenuitys battery, and how much do you need to recharge? But, B: the time windows when you can receive and send commands from Earth to the rover. You can't do that 24 hours a day. So those comm windows when we could inspect the state of the vehicle, identify if Ingenuity successfully dropped, and then send commands to override if needed, only provided us really about 15 minutes in which to react.

[25:17] So it was a very stressful couple of days leading up to that final deployment, and an even more stressful, it was called the drop-and-drive activity. Thankfully, everything went smoothly, and we were ready to begin our 30-day tech demo mission.

Narrator: After Ingenuity was safely delivered on the surface of Mars, and the Perseverance rover had rolled a short distance away, leaving the helicopter exposed to the open sky, there was a pregnant pause. Ingenuity was not yet awake. The rover silently faced the helicopter, waiting in the deep quiet of Mars to see what would happen next.

Teddy Tzanetos: It could have woken up immediately after it was dropped, but we built in a delay to allow for a whole series of contingencies that could have occurred. As with all space missions, you want to avoid moving too quickly, because that's when mistakes are made. So we had a good margin window 2 hours and 15 minutes after the drop and then Ingenuity woke up. Perseverance was there waiting to communicate, and we established a link, and we were off to the races at that point.

[26:19] Narration: Take note this 2 hour and 15-minute delay between Ingenuity separating from and then talking to the rover will have surprising consequences later in the mission.

After Ingenuity left the warm embrace of Perseverance, and was going through system checks to make sure everything was working well, Bob was fretting about what came next.

Bob Balaram: The most nervous time I had was when we were dropped off onto the ground from Perseverance. It was not obvious that we would survive the night.

(music)

Bob Balaram: When we were on the way to Mars, we had a separate heater that was energized by the rover, which, with its radioactive RTG source, effectively has power to spare, especially for a small little helicopter. But once we were on our own, it was our battery powering our helicopter. And if the battery was drained so much overnight that by morning, if it wasn't enough juice to keep the computer alive, then we would be in big trouble.

[27:24] Were a very small object, and it's always difficult for something small to stay warm. You know, you have a small cup of coffee compared to a big barrel of something, it just cools down faster, right? So the helicopter uses almost three quarters of its energy just staying warm through the night. Its collecting all this energy from the solar panels, harvesting it all day, sticking it into the battery, and then it spends most of that energy depleting the battery to run a bunch of heaters. We couldn't let the batteries freeze out. We couldn't let the electronics get so cold that some little soldered joint somewhere would pop free.

Then on top of that, we really didn't know what kind of winds to expect on Mars that night. And it's the nighttime cold winds that would have really sapped our system.

[28:05] sound effect: wind

Bob Balaram: We had an instrument on the rover called MEDA, which was a weather meteorology station. But it was only just beginning to get commissioned. So we didn't know whether the winds would be twice as much or three times as much. Now, it turned out that the winds are not that bad, and especially the closer you get to the ground, it's even less of an issue. But we didn't know that. So that to me was the most harrowing time.

Narrator: Ingenuity endured its first freezing Martian night on its own, and still had enough power remaining by dawn to run its computer. Now Ingenuity needed to bask in the sun until its solar panels recharged the battery.

[28:56] Bob Balaram: There was indeed a scenario where we could have potentially survived on Mars, but never had enough energy during the course of the day to charge up our battery to the point where we could fly. And you have to fly with a battery that's fairly topped up, because if you don't, the moment the rotors kick in and start drawing high power, the battery voltage will droop and all your electronics will brown out. And you have to be able to have enough energy left to have enough flight time to climb up and do something useful. And so just surviving itself is not enough.

Mission Control 1: This is downlink, confirming battery data has been received.Mission Control 2: Rotor motors appear healthy. Swash plate servos appear healthy, overall actuators appear healthy

Teddy Tzanetos: The mission was really about that first flight. We wanted to prove that humanity could build something that could, in fact, fly on Mars. And that first flight where we took off, hovered, we rotated, came back down, and landed 39.1 seconds later that is the most important flight of Ingenuitys entire lifetime.

[30:04] Mission Control: Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight, (shouts, applause) the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.

Teddy Tzanetos: I was elated. I was extremely excited. And then it quickly came back to business. We still had a job to do. Yes, Ingenuity had flown, but we still needed to assess its health. Was it still capable of flying again? How did all of our subsystems fare? How did our actuators perform, the battery perform, the thermal system perform? Across the board, we quickly dove back into the data to finish the job at hand.

Narrator: Ingenuitys altimeter data, which tracked how high the helicopter had risen, was the main indication a flight had actually happened.

Teddy Tzanetos: The altimeter data just showed a simple square. So the helicopter rose up, you saw the altimeter data go up. It stayed there, it hovered, had a little bit of noise, then came back down. And when it came back down and stayed at a steady level, we knew that wed landed, and we stayed upright. That was the key success moment there is to know that, yes, the flight was a success, but we also safely landed. And we remained upright, and we had a healthy vehicle that could again fly for flight number two days afterwards.

[31:19] There's a whole rover imaging team that was in the room adjacent to us. And while our data came down, in parallel, the rover imaging team was also quickly trying to come up with their own secondary confirmation that, yes, flight was a success. So within seconds of having our altimetry data, the imaging team was ready to roll and show the video feed to immediately support that conclusion. It was a beautiful one-two punch of emotion.

(audio: team reacts to video of first flight)

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Flying with Ingenuity: The Mars Helicopter NASA Mars Exploration - NASA Mars Exploration

launch control center is nerve center where engineers, launch director monitor their flight consolesWere going back to the Moon but the countdown and launch operations start here, in the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at NASAs Kennedy Space Center. Engineers control many activities preparing NASAs Space Launch System and NASAs Orion Spacecraft for launch from their consoles in Firing Room 1 utilizing a complex suite of software linking launch team operations to Launch Pad 39B, as well as the Eastern Range and other NASA control centers. (NASA image)

BREVARD COUNTY KENNEDY SPACE CENTER FLORIDA Were going back to the Moon but the countdown and launch operations start here, in the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at NASAs Kennedy Space Center.

Engineers control many activities preparing NASAs Space Launch System and NASAs Orion Spacecraft for launch from their consoles in Firing Room 1 utilizing a complex suite of software linking launch team operations to Launch Pad 39B, as well as the Eastern Range and other NASA control centers.

The launch control center at NASAs Kennedy Space Center the same launch control that sent the first men to the Moon, launched the Space Shuttle Program, and will one day send the first woman and person of color to the lunar surface was renamed after one of NASAs pioneers in Americas quest for space exploration: Rocco Petrone.

Following a ceremony Feb. 22, 2022, the Launch Control Center at the Florida spaceport was officially renamed the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center. Petrone, who was instrumental in Americas first voyages to the Moon and headed the Apollo program, died in 2006 at the age of 80.

Several Kennedy senior leaders attended the special event, including Center Director Janet Petro, Deputy Director Kelvin Manning, and Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, as well as many of Petrones former co-workers.

Its fitting to name this facility for Rocco Petrone, Petro said. Rocco was probably the most influential architect of the Apollo Saturn program in the 1960s, and he was one of the driving forces that helped ensure Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon before the decade was out.

The launch control center serves as a nerve center where engineers and the launch director will monitor their flight consoles and give the go for the upcoming launch of Artemis I and later missions that will establish a sustainable presence on the Moonto prepare for missions to Mars. It was from this same building that Petrone oversaw the launches of the early Apollo lunar missions, and later launch directors launched NASAs shuttles into space.

Today, we recognize the history of this building, at this great facility, by renaming it after one of NASAs pioneers, Rocco Petrone, a man who played a pivotal role in sending the first man to the Moon and inspired generations of future engineers to challenge the status quo and to make what once seemed impossible possible, Blackwell-Thompson said.

When Manning started exploring the possibility of the renaming project and learning more about Petrones influence at Kennedy, he was drawn to a baseball analogy. Specifically, Manning thought of the former Yankee Stadium, known as The House that Ruth Built, after the legendary Babe Ruth.

I asked the question to a number of Kennedy retirees, Was KSC the house that Rocco built? And the response was overwhelmingly, Absolutely, yes. Without him, we would not have made it to the Moon in 1969.

Petrone transferred to Kennedy as an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel in 1960 to serve as Saturn Project Officer. When the United States established its goal of landing a human on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, the Apollo Lunar Landing Program was established.

He managed the planning, development and activation of all launch facilities required for the Apollo Program, including Launch Complex 39, where the Apollo and Saturn V space vehicles were launched. The complex included the Vehicle Assembly Building, the launch towers, the crawler-transporter, and the Mobile Service Structure. He was directly involved in successful launches of the Saturn I and IB as well as the Saturn V rockets.

Following his retirement from the Army in 1966, Petrone became director of Launch Operations at Kennedy. He was responsible for the management and technical direction of pre-flight operations and integration, test, checkout, and launch of all space vehicles, both crewed and uncrewed.

I cant imagine another leader who could have managed that huge, Kennedy workforce so effectively, said John Tribe, who worked under Petrone during the Apollo and shuttle programs. He really was the right man in the right place at the right time. He was instrumental in us successfully achieving President Kennedys Apollo goals.

JoAnn Morgan, the first female engineer and first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy, described Petrone as respectful and professional, with a serious and commanding presence that permeated the environment.

He welcomed me, Morgan said. Accurate data and efficient communication of status were what mattered to him. I am very grateful to have worked for Rocco and observed the excellence in his guidance and decision making.

Petrone directed the first five human-tended Apollo launches, culminating in the Apollo 11 lunar flight. In 1969, he was named director of the Apollo Program for NASA with overall responsibility for the direction and management of the Apollo Space Flight Program.

In 1972, he was assigned additional responsibilities as program director of the NASA portion of the U.S. and the former Soviet Union joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Program. Petrone then served as director of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and as NASA associate administrator until his retirement from NASA in 1975. He worked in private industry during the 1980s and died at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California in 2006.

In a word, he was brilliant. Demanding, yes, but driven and he drove us to be exactly right, said John Tip Talone, a former flow director in the shuttle program. Never was a stone left unturned or a question unanswered or sloughed off. It was obvious he was not going to let the mission, or his team, fail.

The Florida Chapter of the NASA Alumni League endorsed the naming of the Launch Control Center in Petrones honor because of his strong and positive management style, his ability to problem-solve, and his personal dedication to quality work and positive outcomes, said Chapter President Richard Quinn.

Without his strong leadership, we think the work here at Kennedy for Apollo would have been very different, Quinn said. There were many heroes within NASA and our contractors during those times, but few rose to the prominence and success that Rocco did. His personal drive and commitment to excellence are legendary, and naming the Launch Control Center for him we think is a fitting tribute.

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BACK TO THE MOON: Countdown and Launch Operations Start in the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center - SpaceCoastDaily.com

July 22, 2022

Scientists around the world dream of being part of a NASA science mission. Few projects carry the vigor and prestige of exploring scientific questions that can be answered only with a view from and into space.

And thanks to Arizona State University's connection to theLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, studentsfrom theIra A. Fulton Schools of Engineeringhave gained insight into space exploration without ever leaving campus.

The LRO is one of more than90 operating NASA missions, and is currently orbiting the moon with the primary objective of making fundamental discoveries about our closest celestial neighbor.

The LRO has been equipped with seven instruments, one of which is theLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC. This three-camera system is mounted on the LRO to capture the moons surface in high-resolution black and white images and moderate-resolution, multi-spectral images allowing scientists to see beyond what is visible to the human eye.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Science Operations Center, or LROC SOC, is housed at ASU as part of the universitysSchool of Earth and Space Exploration. This proximity is what has created an incredible opportunity for engineering students.

Fulton Schools students operate in different areas of the center, performing tasks related to software, modeling and image creation from data.The variety of learning opportunities available to students help prepare them for various roles after graduation.

I think studentswho can say theyve been a part of an active spacecraft mission, collecting or processing data from a NASA satellite moving around the moon,stand out that much more to potential employers, saysNick Estes, the LROC SOC manager at ASU.

Recently, images captured by NASAsJames Webb Space Telescopehave garnered headlines and captured the attention of people around the world. According to Estes, in a general sense, there are some parallels between the work happening at the LROC SOC and the images coming from the Webb telescope.

Its all aboutexploring our universe and expanding our knowledge of how it all works, Estes says.

At a more detailed level, the differences between lunar exploration andastronomy are pretty pronounced.That said, you have a lot of kids whogrew up watching astronauts on the International Space Station, watching rocket launches andgazing up at the stars, and which particular field they head off tofrequently depends on the opportunities available to them in school.

Seth Grieser, a senior who is double-majoringGrieser is in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of the seven Fulton Schools, and the School of Earth and Space Exploration, in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. in mechanical engineeringand earth and space exploration (exploration systems design), has a unique view of the moon through his work in the center. Using Narrow Angle Camera images, he creates accurate, high-resolution mosaics of regions of interest on the moon.

I use computer software to combine image pairs into a single mosaic, Grieser says. Between image pairs in a mosaic, there is a seam where the software combines the images. Sometimes the lighting conditions or the terrain of the moon doesnt blend properly. My responsibilitiesare to correct these flaws as best I am able and to fix any other mistakes or errors with the mosaics before theirrelease to the public.

These mosaics can be used to assist in finding landing sites for future moon missions or to collect scientific data, such as the number of craters or the elevation of a site researchers may be interested in exploring. For every measurement, it is important that researchers are as accurate as possible.

Earth rising over the moon in a photo captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter operated by ASU. Photo courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/ASU

Grieser says that his experience as an engineering student has helped him be successful in his multidisciplinary work at the LROC SOC.

The professors in the Fulton Schools often emphasize how to detect issues that arise and methods to fix these problems, Grieser says. As an engineer and in my role (at the LROC center), solving problems as a team is often the best approach, and only by working together can large assignments be completed.

The Phoenix native developed an interest in space at an early age and says that since he was in kindergarten its been his dream to work as an engineer on a space mission.

I was honestly shocked after working a few months at the LROC SOC about how fascinating the moon is, Grieser says. The thousands of craters, big and small, along with the huge crater rims and mountains, hundreds of feet high, challenged the notion I had that the moon would be a boring place to explore. Looking up in the night sky, I now view the moon as extremely diverse and complex geologically.

Alex Huft, a third-year computer science student with a software engineering specialization, considers himself an amateur astronomer in his free time. So, working as a student developer at the LROC SOC has been a great fit for him, combining his passion for programming with his interest in space exploration.

My work can range from analyzing spacecraft data using PythonA type of programming language. and creating scripts to help my co-workers automate tasks to writing a new application to create calibration files for the Narrow Angle Cameras on the LRO, Huft says. Everyone is communicative and understanding (at the LROC SOC). Even when something has to get done, there is never a feeling of pressure. Everyone takes pride in the work they do here and always do the best they can.

Huft says a pair of Fulton Schools faculty members have had the greatest impact on him thus far: LecturerJustin Selgradand Associate ProfessorAdam Doup, both of whom are computer science and engineering faculty members in theSchool of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, one of the seven Fulton Schools.

Professor Selgrads C++ assignments, while very involved, gave me a better understanding of C++ as a (programming) language and helped me with a recent application in my work, Huft says. Professor Doup gave me an extreme appreciation for cybersecurity and cemented in me that this is what I wanted to go into as a career.

I feel really lucky to be in such a beneficial environment for my learning and the immense amount of experience I am gaining just by being here at the LROC SOC, Huft says.

The LROC Science Operations Center being located on ASUs Tempe campus enables a mutually beneficial relationship between students and researchers who are committed to NASAs science mission.

Its definitely a great benefit for our operations to have a pool oftalented students available to hire, Estes says. When the students go off to start their careers, itssometimes hard to get your foot in the door, and their experienceworking here helps to make them stand out to potential employers.Inreturn, we get to benefit from their different experiences and freshideas.

Students interested in working on LROC orShadowCamcankeep an eye on theASU student job board, which includes a variety of roles in programming, business assistance, research tasks and working in the LROC stereo lab.

Whenever possible, we let our student workers work on thetypes of things theyre most interested in, and we combine that with alot of mentoring, Estes says.

Web content comm administrator , Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

480-727-1957 erik.wirtanen@asu.edu

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Capturing the moon | ASU News - ASU News Now

CAMBRIDGE, MA (Draper PR) Draper, a company with a heritage in space exploration from the earliest stages of Apollo to the most recent Artemis awards, announced thatNASA has awarded Draper $73 millionto deliver a suite of three NASA-sponsored science payloads to the Schrdinger basin on the lunar surface. Schrdinger basin is on the far side of the Moona first for NASA.

Draper, as prime contractor, will lead a team that brings extensive and highly relevant experience in space, with partners that include General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, ispace technologies U.S. Team and Systima Technologies, a division of Karman Space & Defense. Team Draper will deliver the payloads in 2025 in fulfillment of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task orderCP-12, managed by NASAs Science Mission Directorate.

Draper and its teammates are honored to be selected by NASA to deliver these important payloads to the lunar surface, paving the way for human and robotic exploration missions to follow. Withour heritagein space exploration, originating with theApolloProgram, and our deep roots and broad technology presence in the space sector, Draper is poised to ensure U.S. preeminence in the commercialization of cislunar space, said Drapers principal director of civil and commercial space systems, Pete Paceley.

Each Draper Team partner brings industry-leading solutions:

Schrdinger basin is a large impact crater near the lunar South Pole. The basin is one of a few locations on the Moon that shows evidence of geologically recent volcanic activity, including lava flows and eruptions from vents. The CP-12flightwill deliver three payloads of scientific equipment to measure the Moons seismic and thermomechanical activity, and capture details about the magnetic field, electrical activity, heat flow and surface weathering.

As a result of the far side landing, the lander and payloads will require a communications relay capability to communicate with Mission Control Center on Earth. To fulfill this need, Team Draper will deploy two relay satellites, built by Blue Canyon Technologies, in the cislunar orbit before the lunar landing. Advanced Space will support the team in the mission planning and operations of the satellites.

CP-12 will make possible the kind ofgeophysical observationsfrom the surface of the Moon that have consistently remained a high priority among the lunar community.

About Draper

At Draper, we believe exciting things happen when new capabilities are imagined and created. Whether formulating a concept and developing each component to achieve a field-ready prototype or combining existing technologies in new ways, Draper engineers apply multidisciplinary approaches that deliver new capabilities to customers. As a nonprofit engineering innovation company, Draper focuses on the design, development and deployment of advanced technological solutions for the worlds most challenging and important problems. We provide engineering solutions directly to government, industry and academia; work on teams as prime contractor or subcontractor; and participate as a collaborator in consortia. We provide unbiased assessments of technology or systems designed or recommended by other organizationscustom designed, as well as commercial-off-the-shelf.

About General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) Group is a global leader in the research, design and manufacture of first-of-a-kind electromagnetic and electric power generation systems. GA-EMS history of research, development, and technology innovation has led to an expanding portfolio of specialized products and integrated system solutions supporting aviation, space systems and satellites, missile defense, power and energy, and processing and monitoring applications for critical defense, industrial and commercial customers worldwide.

About ispace technologies, U.S.

Located in Denver, Colorado, ispace U.S. is a subsidiary of ispace. The office, which opened in late 2020, has more than 40 employees and is rapidly growing. It serves as the central location for development of ispaces Series 2 lander, as well as the central location for operations in North America. ispaces plans to invest and develop robust operations in the U.S. is driven by its objective to partner with The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to further its lunar exploration objectives, such as through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, and other business opportunities. Currently, ispace, through ispace U.S., is involved in a strategic partnership with the Massachusetts-based engineering innovation company, Draper, as part of Team Draper to compete in the CLPS program; through this collaboration, ispace would assume the role as a subcontractor and design agent to Draper.

About Systima, a Division of Karman Space & Defense

Karman Space & Defense is an integrated concept-to-production solutions provider for the space and defense industrys most complex and mission-critical projects. Through its four divisions (Systima, AAE, AEC and AMRO) the company provides solutions for integrated dynamic systems, assemblies, and advanced manufacturing that are used in our industrys most critical programs, including crewed-space flight and hypersonic missions. The Systima division located in Mukilteo, WA (WA-2) is a leading manufacturer of separation and deployment systems, integrated launch and retention/release systems, electromechanical systems and electrical initiation systems as well as aerostructures and advanced composite assemblies including deployable shrouds and fuel tanks.

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NASA Awards Draper $73 Million to Deliver Suite of Payloads to the Moon in 2025 Parabolic Arc - Parabolic Arc

The Zacks Satellite and Communication industry companies are benefiting from a vast proliferation and cheaper access to space technology. This trend is leading to a diversification in end-market users. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data have given rise to multiple use cases across industries like oil and gas, agriculture, transportation and non-governmental organizations. Geopolitical competition in space as a contested domain is resulting in further investments by global militaries. Iridium Communications IRDM, Maxar Technologies MAXR and EchoStar Corporation SATS have significant growth potential on global security threats, surging defense budgets, demand for high-quality imagery and value-added services.

Industry Description

The Zacks Satellite and Communication industry comprises space technology companies that provide satellite imagery and intelligence services and spacecraft and robotics for space exploration, research and national security. They help customers understand and navigate the evolving planet, deliver global broadband communications and explore space. The industry players provide communication services to media businesses, fixed and wireless telecommunications operators, data networking providers and Internet service providers. They provide commercial satellite communication services to government and military organizations. The firms offer satellite-based consulting and technical services, including the lifecycle of satellite operations and infrastructure, ranging from satellite and launch vehicle procurement to telemetry and commanding services.

What's Shaping the Industry's Future

Advancements in Technology Hold the Key: There has been a radical change in highly specialized satellite manufacturing patterns. More emphasis is put on using common buses and computer-aided design tools to customize the communications payloads. A mass-produced system is adopted and several satellites are manufactured at once in an assembly line. Integration and testing have become highly automated. The extent of testing is reduced after prototyping and initial production is completed. Countries with comprehensive space programs have distinct military, economic and scientific advantages, but complexity and barriers to entry into space have allowed only a few to develop notable capabilities. The demand for small satellites across regions is expected to increase over time, with North America having the bulk of the market share, followed by the Asia Pacific, Europe and the rest of the world. North America maintains its dominance with the highest number of small satellite launches by government end users. The companies continue to align their products and services with the U.S. Department of Defenses National Defense Strategy needs and growing international defense and intelligence demand.

Subscriber Momentum to Drive Growth: Wide proliferation and cheaper access to space technology have diversified end-market users. The companies share a strategic relationship with various government organizations, including military and disaster response agencies and non-governmental organizations, to provide robust, tactical, real-time voice and low-latency data command and control communications. A wide product portfolio enables the companies to expand their customer base and offset the losses from one product category with benefits obtained from another. Also, high product quality increases brand loyalty and improves their performance in a competitive market. For civil customers, particularly NASA, growth is being driven by space exploration programs. For commercial customers, growth drivers include a strong demand for imagery due to new use cases, space-based remote sensing, Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit replacement demand and Low Earth Orbit communications programs.

Increasing Spending on Space Infrastructure: With more than half of the revenues coming from U.S. government customers, the industry is likely to benefit from increasing defense and space infrastructure budgets. The proliferation of space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and communications is expected to boost government investments in the sector. The companies are developing differentiated capabilities designed for future space exploration, including propulsion, power and robotics. These elements will be critical for helping their customers achieve successful space exploration missions. Focus on research and development and product and service enhancements is a key strategy for innovation and growth. However, increased lead time associated with global supply chain disruptions remain concern.

Zacks Industry Rank Indicates Bright Prospects

The Zacks Satellite and Communication industry is housed within the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector. It currently has a Zacks Industry Rank #42, which places it in the top 17% of more than 251 Zacks industries.

The groups Zacks Industry Rank, which is the average of the Zacks Rank of all the member stocks, indicates strong near-term prospects. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.

Before we present a few satellite and communication stocks that you may want to consider for your portfolio, lets look at the industrys recent stock market performance and valuation picture.

Industry Outperforms Sector, Lags S&P 500

The Zacks Satellite and Communication industry lags the S&P 500 composite but outperformed the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector in the past year.

The industry has lost 22.2% over this period against the S&P 500s decline of 17.8%. The broader sector has plunged 38.7%.

One-Year Price Performance

Industry's Current Valuation

The Enterprise Value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) ratio is commonly used for valuing satellite and communication stocks. The industry has a trailing 12-month EV/EBITDA of 8.29X compared with the S&P 500s 11.66X. It is also below the sectors trailing 12-month EV/EBITDA of 9.31X.

In the past five years, the industry has traded as high as 22.93X, as low as 7.48X, with a median of 10.58X, as the chart below shows.

Enterprise Value-to-EBITDA Ratio (Past Five Years)

3 Satellite and Communication Stocks to Watch

Iridium Communications: Headquartered in McLean, VA, Iridium Communications provides mobile voice and data communication services and products to businesses, the United States and foreign governments, non-governmental organizations and consumers. The company delivers mission-critical services across various industries, allowing its business to remain resilient despite headwinds. Iridium offers competitive broadband services through its Certus technology. Iridiums performance is benefiting from its expanding subscriber base driven by the demand for consumer-oriented devices and higher services revenues. Iridium expects commercial service revenues to benefit from growth in IoT, ongoing activations and solid uptake of the companys broadband services. Iridium carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The consensus estimate for its current-year earnings has remained unchanged in the past 30 days at 9 cents. The stock has gained 48% in the past two-year period. The company delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 109.4%, on average. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Price and Consensus: IRDM

Maxar: Based in Westminster, CO, Maxar is a space technology firm providing satellite imagery and expert intelligence services along with spacecraft and robotics for space exploration, research and national security. Maxars performance is gaining from continued momentum in the Space Infrastructure segment. Increasing demand for the companys 3D and other innovative geospatial products bodes well. There is huge growth potential among three key parts of its addressable market the U.S. government, other international governments and commercial customers. In May 2022, the company announced that it was awarded Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL) contract by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The contract includes a five-year base contract worth $1.5 billion with five additional years of options through 2032. It is the largest ever commercial imagery acquisition contract awarded by the NRO. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current-year earnings has moved up 14.3% over the past 30 days. The company delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 183.7%, on average. The stock has gained 62.5% in the past two-year period. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #2.

Price and Consensus: MAXR

EchoStar Corporation: Headquartered in Englewood, CO, EchoStar Corporation is a global provider of satellite service operations, video delivery services, broadband satellite technologies and broadband internet services. The company also provides innovative network technologies, managed services, and various communications solutions for aeronautical, enterprise and government customers. It operates through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. The company recently deployed pan-European LoRa-powered Internet of Things (IoT) network. This network leverages EchoStar Mobile's licensed S-band spectrum from the EchoStar XXI satellite and provides bi-directional and LoRa-powered connectivity (real-time) across Europe using a single network, added the company. Currently, EchoStar carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Price and Consensus: SATS

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportEchoStar Corporation (SATS) : Free Stock Analysis ReportIridium Communications Inc (IRDM) : Free Stock Analysis ReportMaxar Technologies Inc. (MAXR) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research

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3 Stocks to Watch From the Satellite and Communication Industry - Yahoo Finance