NASA 2020

SPECIAL EDITION

NASA

2020

Discover INSIDE

MOON Artemis launch set for 2021

MARS Perseverance rover launches

OBSERVATIONS Hubble marks 30th anniversary

PARTNERSHIPS Small-business innovations

3D rendering of Earth, moon and Mars alignment

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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION

CONTENTS

3 2020 S PECI A L E D ITI O N

NASA

38 AIM HIGH Mars Perseverance starts its journey to the red planet.

J. KROHN/NASA

Engineers monitor a driving test for the Mars rover Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The rover is expected to touch down on Mars in 2021.

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CONTENTS 32

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44 This is a product of

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jeanette Barrett-Stokes jbstokes@usatoday.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jerald Council

ASTROBOTIC

jcouncil@usatoday.com

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MANAGING EDITOR Michelle Washington mjwashington@usatoday.com

CHRIS GUNN/NASA

ISSUE EDITOR Deirdre van Dyk ISSUE DESIGNER Hayleigh Corkey

NASA

LEADERSHIP

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FEATURES 26 EYE SPY

Satellites watch over the Earth

FORWARD PROGRESS Administrator Jim Bridenstine discusses NASA’s mission

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FUTURE NOW SpaceX launches crew into space from U.S. soil

NEWS

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CRAIG BAILEY/FLORIDA TODAY

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HISTORIC HAPPENINGS NASA achieves numerous firsts

TECHNOLOGY HOMESTEAD Humans living aboard the International Space Station for 20 years

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STAR LIGHT Celebrating Hubble at 30 and the next generation of telescopes

MOON SHOT Artemis program stays on track

PARTNERSHIPS

DESIGNERS David Hyde Debra Moore Gina Toole Saunders Lisa M. Zilka CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Matt Alderton, Joshua Bote, Stacey Freed, Craig Guillot, Adam Hadhazy, Gina Harkins, Antonia Jaramillo, Emre Kelly, Jorge L. Ortiz, Doyle Rice, Robin Roenker, Adam Stone, N’dea Yancey-Bragg

ADVERTISING VP, ADVERTISING Patrick Burke | (703) 854-5914 pburke@usatoday.com

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Vanessa Salvo | (703) 854-6499 vsalvo@usatoday.com

FINANCE

GREEN LIGHT Space Launch System undergoes testing

EDITORS Amy Sinatra Ayres Tracy Scott Forson Harry Lister Debbie Williams

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THINK SMALL Innovative businesses help NASA achieve success

BILLING COORDINATOR Julie Marco ISSN#0734-7456

EDUCATION

56 ON THE COVER Photo Alignment of The Earth, The Moon and Mars

PHOTO Getty Images

SMART START Aerospace engineering programs that can propel NASA careers

HISTORY

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LEADERSHIP

ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine visits Florida’s Kennedy Space Center before the Space X launch in May.

Mission Forward Mars, the moon and working with private industry

By Adam Stone

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ASA ADMINISTRATOR JIM BRIDENSTINE has led the

space agency for two and half years. This year may be his most eventful yet. The former Navy pilot and Oklahoma congressman saw men launched to the International Space Station in a landmark publicprivate partnership with Space X. The agency’s mission to reach Mars moved several steps closer with the launch of the Mars rover, designed to explore the planet’s surface, while the agency continues preparation for the Artemis program’s 2024 moon launch. Just two days before the historic Mars rover launch, Bridenstine talked with USA TODAY about NASA’s mission and goals:

What’s the significance of this latest Mars mission?

BRIDENSTINE: This is an astrobiology mission. We are looking for the signatures of past life on another planet, which we have never done before. So that is a huge leap in the scientific endeavor that has been underway now for decades.

The northern hemisphere of Mars was two-thirds covered in water. It had a thick atmosphere, and it had a magnetosphere that protected it from the radiation of deep space. Mars was at one time habitable.

Q

We’re not saying that it was inhabited; we don’t know, but it was habitable. Now we’re taking the next step, to see if we can discover actual signs of life that may have existed on Mars in ancient times.

The Artemis mission aims to put humans on the moon again by 2024.

Why? The subatomic charged particles that have been coming from the sun now for billions of years, they are today on the CONTINUED

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LEADERSHIP moon right where they were billions of years ago. The moon is a repository of science and data and information of the early solar system.

Also, from the far side of the moon — where it’s extremely quiet from an electromagnetic spectrum perspective — we can see way out into deep space, and in fact, back into time. We’re going to be able to see not just the first light in the universe after the Big Bang, but we’re going to be able to see what we call the dark ages — the time after the Big Bang and before first light.

We’re also trying to prove the capability and the technology to learn how to live and work on another (planet) for long periods of time. The moon has hundreds of millions of tons of water ice. How do we use that water ice for life support? How do we use the hydrogen in the H2O for rocket fuel?

The moon is the proving ground for how we’re going to go to Mars.

How does NASA juggle its many competing priorities?

Wherever there is division, we try to eliminate it. When I was in the House of Representatives (from 2013-2018), I was on the Science Committee, and at the time Democrats were for going to Mars and Republicans were for going to the moon. It was absolutely the most absurd partisan debate I’ve ever seen in my life.

Then Democrats were for the Science Mission Directorate of NASA, and Republicans were for human exploration at NASA. They are not exclusive of each other.

They are, in fact, synergistic. We try to eliminate that division, and then unify people to move forward in a unified way.

As a result, we’ve had strong bipartisan support for these missions. We’re doing everything we can to keep that strong bipartisan support, and right now we have the highest budget NASA has ever had in nominal dollars.

You’ve talked about commercialization of habitation in low-Earth orbit.

How will that work?

It’s really about the things that we can do off the Earth that have transformational benefits for life on Earth. One of the best examples is pharmaceuticals.

We can compound pharmaceuticals in the microgravity of space in a way that you can never do in the gravity well of Earth.

We’ve created immunizations on the International Space Station.

The resource is microgravity or zero gravity. That’s the resource that space

JOHN RAOUX/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Bridenstine speaks during a news conference after a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket test at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in January.

offers, that enables these transformational breakthroughs that improve life on Earth.

Right now, we are proving that we can create human tissue in 3D in the microgravity of space, in a way that you can’t create that human tissue on Earth.

We take your adult stem cells from your skin, and we can create your own tissue with your own DNA in the microgravity of space. Right now, we are also creating artificial retinas, so that somebody who has macular degeneration doesn’t have to lose their eyesight. That’s the value of microgravity.

How does the private sector factor in?

When we have companies that want to develop capabilities using the microgravity of space, we partner with them.

We have companies doing research on the International Space Station right now, and the future is going to be those companies not partnering with NASA, but partnering with private space stations.

We envision having dozens of commercial space stations. And NASA would be a customer on those commercial space stations. It drives down the cost to the American taxpayer, it increases the access to space, and it enables more science than ever before for these transformational breakthroughs that improve life here on Earth.

Other nations have a space interest — sometimes cooperative, sometimes competitive. What is your approach to that?

In the Cold War, competition was the driver. Now that we have all of these different space agencies around the world ... we can all do more when we work together.

When we go to the moon, the president’s space policy directive says to go with international partners and to go with commercial partners. We’re building the coalition that enables us to do more than we could ever do alone. We’re leading that coalition that will eventually

take us all the way to Mars.

But it’s also true that there is great competition in space. As we go forward, we want to make sure that people who are operating in space are doing so responsibly, that they are doing so within a framework that includes norms of behavior that all nations can agree to.

What else do people need to know about NASA’s mission?

No. 1, that the work we do is absolutely transformational for life on Earth. The return on investment is ... not even measurable: It impacts the way we communicate, the way we navigate, the way we produce food and energy, the way we predict weather.

The second thing that’s important to note is that it’s unifying. It unifies Republicans and Democrats. It unifies people across borders and across oceans, and we want to continue that kind of unifying capability. We’re always looking for that next big discovery that will unite the world.

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NEWS

Historic Honor NASA gives nod to female trailblazer

By Joshua Bote

N

ASA’S HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., has

been renamed after Mary W. Jackson, the first Black woman to work as an engineer in the agency.

Jackson joined NASA, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in 1951 and spent more than 30 years in the agency in various roles.

She first worked as a mathematician and “human computer” at Langley Research Center’s then-segregated West Area Computing Unit under fellow Hidden Figure Dorothy Vaughan.

“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space,” says NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Mary never accepted the status quo. She helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.”

Jackson became an engineer in 1958 after completing a program at a segregated school. She published an assortment of research mainly on the boundary layer of air around airplanes before joining Langley’s Federal Women’s Program, working to ensure gender equity in the field. She retired in 1985 and died in 2005 at age 83.

The dedication of the NASA building comes after a street outside the agency headquarters was renamed Hidden Figures Way in 2019, in recognition of the 2016 film and book.

“We are honored that NASA continues to celebrate the legacy of our mother and grandmother Mary W. Jackson,” says Carolyn Lewis, Jackson’s daughter.

“She was a scientist, humanitarian, wife, mother and trailblazer who paved the way for thousands of others to succeed, not only at NASA, but throughout this nation.”

Mary W. Jackson at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

“Mary (W. Jackson) never accepted the status quo. She helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.”

— JIM BRIDENSTINE, NASA administrator

NASA

NASA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters JOSHUA ROBERTS/GETTY IMAGES

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NEWS

See the Burn Sun gets its close-up with first Solar Orbiter images

By Marcia Dunn

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N JULY 16, SCIENTISTS re-

SOLAR ORBITER/EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET IMAGER TEAM, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY AND NASA

Hope Floats Giant balloon will propel telescope into the stratosphere

By Joshua Bote

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N 2023, NASA WILL launch a

telescope and a balloon the size of a football stadium into the stratosphere, so researchers can study the formation of stars.

The telescope, named ASTHROS (Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter wavelengths), measures at 8.4 feet, and the balloon

carrying the device is 400 feet wide.

ASTHROS observes far-infrared light — light with wavelengths invisible to the human eye — that is blocked by Earth’s atmosphere.

It will float at around 130,000 feet in order to extend beyond the atmosphere, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is leading the project. Once it enters the stratosphere, it will monitor four key targets: two star-forming regions in the Milky Way

leased the first images taken

by Solar Orbiter, launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in February. The joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA project snapped the closest pictures ever taken of the sun, revealing countless little “campfires” flaring.

The orbiter was about 48 million miles from the sun — about halfway between the Earth and the sun — when it took the pictures showing vibrant swirls of yellow and dark smoky gray. The team had to create a new vocabulary to name these tiny flare-ups, says ESA project scientist Daniel Miller.

Miller described the observed multitude of campfires shooting into the corona, or sun’s crownlike outer atmosphere, as quite possibly “the tiny cousins of the solar flares that we already

galaxy, the galaxy Messier 83 and a young star named TW Hydrae.

The telescope will make 3D maps of the density, speed and motion of gas in these regions to study a phenomenon known as stellar feedback — which, according to JPL scientist Jorge Pineda, is “the main regulator of star formation throughout the universe’s history.”

“Balloon missions like ASTHROS are higher-risk than space missions but yield high rewards at modest cost,” says JPL engineer Jose Siles, project manager for ASTHROS, in a statement.

The risks, per JPL, include unforeseen technical challenges due to the nature of sending a balloon into space.

NASA launches 10 to 15 balloons every year, but has never sent one carrying a telescope of this size. “The mission will pave the way for future space missions by testing new technologies and providing training for the next generation of engineers and scientists,” says Siles.

know.” Millions, if not billions of times smaller, these tiny flares may be heating the corona, he says, long known to be hundreds of times hotter than the actual solar surface for unknown reasons.

“It was really much better than we expected, but what we dared to hope for,” says David Berghmans, head of the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center at the Royal Observatory of Belgium and principal scientist of the instrument that captured the images.

These campfires, Berghmans notes, are “literally everywhere we look.” Not yet well understood, they could be mini explosions or nanoflares. More measurements are planned.

The $1.5 billion Solar Orbiter will get even closer to the sun in two years. “This is just the beginning of the long epic journey of Solar Orbiter,” Miller says.

Marcia Dunn writes for The Associated Press.

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/NASA AND MICHAEL LENTZ/CONCEPTUAL IMAGE LAB

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XXXXX NEWS

KEVIN M. GILL, USING MARINER 10 DATA/JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

Two images of Venus show the planet’s cloud layer. Scientists have discovered a gas in this layer that leads them to believe a life form is present on the planet.

Venus Rising Astronomers see hint of life in planet’s clouds

By Doyle Rice

U

SING TELESCOPES BASED IN Chile and

Hawaii, astronomers spotted the chemical signature of the noxious gas phosphine in Venus’ clouds. A team of scientists has recently published a study concluding that there is no explanation for the phosphine other than the presence of life.

“This means either this is life, or it’s some sort of physical or chemical process that we do not expect to happen on rocky planets,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Research Scientist Janusz Petkowski, co-author of the study

published in Nature Astronomy.

Co-author Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist, says researchers “exhaustively went through every possibility and ruled all of them out: volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites falling into the atmosphere. ... Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”

The phosphine could be coming from some kind of microbes, probably single-cell ones, which live their entire lives in the 10-mile-deep clouds. The microbes could be organisms that float free of the planet’s scorching surface, with access to water and sunlight and

possessing a tolerance to very high acidity.

Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, lead author of the study, says that “this was an experiment made out of pure curiosity, really. I thought we’d just be able to rule out extreme scenarios, like the clouds being stuffed full of organisms.

When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’ spectrum, it was a shock!”

Venus is a very challenging environment for life of any kind. Life is not possible on its surface, where temperatures approach 900 degrees Fahrenheit and air is drier than the driest places on its nearest neighbor, Earth.

There is, however, a narrow temperate band within Venus’ atmosphere, about 30 miles above the surface, where temperatures range from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, according to MIT. Scientists have speculated, with much controversy, that if life exists on Venus, this layer of the atmosphere, or cloud deck, where the observations were made is likely the only place where it would survive.

“This phosphine signal is perfectly positioned where others have conjectured the area could be habitable,” says Petkowski.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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NEWS

INTERNATIONAL GEMINI OBSERVATORY, NOIRLAB, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY AND M.H. WONG AND TEAM/UC BERKELEY

New View Images reveal secrets about Jupiter

By Doyle Rice

A

TRIO OF NASA instruments — the Hubble Space Telescope, the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and the Juno spacecraft that’s orbiting Jupiter — have teamed up to probe the mightiest storms in the solar system, taking place more than 500 million miles away on the giant planet.

“We want to know how Jupiter’s atmosphere works,” says Michael Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

One recently released image from

NASA shows the warm, deep layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere glowing through gaps in the planet’s thick cloud cover.

This image showing the entire disk of Jupiter in infrared light observed by the international Gemini Observatory is among the highest-resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground.

“At this resolution, the telescope could resolve the two headlights of a car in Miami, seen from New York City,” says Andrew Stephens, the Gemini astronomer who led the observations.

The new observations also confirm that dark areas in the planet’s famous

Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not caused by cloud color variations.

In addition, the Juno spacecraft detected hundreds of lightning strikes around Jupiter’s poles, which NASA says is the opposite of Earth, where lightning is most common around the equator.

Jupiter’s constant storms are gigantic compared to those on Earth.

Thunderhead clouds reach 40 miles from base to top — five times taller than typical thunderheads on Earth — and powerful lightning flashes up to three times more energetic than Earth’s largest “superbolts,” NASA says.

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NEWS

Breaking Barriers Space station will have a new resident

By N’dea Yancey-Bragg and Antonia Jaramillo

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ASA ASTRONAUT JEANETTE EPPS is slated to make history

next year when she will become the first Black woman to live on the International Space Station (ISS) for months at a time.

Epps will join Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada on Boeing’s Starliner-1 mission, which will mark the first operational crewed flight of the company’s Starliner spacecraft to the ISS.

More than a dozen African American astronauts have flown in space and visited the station, but this mission will make Epps the first Black crew member to live there for an extended period of time.

This will mark Epps’ first spaceflight.

Before becoming a member of the 2009 astronaut class, Epps worked for the CIA as a technical intelligence officer.

Epps was slated to fly on the Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS in 2018, but NASA replaced her with another astronaut. “It felt like a huge amount of

responsibility. There have been three African Americans who have visited ISS, but they haven’t done the long-duration mission that I am undertaking,” Epps told The Cut in 2017 when she was preparing for that previous mission. “As a steward, I want to do well with this honor. I want to make sure that young people know that this didn’t happen overnight.”

Antonia Jaramillo writes for Florida Today. Marcia Dunn of The Associated Press contributed to this story.

ROBERT MARKOWITZ

Outer Limits of Medicine Doctors treat an astronaut’s blood clot in space

By Jorge L. Ortiz

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UST TWO MONTHS INTO a

six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, a NASA astronaut detected a blood clot — a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) — while doing neck ultrasound examinations as part of a NASA study. NASA has not revealed the patient’s name or the time frame of the incident to protect the astronaut’s privacy.

“On Earth we would feel comfortable just observing the person and not treating with blood thinners, because if things get worse, you can always do some intervention,” says Dr. Stephan Moll, a coagulation expert and University of North Carolina professor who consulted on the case. “There are emergency rooms here, but in space you don’t have that option.”

Moll pointed out that blood clots usually dissolve on their own, but was concerned the DVT could expand from the neck area toward the brain, perhaps

leading to strokelike symptoms. There was also the chance the clot would result in a pulmonary embolism.

After assessing the risk against the likelihood the astronaut may bleed from an injury, Moll and the NASA physicians decided to treat the patient with blood thinners. Shots were available aboard, but they were difficult and time-consuming for the astronaut to administer because the liquid clung to the vial in zero gravity. The medication arrived later in pill form.

All along, the astronaut kept doctors apprised of the condition’s progress with regular ultrasound checkups.

“In this space case, the power of telemedicine from the International Space Station to the doctor’s office on Earth is remarkable,” says Dr. Craig Greben, chief of interventional radiology at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y. “The astronaut patient-performed, radiologist-guided ultrasound with real-time image transmission to Earth allowed for prompt image interpretation and diagnosis by the radiologists

found that in half the astronauts the and blood thinner prescription by the blood flow was abnormal, but the body clinicians.” adjusts to it.

The case presented unique chalIn a case study published in the New lenges. For one, there wasn’t any similar England Journal of history for the doctors Medicine — written by to lean on in devising four physicians, includa treatment plan. This “There are ing Moll and NASA was the first known instance of a U.S. emergency rooms flight engineer Serena Auñon-Chancellor — the astronaut developing (on Earth), but authors call for further a DVT while in outer research into blood space. Even on Earth, in space you viscosity and the risk there has been little of clots in weightless documentation of how don’t have that conditions. isolated inter-jugular option.”

Dr. Maja Zaric, interclots behave without ventional cardiologist treatment and how — DR. STEPHAN MOLL, at Lenox Hill Hospital in often they reoccur.

University of North New York City seconds Doctor and patient Carolina that request. communicated through “The study results email and calls. “It was open the door for much almost like a regular needed research dedicated to space clinic visit,” says Moll. medicine and subjects exposed to (a) It’s still not clear whether the lack of zero-gravity state,’’ Zaric says, “and gravity or other factors in outer space will surely have major implications on contribute to the development of blood future space endeavors.” clots, though Moll says the NASA study

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NEWS

Learning Lab Space Station marks two decades of interstellar cooperation

By Deirdre van Dyk

T

HE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS)

marks 20 years of continuous human habitation this November. Operated by 15 countries, ISS serves as a microgravity laboratory, with more than 3,000 experiments conducted on board so far, and is also a testbed for future human exploration, such as trips to Mars and beyond.

The space station was the largest, most-complex interstellar construction project ever attempted when the Russian and American segments were fitted together in 1998. On Oct. 31, 2000, the first crew to

take up residence, American William Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome space center in Kazakhstan and docked with ISS two days later.

Randolph Brinkley, who managed NASA’s space station program, talked about the early days of international crews working together in a 2015 interview as part of the International Space Station Oral History Project: “Once you get past the language barrier, people understood that the laws of physics are the same, the laws of orbital mechanics are the same, zero gravity is the same, and it was pretty easy to find common ground amongst the crew members and the supporting engineers.”

Some 240 astronauts from 19 countries have visited the space station, now about the size of a football field.

“We’ve been given the International Space Station that’s been outfitted very well in some regards as a world-class research facility,” John Charles, the retired chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, said in his 2015 interview for the oral history project, “and it’s incumbent on us to use it to the fullest extent, so we can then enable those future missions beyond low Earth orbit. ... This is our chance to acquire ... the fullest possible set of answers for future exploration. ... I could not imagine going off into the universe without the space station.”

NASA

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NEWS

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

BY THE NUMBERS NASA

Hurricane Laura is seen as the space station orbits over the Gulf of Mexico this August.

LENGTH

ORBITS

357

16

FEET (3 FEET SHORT OF A U.S. FOOTBALL FIELD)

ROTATIONS AROUND THE EARTH ARE MADE EACH DAY

VISITORS

SPEED

240

5

ASTRONAUTS FROM 19 COUNTRIES

MILES PER SECOND SUITING UP

RESEARCH

NASA

3K+

The first crew to live on the station enjoys a rare treat of fresh oranges in 2000.

INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN CONDUCTED

230+ SPACEWALKS HAVE BEEN MADE TRAVEL TIME

LONGEST STAY

340

DAYS

BY U.S. ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY NASA

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy reviews maintenance for his spacesuit in June.

SOURCE: NASA

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HOURS TO FIVE DAYS FROM EARTH, DEPENDING ON THE SPACECRAFT

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ARTEMIS

Moon Shot NASA is on track for Artemis launch GETTY IMAGES

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ARTEMIS

“It’s not just about the moon. It’s about going farther and deeper into space. If we want to go to Mars, we need to understand how to live on the moon and build systems that will work there.”

— MARSHALL SMITH, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate

DANIEL RUTTER/NASA

NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, a mobile robot, will be delivered to the moon in 2023.

By Craig Guillot

U

NLIKE THE SINGULAR GOAL

of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to land men on the moon, NASA’s Artemis program aims to establish a long-term lunar presence to eventually support a trip to Mars. Those involved in the project say new technologies, international partnerships and the participation of private industry are opening a new era of space exploration.

“It’s not just about the moon. It’s about going farther and deeper into space.

If we want to go to Mars, we need to understand how to live on the moon and build systems that will work there,” says Marshall Smith, deputy associate administrator for systems engineering and integration in NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

TO THE MOON AND BEYOND While humans first traveled to the moon more than 50 years ago, lunar travel remains a complex undertaking involving rockets, landing systems, surface transport and habitats, says Smith.

Artemis aims to put astronauts, and for the first time female astronauts, on the moon by 2024 and establish support services to create a training ground and base to send the first astronauts to Mars. The project consists of several components, including the Space Launch System, the Orion spacecraft to carry crew to lunar orbit and the lunar landers to transport supplies to the surface.

NASA is also working on the Gateway, an outpost that will orbit the moon to provide support and enable scientific exploration in deep space.

Many of the pieces are quickly falling

into place, Smith says. The Space Launch System is undergoing testing. The Orion spacecraft has completed its threemonth test campaign at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, where it was subjected to extreme temperatures.

PRIVATE-INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS Unlike the 1960s when scientists had to invent the computing technologies and flight capabilities, there’s now an abundance of space technologies and companies experienced in space travel.

Through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, NASA has contracted with several vendors for the project, including Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and Draper Labratory. SpaceX, one of three companies selected to deliver a crew moon lander, completed its well-publicized Demo-2 test flight in

early August.

Many of the launches leading up to 2024 will deliver supplies to the moon before humans go, says Chris Culbert, CLPS program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Space robotics company Astrobotic was awarded a $79.5 million contract in 2019 to deliver 14 payloads to the moon in July 2021 on its Peregrine lunar lander and recently secured a second contract to deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover to the south pole of the moon in 2023.

“Landing on the moon is still very hard.

You’re a quarter-million kilometers from Earth with about a six- to 30-second communication delay. It’s all about robotics, computer vision and autonomy.

It has to work the first time with no room CONTINUED

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ARTEMIS

SEE THE STARS More than 12,000 apply to the Artemis program

Astronaut training

Orion spacecraft at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION

for error,” says Astrobotic CEO John Thornton.

Collaborating with private companies instead of relying only on NASA-designed systems will enable faster and less expensive response, Culbert says.

Astrobotic even has a program with parcel delivery and logistics company DHL that will enable anyone to send anything to the moon.

“If we reach the point where NASA is just one of many customers sending payloads to the moon, we don’t have to pay the full cost of the entire infrastructure, only our share of it,” Culbert says.

NASA is expected to announce more project contract awards this year.

Ongoing progress isn’t just about getting

to the moon, but ensuring sustainability and habitat once there.

“Our job is to go there and stay there, so we have to build more capable vehicles, which means they’re heavier, harder to launch, harder to get where you want to go — particularly the south pole, which requires more fuel and mass,” says Smith.

THE FUTURE OF SPACE TRAVEL Culbert notes NASA’s commitment to flying smaller-scale landers at least twice a year for the next eight to 10 years will significantly increase the pace of innovation and advancement in space travel. Rather than once-in-a-career opportunities to build the technology,

participating companies will get a chance to optimize and improve with each mission, he says.

Thornton calls the commercial approach a “game-changer” in space travel that will allow innovators to test more technologies, take more risks and learn from each mission.

Being able to offer regular and affordable service to the moon will also enable companies to establish habitats, fuel depots and support for further space exploration.

“It’s an unprecedented scale that can open up a whole new realm of possibility to access the moon in ways that have never been possible before,” says Thornton.

NASA has a wide selection to choose from for its next class of astronauts, who could be among the first to fulfill the agency’s commitment to putting a woman on the moon.

By the time the astronaut application program closed this spring, the space agency drew more than 12,000 applicants from every U.S. state, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories. NASA expects to introduce its new astronaut candidates in summer 2021.

For this class, NASA tightened its qualifications. Beyond a bachelor’s degree in a science, technology, engineering or math field, a master’s degree was also required in one of those fields.

Once selected, candidates will go through approximately two years of training, which includes robotics, spacecraft systems and prepping for spacewalks, as well as expeditionary behavior skills that entail leadership, followership and teamwork.

“We’ve entered a bold new era of space exploration with the Artemis program, and we are thrilled to see so many incredible Americans apply to join us,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says. “The next class of Artemis-generation astronauts will help us explore more of the moon than ever before and lead us to the red planet.”

Since the 1960s, NASA has selected 350 people to train as astronaut candidates and currently has 47 astronauts in the active astronaut corps.

— Antonia Jaramillo JOSH VALCARCEL/NASA

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NEWS

Launch Pad Testing the world’s most powerful rocket

By Craig Guillot

T

HE SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM

(SLS) heavy-lift rocket is NASA’s newest vehicle designed to send humans and payloads into deep space. SLS is undergoing testing and is on track to launch an uncrewed mission, Artemis I, to the moon in late 2021. Artemis I is the first of three forthcoming lunar missions.

“It’s the only rocket that can take the Orion spacecraft to the moon. SLS is the backbone for the Artemis program to send astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars,” says John Honeycutt, NASA’s SLS program manager.

In addition to testing the rocket’s systems during its first flight, the Artemis I mission will also test the spacecraft Orion’s systems, including navigation, because GPS won’t work in deep space; communications, to test a new system; and the heat shield, which is designed to protect the astronauts upon reentry.

The next mission, Artemis II, will be the first crewed mission, but the astronauts will not land on the moon.

The first astronauts scheduled to land on the surface of the moon since 1972 will travel on Artemis III. More missions to the moon and Mars will be added to the manifest, with plans to launch one a year. SLS’s ability to be updated and upgraded gives NASA the capacity to go faster and further to undertake those missions.

CUSTOM BUILD SLS has been constructed in part by contractors — more than 1,000 companies have worked with NASA. Boeing — an aerospace agency which has worked with NASA since the start of the space program more than 50 years ago — built the 212-foot-tall core stage where the four RS-25 engines, originally developed for the space program and built

by Aerojet Rocketdyne of El Segundo, Calif., are attached.

For the past few years, SLS has gone through rigorous testing, putting the core stage through the same stresses

NASA

The Space Launch System rocket is lifted into position for testing at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center.

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NEWS

SLS FOR ARTEMIS I HEIGHT

322 FEET WEIGHT

5.75 MILLION POUNDS AT LAUNCH WILL PRODUCE

8.8 MILLION POUNDS OF MAXIMUM THRUST

it would experience in space. The rocket has 800 sensors that feed data to the system’s three flight computers — one main computer and two backups — on how the rocket is performing.

“We want this vehicle to be as safe as possible,” says John Shannon, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for SLS. “The avionics are state-of-the-art, redundant in most areas with software that’s able to identify any failures that might happen and get the crew in a safe position.”

ENGINES READY This year, at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Artemis I’s SLS core stage was raised vertically, the four RS-25 engines were mounted and it has been undergoing eight “green run” tests. In NASA parlance “green” indicates new, untested rocket hardware; “green run” signifies a full test of the core stage hardware.

In these tests, the rocket was put through its paces via tank pressurization and fueling to evaluate every valve and avionic component.

This green run will conclude with the final test in late fall — an 8.5-minute “hot fire” test in which the engines are fired as if they are being launched into space.

The core stage will be moved to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in January for integration with the rest of the rocket, and Orion, and eventually launch in November 2021.

POWER PACK To launch Artemis I, SLS will deliver

propulsion in stages. First, the solid rocket boosters and core stage’s RS-25 engines fire. They require five seconds to reach 100 percent power and create the thrust needed to propel the 6-millionpound Artemis I upward.

Two minutes after launch, speeding above the Earth’s surface and having burned though 3 million pounds of fuel, the boosters on either side of the core stage fall away and the four engines continue to accelerate the rocket. Eight minutes after launch, having reached the Earth’s orbit, the core stage detaches.

At this point, the uncrewed Orion will be orbiting more than 100 miles above the Earth, traveling at a rate of more than 17,500 miles per hour. When lined up with the moon, the RL-10 engine on the upper stage will fire and break the Orion free of gravity, sending the spacecraft to the moon.

END GAME As Artemis I nears its launch date, Boeing teams are building the core stage for Artemis II. Unlike some newer commercial rockets, SLS is not a reusable system, so there will be no recovery attempts. After assembling the first stage for Artemis I, teams immediately began assembly of a new stage for Artemis II. “(SLS) gives our country a really good capability that will serve us well for decades to come,” Honeycutt says. “It’s about the ability to evolve into an even bigger, more advanced rocket.”

Emre Kelly of Florida Today contributed to this story.

WILL PROVIDE POWER TO TRAVEL

280K MILES FROM EARTH

40K MILES BEYOND THE MOON

The core stage on its way to Stennis Space Center in Mississippi GERALD HERBERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

SIDE ARM Booster rockets pass their test NASA and defense contractor Northrop Grumman teams ignited a five-segment solid rocket booster (SRB) — to be mounted on each side of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) to power liftoff — in Utah in mid-August.

The Northrop Grummandesigned booster roared to life with 3.6 million pounds of thrust during the two-minute “hot fire” test of hardware and of a new rocket fuel ingredient slated for future missions.

This test provided data to help engineers design improvements for the Artemis IV and subsequent versions.

Meanwhile, at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, teams are working on booster segments to form the 177-foot SRB that will power Artemis I in late 2021.

At a combined 7.2 million pounds of thrust, the two side boosters provide some 75 percent of the system’s total output.

The Boeing-built core stage uses former space shuttle RS-25 engines to provide the rest.

“I know what it’s like to fly the space shuttle rocket boosters, and these five-segment boosters will add far greater capability than the shuttle had,” said Charlie Precourt, a former astronaut and Northrop Grumman’s vice president of propulsion systems, during a September webcast. “I’d love to ride on the SLS and can’t wait to hear the experiences of the first SLS astronaut crew.”

— Emre Kelly GEORGE FREY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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“Earthrise” photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders in 1968 NASA (2)

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EYE IN THE SKY NEWEST SATELLITE CONTINUES NASA’S EARTH STEWARDSHIP

By Matt Alderton In a year chock-full of space exploration milestones, it’s easy to forget the difference NASA makes here on Earth.

There’s no better reminder than NASA’s iconic “Earthrise” photo. Taken in 1968 by astronaut Bill Anders, who captured it aboard Apollo 8 as it orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, it was the first-ever color photograph of Earth taken from space. Showing An illustration of the Sentinel-6 satellite

a cerulean planet rising over a gray moon in the vast blackness of space, it triggered in Anders and many others an “aha!” moment where they realized for the first time Earth’s inherent fragility. Just two years after “Earthrise” was taken, environmentalists organized the first-ever Earth Day in 1970.

And yet, NASA’s most consequential photos of the planet aren’t taken by astronauts using consumer-grade cameras. Instead, they’re taken by satellites using sophisticated sensors that observe and analyze real-time CONTINUED

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“Now, we have 27 years of data from satellites that is exquisitely precise that proves global sea level is rising.”

— KAREN ST. GERMAIN, director, NASA’s Earth Science Division

conditions in the air and on the ground.

Those sensors transmit high-resolution photographs as well as radar, multispectral, infrared and thermal images that help governments, businesses and scholars better understand the planet. Because it captures wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye, for example, NASA’s multispectral imagery helps farmers assess crop health and estimate yield.

By capturing ambient temperature data, its thermal imagery helps public health authorities understand the causes and transmission of waterborne diseases like cholera. Satellite imagery can even warn governments about water scarcity and poor air quality.

“Earth is our awesome planet. We rely on it for food, clean water and air that we can breathe … imagine if those things were disrupted,” says Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, whose mission is analyzing data from more than 30 NASA satellites, as well as from instruments that are located on the International Space Station, airplanes, balloons, ships and land.

“Information (from satellites) ... helps avoid that.”

In an era of accelerating climate change with profound social and economic consequences, satellite imagery is more critical than ever.

Which is why NASA continues to develop new and improved platforms to generate it.

Its latest satellite, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich — named for the late Earth Science Division director — will launch this fall with the goal of helping humanity respond to one of its most pressing climate-change crises: global sea level rise.

RISE AND FALL Since 1880, the average global temperature has increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit due largely to greenhouse gas emissions from human activities like driving, manufacturing and energy production. Increased temperatures have caused glaciers and ice

observations NASA made from space led to an understanding which (led to) policy decisions that have produced positive outcomes for our planet,” says St. Germain, who hopes Sentinel-6 will be similarly impactful.

SEA VIEW

1986

2019 NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY

Images showing glaciers shown retreating in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park.

sheets to melt and seawater to warm, the impact of which is rising oceans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which says the average global sea level has risen 8 to 9 inches in the last 140 years. In 2019, NOAA reports, global mean sea level was 3.4 inches above the 1993 average — the highest annual average on record.

And agencies like NOAA can quantify sea level rise precisely, thanks to satellites like Sentinel-6.

“When I was a graduate student in 1990, we didn’t know quantitatively whether or how sea level was changing. Now, we have 27 years of data from satellites that is exquisitely precise that proves global sea level is rising,” explains St. Germain, who notes the extent to which American citizens, businesses and military bases reside on coasts that are susceptible to swelling surf. “Given how much our global economy and national security infrastructure reside on the coast, understanding sea level rise and what it’s going to mean is critically important.”

It’s reminiscent of an earlier environmental crisis in which NASA engaged — ozone depletion.

HOLE PICTURE Since launching in 1978, NASA’s Nimbus 7 weather satellite has been taking measurements using an instrument known as the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS). In 1985, that instrument confirmed from space what scientists on Earth already had suspected based on ground and air observations — a perilous hole in the ozone layer.

“The TOMS observations that were made in 1985 led us to understand not only that there was depleted ozone over Antarctica, but that the ozone hole was enormous — the size of a continent — and that it was related to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were a commonly used aerosol propellant at the time in things like hairspray,” explains St. Germain, who says NASA’s ozone observations were a catalyst for the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty whose signatories agreed in 1987 to phase out the use of CFCs in order to protect the ozone layer.

NASA’s latest observations show that Earth’s ozone hole was the smallest ever measured.

“That’s a complete story of how

NASA has been measuring global sea level rise since 1992 when it launched the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, whose measurements of ocean surface topography catalyzed nearly three decades of valuable research about sea level rise from climate change.

A joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Sentinel-6 will be NASA’s fourth “ocean altimeter” mission, behind TOPEX/Poseidon, 2001’s Jason-1, 2008’s Jason-2 and 2016’s Jason-3.

Launching on Nov. 10, it will be the first of two new satellites designed to measure the oceans’ height. The mission’s second satellite will follow in 2025.

Although it will perform the same task as its predecessors, Sentinel-6 will do it faster and better thanks to a next-generation radar altimeter that uses radio waves to measure water levels, according to project manager Parag Vaze, who says the new satellite will be able to analyze more data in greater detail within a shorter timespan — digesting sea level measurements down to the centimeter for 90 percent of the world’s oceans in a matter of days instead of months.

Sentinel-6 will also be able to measure ocean altitude closer to the coasts than previous satellites, and will have secondary instruments on board to measure temperature and humidity in the atmosphere above the oceans. In addition to helping NASA forecast sea level rise, such data will help meteorologists improve hurricane forecasts, logistics companies improve ship routing, fishermen keep tabs on ocean currents, marine biologists protect endangered species and governments respond to environmental catastrophes such as oil spills.

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NASA’S SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO

While airplanes and cars were parked and industrial production slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA imagery shows the reduction of nitrogen dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels.

ANALYZING EARTH WHILE THE WORLD TOOK A BREATHER

sitting idle, they wondered what the impact

tions of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide

would be on the planet.

in the atmosphere. In the northeast United

C

OVID-19 put a wrench in 50th

Earth Science Division established two

30 percent in March 2020 compared to

anniversary Earth Day celebrations

portals — one exclusive to NASA, the other

March 2019.

in April, which took place online

shared with international partners — to

In order to answer that question, NASA’s

States alone, nitrogen dioxide declined by

NASA Earth Science Division director

due to the pandemic. It could not, however,

publicly collect and share Earth observa-

Karen St. Germain says it’s too early to draw

dampen the day’s spirit. In fact, Earth Day’s

tions made from space. First, NASA

conclusions from pandemic data. While

environmental mission made new strides

scientists watched light pollution. When

researchers continue their work, however,

during the pandemic, when stay-at-home

light at night declined relative to pre-

citizen scientists can explore on their own at

orders gave scientists the opportunity to

pandemic levels, it indicated decreased

eodashboard.org and earthdata.nasa.gov/

analyze the Earth under new, eco-friendlier

economic activity. Next, the scientists

covid19.

circumstances. With drivers staying home,

correlated decreased economic activity

planes parked in hangars and factories

with other observations, like concentra-

“The oceans make a very, very large contribution to weather patterns around the world,” Vaze says. “Being able to understand — and more importantly, predict — those weather patterns in the ocean just like we do in the atmosphere ... has all sorts of societal applications, from commerce and shipping to agriculture.”

SCIENCE FOR SOCIETY Sentinel-6 offers a preview of NASA satellites to come. Also in development are the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, which will help scientists identify harmful algal blooms in oceans by measuring water color; the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, which will give

scientists their first comprehensive view of Earth’s freshwater bodies from space; and the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) mission, which will improve air-quality forecasts by measuring atmospheric pollution over North America on an hourly basis and at a high spatial resolution. Launching in 2022, each will yield new data that governments and businesses can use to become more efficient, productive and intelligent.

What makes NASA’s Earth observations so critical, however, isn’t just what they can do for the economy. Ultimately, it’s what they can do for existence, suggests data from the World Economic Forum, whose 2020 Global Risks Report

names escalating environmental threats — including extreme weather, natural disasters, biodiversity loss and climate action failure — as humanity’s most pressing concerns.

“Humans are a big part of the overall Earth system,” says Lawrence Friedl, director of the Applied Sciences Program within NASA’s Earth Science Division. “If people can gain a better understanding of how the decisions they make are both influenced by the environment and affect the environment, we can have a more sustainable future.”

In service of that future, St. Germain set two main objectives when she took the reins of the Earth Science Division in June. One is making it easier for end

— Matt Alderton

users to access and use NASA’s Earth observations. The other is increasing the speed and quality of those observations by leveraging new technology and international partnerships. Because they’re the size of a suitcase instead of a school bus, new, miniaturized “smallsats” can help NASA iterate more quickly and affordably, as can collaborations like its Sentinel-6 endeavor with ESA, which accelerates progress through cost sharing.

“To understand, predict and help people prepare is more important now than ever. And I believe that what we do in the next decade is really going to lay the foundation for how well we’re able to manage in the rest of the century beyond that,” St. Germain says.

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By Adam Hadhazy

NASA’s first commercial crew mission sets a course for the future of human spaceflight

Astronaut Douglas Hurley SPACEX

GETTY IMAGES

W

hen the historic countdown clock at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida finally hit 00:00:00 on the afternoon of May 30, 2020, it may have felt as though the clock had actually been ticking for years — nearly nine, in fact, back to July 2011. That was the last time American astronauts had launched on an American rocket from American soil, aboard the since-retired space shuttle.

After that last flight, U.S. astronauts hitched rides to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, launched from Kazakhstan, while NASA pursued a Commercial Crew Program.

The goal: private companies eventually taking over the transport of astronauts to and from the ISS. This round of human spaceflights was originally scheduled for 2017, but was delayed by appropriations shortfalls and technical challenges faced by contractors Boeing and SpaceX. “At times it seemed like the universe was against

us,” says Phil McAlister, the director of commercial spaceflight at NASA. “But there, on the day of launch, the clouds parted for us.”

Built and operated by SpaceX, the transportation system encompasses a rocket, named Falcon 9, and a crew capsule that sits atop it, dubbed Dragon.

Falcon delivered Dragon into orbit, where the capsule proceeded to dock with the ISS, safely bringing aboard two astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley.

After two months aloft, Behnken and Hurley returned to Earth in the same Dragon capsule, splash-landing in the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 2.

The mission was intended as a limited test flight demonstration only — hence its formal moniker of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 (Demo-1 was uncrewed) — but it ended up as a longer, more thorough demonstration than originally intended.

McAlister says this is a good thing.

“It’s been gratifying,” says McAlister. “To see the mission go as smoothly as it’s gone, it’s really been great for a lot of us that’ve been working on this from the very beginning.”

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ROBERT MARKOWITZ/NASA

Douglas Hurley, followed by NASA flight surgeon Joe Dervay, arrives at Houston’s Ellington Field after the Aug. 2 mission.

The Frontier

Astronaut Robert Behnken SPACEX

The mission’s success could prove an important milestone in the history of human activity beyond our planet. Until now, the launching of people into space has been dauntingly expensive and challenging, and thus primarily the responsibility of governments, says McAlister.

Now, with commercial companies gaining the necessary technical mastery, the hope is to dramatically reduce costs. Doing so would grant access to space to a vastly greater share of the world.

“With this mission, we

have changed the arc of human spaceflight,” says McAlister. “I strongly believe we are opening up low-Earth orbit,” he adds, using the term for the region where the ISS flies. “I think this is going to be a fairly momentous thing when we look back on it decades from now.”

“We want spaceflight to become something common,” says Benjamin Reed, the director of crew mission management for SpaceX. “We want to drive down the costs by orders of magnitude to something affordable in the very near term.”

McAlister says that outsourcing much of crew transportation system

development to the private sector substantially reduced overall costs, netting savings he estimates at $20 billion to $30 billion.

“We can put those savings now into our deep-space missions,” says McAlister, reflecting NASA’s strategy of shifting low-Earth orbit spaceflight needs — such as handling crew rotations on the ISS — to commercial entities, while the agency focuses on taking humans back to the moon and then on to Mars.

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to calculations by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, for the six launches planned with SpaceX over the next few years, each seat aboard a Dragon crew capsule will cost the agency about $55 million.

While that’s a hefty sum, it’s a good deal less than the approximately $80 million that Russia has been charging for a seat on a Soyuz capsule.

McAlister expects costs will continue to decline, similar to how commercial air flight has become more affordable over the decades.

This trend toward cost efficiency should accelerate as new players enter the commercial crew sector.

NASA’s second selected contractor, Boeing, is gearing up for its first crewed launch late next spring aboard a capsule christened the CST-100 Starliner.

“At times it seemed like the universe was against us.

But there, on the day of launch, the clouds parted for us.”

— PHIL MCALISTER, director of NASA’s commercial spaceflight

Efficient Design Beyond cost, commercial crews are also changing the complexion of human spaceflight, and SpaceX’s system differs from the space shuttle in some fundamental ways.

The latter — a reusable space plane, essentially — was vertically connected to a large, external, liquid fuel tank and coupled with two solid-propellant boosters to achieve orbit.

Falcon 9, in contrast, burns through an all-liquid propellant mixture of rocket-grade kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen.

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon 2 capsule is actually a bit of a throwback to the era before the space shuttle.

For its design, SpaceX went with a capsule placed right on top of Falcon 9. It’s the same configuration used for the NASA Apollo crew vehicles, perched atop the Saturn V rocket, for the lunar missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and even further back to the Gemini and Mercury programs at the dawn of human spaceflight.

Placing the capsule on top of the rocket offers a better safety profile than the placement on the shuttle, which incurred damage from debris falling off of its external tank during numerous launches.

Foam that fell off the tank critically damaged the left wing of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, leading

CRAIG BAILEY/FLORIDA TODAY

SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on May 30.

GETTY IMAGES

BILL INGALLS/NASA

CONTINUED

The Dragon spacecraft splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico after 64 days in space on Aug. 2.

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to the vehicle’s destruction and the death of its crew.

The capsule design offers excellent stability during atmospheric re-entry, as evidenced by its sterling history of splashdown recoveries at sea. “(The capsule) has a long history of proven spaceflight, since the very beginning,” says Reed.

Significant innovations instead took place inside the capsule.

Developed in the 1970s, the space shuttle relied on the best technologies and user interfaces of its time. From our current perspective, that translates to old school airplane and video-game-style controls, such as joysticks.

In keeping with the times, the Dragon capsule is outfitted with touch screens, much like the interfaces many of us have grown accustomed to with smartphones and tablets.

“The goal with Dragon is a 21stcentury spacecraft,” says Reed.

SpaceX also took care in designing its vehicles to look, well, snazzy, to hopefully engage people in supporting and getting involved in spaceflight. Reed says engaging the public in this way is very much a part of a successful space program. “It’s (secondary) always to safety and performance,” says Reed, “but inspiration is really important.”

SPACEX

Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley run through a full simulation of launch and docking in March.

New Destinations A NASA SpaceX crew launch was scheduled for this fall, and another is slated for spring 2021, both of which would transport astronauts to the ISS. The ISS is not the sole intended destination for NASA’s and SpaceX’s continuing collaboration, though. NASA is exploring the use of commercial crews for moon and Mars missions, looking to likewise innovate while constraining costs.

“We hope to get better, more efficient systems for deep space missions, now that we’ve seen it work,” says McAlister.

“We want to make human life multiplanetary,” adds Reed.

Reed describes how he took his children outside on a summer night to observe the moon and Mars appearing close together in the sky.

“I told my kids, ‘that’s where we’re going,’” he says. “The moon is next, and after that, it’s Mars.”

BILL INGALLS/NASA

Capsule and astronauts are recovered.

NASA

Behnken and Hurley, far right, join the crew aboard the International Space Station.

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Red Rover PAVING THE WAY FOR HUMAN HABITATION ON MARS

By Adam Stone

MARS PERSEVERANCE

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N JULY 30, NASA

JEZERO CRATER

HELICOPTER DRONE

launched an United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to Mars.

When its precious payload — including the Perseverance rover — arrives in February 2021, touching down on the Jezero crater, it will bring us one step closer to a human mission to the red planet.

“The Perseverance rover is the first step in a series of missions that will demonstrate a lot of the capabilities we will need to send a human to Mars,” says Lori Glaze, Planetary Science Division director at NASA. Rover will collect Martian soil samples, to be returned to Earth on a future round-trip mission. It will look for signs of ancient life, and onboard experiments will convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.

The rover is also expected to launch a helicopter drone — the first time that humans will undertake powered flight on another planet.

While a human mission to Mars is likely decades away, the technology currently making its way through space will help NASA better understand how humans can land and live safely on our nearest planetary neighbor.

TOUCHDOWN To live on Mars, you first have to land on Mars, and that’s no small trick.

The atmosphere is too thin to support a conventional parachute, and past missions have essentially plummeted blindly. When Perseverance arrives, it will descend on a specially designed supersonic parachute, and then the new Terrain-Relative Navigation system will kick in.

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“It means we can land in more hazardous areas with over 99 percent chance of landing safely,” says Mohan. “Humans also will come with a lot of stuff and baggage. This technology would allow us to land those supplies more precisely and closer to a human habitat. We could also use it to land things in advance of humans arriving, so that the supplies will already be there when they get there.”

Once Perseverance touches down, a range of scientific missions will commence.

AIR BRIDGE

UNITED LAUNCH ALLIANCE ATLAS V

“Mars 2020 added a second brain to the Perseverance rover to take in the images and do all the crunching on that data in order to figure out what it is seeing as it descends,” says Swati Mohan, a guidance, navigation and control systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

That onboard computer will compare what it sees in the final minutes of descent against pre-programmed maps. “It will be looking at the ground, identifying features. Then it picks a safe spot that it can get to, looking at all the identified hazards on the ground based on maps drawn from orbital imagery,” Mohan says.

This method could pave the way for a future human mission.

Perseverance will deploy the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, a device that sucks in carbon dioxide, heats it, zaps it with an electric charge and converts it to oxygen.

“The Martian atmosphere is 95 percent CO², so that is quite abundant on Mars,” says Asad Aboobaker, an instrument systems engineer at JPL. MOXIE will churn out about 6 grams of oxygen per hour — enough to keep a small dog alive — and it will take a lot of energy to do even that much, draining the rover’s solar batteries in the course of a day’s work. “It takes 250 watts to run MOXIE while it’s generating oxygen, about what a blender uses,” says Aboobaker.

Sensors will tell NASA scientists whether the system is working. “We can figure out how much of the CO² is being used and the concentration of oxygen in the resulting gas stream. We’ll get all that data as part of running MOXIE on Mars,” Aboobaker explains.

MOXIE will demonstrate the art of the possible, aiming to prove we can convert the Martian atmosphere into breathable air. If it works, NASA’s next task will be to figure out how to support a version big enough to sustain human life.

“The goal for the future is to scale up to human-scale systems,” says Aboobaker.

“That means we need to design a system that can operate independently, one that can generate a factor of 200 times more oxygen, which is what we would need for CONTINUED

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human exploration.”

In addition to making oxygen, Perseverance will be engaged in other scientific pursuits, including flying its own helicopter.

HIGH FLYER The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter weighs only about 4 pounds, but it represents a big leap forward in the history of human aviation.

“It’s something fundamentally new — powered flight on another world. This will be the first time that has happened,” says Ken Williford, deputy project scientist for the NASA Mars 2020 mission and the director of the JPL Astrobiogeochemistry Laboratory.

On Earth, the density of air helps to support planes and helicopters in flight. Given the thin Martian atmosphere, Ingenuity will have to take a different approach, using carbon-fiber blades arranged into two rotors that spin in opposite directions at around 2,400 rpm. That’s far faster than a passenger helicopter on Earth.

Because of communication delays — it takes about 10 minutes for a signal to reach from here to there — humans won’t be able to pilot the drone. Instead, Ingenuity will fly according to pre-programmed commands.

This could pave the way for future uses of drones in support of a human mission on Mars. “If you had a crew of humans at

PERSEVERANCE

a base, they could send out a helicopter drone while sitting there safely shielded from radiation,” says Williford. “The beauty of a helicopter is that you can execute a search pattern and you don’t have to worry about running into rocks or going around things. There’s a lot less to bump into when you’re up in the sky.”

SIGNS OF LIFE All this begs the question: Could human beings survive on the Martian landscape, with its high radiation load and other unknown factors? Enter SHERLOC — Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals.

A part of the rover’s experimental suite, SHERLOC will expose spacesuit and helmet materials to see how they react to the Martian environment. “That will help inform us in how we develop the spacesuits for astronauts when they land on Mars,” Glaze says.

Another key scientific mission for Perseverance will be the search for traces of ancient microbial life. Did the red planet once host living organisms? If it did, that might tell us something about how humans could one day live there safely.

The long-term plan is for the rover to collect samples of Martian soil that could eventually be returned to Earth for analysis. Williford says this could help answer key questions: “How did Mars become habitable? How long ago, and in what ways was it habitable? How long did it remain habitable, and how did that habitability decline?”

To find out, we’d have to devise a way to launch materials from the Martian surface into orbit, where a passing rocket could grab them and return them to Earth. NASA already is evolving concepts for such a sample-return mission.

All the technology that left Earth this summer could help to inform a future human visit to Mars. “Everything we are doing is helping to speed the way,” says Glaze. “Whenever we want to send humans someplace, it makes sense to start with robotic exploration to initiate investigations. Robotic exploration and human exploration go hand in hand.”

NASA

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TECHNOLOGY

DESIREE STOVER/NASA

The James Webb Space Telescope undergoes testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

By Gina Harkins

Next-Gen Space Telescopes As Hubble turns 30, NASA readies two state-of-the-art successors

T

HREE DECADES AFTER NASA launched

the world’s first space-based telescope, it’s still exceeding researchers’ expectations.

Nobody would’ve bet that the Hubble Space Telescope would still be in orbit 30 years after its April 24, 1990, launch from the space shuttle Discovery, says Paul Hertz, director of the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA. That’s especially true after a problem with Hubble’s mirror required a complex repair three years into its mission.

Now NASA is investing $12 billion in two new telescopes that will give scientists unprecedented views of the universe, building on technology that emerged in the decades since Hubble was launched.

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TECHNOLOGY XXXXX

HUBBLE AT 30 NUMBER OF OBSERVATIONS

1.4 million ORBITS

340 miles ABOVE THE EARTH SPEED AT WHICH IT ORBITS

17,000 mph TIME TO COMPLETE ONE ORBIT OF EARTH

95 minutes SOURCE: NASA

Hubble Space Telescope in orbit NASA

“Whereas Hubble (takes) a picture of ... a tiny piece of the Andromeda Galaxy, Roman (will) take about half the Andromeda Galaxy in one snapshot.”

— PAUL HERTZ, director, astrophysics division, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

JIM JELETIC/NASA

The late astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, with a model of Hubble, is the namesake of the Roman Space Telescope due to be launched before the end of the decade.

“There were so many things that we learned about how to do a large space telescope,” says Hertz. “Now we can build bigger space telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope or telescopes that have more powerful capabilities, like the Roman Space Telescope.”

Here’s a look at Hubble’s legacy and how it paved the way for NASA’s next big telescopes that will launch into space:

EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE NASA is throwing Hubble a bit of a celebration this year. In honor of the school bus-size telescope’s three decades in orbit, NASA is releasing a series of images Hubble captured during each year of service. On Hubble’s 30th anniversary, for example, NASA released a stunning image, Cosmic Reef, showing the starforming region in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, 163,000 light years away. That is just one of the more than 1.4 million observations captured by Hubble since 1990.

“We didn’t know the details of how stars formed, and Hubble lets us see (that) in great detail,” Hertz says. “We see

inside those dust and gas clouds to see where the stars are forming.”

Perhaps even more remarkable is that Hubble has also shown planetary systems forming around some of those stars, Hertz adds. Until Hubble launched, NASA didn’t know any planets existed outside the Earth’s solar system.

“Now, of course, we know of thousands,” asserts Hertz. “And with Hubble, we see them forming.”

NASA considers Hubble one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built, with its data leading to more than 800,000 citations in scientific papers. One of the original requirements for the telescope was that it accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe.

It did that and much more, Hertz says. From how and when the Big Bang happened to the prominence of black holes at the center of just about every galaxy and new information about Pluto’s moons, Hubble continues making new discoveries.

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TECHNOLOGY

NASA

Two galaxies, known as the Antennae, are engaged in a violent clash. The flashes of blue indicate new stars forming.

NASA

A dying star, commonly called the Helix Nebula, is more than three light years in diameter and one of the closest planetary nebulas to Earth.

“We didn’t know the details of how stars formed and Hubble lets us see (that) in great detail. We see inside those dust and gas clouds to see where the stars are forming.”

— PAUL HERTZ, director, astrophysics division, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate NASA

Located 4,000 miles away from Earth, the sun-like star known as the Butterfly Nebula has exhausted its nuclear fuel and is ejecting layers of gas at speeds of more than a million miles an hour.

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“(With Webb) we’ll be able to ... (see) how galaxies assembled from the chaos of the Big Bang to the very highly structured modern universe we see today.”

— THOMAS ZURBUCHEN, associate administrator, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

NASA, EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY AND SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Hubble captures an image of a giant red nebula and a blue nebula, part of the star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

NEXT GENERATION One reason Hubble has had such staying power is that astronauts have been able to fix and upgrade the telescope in space. That won’t be possible with the next two space telescopes, Hertz says, since each is headed a million miles away.

The $8.8 billion Webb Space Telescope, named for the man who led NASA through most of the 1960s and retired just before the first moon landing, will launch from South America on Oct. 31, 2021. The 14,000-pound telescope is 100 times more powerful than Hubble and will be the largest launched into space.

Its design features a tennis-courtsize sunshield that must be folded up origami-style to fit in a rocket before being unfurled in space. It’s now undergoing tests to ensure its complex design will work a million miles from Earth.

“We’re going to put it through its final

environmental test later this year where we’re going to shake it like the rocket and blast it with noise — giant speakers just like the rocket — then unfold it one last time to make sure everything still works the way it’s supposed to,” Hertz says.

The telescope was set to launch in March 2021, but those plans were derailed by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Webb is the world’s most complex space observatory and our top science priority, and we’ve worked hard to keep progress moving during the pandemic,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at a July 16 press conference. “The team continues to be focused on reaching milestones and arriving at the technical solutions that will see us through to this new launch date next year.”

Webb is designed to see the first light in the universe, Hertz says, including the earliest stars and galaxies.

“Because we’ll be able to also observe stars and galaxies everywhere in between here and there, we’ll be able to … (see) how galaxies assembled from the chaos of the Big Bang to the very highly structured modern universe we see today,” Zurbuchen adds.

WIDE VIEW The Roman Space Telescope — named for the late Nancy Grace Roman, called the “mother of Hubble” for the astronomer’s work leading that program — is set to launch in the next five to six years.

And even though Roman and Hubble are about the same size and have roughly the same size mirror — about 8 feet in diameter — Roman will be able to see 100 times as much sky.

“Whereas Hubble will take a picture of just a tiny piece of the Andromeda Galaxy, Roman can take about half the Andromeda Galaxy in one snapshot,” says Hertz.

The goal is to be able to use Roman to better understand dark energy, he adds.

Both new telescopes will use fuel to maintain their orbits for at least 10 years, explains Hertz. Webb will also need fuel to keep its sunshield pointed in the right direction. The hope, he says, is that NASA can eventually figure out how to run both telescopes using less fuel than planned so the devices remain operational longer.

If the technology advances enough, Hertz surmises that Roman might also someday be serviced by robotics.

And as with Hubble, NASA leaders hope Americans will appreciate the powerful imagery these telescopes will produce.

“We’ll be seeing the universe in a way that we’ve never seen it before,” he says.

“We’ll be learning new fascinating things that will really excite people interested in science in the general public, just like Hubble did.”

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PARTNERSHIPS

NASA

Astronaut Christina Koch inserts a cassette containing bioprinted cells into a Techshot machine on the International Space Station.

The Smart Set Small businesses offer big ideas

By Stacey Freed

E

VERY YEAR, NASA AWARDS

money through the government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program — which provides grants to businesses with fewer than 500 employees — and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program — which offers grants

to research institutions — in order to advance technological innovation. This year NASA awarded $51 million to 312 small businesses that are working on projects to lower the cost of rocket launches, power electric airplanes and grow human tissue, among others.

“NASA benefits from the ingenuity and agility of small businesses through the SBIR/STTR programs, and our

investments go toward growing entrepreneurship in the U.S. economy,” says Jenn Gustetic, SBIR/STTR program executive.

“Small business technologies contribute to the success of NASA missions and benefit life on Earth. It’s a true partnership in that way.”

These small businesses are partnering with NASA to create new technologies and solutions:

PRINTING HUMAN TISSUE For Techshot, a biotech and aerospace engineering company based in Greenville, Ind., the most recent project for NASA began with the question, “How can you advance regenerative medicine in microgravity?” says Rich Boling, the company’s vice president of corporate advancement.

Using its 3D BioFabrication Facility (BFF), Techshot manufactures tissue in orbit. Why do this in space? “On Earth you can’t manufacture thick, highly cellularized tissue, like heart tissue for example. Gravity’s pull will flatten it out,” says Boling.

“We need the cells to stay where we put them.”

Techshot scientists and engineers on Earth have a direct link to the International Space Station (ISS), enabling them to work with the astronauts in microgravity. “We’ve done three prints — two of cardiac tissue and one of cartilage — so far, and next year will do more,” says Boling. “We learn so much each time we do it.” Knee meniscus cartilage has been printed for a foundation working with wounded soldiers. The cardiac tissue was a test of the machine.

By the end of the decade, Techshot hopes to reduce the organ donor shortage — particularly for heart, liver and kidney transplants — by printing organs using the recipient’s own cells to make the printing material.

This has the potential to help eliminate the problem of organ rejection as well.

Techshot, a company of just 50 employees, has had as many as six research machines on the ISS. Among them is an X-ray machine for mice. Space accelerates aging, so researchers and drug companies are able to study new treatments for muscle-wasting diseases. A minilab called a multi-use variable-gravity platform (MVP) has been used to study the heart cells of fruit flies.

“The SBIR calls itself America’s seed fund,” says Boling. “It’s enabled our little Indiana company to compete with the biggest names in aerospace.”

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PARTNERSHIPS NEXT-GENERATION PROPULSION For decades, space launches have been extremely expensive. One company that is working to lower launch costs is Parabilis, a San Marcos, Calif.-based company that specializes in propulsion, launch vehicle and spacecraft products. Soon after its founding in 2015, Parabilis was awarded funding

by NASA to develop and test a low-cost way to launch CubeSat class payloads (small satellite payloads) into orbit by using an alternate fuel.

Parabilis’ hybrid propulsion uses a liquid oxidizer and a solid fuel grain as a propellant, combining the advantages of expensive liquid-fueled propulsion — throttleability and multiple restarts — with the safety and economic benefits of solid propulsion.

As a result of NASA’s investment, the U.S. Air Force has contracted with Parabilis for its hybrid propulsion. “It can help with testing hypersonic systems,” says Dave Streich, Parabilis’ CEO, adding that the Air Force is planning to deploy Parabilis technology in the next two years. “It’s cheap and it works.”

In developing its technology, Parabilis is able to be nimble in ways that NASA cannot. “(It’s) a win-win proposition.

Small businesses can provide fast and efficient R&D at a very low cost to NASA,” says Streich. “NASA can provide valuable seed funding, technical expertise and facilities to small businesses.”

CROPS IN SPACE Millions of moviegoers watched Matt Damon survive being stranded on Mars by growing potatoes in The Martian.

Enter Adam and Christine Escobar, founders of Space Lab Technologies, and their ideas for building a greenhouse on the red planet.

Space Lab Technologies, which focuses on developing sustainable technology for human space exploration, is collaborating with the University of Colorado Boulder to make the MarsOasis. The greenhouse can be stowed for travel to the planet, where it will be inflated and harden over a few days to withstand Mars’ atmosphere.

The Escobars, who started Space Lab Technologies in 2016 using their guest room as a lab, are also developing a growth chamber to produce duckweed in microgravity as a nutrient-dense food for astronauts. Commonly eaten in Asia, the small, ubiquitous plant grows on the surface of ponds and is rich in protein, vitamins and Omega-3. “I looked for the

A successful Parabilis test fire PARABILIS

fast-growing edible plants, because you can then produce more food in a small space. Then discovered it was not only fast growing, but incredibly nutritious,” says Christine, the company’s vice president and chief business officer.

Space Lab will be testing its floating plant pond in microgravity on an upcoming Blue Origin suborbital rocket.

The solar-powered MarsOasis prototype made by the six-person company, now working out of a 2,400-square-foot lab, will be tested on a high-altitude balloon in 2021.

“We even hope to do a demonstration on the surface of the moon” with a greenhouse called LunaOasis.

“Here on Earth, this technology could be used for more energy-efficient indoor farming and to sequester CO² for enhanced plant growth in an environmentally friendly way,” Christine says.

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An artist’s rendering of the MarsOasis SPACE LAB TECHNOLOGIES

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PARTNERSHIPS RECYCLING WATER To get a fresh gallon of water into space costs $83,000, “about $10,000 per pound for shipping,” says Bill Cumbie, founder and CEO of Hampton, Va.-based Pancopia, which develops environmental solutions to beneficially reuse waste. So, astronauts drink water that comes from their bodily fluids and has been recycled in a mechanical process via purification machines and a specialized reactor.

NASA has been looking into biological alternatives to decrease cost and increase efficiency. Cumbie believes that using anaerobic ammonia oxidizing bacteria — known as anammox — might be a great solution. Anammox removes nitrogen from wastewater “without the need for oxygen or organic matter and does so at one-third the cost of traditional technology,” says Cumbie.

Although Pancopia’s novel treatment for recycling wastewater was originally developed to benefit astronauts, it’s finding new applications — including beneficial treatment and reuse of swine waste. Installation of Pancopia’s innovative nitrogen control system can enable biogas to be produced from swine lagoon waste and eliminate health and odor problems.

“There are over 3,000 waste lagoons — each about the size of a football field — for swine in North Carolina alone,” says Cumbie. “They emit ammonia. They stink; they cause about $300,000 in health damage to surrounding neighborhoods, and they can affect swine health and pork production.”

“We’re probably at least five years away from using something like this on the International Space Station, but the bottom line is it will propel earthbound technology that will be of use in less than two years,” Cumbie says. “And we couldn’t have done any of it without NASA supporting our research.”

INTELLIGENT BATTERIES If you’re driving an electric car, you want your batteries to be dependable and durable. The systems in today’s electric vehicles will stop working with just one battery cell failure. “I want to isolate the batteries that are causing the failure while still providing the means to continue powering the vehicle. Surprisingly, batteries aren’t built this way currently,” says Carlos Rentel, director of battery technologies at X-wave Innovations, a research and development firm in Gaithersburg, Md. X-wave has been integrating electronics around battery modules to make them smarter. Each module has an

ANNETTE HOLLOWAY

Pancopia CEO Bill Cumbie pours anammox bacteria, which might be a solution to reusing waste.

IT COSTS

$83,000 TO TRANSPORT ONE GALLON OF FRESH WATER TO SPACE SOURCE: PANCOPIA

embedded computer that, with very low power, runs coordinating algorithms. “The system forms an intelligent network that can deliver power in a controlled way. If one module fails, you’d still have enough power to reach a safe port or to avoid a more serious incident,” says Rentel. “This system will be more efficient and provide full tolerance, as an added bonus.”

While it is in a prototype stage, X-wave anticipates having a version for the market in 2022, Rentel says.

NASA also is exploring the company’s new technologies for possible use in electric airplanes such as its battery-powered experimental X-57 aircraft.

“NASA is helping to create the next generation of battery systems for critical and commercial applications,” says Rentel. “We’re confident that this work will result in innovations that will add value to society and contribute to a cleaner world.”

Electronics inside an X-wave Innovations battery X-WAVE INNOVATIONS

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EDUCATION

Sky’s the Limit Top schools are training tomorrow’s aeronautics leaders

By Robin Roenker

N

ASA HAS BIG PLANS for the coming decades,

including the establishment of a permanent human presence on the moon and sending the first astronauts to Mars. Here on Earth, advances in aeronautics, including deliveries by drone and autonomous air travel, will reshape the way we live.

A degree from one of these top-rated aerospace engineering schools can help open the door to a rewarding career at NASA:

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND A. James Clark School of Engineering Research specializations in aerospace engineering at the university include rotorcraft technology, advanced propulsion, unmanned aircraft systems and space-centered work. Associate professor Christine Hartzell’s research, for example, centers on lessening mechanical disruptions from space dust — essential if we are to have sustained settlements on the moon — while some of her colleagues are focused on designing next-gen spacesuits.

Students can gain hands-on skills via internships at NASA’s nearby Goddard Space Flight Center and through competitive rotorcraft and rocket design competitions.

“There’s renewed interest in going back to the moon, so there’s a demand for these skills not only for NASA jobs, but also in the commercial and military sector as well,” says Hartzell. uaero.umd.edu

University of Maryland doctoral student Lena Johnson JOHN CONSOLI

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CU’s new aerospace engineering sciences building AKHIL KANTIPULY/UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CU BOULDER

Research assistant Emanuela Della Bosca inspects a tandem pair of CubeSats.

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Michigan Engineering

“We are the public university that receives the most NASA funding,” says Marcus Holzinger, University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of aerospace engineering and associate chair for graduate studies. “We have research ties with all components of NASA’s work — from aeronautics to space exploration.”

Two faculty members are former astronauts. Others — including Daniel Scheeres, a lead investigator in the OSIRIS-REx mission to explore the asteroid Bennu — are directly involved in high-priority NASA projects. Nearly all classes have an integrated lab component which allows for applied learning, and the program’s two-semester senior design sequence allows students to build a full project prototype, such as a CubeSat (cube satellite) or an unmanned aerial vehicle, from start to finish. ucolorado.edu/aerospace

Founded in 1914, the University of Michigan (U-M)’s department of aerospace engineering — the first in the U.S. — counts among its alumni the entire crews of Gemini 4, which orbited the Earth, and Apollo 15, the fourth mission to the moon, as well as Kelly Johnson, the designer of the SR-71 Blackbird, and Harry Hillaker, designer of the F-16. The department is home to one of the world’s leading electric propulsion research centers — helping shape cutting-edge propulsion technology that will allow us to reach Mars.

The campus’ recently launched Space Institute allows for robust cross-disciplinary research collaboration. “Space exploration and engineering, we think, is the future of aerospace,” says Anthony Waas, U-M’s Richard A. Auhll department chair of aerospace engineering. Other research specializations include the use of robotics in aircraft manufacturing and the development of drones and unmanned aerial systems. “In our aerospace department, we are training next-generation space people – the people who will staff the future of the space industry, who will be behind routine flights to the moon and to Mars,” Waas says. uaero.engin.umich.edu

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY College of Engineering

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

Students test their aircraft in the university’s wind tunnel.

Nearly doubling its faculty in the past 10 years, Texas A&M’s aerospace engineering department is in a period of tremendous growth. Professors include former NASA astronauts Bonnie Dunbar and Gregory Chamitoff, and eight National Academy of Engineering members. “They are teaching classes actively and mentoring large groups of researchers, so it is a very exciting time for our department,” says associate professor Darren Hartl.

Home to an advanced vertical flight laboratory, an aerospace human systems laboratory, a variety of wind tunnels, a flight simulator and a virtual reality lab, the department offers students an array of opportunities to be involved in hands-on research.

The university was one of five original recipients of grants from NASA’s $10 million University Leadership Initiative which supports work to develop supersonic aircraft that produce a diminished supersonic boom. “People think NASA is (just) space, but NASA was aeronautics first, and NASA aeronautics is a great partner to us,” Hartl says. uengineering.tamu.edu/aerospace

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THE FUTURE OF SPACE CAREERS Founded in 1969 by the National Academy of Sciences, the nonprofit Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a group of universities conducting leading research. The organization works with more than 100 member universities across the country to further scientific research and technology development on behalf of NASA, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies as well as promote careers in space.

USRA president and CEO Jeffrey A. Isaacson, who holds a doctorate in physics, shares insights on USRA’s mission and what’s on the horizon in space science:

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Cornell’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is based at the university’s Upson Hall.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Cornell aerospace engineering graduates often end up working at one of NASA’s 10 major centers — or with agencies that contract with NASA — thanks to a rigorous curriculum that “takes students from the fundamentals of aerosciences, including basic mathematics, physics and materials science content, through more specific aerospace content that includes propulsion and structures for aerospace systems and the design of spacecraft,” says Mason Peck, the Stephen J. Fujikawa professor of astronautical engineering at Cornell and a former NASA chief technologist. A hallmark of the program is its projectbased, experiential learning approach, in which student-led teams solve a research or design problem.

“Our students do cradle-to-grave flight projects. They get to design, build, implement and operate spacecraft,” Peck says. umae.cornell.edu

GEORGIA TECH Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

Georgia Tech’s campus in Atlanta GEORGIA TECH

At Georgia Tech, students can select from specialized aerospace engineering course tracks that best fit in-demand career paths, including space systems, space entrepreneurship, propulsion, combustion, flight dynamics and drones.

Coursework is supplemented through applied learning via co-op and internship opportunities as well as the school’s active CubeSat program — which anticipates a launch in each of the next four years.

“It gives our students hands-on experience, so that when they go to the (job) interview, they can actually talk knowledgeably about space hardware,” says Mitchell L.R. Walker II, an aerospace engineering professor and associate chair for graduate programs. uae.gatech.edu

What do you see as the future of space and aeronautic science?

I think the most exciting thing right now has got to be space exploration. At the national level, we have articulated a plan to go back to the moon in a meaningful way and to operate there, outside of low-Earth orbit, as a stepping stone, so to speak, for greater human exploration of the solar system, beginning with Mars.

USRA has supported research that will help achieve these goals of extended space exploration — including, for example, pioneering work on microgravity environments and enablers, like quantum computing.

Back on Earth, I like to point out to people that the first “A” in NASA is aeronautics. USRA is involved in work on urban air mobility. You can imagine a future where we’re having things delivered by drones and using pilotless “air-taxis” to get around. It’s cuttingedge research that I’m really excited about.

What are the career prospects for students who go into space science, aeronautical engineering or related fields?

If there is anything standing in the way, it’s just finding enough people (to fill openings). There are so many demands now for a technical workforce in this country. The space enterprise in the United States, and in the world, is literally burgeoning. We have new approaches and new suppliers — like Blue Origin and SpaceX and Virgin Galactic — that have upended the traditional government approach to space exploration.

And, militarily, we’ve recognized the growing importance of space — so much so that we’ve created a new military branch, the Space Force.

The direction is very clear: There will be a strong, continued demand for workers with a knowledge of space science and engineering in our future.

What opportunities are there at USRA? An important part of our mission is workforce development — enabling and preparing the future space R&D (research and development) workforce. To that end, we manage a number of internships and related education programs for NASA and other federal agencies. Even in this, a pandemic year, we have more than 2,000 interns involved in those programs.

— Robin Roenker

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LOOKING XXXXX BACK

NASA

Members of the U.S. Navy assist with Apollo 13 recovery operations in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17,1970. Command module pilot Jack Swigert is seated far left, lunar module pilot Fred Haise steps into the life raft and commander Jim Lovell exits the spacecraft.

A Most Successful Failure Remembering Apollo 13 on the mission’s 50th anniversary

By Marcia Dunn

A

POLLO 13’S ASTRONAUTS, MISSION commander Jim

Lovell, Fred Haise and last-minute fill-in Jack Swigert, were almost to the moon when they heard a bang and felt a shudder. One of two oxygen tanks had burst in the spacecraft’s service module.

The tense words that followed are the stuff of NASA — and Hollywood — fame.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” radioed Swigert, the command module pilot who died in 1982.

When Lovell peered out the window and saw oxygen escaping into the black void, he shoved all emotions aside. “Not landing on the moon or dying in space are two different things,” Lovell, 92, explains, “and so we forgot about landing on the moon. This was one of survival. How do we get home?”

The astronauts were 200,000 miles from Earth. Getting back alive would require calm, skill and luck.

The flight controllers went into crisis mode. They immediately ordered the command module Odyssey shut down to conserve what little power remained,

and the astronauts to move into the lunar module Aquarius, now a lifeboat. “It was designed for two people for two days.

We were three people for four days,” says Lovell. The carbon dioxide overload from breathing threatened to kill them.

Engineers scrambled to figure out how to convert the square air-purifying canisters in the dead capsule into round ones that would fit in their temporary home. Their outside-the-box, seat-ofthe-pants solution, using spacecraft scraps, worked.

When splashdown day finally arrived on April 17, 1970, the communication

blackout as the astronauts re-entered the atmosphere lasted nearly 2 minutes longer than normal. Controllers grew alarmed. Finally, three billowing parachutes appeared above the Pacific. It was only then, Lovell says, that “we knew that we had it made.”

Haise, like so many others, regards it as NASA’s most successful failure. “It was a great mission,” says Haise, 86. It showed “what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity.”

Marcia Dunn writes for The Associated Press.

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