Gamma-ray Bursts: Black Hole Birth Announcements

6 Ways You Are Safer Thanks to NASA Technology

By now everyone knows that we are to thank for the memory foam in your mattress and the camera in your cell phone. (Right? Right.)

But our technology is often also involved behind the scenes—in ways that make the products we use daily safer and stronger, and in some cases, that can even save lives.

Here are some examples from this year’s edition of Spinoff, our yearly roundup of “space in your life”:

Impact Testing

What happens to your car bumper in an accident? When does it crumple and when does it crack? And are all bumpers coming off the assembly line created equal?

These types of questions are incredibly important when designing a safe car, and one technology that helps almost every U.S. automobile manufacturer find answers is something we helped develop when we had similar questions about the Space Shuttle.

Before flying again after the Columbia disaster in 2003, we had to be sure we understood what went wrong and how to prevent it from ever happening again. We worked with Trilion, Inc. to develop a system using high-speed cameras and software to analyze every impact—from the one that actually happened on the Shuttle to any others we could imagine—and design fixes.

Finding Survivors

We’re pretty good at finding things you can’t see with the naked eye—from distant exoplanets to water on Mars.

But there are also plenty of uses for that know-how on Earth.

One example that has already saved lives: locating heartbeats under debris.

Engineers at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory adapted technology first devised to look for gravity fluctuations to create FINDER, which stands for Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response and can detect survivors through dense rubble.

We have licensed the technology to two companies, including R4, and it has already been used in natural disaster responses, including after earthquakes in Nepal, Mexico City, Ecuador, and after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Fighting Forest Fires

As we have seen this year with devastating wildfires in California, forest fires can spread incredibly quickly.

Knowing when to order an evacuation, where to send firefighters, and how to make every other decision—all amid a raging inferno—depends on having the most up-to-date information as quickly as possible.

Using our expertise in remote sensing and communicating from space, we helped the U.S. Forest Service make its process faster and more reliable, so the data from airborne sensors gets to decision makers on the front line and at the command center in the blink of an eye.

Safer, Germ-Free Ambulances 

When paramedics come racing into a home, the last thing anybody is worrying about is where the ambulance was earlier that morning. A device we helped create ensures you won’t have to.

AMBUstat creates a fog that sterilizes every surface in an ambulance in minutes, so any bacteria, viruses or other contaminants won’t linger on to infect the next patient.

This technology works its magic through the power of atomic oxygen—the unpaired oxygen atoms that are common in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. We’ve had to learn about these atoms to devise ways to ensure they won’t destroy our spacecraft or harm astronauts, but here, we were able to use that knowledge to direct that destructive power at germs.

Air Filters 

Did you know the air we breathe inside buildings is often up to 10 times more polluted than the air outdoors?

Put the air under a microscope and it’s not pretty, but a discovery we made in the 1990s can make a big impact.

We were working on a way to clear a harmful chemical that accumulates around plants growing on a spacecraft, and it turned out to also neutralize bacteria, viruses, and mold and eliminate volatile organic compounds.

Now air purifiers using this technology are deployed in hospital operating rooms, restaurant kitchens, and even major baseball stadiums to improve air quality and keep everyone healthier. Oh, and you can buy one for your house, too.

Driverless Cars 

Car companies are moving full-speed ahead to build the driverless cars of the not-so-distant future. Software first created to help self-learning robots navigate on Mars may help keep passengers and pedestrians safer once those cars hit the road. The software creates an artificially intelligent “brain” for a car (or drone, for that matter) that can automatically identify and differentiate between cars, trucks, pedestrians, cyclists, and more, helping ensure the car doesn’t endanger any of them. 

So, now that you know a few of the spinoff technologies that we helped develop, you can look for them throughout your day. Visit our page to learn about more spinoff technologies: https://spinoff.nasa.gov Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

Science Balloons on Parade

You might see some of your favorite characters bobbing through the streets of New York City during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but did you know that NASA's got some balloons of our own? Early December in Antarctica, we're planning to launch some behemoth balloons carrying science experiments and instruments to help unravel mysteries of our universe. 

Like the parade balloons, these scientific balloons are filled with helium. But the science balloon is designed to soar above 130,000 feet, past the clouding views of our atmosphere. They can stay in the air from 2 hours to 100 days, depending on the balloon type and how heavy the science payload is (up to 6000 lbs). A typical, fully-inflated scientific balloon can be 460 ft in diameter and 396 ft in height, made of acres of sandwich bag-looking film. That’s MUCH larger than some parade balloons, and probably a pain to bring down 6th Avenue.

Like the parade balloons, these scientific balloons are filled with helium. But the science balloon is designed to soar above 130,000 feet, past the clouding views of our atmosphere. 

So why launch these balloons in Antarctica? Winter in the South Pole means 24 hours of non-stop sunlight, which is great for studying our sun. Being at the poles, which has a weaker magnetic field than the rest of our planet, also means we can capture and study cosmic ray particles that would be too scattered by the Earth’s magnetic field elsewhere. Depending on the kind of science we'd like to do, we also launch balloons from places all over the world.

These balloons are great, inexpensive test-beds for scientific instruments that could one day end up on a space-bound mission. NASA's NuSTAR mission started out as a balloon experiment before it was refined and launched into space to study black holes and other supernova remnants. Learn more about our balloons, and see where these balloons are going using our tracker.

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Parade Photo: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brian Ferguson

For NASA, Earth Day is Every Day!

With a fleet of spacecraft orbiting our home planet collecting data on everything from the air we breathe to natural disasters that impact our lives, Earth is always in focus. Join us as we celebrate our home with beautiful views from our unique vantage point of space.

On December 17, 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 snapped this iconic image of planet Earth. Dubbed the Blue Marble, this image was taken as Apollo 17 rocketed toward the moon. 

On the way to the moon or from the surface of Mars, our spacecraft have photographed the beauty of Earth from many vantage points. In this image, the most powerful telescope orbiting Mars captured this view of Earth and its moon, showing continent-size detail on the planet and the relative size of the moon. The image combines two separate exposures taken on November 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. 

In this image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on our Cassini spacecraft captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame.

Our Suomi-NPP satellite also observed the Earth at night. Earth’s "night lights" often have a gee-whiz curiosity for the public , but have also served as a tool for fundamental research for nearly 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness. 

You can be mesmerized by the constant swirls in these visualizations of ocean currents. The swirling flows of tens of thousands of ocean currents were captured using the largest computations of their kind ever undertaken, using high-end computing resources at our Ames Research Center. 

We’ve all seen iconic photographs of Earth shot by astronauts. But even satellites and robotic spacecraft often get in on the act. The above image, called “Pale Blue Dot,” was taken Voyager 1 in February 1990 from a distance of 4 billion miles.

Our satellites do more than take pretty pictures of Earth. They do everything from measure rainfall to observe weather patterns. The ten satellites in the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation have provided unprecedented information about rain and snow fall across the entire Earth. This visualization shows the constellation in action, taking precipitation measurements underneath the satellite orbits. 

In an homage to Apollo 17′s “Blue Marble” image, Suomi-NPP, a joint NASA-NOAA Earth-observing satellite, made this composite image, by making a number of swaths of Earth's surface on January 4, 2012. 

What’s your favorite aspect of planet Earth? These kids have their own ideas. You can even “adopt” parts of the planet. Which one of the 64,000 locations will you get? 

Our home planet is constantly changing, which is why our fleet of Earth-observing satellites continuously monitor the globe, recording every moment of what they see. Luckily for us, many of the views are not only deeply informative but also awe-inspiring. 

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The Path to High Adventure Begins With Girl Scouting!

Former NASA astronaut and Girl Scout alumna Jan Davis eating Girl Scout Cookies inside the shuttle Endeavour on Sept. 12, 1992. Image credit: NASA

Leadership, service, being prepared and doing your best – these qualities are exemplified by our astronauts, but are also shared by the Girl Scouts! Our astronaut corps has many scout alumnae, and over the years they’ve been breaking barriers and making names for themselves at NASA.

March 12, 2021 marks the 109th birthday of Girl Scouts in the United States, which has been inspiring generations of girls through leadership and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities to empower the explorers of today and tomorrow. To celebrate, we’re highlighting some of our Girl Scout alumnae over the years!

NASA astronaut and Girl Scout alumna Sunita Williams, who served as an International Space Station commander and spent 322 days in space during two spaceflight expeditions.

Former Scouts have served as crew members on numerous spaceflight missions.

From left: Susan Helms, the first female International Space Station crew member; Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle; and Dr. Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.

Former Girl Scouts flew on more than one-third of the space shuttle missions and were pioneering forces as women began making their mark on human spaceflight. The first female crew member to serve on the International Space Station, the first to pilot and command a space shuttle and the first American woman to spacewalk were all Scout alumnae. 

They continue to break records, such as the first three all-woman spacewalks... 

Girl Scout alumnae and NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history when they conducted the first ever all-woman spacewalk on Oct.18, 2019. They went on to complete two more spacewalks, successfully completing their task of upgrading the space station’s battery charge/discharge unit. Christina and Jessica’s historic spacewalk was a testament to the growing number of women (and Girl Scouts) joining our astronaut corps; it is a milestone worth celebrating as we look forward to putting the first woman on the Moon with our Artemis Program! 

....and the longest spaceflight ever by a woman!

NASA astronaut Christina Koch smiles for a selfie while completing tasks during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

Koch went on to seal her name in the record books by surpassing Peggy Whitson’s record for the longest single spaceflight in history by a woman!

Understanding how the human body adjusts to things like weightlessness, radiation and bone-density loss is crucial as we look forward to embarking on long-duration spaceflights to the Moon and Mars. Thanks to former astronaut Scott Kelly’s Year in Space mission, we’ve been able to observe these changes on a biological male. Now, thanks to Christina’s mission, we are able to observe these changes on a biological female. 

Girl Scout alumnae will also help lead human exploration farther than ever before as members of our Artemis generation!

 From left: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Loral O’Hara and Kayla Barron

On January 10, 2020 we welcomed 11 new astronauts to our ranks – including three Girl Scout alumnae! As part of the first-ever class of astronauts under our Artemis lunar exploration program, Kayla Barron, Jessica Watkins and Loral O’Hara are now qualified for assignments including long-duration missions to the International Space Station, the Moon and Mars.

They took a moment after graduation to share inspiration and insight for current and future Scouts!

Q: A question from the Girl Scouts: What inspires you?

A: “Being a part of an awesome team has always been what inspires me. Whether it’s your Girl Scout troop, a sports team, your class – I think for me always the people around me who push me to succeed and support me when I make mistakes and help me become my best self is what inspires me to show up and do my best.” - NASA astronaut Kayla Barron 

Q: How has being a Girl Scout helped you in becoming an astronaut?

A: “Being in the Girl Scouts when I was younger was really cool because, well, first it was just a group of my friends who got to do a lot of different things together. But it really gave us the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different areas. Like we’d get to go camping. We’d get to ride horses and learn all of these different skills, and so that variety of skill set I think is very applicable to being an astronaut.” - NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara 

Q: What would your advice be for the next generation of Girl Scout astronauts?

A: “My advice would be to find something that you’re passionate about. Ideally something in the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics, and to pursue that thing that you’re interested in. Pursue that passion, whatever it is. And don’t give up on your dreams, and continue to follow them until you arrive where you want to be.” - NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins 

To all the Girl Scouts out there, keep reaching for the stars because the sky is no longer the limit!

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Urban Growth of New Delhi

The capital of India, New Delhi, has been experiencing one of the fastest urban expansions in the world. Vast areas of croplands and grasslands are being turned into streets, buildings, and parking lots, attracting an unprecedented amount of new residents. By 2050, the United Nations projects India will add 400 million urban dwellers, which would be the largest urban migration in the world for the thirty-two year period.

These images show the growth in the city of New Delhi and its adjacent areas—a territory collectively known as Delhi—from December 5, 1989 to June 5, 2018. 

Most of the expansion in Delhi has occurred on the peripheries of New Delhi, as rural areas have become more urban. The geographic size of Delhi has almost doubled from 1991 to 2011, with the number of urban households doubling while the number of rural houses declined by half. Cities outside of Delhi—Bahadurgarh, Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, and Gurugram—have also experienced urban growth over the past three decades, as shown in these images.

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2y32G7h

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Setting the Standards for Unmanned Aircraft

From advanced wing designs, through the hypersonic frontier, and onward into the era of composite structures, electronic flight controls, and energy efficient flight, our engineers and researchers have led the way in virtually every aeronautic development. And since 2011, aeronautical innovators from around the country have been working on our Unmanned Aircraft Systems integration in the National Airspace System, or UAS in the NAS, project.  

This project was a new type of undertaking that worked to identify, develop, and test the technologies and procedures that will make it possible for unmanned aircraft systems to have routine access to airspace occupied by human piloted aircraft. Since the start, the goal of this unified team was to provide vital research findings through simulations and flight tests to support the development and validation of detect and avoid and command and control technologies necessary for integrating UAS into the NAS.  

That interest moved into full-scale testing and evaluation to determine how to best integrate unmanned vehicles into the national airspace and how to come up with standards moving forward. Normally, 44,000 flights safely take off and land here in the U.S., totaling more than 16 million flights per year. With the inclusion of millions of new types of unmanned aircraft, this integration needs to be seamless in order to keep the flying public safe.

Working hand-in-hand, teams collaborated to better understand how these UAS's would travel in the national airspace by using NASA-developed software in combination with flight tests. Much of this work is centered squarely on technology called detect and avoid.  One of the primary safety concerns with these new systems is the inability of remote operators to see and avoid other aircraft.  Because unmanned aircraft literally do not have a pilot on board, we have developed concepts allowing safe operation within the national airspace.  

In order to better understand how all the systems work together, our team flew a series of tests to gather data to inform the development of minimum operational performance standards for detect and avoid alerting guidance. Over the course of this testing, we gathered an enormous amount of data allowing safe integration for unmanned aircraft into the national airspace. As unmanned aircraft are becoming more ubiquitous in our world - safety, reliability, and proven research must coexist.

Every day new use case scenarios and research opportunities arise based around the hard work accomplished by this incredible workforce. Only time will tell how these new technologies and innovations will shape our world.

Want to learn the many ways that NASA is with you when you fly? Visit nasa.gov/aeronautics.



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TweetChat from Space!

Astronaut Scott Kelly, who is currently in the middle of his #YearInSpace mission, hosted his second TweetChat Saturday, Sept. 19, from the International Space Station. He received tons of great questions about his life in orbit, and we’ve selected a few to highlight below: 

For regular updates on Kelly’s one-year mission aboard the space station, follow him on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. 

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The Artemis I Mission: To the Moon and Back

The Artemis I mission was the first integrated test of the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and Exploration Ground Systems at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We’ll use these deep space exploration systems on future Artemis missions to send astronauts to the Moon and prepare for our next giant leap: sending the first humans to Mars.

Take a visual journey through the mission, starting from launch, to lunar orbit, to splashdown.

Liftoff

The SLS rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launched on Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The world’s most powerful rocket performed with precision, meeting or exceeding all expectations during its debut launch on Artemis I.

"This is Your Moment"

Following the successful launch of Artemis I, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson congratulates the launch team.

“The harder the climb, the better the view,” she said. “We showed the space coast tonight what a beautiful view it is.”

That's Us

On Orion’s first day of flight, a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays captured this image of Earth.

Inside Orion

On the third day of the mission, Artemis I engineers activated the Callisto payload, a technology demonstration developed by Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Cisco that tested a digital voice assistant and video conferencing capabilities in a deep space environment. In the image, Commander Moonikin Campos occupies the commander’s seat inside the spacecraft. The Moonikin is wearing an Orion Crew Survival System suit, the same spacesuit that Artemis astronauts will use during launch, entry, and other dynamic phases of their missions. Campos is also equipped with sensors that recorded acceleration and vibration data throughout the mission that will help NASA protect astronauts during Artemis II. The Moonikin was one of three “passengers” that flew aboard Orion. Two female-bodied model human torsos, called phantoms, were aboard. Zohar and Helga, named by the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) respectively, supported the Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE), an experiment to provide data on radiation levels during lunar missions. Snoopy, wearing a mock orange spacesuit, also can be seen floating in the background. The character served as the zero-gravity indicator during the mission, providing a visual signifier that Orion is in space.

Far Side of the Moon

A portion of the far side of the Moon looms large in this image taken by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays on the sixth day of the mission.

First Close Approach

The Orion spacecraft captured some of the closest photos of the Moon from a spacecraft built for humans since the Apollo era — about 80 miles (128 km) above the lunar surface. This photo was taken using Orion’s optical navigational system, which captures black-and-white images of the Earth and Moon in different phases and distances.

Distant Retrograde Orbit

Orion entered a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon almost two weeks into the mission. The orbit is “distant” in the sense that it’s at a high altitude approximately 50,000 miles (80,467 km) from the surface of the Moon. Orion broke the record for farthest distance of a spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and safely return them to Earth, reaching a maximum distance of 268,563 miles (432,210 km).

Second Close Approach

On the 20th day of the mission, the spacecraft made its second and final close approach to the Moon flying 79.2 miles (127.5 km) above the lunar surface to harness the Moon’s gravity and accelerate for the journey back to Earth.

Cameras mounted on the crew module of the Orion spacecraft captured these views of the Moon’s surface before its return powered flyby burn.

Heading Home

After passing behind the far side of the Moon on Flight Day 20, Orion powered a flyby burn that lasted approximately 3 minutes and 27 seconds to head home. Shortly after the burn was complete, the Orion spacecraft captured these views of the Moon and Earth, which appears as a distant crescent.

Parachutes Deployed

Prior to entering the Earth’s atmosphere, Orion’s crew module separated from its service module, which is the propulsive powerhouse provided by ESA (European Space Agency). During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures about half as hot as the surface of the Sun at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius). Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph (40,236 kph) to about 20 mph (32 kph) for its parachute-assisted splashdown.

Splashdown

On Dec. 11, the Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California after traveling 1.4 million miles (2.3 million km) over a total of 25.5 days in space. Teams are in the process of returning Orion to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once at Kennedy, teams will open the hatch and unload several payloads, including Commander Moonikin Campos, the space biology experiments, Snoopy, and the official flight kit. Next, the capsule and its heat shield will undergo testing and analysis over the course of several months.

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The magnetic field lines between a pair of active regions formed a beautiful set of swaying arches, seen in this footage captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory on April 24-26, 2017. 

These arches, which form a connection between regions of opposite magnetic polarity, are visible in exquisite detail in this wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. Extreme ultraviolet light is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in gold. 

Take a closer look: https://go.nasa.gov/2pGgYZt

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Earth from Afar

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” - Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11

This week we're celebrating Earth Day 2018 with some of our favorite images of Earth from afar...

At 7.2 million Miles...and 4 Billion Miles

Voyager famously captured two unique views of our homeworld from afar. One image, taken in 1977 from a distance of 7.3 million miles (11.7 million kilometers) (above), showed the full Earth and full Moon in a single frame for the first time in history. The second (below), taken in 1990 as part of a “family portrait of our solar system from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers), shows Earth as a tiny blue speck in a ray of sunlight.” This is the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image immortalized by Carl Sagan.

“This was our willingness to see the Earth as a one-pixel object in a far greater cosmos,” Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan said of the image. “It's that humility that science gives us. That weans us from our childhood need to be the center of things. And Voyager gave us that image of the Earth that is so heart tugging because you can't look at that image and not think of how fragile, how fragile our world is. How much we have in common with everyone with whom we share it; our relationship, our relatedness, to everyone on this tiny pixel."

A Bright Flashlight in a Dark Sea of Stars

Our Kepler mission captured Earth’s image as it slipped past at a distance of 94 million miles (151 million kilometers). The reflection was so extraordinarily bright that it created a saber-like saturation bleed across the instrument’s sensors, obscuring the neighboring Moon.

Hello and Goodbye

This beautiful shot of Earth as a dot beneath Saturn’s rings was taken in 2013 as thousands of humans on Earth waved at the exact moment the spacecraft pointed its cameras at our home world. Then, in 2017, Cassini caught this final view of Earth between Saturn’s rings as the spacecraft spiraled in for its Grand Finale at Saturn.

‘Simply Stunning’

"The image is simply stunning. The image of the Earth evokes the famous 'Blue Marble' image taken by astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17...which also showed Africa prominently in the picture." -Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

Goodbye—for now—at 19,000 mph

As part of an engineering test, our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured this image of Earth and the Moon in January 2018 from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). When the camera acquired the image, the spacecraft was moving away from our home planet at a speed of 19,000 miles per hour (8.5 kilometers per second). Earth is the largest, brightest spot in the center of the image, with the smaller, dimmer Moon appearing to the right. Several constellations are also visible in the surrounding space.

The View from Mars

A human observer with normal vision, standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the Moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

Moon Photobomb

"This image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth in 2015. It provides a view of the far side of the Moon, which is never directly visible to us here on Earth. “I found this perspective profoundly moving and only through our satellite views could this have been shared.” - Michael Freilich, Director of our Earth Science Division.

Eight Days Out

Eight days after its final encounter with Earth—the second of two gravitational assists from Earth that helped boost the spacecraft to Jupiter—the Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of our planet and its Moon. The image was taken from a distance of about 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers).

A Slice of Life

Earth from about 393,000 miles (633,000 kilometers) away, as seen by the European Space Agency’s comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft during its third and final swingby of our home planet in 2009.

So Long Earth

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of our home planet on Aug. 2, 2005.

Earth Science: Taking a Closer Look

Our home planet is a beautiful, dynamic place. Our view from Earth orbit sees a planet at change. Check out more images of our beautiful Earth here.

Join Our Earth Day Celebration!

We pioneer and supports an amazing range of advanced technologies and tools to help scientists and environmental specialists better understand and protect our home planet - from space lasers to virtual reality, small satellites and smartphone apps. 

To celebrate Earth Day 2018, April 22, we are highlighting many of these innovative technologies and the amazing applications behind them.

Learn more about our Earth Day plans HERE. 

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