Tag: NASA

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NASA lays out two new options for Mars sample return

Montage of sample tube on Mars surface
This montage shows tubes containing Martian samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)

Months after deciding that its previous plan for bringing samples back from Mars wasn’t going to work, NASA says it’s working out the details for two new sample return scenarios, with the aim of bringing 30 titanium tubes filled with Martian rocks and soil back to Earth in the 2030s.

One scenario calls for using a beefed-up version of NASA’s sky crane to drop the required hardware onto the Red Planet’s surface, while the other would use heavy-lift commercial capabilities provided by the likes of SpaceX or Blue Origin.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the space agency plans to flesh out the details for each option over the course of the next year and make its choice in 2026. But that all depends on what Congress and President-elect Donald Trump’s administration want to do.

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NASA and Microsoft team up on AI guide to Earth data

Screenshot of Earth Copilot interface with image of hurricane
A screenshot shows Earth Copilot in action, guiding a computer user to data about Hurricane Harvey. (Image via Microsoft)

Microsoft and NASA have joined forces to develop Earth Copilot, a software tool that uses artificial intelligence and cloud computing to simplify the process of searching and analyzing Earth science data.

The collaboration is part of NASA’s Transform to Open Science Initiative, which aims to make more than 100 petabytes of satellite imagery and other Earth science data more readily available to scientists, educators, policymakers and the general public.

“The vision behind this collaboration was to leverage AI and cloud technologies to bring Earth’s insights to communities that have been underserved, where access to data can lead to tangible improvements,” Minh Nguyen, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, said today in a blog posting about the project. “By enabling users to interact with the data through simple, plain language queries, we’re helping to democratize access to spaceborne information.”

Tyler Bryson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for U.S. health and public sector industries, said Earth Copilot lets users interact with NASA’s data repository conversationally.

Bryson noted that the sheer scale and complexity of the information gathered for NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program can sometimes make finding the right information a daunting task. Earth Copilot doesn’t require users to navigate highly technical interfaces or master the intricacies of geospatial analysis.

“Instead, they can simply ask questions such as ‘What was the impact of Hurricane Ian in Sanibel Island?’ or ‘How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect air quality in the U.S.?’” Bryson said. “AI will then retrieve relevant datasets, making the process seamless and intuitive.”

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Europa Clipper starts odyssey to mysterious Jovian moon

Europa Clipper liftoff on SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket sends NASA's Europa Clipper into space from its Florida launch pad. (NASA Photo / Kim Shiflett)

NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft today began its six-year cruise to the Jupiter system, with the goal of determining whether one of the giant planet’s moons has the right stuff in the right setting for life.

The van-sized probe was sent into space from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 12:06 p.m. ET (9:06 a.m. PT). A little more than an hour after launch, the spacecraft separated from its launch vehicle to begin a roundabout journey of 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from Earth orbit to Europa.

For decades, scientists have been collecting evidence that Europa harbors a hidden ocean of salty water beneath its icy shell. Or are they hidden lakes? Europa Clipper is built to characterize the moon’s surface, and what’s beneath that surface, to an unprecedented degree.

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Starfish Space will inspect dead satellites for NASA

Illustration: Otter in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter spacecraft in orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space has won a three-year, $15 million contract from NASA for a mission aimed at doing up-close inspections of defunct satellites in orbit.

Such inspections, to be carried out using Starfish’s Otter spacecraft starting in 2027, could blaze a trail for even more ambitious missions involving the repair or removal of such satellites.

The mission is known as SSPICY, an acronym that stands for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability. NASA awarded the Phase III Small Business Innovation Research contract after a study that provided Starfish and three other small businesses with funds to develop mission concepts. (The other three companies were Kayhan Space, Turion Space and Vast Space.)

Taking care of orbital debris is a key component of NASA’s Space Sustainability Strategy. Orbital debris mitigation and satellite servicing are also key parts of the business model for Starfish, a five-year-old startup that was founded by two veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, Trevor Bennett and Austin Link.

“We are excited to expand our partnership with NASA, building on our shared commitment to advancing in-space manufacturing and assembly capabilities,” Bennett said today in a news release. “It’s an honor for Starfish to lead the first commercial debris inspection mission funded by NASA. We look forward to collaborating on this and future satellite servicing missions to enable a new paradigm for humanity in space.”

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Starliner spacecraft wraps up its crewless journey home

Starliner in the dark desert
Boeing’s Starliner space capsule sits in the New Mexico desert after its uncrewed return to Earth in 2024. (Boeing Photo)

It wasn’t perfect, but the propulsion system that NASA worried about did its job today as Boeing’s Starliner space capsule made an uncrewed descent from the International Space Station back down to Earth.

The gumdrop-shaped spacecraft, christened Calypso, floated down to a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned touchdown at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. “Starliner is back on Earth,” Boeing commentator Lauren Brennecke said.

Starliner’s first crewed trip to the space station was supposed to last only about a week, but when the capsule made its approach for docking on June 6, five thrusters out of a set of 28 malfunctioned. Four of the thrusters were reactivated, and NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams executed a successful docking. But concerns about the thrusters — and about a string of helium leaks in the propulsion pressurization system — sparked weeks of troubleshooting by NASA and Boeing.

Engineers decided that they could cope with the helium leaks, but the thruster problem was a bigger concern. Tests determined that the propulsion system’s performance was degraded by overheating that exceeded design specifications.

Two weeks ago, NASA said the uncertainties surrounding the system’s performance were too great to risk having Williams and Wilmore ride back to Earth on Starliner. Instead, the astronauts were told to remain on the station for months longer than originally planned.

To accommodate the personnel shift, NASA reduced the size of the next scheduled crew, known as Crew-9, from four to two spacefliers. That crew is due to go into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Sept. 24. Williams and Wilmore will join Crew-9 and return to Earth in the SpaceX capsule next February.

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Blue Origin and NASA shift New Glenn launch plans

Workers mate sections of New Glenn first stage
Elements of the New Glenn rocket’s first stage are mated at Blue Origin’s factory in Florida. (Blue Origin Photo)

NASA is delaying the launch of its ESCAPADE probes to Mars, which means plans for the debut of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket will change as well.

New Glenn was previously due to send the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to Mars as early as next month, but after a review of launch preparations, NASA rescheduled the launch for next spring at the earliest.

Planning for the mission is complicated because of the tight window for launch, necessitated by the alignment of Earth and Mars. Even a small schedule change can result in a months-long delay for liftoff.

After consulting with Blue Origin, the Federal Aviation Administration and range safety managers at the U.S. Space Force, NASA decided to hold off on fueling up the ESCAPADE probes. “The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors,” the space agency said today in a mission update.

ESCAPADE — an acronym that stands for “Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers” — is a mission designed to study interactions between the solar wind and Mars’ magnetosphere.

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NASA decides to keep astronauts in orbit months longer

Starliner docked to ISS
Boeing’s Starliner capsule is shown docked to the International Space Station with a turning Earth in the background. (NASA Photo)

NASA has decided it’s too risky to have Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft return to Earth from the International Space Station with its two crew members, and so those astronauts will extend their stay by several months and come back on a SpaceX Dragon capsule instead. Starliner, which has been in the midst of its first crewed flight after years of delay, will be reprogrammed to make an uncrewed departure from the space station next month.

Top mission managers said today that they decided unanimously to make a dramatic change in what was originally expected to be a test flight lasting only a couple of weeks. They said there was too much uncertainty surrounding the thruster problems that cropped up during Starliner’s trip to the space station in early June.

“All of us really wanted to complete the test flight with crew, and I think unanimously we’re disappointed not to be able to do that,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Boeing “worked hard” to address questions about the thruster system, but in the end, the space agency took what it considered to be the safer course. He said NASA learned its lessons from “mistakes done in the past,” including safety lapses that led to space shuttle disasters in 1986 and 2003.

“Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star,” Nelson said.

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MagniX shows off its future hybrid electric airplane

MagniX CEO with plane destined for hybrid electric conversion
MagniX CEO Reed Macdonald speaks at the unveiling of a test airplane at Boeing Field. (MagniX via Vimeo)

The airplane that Everett, Wash.-based magniX will use to test its hybrid electric propulsion system for a $74.3 million NASA demonstration project is ready to go on the outside, and it’ll soon be ready on the inside as well.

Today magniX and its partners unveiled the De Havilland Dash 7 plane at Seattle’s Boeing Field in preparation for its conversion for NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, or EPFD. The aircraft now bears the logos of magniX, NASA and Air Tindi, the Canadian regional carrier from which the Dash 7 was acquired.

“There’s a lot of work left to be done, but when you see the airplane, and you see the great livery and what’s behind it, it allows you to think about all of the really important work, all of the really hard work that’s gone on,” said Bob Pearce, NASA’s associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

The plane has already gone through baseline flight tests with its four standard Pratt & Whitney PT6A turbine engines — operating from Moses Lake, Wash., with technical assistance from Seattle-based AeroTEC. Meanwhile, magniX’s 650-watt electric motor has been tested at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio under conditions that simulate altitudes of up to 27,500 feet.

Now the project timeline calls for replacing two of the PT6A engines with magni650 electric motors, one at a time, and installing magniX’s 450-kWh Samson battery packs. Flight tests with the hybrid electric system are due to begin in 2026.

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One way to get samples on Mars: Send in the Cybertrucks

Six AI-generated images of "Cybertruck on Mars" from Tesla AI Day presentation
These AI-generated images of a “Cybertruck on Mars” were shown during Tesla's AI Day 2022. (Tesla via YouTube)

Tesla’s Cybertruck may look ungainly on Earth, but a pressurized version of the vehicle might be just the thing for gathering up samples of Martian rock and soil for return to Earth. That’s one of the way-out concepts that was discussed in Seattle during the past week’s convention of the Mars Society, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Robotically controlled Cybertrucks could be part of a Mars exploration system that also includes SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket as well as spaceworthy versions of all-terrain vehicles and humanoid robots built by Tesla, according to mission plans suggested by Mars Society co-founder Robert Zubrin, retired NASA engineer Tony Muscatello and business analyst Kent Nebergall.

Zubrin said the Starship-based concept could even accelerate progress toward crewed missions to Mars.

“We use Starship to deliver a robotic expedition that has already examined thousands of samples on Mars, gathered from hundreds of kilometers away by helicopters, and tens of kilometers away gathered by rovers, and then we land the crew to do follow-up exploration, including drilling in well-characterized sites to bring up water and see what the life on Mars is,” he said during an Aug. 8 session.

How way out is that? It sounds like science fiction, but theoretically, at least some elements of the plan could show up in SpaceX’s proposal for reworking NASA’s Mars sample return strategy.

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Starliner crew might have to return in a Dragon in 2025

View of Boeing Starliner craft docked to International Space Station
An image captured through the window of a SpaceX capsule shows Boeing’s Starliner capsule at the International Space Station. (NASA Photo)

Continuing concerns about the thruster system on Boeing’s Starliner space capsule may lead NASA to decide against letting astronauts take the craft back down to Earth from the International Space Station, mission managers said today.

In such a scenario, the two astronauts who rode to the ISS in Starliner for the capsule’s first crewed test mission in June would fly back down in a SpaceX Dragon capsule next February.

“We haven’t approved this plan,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told journalists during a teleconference. “In other words, we’ve done all the work to make sure this plan is there.”

Going ahead with the contingency plan would require shuffling arrangements for the next crew that’s due to take a Dragon to the ISS, known as Crew-9.

That crew would be cut back from four to two astronauts. Starliner’s test pilots, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, would remain on the station for Crew-9’s tour of duty and return to Earth with Crew-9 as part of the regular rotation.

This week NASA pushed back Crew-9’s scheduled launch to no earlier than Sept. 24 to accommodate potential changes. Because of the parking arrangements at the station, the Starliner capsule would have to undock from the station before the Crew-9 launch and make an uncrewed, robotically controlled descent and landing.

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