Nasa has asked Elon Musk, who owns the rocket company SpaceX, to help with a new mission.

The aim of it is to explore a giant metallic asteroid called 16 Psyche. It's often called the 'golden asteroid' because it contains metals worth A LOT of money.

Gold isn't the only metal it has lots of - large quantities of platinum, iron and nickel also make it very valuable.

It's thought that if all the metal on the asteroid were valued, it would be worth a gigantic $15.8 quadrillion (that's 15.8 followed by 17 zeros!).

But even if the spacecraft does successfully reach the asteroid, there are currently no plans for mining or to remove the metal.

Nasa says the trip is simply a research mission to examine what the asteroid is made of.

The Psyche mission will be Nasa's first time investigating a world of metal, rather than rock and ice.

In a statement the space agency said: "The asteroid is considered unique, as it appears to largely be made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet - one of the building blocks of our solar system."

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The giant rock, which measures about 140 miles across, is found in an asteroid belt in our Solar System between Mars and Jupiter.

Nasa scientists believe 16 Psyche is a survivor of collisions between planets, which were common when the Solar System was forming.

That means it could tell us how Earth's core and the cores of the other planets were formed.

If everything goes to plan, Musk's rocket-building company SpaceX and Nasa will launch an un-crewed spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2022, with the spacecraft arriving at the asteroid in 2026.

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Nasa and SpaceX mission to find space gold - CBBC Newsround

Theres a very tasty explanation for the existence of this unusual pattern (Image: Nasa)

Nasa has released pictures of a bizarre natural formation on Mars which (apparently) resembles a tasty slice of tiramisu.

The pattern was spotted in an ice cap near the Martian North Pole and could reveal the secrets of climate change on the Red Planet, which was once covered in water but is now dead and barren.

The Martian ice cap is like a cake with every layer telling a story. In this case, the story is one of climate change on Mars, Nasa wrote.

This image of an exposed section of the north polar layered deposits (NPLD) looks much like a delicious slice of layered tiramisu. The NPLD is made up of water-ice and dust particles stacked one on top of the other. However, instead of icing, layers are topped with seasonal carbon dioxide frost, as seen here as lingering frost adhering to one of the layers.

It added: These complex layers might encapsulate tiny air pockets from the atmosphere which, if sampled, could be studied to understand linkages to previous climates.

In the end, its not always a piece of cake studying NPLD on Mars but, where there is cake, there is hope.

Earlier this month, Nasa released pictures of a mysterious hole on Mars which leads to a cave in which life could survive.

The hole was discovered by analysing images of the dusty slopes of Mars Pavonis Mons volcano, which were snapped by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter craft thats currently orbiting Mars.

Nasa wrote: The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right.

Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep.

Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern.

Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life.

These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.

Scientists recently revealed thatNasa is losing water more quickly than previously estimated, which could affect its chances of hosting alien life.

A new study has found that water vapour is accumulating in large quantities and unexpected proportions at an altitude of over 80 km in the Martian atmosphere.

Parts of its atmosphere are in a state of super-saturation which means they contain more vapour than thought possible, meaning the capacity of water to escape would greatly increase during certain seasons.

What this means is that Mars could be drier than believed and therefore less likely to host life.

In a statement, theCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique wrote: The small red planet is losing water more quickly than theories and past observations would suggest.

The gradual disappearance of water (H2O) occurs in the upper atmosphere of Mars: sunlight and chemistry disassociate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms that the weak gravity of Mars cannot prevent from escaping into space.

Once upon a time, Mars was a beautiful world of lakes, rivers and oceans.

But today its red, dead and appears to be totally devoid of extraterrestrial life.

Now Nasa has discovered evidence of a beautiful aurora on the Red Planet which will help scientists understand the processes which made it so inhospitably barren.

On Earth, the most famous auroras take place near the poles and are known as the Northern Lights.

But on Mars, they take place during the day and give off ultraviolet light, which means they cannot be seen by the naked eye.

However, Nasa has a spacecraft called MAVEN ((Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiting the Red Planet which is equipped with an instrument called theImaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) capable of detecting the aurora.

Its thought that the aurora is generated by hydrogen from Martian water thats currently escaping into space a process which has been happening slowly for a very long time.

Nasa believes that understanding the aurora could shed light on the long process of water loss which is responsible for transforming its climate from one that might have supported life to one that is cold, dry, and inhospitable.

Andra Hughes of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Hughes is the lead author of a paper on about the latest discovery.

She said: Perhaps one day, when interplanetary travel becomes commonplace, travellers arriving at Mars during southern summer will have front-row seats to observe Martian proton aurora majestically dancing across the dayside of the planet (while wearing ultraviolet-sensitive goggles, of course).

These travellers will witness firsthand the final stages of Mars losing the remainder of its water to space.

And if we understand where the water went, we might be able to work out if Mars was ever hospitable to Earth or if its always been a lifeless world.

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Nasa spots bizarre alien 'tiramisu' pattern on the surface of Mars - Metro.co.uk

We won't have to call NASA's next Red Planet rover "Mars 2020" for much longer.

On Thursday (March 5), NASA will reveal the official name of the car-size robot, which is scheduled to launch this July and land inside Mars' 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021. The unveiling will occur during a live event at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT), which will be followed at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT) by a news conference about the name and the rover's mission.

You can watch both of these events live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission in pictures

Like NASA's previous Red Planet rovers, Mars 2020 is getting its official moniker via a student naming competition. The contest, which kicked off last year, generated more than 28,000 essay submissions from K-12 students representing every U.S. state and territory, NASA officials said.

That initial pool was whittled down to 155 semifinalists, which in January were culled to nine finalists, three in each of three age categories (grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12). These nine contenders, and the students who proposed them, are:

NASA encouraged the public to vote for their favorite of these nine through the end of last month. But the final decision was made by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, agency officials wrote in an update on Tuesday (March 3).

Zurbuchen will attend the name-unveiling event on Thursday, as will Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington; Deanne Bell, the founder and CEO of California-based organization Future Engineers, which ran the naming contest in partnership with NASA and Ohio-based Battelle Education; and the student who submitted the winning name.

Mars 2020's chief task involves hunting for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. The six-wheeled rover will also collect and store samples for future return to Earth, where scientists can analyze the pristine Mars material in great detail.

The $2.5 billion mission also features several technology demonstrations, including a small helicopter scout and an instrument that will generate oxygen from the Red Planet's thin, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere.

NASA already has an active rover on the Martian surface,Curiosity, which landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater in August 2012. Curiosity has determined that Gale hosted a potentially life-supporting lake-and-stream system for long stretches in the ancient past.

Curiosity was named in 2009 by Clara Ma, then a sixth grader in Kansas. Ma graduated from Yale University last year.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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NASA will reveal the new name of its Mars 2020 rover on Thursday - Space.com

NASA and a clutch of startup and established companies are moving forward with plans to transform mobility in urban environments through the Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge.

If its fully implemented, the new Urban Air Mobility system could enable air transit for things like package delivery, taxi services, expanded air medical services and cargo delivery to underserved or rural communities, the agency said in a statement.

The Grand Challenge series brings together companies developing new transportation or airspace management technologies, the Agency said.

With this step, were continuing to put the pieces together that we hope will soon make real the long-anticipated vision of smaller piloted and unpiloted vehicles providing a variety of services around cities and in rural areas, said Robert Pearce, NASAs associate administrator for aeronautics, in a statement.

The idea is to bring companies to collaborate and also give regulatory agencies a window into the technologies and how they may work in concert to bring air mobility to the masses in the coming years.

Our partnership with the FAA will be a key factor in the successful and safe outcomes for industry that we can expect from conducting these series of Grand Challenges during the coming years, Pearce said, in a statement.

Getting the agreements signed are the first step in a multi-stage process that will culminate in the challenges official competition in 2022. There are preliminary technological tests that will take place this year.

We consider this work as a risk reduction step toward Grand Challenge 1, said Starr Ginn, NASAs Grand Challenge lead. It is designed to allow U.S. developed aircraft and airspace management service providers to essentially try out their systems with real-world operations in simulated environments that we also will be flight testing to gain experience.

Partnerships for the challenge fall into three categories:

The Grand Challenge is managed through NASAs Advanced Air Mobility project, which was established in the agencys Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to coordinate urban air mobility activities.

Companies participating in the challenge include:

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NASA moves forward with 17 companies as part of bid to transform urban aerial transportation - TechCrunch

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An asteroid large enough to cause global effects to the planet will pass the Earths orbital path late next month, according to NASA, and is projected to miss the planet by approximately three million miles about 12 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

The newly discovered asteroid, 1998 OR2, was found alongside another potentially dangerous asteroid, called 1998 OH, NASA said in a release. Both measure about one mile in diameter.

The more imminent asteroid is set to be closest to Earth on April 29 and will be traveling at approximately 19,461 mph, according to NASAs tracking data.

The asteroids were found by NASAs Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system, which is designed to track potentially dangerous asteroids and comets before they reach Earth.

These discoveries come on the heels of last months installation of new state-of-the-art computing and data analysis hardware that speeds our search for near-Earth objects, said NEAT Project Manager Dr. Steven Pravdo of JPL. This shows that our efforts to find near-Earth objects are paying off.

Follow-up observations made by Dr. David L. Rabinowitz of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed that neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth, according to NASA.

Our goal is to discover and track all the potentially dangerous asteroids and comets long before they are likely to approach Earth, said NEAT Principal Investigator Eleanor Helin. The discovery of these two asteroids illustrates how NEAT is doing precisely what it is supposed to do.

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NASA: Massive asteroid will pass Earth next month - SILive.com

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) Aaron Carver rarely lit up the scoring column in the box score.

Considered an undersized forward-turned-center whos averaged 4.6 points over his senior year, Carver has rarely garnered the glory or the press clippings of team captain Xavier Green, or his former teammates Ahmad Caver or B.J. Stith.

In reality, Carver has never had time for that. Hes been too busy doing the dirty work in the paint; snatching hard-earned rebounds, muscling with much bigger centers, and scoring critical put-back baskets.

Its all about winning for me, said Carver.

Just a terrific young man and a terrific teammate, said head coach Jeff Jones, whose praise of Carver couldnt be any higher.

On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey. On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey. On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey.

Carver was never sure how his role might develop. I didnt know if I would ever blossom into a starter for two years, but I knew if I kept my head down, keep going and listen, take in what coaches are saying and try to apply it, I would be able to accomplish something, he said.

This season, hes blossomed into the best rebounder in Conference USA. The 6-foot-7 Elizabeth City native averages 10.2 boards per game, and has twice pulled down 20 in a single game.

Now that Im kind of a marked man as far as getting rebounds, I have guys that come and just push me for no reason, Carver said. It gets a little physical, but I enjoy it.

Hes also enjoyed success off the court. Carver graduated last year with a degree in civil engineering technology, and is currently pursuing his masters in engineering management. Last summer, he interned at NASA in Maryland, and helped work on the James Webb space telescope.

It was a pretty cool experience, and I learned a lot.

Carver has at least three more games left in his Monarch career: two more regular season games, and at least one more in the upcoming Conference USA Tournament. He hopes his team has one more run left in them.

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A former intern at NASA, Carvers career has rocketed beyond expectations - WAVY.com

A new documentary centers on Edward Dwight, the first African American selected as a potential astronaut in 1963 for Aerospace Research Pilot School. Bettmann Archive/Getty hide caption

A new documentary centers on Edward Dwight, the first African American selected as a potential astronaut in 1963 for Aerospace Research Pilot School.

For many Americans, the first moon landing remains the most memorable moment in the history of manned space travel.

It was a high-water mark in the space race, but as the United States and Soviet Union were rushing to prove their dominance, a lesser known chapter in that battle was taking place: America's effort to send a black man into space.

Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier, a new documentary on the Smithsonian Channel, brings light to the groundbreaking moment that almost came to be during the heights of the civil rights movement.

The film centers on the story of Ed Dwight, who in the early 1960s was on his way to becoming the first African American astronaut. In 1962, the Kennedy administration named Dwight, an Air Force pilot at the time, as the first African American astronaut trainee.

The selection was made after an emphatic pitch from broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. President John F. Kennedy tasked Murrow, appointed as the head of the United States Information Agency, with strengthening the country's image abroad.

As the civil rights movement was gaining ground, the U.S. was still largely segregated. But Murrow's proposal to NASA to put the first man of color in space was his diplomatic appeal to the majority "non-white world," as The New York Times noted:

"Why don't we put the first non-white man in space?" Murrow wrote to NASA's administrator. "If your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to the whole non-white world, which is most of it."

In his 2009 memoir, Soaring on the Wings of a Dream, Dwight details his experiences with discrimination from classmates and superiors during the astronaut training program.

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Dwight lost his most important ally, and his dreams to reach space came to an end. He was soon reassigned from astronaut training to unrelated Air Force projects.

"It really is disappointing that he did not fly and was not a part of the Apollo experience," Robert Satcher, a black astronaut who went to space in 2009, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "It would've been fantastic if we saw Ed Dwight walking on the moon."

For years, Dwight's story was largely forgotten. Satcher himself says he didn't know about that chapter of NASA's history until he worked there.

"Although there's a lot to be proud of at NASA, I think it's one of those chapters that is consistent with a lot of other disappointments that African Americans have experienced in this country," he says.

It wasn't until 1983 that Guion Bluford Jr. would become the first African American to travel in space. And nearly three decades after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, a black astronaut, Bernard Anthony Harris Jr., was the first African American to perform a spacewalk in 1995.

Satcher says NASA's early struggles to integrate its force has put American scientific discovery behind.

"If we're gonna be at our best in bringing all the best minds to bear on this incredibly difficult problem, which is deep space exploration, then everybody needs to be included," he says.

"You never know where the next Einstein, genius, whoever, is gonna come from. Maybe we haven't discovered some discovery that we could've made because of denying some kid an opportunity just because of how they look."

Satcher says the pioneering work of astronauts like Bluford and Harris is what inspired him to believe he too could join the ranks of African Americans who made it to space. In 2009, he got that opportunity when he took off on a construction mission aboard the now-retired space shuttle Atlantis.

As part of his work, he repaired a robotic arm operated by another black astronaut, Leland Melvin.

"When I first applied, I had an idea that I could get in because there were other African American astronauts that I saw, and actually got to meet," he says. "We need to have everybody represented so that kid, wherever he is or she is, can look there and say yeah, you know, 'I can do that too.' "

NPR's Andrew Craig and William Troop produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Emma Bowman produced the Web version.

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'Black In Space' Documentary Looks At The 1st Black Astronaut That Almost Was - NPR

The two oval storms inside the orange band are merging in this NASA Juno image from late December.

Jupiter loves to put on a show. The gas giant's swirling atmosphere is constantly changing and rearranging. Most recently, NASA'sJuno spacecraft caught sight of two oval storms in the act of merging, an event NASA described as "something remarkable."

Look to the orange band and spot the snowman-shaped storm formation that shows a larger oval connecting with a smaller one. Both of these storms are anticyclones that rotate counter-clockwise. Jupiter's long-lived Great Red Spot is the planet's most famous example of an anticyclonic storm.

NASA has been tracking the bigger of the oval storms for years. It's had quite an appetite for other anticyclones, which might qualify it as a cosmic cannibal. It has grown larger as it merges with others of its kind.

Juno's timing for this image was immaculate, since storm mergers can happen over just a few days. These two storms had been teasing the spacecraft's camera. "The event interests scientists because the ovals had approached each other months earlier, only to move apart again," NASA said.

Juno's JunoCam camera snapped the image in late December. Citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik processed the image to enhance the color, and NASA shared the story of the storm merger on Monday.

Jupiter's dynamic atmospheric formations sometimes resemble familiar Earth shapes. Let's not forget the time when Juno spotted a "dolphin" in the clouds.

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NASA catches Jupiter storms in the tempestuous act of merging - CNET

Persistent heavy rains soaked the Mississippi River watershed in the first two months of 2020. The result has been bulging rivers from Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. Near-record flooding has brought two weeks of misery to the states of Mississippi and Tennessee, and high water is expected to arrive next week in New Orleans.

On February 27, 2020, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite acquired an image showing high water along the lower Mississippi, Pearl, and Pascagoula rivers, among others. The second image shows more typical river conditions as they appeared on March 3, 2017. Both images use a combination of near-infrared and visible light to make it easier to see where rivers are out of their banks and spread across the floodplains. Since thick cloud cover obscured the area for the past 10 days, visible flooding had subsided somewhat before the satellite could get a clear view.

On February 17, the Pearl River near Jackson, Mississippi, crested at 36.8 feet (11.2 meters), the third highest level on record for the city and the highest since 1983. At least 1,000 homes in the area were inundated. The flood misery then spread downstream into Copiah, Marion, Hancock, and Lawrence counties. On February 29, the Pearl River stood at 17.86 feet (5.44 meters) near the town of the same name; the water level had dropped from major to moderate flooding the previous day.

Forecasters in Louisiana are expecting the Mississippi River to approach 17 feet (5.2 meters)just below flood stagein New Orleans by March 4. On February 29, the river had risen to 41.65 feet (12.69 meters) at Baton Rouge, a major flood stage for that area.

At midday on February 29, at least 17 river gauges along the Mississippi River south of Missouri were above flood stage (mostly minor to moderate), with five more in flood along the Pearl River.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.Story by Michael Carlowicz.

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Winter Flooding in Mississippi and Louisiana - nasa.gov

Meet VIPER, NASAs new lunar rover, equipped with a drill to probe the Moons surface and look for water ice. VIPER, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, will carry a one-meter drill and will use it to map out water resources at the Moons south pole. Its scheduled to be on the lunar surface by December 2023, one year later than its initial date.

The key to living on the Moon is water the same as here on Earth.

The Moon is in humanitys cross-hairs these days, more specifically, the Moons south pole. Thats where NASAs Artemis program will land astronauts in 2024, if all goes well. So its no coincidence that VIPER will be looking there.

The key to living on the Moon is water the same as here on Earth, said Daniel Andrews, the project manager of the VIPER mission and director of engineering at NASAs Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.Since the confirmation of lunar water-ice ten years ago, the question now is if the Moon could really contain the amount of resources we need to live off-world, Andrews said in a press release. This rover will help us answer the many questions we have about where the water is, and how much there is for us to use.

NASA recently announced a one year delay in the mission, from December 2022 to December 2023, and theyve reached out to contractors to bid on delivering the rover to the Moon. The 14 companies theyve talked to are all part of the Commercial Lunar Payload System (CLPS) program.

VIPER is about the size of a golf cart, and will travel several miles in its search for water. It has four instruments on board:

Other spacecraft have found that water is widespread on the Moon. Its especially evident in craters on the south pole. Overall, the water is thought to be spread thinly, and not in large deposits. Rather than sheets of ice, think tiny amounts coating soil grains.

The most obvious use for water is for human consumption, both as water and as breathable oxygen. But once you have water, you have access to both molecular hydrogen and molecular oxygen. Those can be used as rocket fuel. They can also be used in various production processes involving chemistry and metallurgy.

VIPER will collect up to 100 days worth of data, and will be critical in developing a water-ice map of the Moon. This is an important step in NASAs long-term plan, which includes a sustained human presence on the Moon. That lunar presence is not only a goal in itself, its important for getting to Mars.

Because the Moon is tilted, there are areas that are in perpetual shadow, and thats where NASA thinks they can find water ice. The water itself can come from comet impacts, and meteor impacts, but also from the interaction between the Sun and the lunar regolith. There are potentially millions of tons of water on the Moon, and VIPER will help find it and determine how accessible it is.

Its incredibly exciting to have a rover going to the new and unique environment of the South Pole to discover where exactly we can harvest that water, said AnthonyColaprete, VIPERs project scientist, in an October 2019 press release.VIPER will tell us which locations have the highest concentrations and how deep below the surface to go to get access to water.

VIPER will work like this: as it roams along the surface, NSS will detect water ice from a distance. Then itll use TRIDENT to drill up to a meter deep and retrieve samples. After that, the MSOLO and the NIRVSS will examine the samples to find water and other resources, and to ascertain the amounts.

The 14 companies in NASA Commercial Lunar Services Payload program include Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Lockheed Martin Space, SpaceX, and others.

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NASA is Planning to Build a Lunar Rover With a 1-Meter Drill to Search for Water Ice - Universe Today

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

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The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earths orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.1

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2 Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earths climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.3

The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.4 Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with the five warmest years on record taking place since 2010. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year from January through September, with the exception of June were the warmest on record for those respective months. 5

The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of more than 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.6

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the same time period. The rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.7

Image: Flowing meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet

An indicator of the current volume and the Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets using data from NASAs Grace satellite.

An interactive exploration of how global warming is affecting sea ice, glaciers and continental ice sheets world wide.

Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.8

Image: The disappearing snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro, from space.

Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and that the snow is melting earlier.9

Global sea level rose about 8 inches in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century and is accelerating slightly every year.10

Image: Republic of Maldives: Vulnerable to sea level rise

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.11

Image: Visualization of the 2012 Arctic sea ice minimum, the lowest on record

An indicator of changes in the Arctic sea ice minimum over time. Arctic sea ice extent both affects and is affected by global climate change.

An interactive exploration of how global warming is affecting sea ice, glaciers and continental ice sheets worldwide.

NASAs Operation IceBridge images Earth's polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand processes that connect the polar regions with the global climate system.

The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.12

The official website for NASA's fleet of Earth science missions that study rainfall and other types precipitation around the globe.

Earths water is stored in ice and snow, lakes and rivers, the atmosphere and the oceans. How much do you know about how water is cycled around our planet and the crucial role it plays in our climate?

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent.13,14 This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.15,16

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Evidence | Facts Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

Voyager, Pioneer, the Curiosity Rover, the Hubble Telescope and the New Horizons space craft all have one thing in common they were all conceived, built, and delivered to NASA by its contractors. But not all missions are alike in these ways, and not all proposed missions even make it to the drawing board. Lets take a look at the process of getting an idea into space.

I talked with Dr. Harold Reitsema, a member of the Shoreline Amateur Astronomical Association and semi-retired rocket scientist who worked on both the Kepler and New Horizons spacecraft. He explained that NASA does science missions in two very different ways.

The first is known as a Principal Investigator Led Mission in which a team of knowledgeable scientists is formed, then becomes aligned with a spacecraft builder, some NASA scientists and even sometimes a NASA center, and finally puts together a complete mission design. The design includes the satellite, its instruments, who the operator will be, and how the data that comes from the spacecraft is stored and analyzed. The team then writes a proposal that was solicited by NASA through what is known as an Announcement of Opportunity.

This Announcement of Opportunity defines a broad area of science, such as cosmology or the origin of the solar system, and anyone with an idea that fits that objective can respond with a proposal for a full mission. Proposals can therefore be quite diverse. For example, one might be for an orbiter to study the atmosphere of Jupiter while another proposes a lander on Venus. Both fall under the category of planetary exploration.

NASA then creates two panels, one that evaluates the value of the science and one that studies the risks associated with building the hardware to actually accomplish the missions goals. The scientists submitting the proposals then approach private industries such as Lockheed or Ball Aerospace to work out the design and construction details. Often industries try to work with proposals from several teams to increase the chances of being approved since each announcement of opportunity can be met with a dozen or more proposals. The Kepler telescope and the New Horizons spacecraft were both missions of this type that Dr. Reitsema worked on for Ball Aerospace. Clearly, those proposals were accepted.

Such missions are relatively low in cost and risk. Larger, more expensive endeavors, such as the Mars Rovers or the Hubble Telescope, take a different course from conception to completion. In these cases, NASA puts out a list of requirements that a mission must meet and requests proposals from the aerospace industry that meet these requirements. The James Webb Telescope is a prime example. NASA knew they wanted to do a really big infrared telescope and it needed to be able to aim with a high accuracy, have a particular sensitivity, size, and life expectancy, and operate at extremely low temperatures. NASA then puts out a "Request for Proposals" to accomplish their mission.

Such endeavors require vast resources so the number of proposals is limited and they almost always come from the aerospace industry. Since these missions have never been done before and often require untested or even nonexistent technologies, NASA is willing to cover certain cost overruns. Again, the Webb is a good example. Originally proposed at a cost of around $1.6 billion in 1997, it jumped to $5 billion by 2007 and now is estimated at almost $9 billion! Part of the problem was that it is very difficult to perform tests here on Earth to evaluate how it will behave in a weightless environment, with its optics near absolute zero and electronics at room temperature.

So, to summarize, missions are the result of two processes. In the first, groups propose different ideas in response to an announcement of opportunity from NASA to study a broad branch of science. In the second, proposals are submitted for specific investigations as defined by NASA. Each scenario brings us a better understanding of whats up in the sky.

This month in history:

Peter Burkey is a Holland resident. Contact him at pburkey@comcast.net.

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What's Up in the Sky? How NASA missions are born - HollandSentinel.com

NASAs Advanced Exploration Systems division will offer multiple competitively- selected awards

ABOVE VIDEO: NASA, in collaboration with the National Space Grant Foundation, is giving university teams the opportunity to develop innovative design ideas that will assist NASAs Moon to Mars mission objectives.

(NASA) NASA, in collaboration with the National Space Grant Foundation, is giving university teams the opportunity to develop innovative design ideas that will assist NASAs Moon to Mars mission objectives.

The 2021 Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) Academic InnovationChallengeis an opportunity for NASA to build partnerships and tap into the ingenuity and creativity of the rising Artemis generation spaceexplorers.

This collaborative opportunity provides real-world, hands-on design, research and development opportunities for university students interested in aerospace careers while strengthening NASAs efforts to optimize technology investments, foster innovation and facilitate technology infusion.

NASAs Advanced Exploration Systems division will offer multiple competitively- selected awards ranging from $15,000- $50,000 to university teams to assist them in designing and producing studies, research findings or functional products that bridge strategic knowledge gaps, increase capabilities and lower technology risks related to NASAs Moon to Mars space exploration missions.

Proposals are due April 24, 2020.

M2M X-Hab 2021 Academic Innovation Challenge projects proposals will provide solutions for overcoming technology barriers and advancing technology in the following areas:

NASA is leading a sustainable return to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.

The key components of the exploration campaign that will send astronauts to the Moon and beyond sustainably are being developed.

NASAs next big rocket, the Space Launch System, along with the Orion spacecraft and the mobile, lunar command moduleGatewaywill be the backbone for deep space exploration.

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WATCH: NASA Tapping University Teams for Innovative Ideas to Enhance Moon to Mars Missions | - SpaceCoastDaily.com

The world is not ready for the discovery of life on Mars, NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green recently told a British newspaper. I dont think were prepared for the results.

Agreed. But we could take it one step further and ask, Is NASA ready to find life beyond Earth? The quest to find and investigate life beyond the Earth has reached a tipping point. We stand on the brink of changing the perspective of humanitys place in the universe and finally answering the question Are we alone?

The quest to find life beyond Earth is compelling. However, the capabilities to achieve the quest are distributed across the NASA organization, primarily in the Science Mission Directorate. They compete against other priorities for resources and urgency. This is a quest for all humanity. For NASA to succeed requires a new approach.

Why now? This current quest began in the mid-1990s. Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first planet orbiting another star in 1995, work recognized with the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1996, the claim of a fossilized bacteria in a Mars meteorite sample created new momentum in the NASA planetary program. These discoveries set off a chain of missions and research that today is paying off handsomely.

The NASA Kepler mission science team has identified more than 2,700 confirmed extrasolar planets, the so-called exoplanets. Kepler and other observatories have demonstrated that our solar system is not typical, that planets come in many different types and orbits, and has identified candidates for Earthlike planets orbiting other suns. Those in the habitable zone where water is expected to be a liquid are of particular interest. These discoveries have created an enthusiastic and fast-growing exoplanet community, eager to find life beyond Earth.

Within our solar system, the Cassini mission team discovered geysers from Saturns moon Enceladus that are gushing salty water and possibly microbial life created in hydrothermal activity analogous to life found around deep ocean vents on the Earth. Astrobiology, an interdisciplinary scientific field concerned with the origins of and search for life in the universe, has gone from a speculative theoretical research initiative started at NASA over 20 years ago, to the observational mainstream with a thriving science community.

The time is now to create a new Life beyond Earth organization within the NASA Science Mission Directorate. This would bring together the NASA life-finding capabilities including both the relevant future telescopes and solar system exploration missions. This may seem like a radical proposal to combine such different capabilities. However, the common science objective should drive the organization, rather than capability or technique. And it is worth remembering that telescopes discovered the planets in our solar system and the large future life-finding telescopes will provide amazing high-resolution imaging capabilities not just of exoplanets, but also of solar system planets and moons.

A Life beyond Earth organization would include the science enabled by human exploration. Future Artemis astronauts will return samples from the ice-filled, permanently shadowed lunar craters that may hold clues to the origins of life. Robotic missions and eventually astronauts will return samples from Mars that may provide definitive evidence for life beyond Earth. The important advocacy for planetary protection to prevent false alarms from contaminating microbes brought from Earth would be an essential part of this organization. Astronauts will most likely be needed to assemble in space the large life finding telescopes required to make detailed studies of candidate extrasolar habitable planets.

Such reorganizations have been successfully undertaken in response to the shifting scientific landscape. Heliophysics at NASA was created 20 years ago bringing together the solar astronomers and the space physicists toward a common goal: studying the Sun-Earth magnetosphere system. While initially there were concerns about how the two different scientific cultures would coexist, it has been a resounding success exemplified by successful missions, such as the Parker Solar Probe.

This new organization will also inform decadal surveys, which set priorities for future science missions. The astrophysics decadal survey (Astro2020) is currently underway. New observatories are being considered to directly image exoplanets and search for the signatures of habitability. Astro2020 has a Hobsons choice to prioritize the search for life against other high priority astrophysics science. Likewise, the upcoming planetary science 2023 decadal will confront a similar dilemma (e.g., prioritizing returning samples from Mars against flagship missions to the ice giants.). Ultimately, under this new approach, there would be a search for life decadal survey that would focus on prioritizing resources toward this quest.

The quest for life beyond Earth has entered a new phase and requires a bold new initiative. It presents an opportunity to raise the tide to lift all boats. This will prepare NASA and the public not just for the first discovery of life beyond the Earth, but for what follows. In doing so this will be a winwin for NASA, the scientific community and humanity.

Nicholas E. White Ph.D. is a research professor of physics at George Washington University and owner of Space Science Solutions LLC. He previously served as senior vice president for science at the Universities Space Research Association and director of science at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 23, 2019 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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Op-ed | Is NASA ready to find life beyond Earth? - SpaceNews

A batch of new papers summarizes the lander's findings above and below the surface of the Red Planet.

A new understanding of Mars is beginning to emerge, thanksto the first year of NASA's InSight lander mission. Findings described in a setof six papers published today reveal a planet alive with quakes, dust devilsand strange magnetic pulses.

Five ofthe papers were published in Nature. An additional paper in Nature Geoscience details the InSight spacecraft's landing site, a shallow crater nicknamed"Homestead hollow" in a region called Elysium Planitia.

InSight is the first mission dedicated to looking deepbeneath the Martian surface. Among its science tools are a seismometer fordetecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, a magnetometer,and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet's temperature.

A cutaway view of Mars showing the InSight lander studying seismic activity. Credit: J.T. Keane/Nature Geoscience Larger view

While the team continues to work on getting the probeinto the Martian surface as intended, the ultra-sensitive seismometer, calledthe Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), hasenabled scientists to "hear" multiple trembling events from hundreds tothousands of miles away.

Seismic waves are affected by the materials they movethrough, giving scientists a way to study the composition of the planet's innerstructure. Mars can help the team better understand how all rocky planets,including Earth, first formed.

Underground

Mars trembles more often - butalso more mildly - than expected. SEIS has found more than 450 seismicsignals to date, the vast majority of which are probably quakes (as opposed todata noise created by environmental factors, like wind). The largest quake was aboutmagnitude 4.0 in size - not quite large enough to travel down below the crust intothe planet's lower mantle and core. Those are "the juiciest parts of theapple" when it comes to studying the planet's inner structure, said BruceBanerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL.

Scientists are ready for more: It took months afterInSight's landing in November 2018 before they recorded the first seismicevent. By the end of 2019, SEIS was detecting about two seismic signals a day,suggesting that InSight just happened to touch down at a particularly quiettime. Scientists still have their fingers crossed for "the Big One."

Mars doesn't have tectonic plates like Earth, but it doeshave volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles. A pair of quakes wasstrongly linked to one such region, Cerberus Fossae, where scientists see bouldersthat may have been shaken down cliffsides. Ancient floods there carved channels nearly 800miles (1,300 kilometers) long. Lava flows then seeped into those channels withinthe past 10 million years - the blink of an eye ingeologic time.

Some of these young lava flows show signs of having been fracturedby quakes less than 2 million years ago. "It's just about the youngesttectonic feature on the planet," said planetary geologist Matt Golombek ofJPL. "The fact that we're seeing evidence of shaking in this region isn'ta surprise, but it's very cool."

At the Surface

Billions of years ago, Mars had a magnetic field. It is nolonger present, but it left ghosts behind, magnetizing ancient rocks that arenow between 200 feet (61 meters) to several miles below ground. InSight isequipped with a magnetometer - the first on the surface of Mars to detect magneticsignals.

The magnetometer has found that the signals at Homestead holloware 10 times stronger than what was predicted based on data from orbitingspacecraft that study the area. The measurements of these orbiters are averagedover a couple of hundred miles, whereas InSight's measurements are more local.

Because most surface rocks atInSight's location are too young to have been magnetized by the planet's formerfield, "this magnetism must be coming from ancient rocksunderground," said Catherine Johnson, a planetary scientist at theUniversity of British Columbia and the Planetary Science Institute. "We'recombining these data with what we know from seismology and geology tounderstand the magnetized layers below InSight. How strong or deep would theyhave to be for us to detect this field?"

In addition, scientists are intriguedby how these signals change over time. The measurements vary by day and night;they also tend to pulse around midnight. Theories are still being formed as towhat causes such changes, but one possibility is that they're related to thesolar wind interacting with the Martian atmosphere.

In the Wind

InSight measureswind speed, direction and air pressure nearly continuously, offering more datathan previous landed missions. The spacecraft's weathersensors have detected thousandsof passing whirlwinds, which are called dust devils when they pick up grit andbecome visible. "This site has more whirlwindsthan any other place we've landed on Mars while carrying weather sensors,"said Aymeric Spiga, an atmospheric scientist at Sorbonne University inParis.

Despite all that activity andfrequent imaging, InSight's cameras have yet to see dust devils. But SEIScan feel these whirlwinds pulling on the surface like a giant vacuum cleaner. "Whirlwindsare perfect for subsurface seismic exploration," said Philippe Lognonn ofInstitut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), principal investigator of SEIS.

Still to Come: TheCore

InSight has two radios: one for regularly sending andreceiving data, and a more powerful radio designed to measure the"wobble" of Mars as it spins. This X-band radio, also known as theRotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), can eventually revealwhether the planet's core is solid or liquid. A solidcore would cause Mars to wobble less than a liquid one would.

This first year of data is just a start. Watching over afull Martian year (two Earth years) will give scientists a much better idea ofthe size and speed of the planet's wobble.

About InSight

A division of Caltech inPasadena, JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSightis part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall SpaceFlight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built theInSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supportsspacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's CentreNational d'tudes Spatiales (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and theUnited Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA), are supporting the InSight mission. CNESprovided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument toNASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe deParis). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max PlanckInstitute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss FederalInstitute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College Londonand Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the HeatFlow and Physical Properties Package (HP3)instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK)of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro deAstrobiologa (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

News Media Contact

Andrew GoodJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-393-2433andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Alana JohnsonNASA Headquarters, Washington202-358-1501alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2020-039

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A Year of Surprising Science From NASA's InSight Mars Mission - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Two years after I joined NASA in 1987, I was preparing for a trip to Brazil to help the United States Information Service celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The souvenir posters I would give out referred to the first American men on the moon. I suggested it would be more appropriate if they read first humans on the moon.

A male astronaut sneered at the idea and said that it had been men who landed on the moon.

But it was women who helped put them there! I pushed back.

I was referring to the countless generations of women who have done so much to support human achievements but have gone unrecognized.

Even though I was soon to become the first woman of color who went to space, at that time I did not know of the mathematician Katherine Johnson, who died on Monday at the age of 101, or of the crucial calculations she made for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.

It would have put such a fierce smile on my face had I known about Katherine Johnson, her colleagues Mary Jackson and Jackie Vaughn and the other women mathematicians at NASA when I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s. I always assumed that I would go into space, even though the United States had no astronauts who were women or of color at the time. I could see on TV that the mission control rooms were filled with white men. Even at 8, 9 or 10 years old, I was sure that the picture misrepresented the capabilities women and I possessed.

Though I majored in African and African-American studies as well as chemical engineering at Stanford, when I joined the NASA astronaut corps I only knew vaguely of some African-American women at NASA and in aviation. I knew of African-American men and white women who were science and exploration legends. Yet I was unfamiliar with Bessie Coleman, who became the first black woman in the world to get a pilots license in 1921; or Willa Brown, an African-American and the first U.S. woman to get both a pilots and a mechanics license and who lobbied the government to integrate the Army Air Corps. That helped lead to the establishment of the Tuskegee Airmen, a number of whom she trained.

It fortified me to get to know and work with Christine Darden, Patricia Cowings and other women scientists, engineers and mathematicians of all ethnicities who worked at NASA centers throughout the nation.

I am so pleased the book and movie Hidden Figures allowed the world to meet and celebrate Katherine Johnson and her colleagues.

Katherine Johnson was a revelation. An inspiration. But she was not a one-off to be put on a shelf and admired for her singular genius. She was representative of the deep well of talent and potential that is so often buried by lack of opportunity, access, exposure and expectation for women and particularly women of color in science and technical fields.

She was a beacon who heralded the contributions made by women that were hidden and stymied by the deep institutional and societal bias that accredits achievements to white men, deemed by society to be the unique holders of genius.

Johnson today is a balm for the discomfort that arises when you stand up in a crowd a crowd that doubts your capabilities due only to your gender or race and press a point, disagree with a widely held premise or challenge the sugar coating of facts meant to make the powerful feel better while disregarding the less powerful, who need the truth revealed.

I have been working with a group of experts to understand what is needed to achieve the equitable participation and leadership of women in STEM fields. The insight may be uncomfortable for some allies, because effective, lasting solutions demand profound change in core beliefs and behaviors.

The changes require the dismantling of a gantlet: of persistent bias, obstacles and actions that block womens entry or push them out. It is a gantlet that has gone unacknowledged even decades after Katherine Johnsons accomplishments at NASA. Organizations value women for their work when it aligns with the organizations traditional perspectives; but they fall back on exclusionary behavior when new, diverse perspectives are generated or required.

Women have continued to advance within NASA Peggy Whitson is the American astronaut who has spent the most time in space. In October, a pair of female astronauts, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, walked in space together.

Even great organizations may be blind to persistent intersectional bias that treats African-American women so differently. As I testified before the House space and science committee in May, there have been just six African-American women astronauts; three of them have flown in space. It is confounding that of 338 NASA astronauts, two of these African-American women, of stellar accomplishments and tenures of over 10 years each, are the only American astronauts who have been denied or pulled from a spaceflight assignment without any official explanation.

While I did not meet Katherine Johnson, when I channel her, I am jazzed. Katherine Johnson is the shining example. Through her I see the possibilities when the full scope of human experience, talent and perspectives are engaged to address the challenges and opportunities to improve life on Earth for all and push the limits of our knowledge.

Dr. Mae Jemison, an engineer and physician, was the first woman of color in space.

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I Was the First Woman of Color in Space. Heres What Katherine Johnson Means to Me. - The New York Times

What is more powerful than suction cup and even a vacuum pump, but was not invented by humans?

Answer: a geckos foot. NASA has decided to copy the lizards incredible gripping technology, which relies on electrostatic attractions, in its Gecko Gripper robot. This is not coming from an internet troll trying to sell car insurance. The space agency partnered with OnRobot, which specializes in finger-like robotic grippers, to create a device that can (so far) lift 14 pounds. The radiation-resistant pads could literally mean a huge step forward for getting around in space.

Moving around in microgravity is more of a climbing problem than a walking problem, said Aaron Parness, who had overseen the robotic climbers and grippers group at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA.

If youve ever seen a spacewalk video, then you know that astronauts are not just walking outside to adjust something on the ISS. They have to climb and somehow make their bodies conform to the shape of whatever they are climbing if they expect to not float away into the cosmic void. Geckos feet automatically conform to whatever theyre climbing, which explains how you can find one hanging out on the ceiling with no problem at all. Each toe pad has a million ultrathin hairs with hundreds of even thinner nanohairs.

With hairs too small for the naked eye to see, a gecko creates a surprising amount of surface area that its feet will conform to with hardly any pressure. Replicating that was not nearly as easy for humans as crawling at weird angles may be for this lizard.

The Gecko Gripper is still being upgraded, but it could possibly challenge the reptile it was modeled after. Its ultrasonic sensor finds the target, and the weight of that target is figured out by a load sensor, which is beyond convenient for picking up and sticking to objects on Earth and in space. It can also switch adhesion on and off autonomously using the same tech that a geckos foot evolved over millions of years. Like gecko nanohairs, it has tiny fibers that stick out an an angle, so only moving in the right direction will allow them to grip.

Pulling in the opposite direction will release that grip. If nature hadnt come up with this, I dont think anyone would have ever thought of it, said Gareth Meirion-Griffith, current manager of the JPL climbers and grippers group, of this creation. The Gecko Gripper is also much more convenient than the vacuum-powered pump it will eventually replace in microgravity.

Its obvious that things crawling (or growing) on the planet we live on still have much to teach us about how we can advance technology.

(via NASA)

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NASAs new gecko-robot can climb just about everything like the lizards feet - SYFY WIRE

Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond.

The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agencys first space missions, including John Glenns 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. But Johnsons contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASAs missions today. She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general, says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber.

At NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Gruber works on the Artemis mission, which plans to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2024. Gruber plans trajectories for Artemis, just as Johnson did for the first lunar landing. Grubers basic task remains essentially the same as Johnsons was in 1962: to calculate the speed, acceleration, and direction required to lob a spacecraft of certain size and fuel capacity to hit a moving target, without a lot of room for extra maneuvering.

These missions are not unlike trying to hit a rotating bulls-eye with a dart while jumping off a carousel, the dart being the astronaut, the Earth the spinning carousel, and the bulls eye a spot on the moon. As Johnson told a PBS interviewer in 2011, It was intricate, but it was possible.

Once launched, astronauts have limited means for adjusting their trajectory, and small errors committed either by trajectory planners or the astronauts themselves can result in dire consequences. For example, Scott Carpenter, who replicated Glenns flight and was the sixth human in space, overshot his target landing spot in the Atlantic Ocean by 250 miles because he fell behind preparing for re-entry. (A US Navy team safely recovered him about three hours later.) So just as Johnson's team did in the 1960s, Gruber and her team are trying to calculate and plan for all possible scenarios on the way to the moon. If you get it wrong, people die, she says. And then people see it on TV.

The job has always had crazy high pressure. One of the most important aspects of Johnsons mathematical prowess is that her calculations involved real people, real objects interacting at the limits of human engineering. During these missions, human lives were at stake, and so was the outcome of the space race between the US and the former Soviet Union. The space program was in overdrive, trying to get ahead of the Russians, says NASA historian Bill Barry. And, of course, the whole world was watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television.

Although the basics of space missions have remained the same, much has evolved in mission planning since Johnsons time. In 60s, NASA employed so-called human computersmostly women like Johnsonto perform the calculations. The main reason women were hired to be computers was that it was drudge work, says Barry. The engineers didnt want to do it.

But even if the public didnt know much about these mathematicians, the astronauts relied on them. While preparing for the 1962 Friendship 7 mission, Glenn famously did not trust NASAs new electronic computer, the multimillion-dollar IBM 7090, to plan his trip. He specifically requested that Johnson, who worked at NASAs Flight Research Division, double-check the IBMs computations with pen and paper. Get the girl, Glenn said, according to Barry. Everyone knew which girl he meant. Katherine Johnson was the premier mathematician doing this type of work.

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Katherine Johnsons Math Will Steer NASA Back to the Moon - WIRED

Dajae Williams is a quality engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "I create music that fuses hip-hop and math as a tool to encourage underprivileged youth to explore STEM." NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Dajae Williams is a quality engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "I create music that fuses hip-hop and math as a tool to encourage underprivileged youth to explore STEM."

NASA engineer Dajae Williams is using hip hop to make math and science more accessible to young people. We talk with Dajae about her path to NASA, and how music helped her fall in love with math and science when she was a teenager.

Follow Maddie on Twitter. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

Production note: This interview was originally recorded on October 11th, 2019.

This episode was produced by Brit Hanson and edited by Viet Le.

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This NASA Engineer Is Bringing Math And Science To Hip Hop - NPR

JAFFREY A local teachers career is reaching new heights.

Susan Rolke, who teaches science at Conant High, was one of 28 teachers nationwide selected to participate in the SETI Institutes NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program, according to a news release from the institute.

The program is a professional development opportunity for high-school science teachers, and aims to bolster science education and literacy. In addition to online and in-person training, teachers spend a week at a NASA research center in Palmdale, Calif.

While there, teachers accompany scientists on an overnight research flight on NASAs Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) a modified 747, equipped with a specialized infrared telescope, that flies at 35,000 to 45,000 feet, according to Rebecca McDonald, director of communications for the SETI Institute.

Flying high in the atmosphere eliminates visual interference that happens closer to earth, aiding astronomers observations, she said.

After the program, participants teach a two-week module focused on the electromagnetic spectrum, using examples from SOFIA, according to the release.

McDonald said the teachers flight weeks typically happen in the spring.

The SETI Institute is a nonprofit research and education organization based in Mountain View, Calif.

Paul Cuno-Booth can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1409, or pbooth@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @PCunoBoothKS

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Conant teacher chosen for training in NASA observation plane - The Keene Sentinel