Behold one of the more detailed images of Earth. This Blue Marble Earth montage—created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite—shows many stunning details of our home planet.
NASA
This Jan. 30, 2012 image of Earth was created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite. Many features of North America and the Western Hemisphere are particularly visible. The composite was created from the data collected during four orbits of the robotic satellite taken earlier in January 2012 and digitally projected onto the globe.
VIIRS collects visible and infrared imagery along with global observations of Earth’s land, atmosphere, cryosphere, and ocean, extending observational records collected by similar instruments aboard previously launched satellites, such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and NOAA’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR).
‘Vast and Rich:’ Studying the Ocean With NASA Computer Simulations
A tool developed at NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing division provides researchers with a global view of their ocean simulation in high resolution. In this part of the global visualization, the Gulf Stream features prominently. Surface water speeds are shown ranging from 0 meters per second (dark blue) to 1.25 meters (about 4 feet) per second (cyan). The video is running at one simulation day per second. The data used comes from the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) consortium. Credits: NASA/Bron Nelson, David Ellsworth
“Every time I help with visualizing [ocean] simulation data, I learn about an entirely new area of ocean or climate research, and I’m reminded of how vast and rich this area of research is. And…the real magic happens at the intersection and interaction of simulated and observed data.
It is a great honor – and a thrill – to collaborate with devoted, world-class scientists doing such important, cutting-edge research and sometimes to even help them learn something new about their science.”
Why is Methane Seeping on Mars? NASA Scientists Have New Ideas
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Why is Methane Seeping on Mars? NASA Scientists Have New Ideas
Filled with briny lakes, the Quisquiro salt flat in South America’s Altiplano region represents the kind of landscape that scientists think may have existed in Gale Crater on Mars, which NASA’s Curiosity Rover is exploring.
Credits: Maksym Bocharov
The most surprising revelation from NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover — that methane is seeping from the surface of Gale Crater — has scientists scratching their heads.
Living creatures produce most of the methane on Earth. But scientists haven’t found convincing signs of current or ancient life on Mars, and thus didn’t expect to find methane there. Yet, the portable chemistry lab aboard Curiosity, known as SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars, has continually sniffed out traces of the gas near the surface of Gale Crater, the only place on the surface of Mars where methane has been detected thus far. Its likely source, scientists assume, are geological mechanisms that involve water and rocks deep underground.
If that were the whole story, things would be easy. However, SAM has found that methane behaves in unexpected ways in Gale Crater. It appears at night and disappears during the day. It fluctuates seasonally, and sometimes spikes to levels 40 times higher than usual. Surprisingly, the methane also isn’t accumulating in the atmosphere: ESA’s (the European Space Agency) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, sent to Mars specifically to study the gas in the atmosphere, has detected no methane.
“It’s a story with a lot of plot twists,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads Curiosity’s mission.
Methane keeps Mars scientists busy with lab work and computer modeling projects that aim to explain why the gas behaves strangely and is detected only in Gale Crater. A NASA research group recently shared an interesting proposal.
Reporting in a March paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the group suggested that methane — no matter how it’s produced — could be sealed under solidified salt that might form in Martian regolith, which is “soil” made of broken rock and dust. When temperature rises during warmer seasons or times of day, weakening the seal, the methane could seep out.
Led by Alexander Pavlov, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the researchers suggest the gas also can erupt in puffs when seals crack under the pressure of, say, a rover the size of a small SUV driving over it. The team’s hypothesis may help explain why methane is detected only in Gale Crater, Pavlov said, given that’s it’s one of two places on Mars where a robot is roving and drilling the surface. (The other is Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance rover is working, though that rover doesn’t have a methane-detecting instrument.)
Pavlov traces the origin of this hypothesis to an unrelated experiment he led in 2017, which involved growing microorganisms in a simulated Martian permafrost (frozen soil) infused with salt, as much of Martian permafrost is.
Pavlov and his colleagues tested whether bacteria known as halophiles, which live in saltwater lakes and other salt-rich environments on Earth, could thrive in similar conditions on Mars.
The microbe-growing results proved inconclusive, he said, but the researchers noticed something unexpected: The top layer of soil formed a salt crust as salty ice sublimated, turning from a solid to a gas and leaving the salt behind.
“That’s when it clicked in my mind,” Pavlov said. And that’s when he and a team began testing the conditions that could form and crack hardened salt seals.
Pavlov’s team tested five samples of permafrost infused with varying concentrations of a salt called perchlorate that’s widespread on Mars. (There’s likely no permafrost in Gale Crater today, but the seals could have formed long ago when Gale was colder and icier.) The scientists exposed each sample to different temperatures and air pressure inside a Mars simulation chamber at NASA Goddard.
Periodically, Pavlov’s team injected neon, a methane analog, underneath the soil sample and measured the gas pressure below and above it. Higher pressure beneath the sample implied the gas was trapped. Ultimately, a seal formed under Mars-like conditions within three to 13 days only in samples with 5% to 10% perchlorate concentration.
This is a sample of mock Martian regolith, which is “soil” made of broken rock and dust. It’s one of five samples that scientists infused with varying concentrations of a salt called perchlorate that’s widespread on Mars. They exposed each sample to Mars-like conditions in the Mars simulation chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The brittle clumps in the sample above show that a seal of salt did not form in this sample because the concentration of salt was too low.
NASA/Alexander Pavlov
This image is of another sample of mock Martian “soil” after it was removed from the Mars simulation chamber. The surface is sealed with a solid crust of salt. Alexander Pavlov and his team found that a seal formed after a sample spent three to 13 days under Mars-like conditions, and only if it had 5% to 10% perchlorate salt concentration. The color is lighter in the center where the sample was scratched with a metal pick. The light color indicates a drier soil underneath the top layer, which absorbed moisture from the air as soon as the sample was removed from the simulation chamber, turning brown.
NASA/Alexander Pavlov
That’s a much higher salt concentration than Curiosity has measured in Gale Crater. But regolith there is rich in a different type of salt minerals called sulfates, which Pavlov’s team wants to test next to see if they can also form seals.
Improving our understanding of methane generation and destruction processes on Mars is a key recommendation from the 2022 NASA Planetary Mission Senior Review, and theoretical work like Pavlov’s is critical to this effort. However, scientists say they also need more consistent methane measurements.
SAM sniffs for methane only several times a year because it is otherwise busy doing its primary job of drilling samples from the surface and analyzing their chemical makeup.
In 2018, NASA announced that the Sample Analysis at Mars chemistry lab aboard the Curiosity Rover discovered ancient organic molecules that had been preserved in rocks for billions of years. Findings like this one help scientists understand the habitability of early Mars and pave the way for future missions to the Red Planet. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
“Methane experiments are resource intensive, so we have to be very strategic when we decide to do them,” said Goddard’s Charles Malespin, principal investigator for SAM.
Yet, to test how often methane levels spike, for instance, would require a new generation of surface instruments that measure methane continuously from many locations across Mars, scientists say.
“Some of the methane work will have to be left to future surface spacecraft that are more focused on answering these specific questions,” Vasavada said.
By Lonnie Shekhtman NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Work Underway on Large Cargo Landers for NASA’s Artemis Moon Missions
Early conceptual renderings of cargo variants of human lunar landing systems from NASA’s providers SpaceX, left, and Blue Origin, right. Both industry teams have been given authority to begin design work to provide large cargo landers capable of delivering up to 15 metric tons of cargo, such as a pressurized rover, to the Moon’s surface.
SpaceX and Blue Origin
Under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency and its partners will send large pieces of equipment to the lunar surface to enable long-term scientific exploration of the Moon for the benefit of all. NASA’s human landing system providers, SpaceX and Blue Origin, are beginning development of lunar landers for large cargo deliveries to support these needs.
NASA has contracted SpaceX and Blue Origin to provide landing systems to take astronauts to the Moon’s surface from lunar orbit, beginning with Artemis III. The agency has asked the two companies to develop cargo versions of their human lunar landers as an option under their existing contracts. These cargo variants are expected to land approximately 26,000 – 33,000 pounds (12 to 15 metric tons) of payload on the lunar surface and be in service no earlier than the Artemis VII mission.
“It’s essential that NASA has the capability to land not just astronauts, but large pieces of equipment, such as pressurized rovers, on the Moon for maximum return on science and exploration activities,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, Human Landing System Program Manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “Beginning this work now allows SpaceX and Blue Origin to leverage their respective human lander designs to provide cargo variants that NASA will need in the future.”
NASA expects the cargo versions of the companies’ landers to be modified versions of the human landing systems currently being developed for Artemis III, IV, and V. Modifications will include adjustments for payload interfaces and deployment mechanisms, and the cargo variants will not have human life support systems.
This initial work allows the companies to proceed with development for their cargo landers through a preliminary design review, the step that establishes the basis for proceeding with detailed design. SpaceX is conducting its work under the NextSTEP Appendix H contract, and Blue Origin is conducting its work under NextSTEP Appendix P. NASA officially exercised the options under those contracts in November 2023 to begin work on the large cargo landers.
With Artemis, NASA will explore more of the Moon than ever before, learn how to live and work away from home, and prepare for future human missions to the Red Planet. Artemis requires the best of international space agencies, private industry, and academia to establish the infrastructure for long-term scientific research and exploration. NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, exploration ground systems, and Orion spacecraft, along with the human landing system, next-generation spacesuits and rovers, and Gateway lunar space station are the agency’s foundation for human exploration deep space.
Slovenia Signs Artemis Accords, Joins Pursuit of Safer Space
Matevž Frangež, State Secretary, Ministry of Economy, Tourism, and Sport signs the Artemis Accords on behalf of Slovenia with NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, Ambassador Jamie L. Harpootlian, Rebecca Bresnik, Associate General Counsel for International and Space Law, and Slovenian Ambassador to the United States Iztok Mirošič standing behind.
Credit: State Department
NASA and Slovenia affirmed their cooperation in future space endeavors on Friday as Slovenia became the 39th country to sign the Artemis Accords. The signing certified Slovenia’s commitment to pursue safe and sustainable exploration of space for the benefit of humanity and took place during a U.S.-Slovenia strategic dialogue in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Offices.
“NASA welcomes Slovenia to the Artemis Accords,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Today, the partnership between the United States and Slovenia crosses a new frontier. We live in a golden era of exploring the stars. That era will be written by nations that explore the cosmos openly, responsibly, and in peace.”
State Secretary Matevž Frangež of the Ministry of the Economy, Tourism, and Sport signed the Accords on behalf of Slovenia, with James O’Brien, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, participating in the signing event.
“Slovenia joins the principles, values, and rules on the peaceful use of space as a common good of humanity,” Frangež said.
Rebecca Bresnik, Associate General Counsel for International and Space Law, served as the senior NASA official at the ceremony, along with her husband, Randy Bresnik, who is a NASA astronaut of Slovenian descent.
“We are delighted to welcome Slovenia to the Artemis Accords family,” said Ambassador Jamie Harpootlian, the U.S. ambassador to Slovenia “We recognize Slovenia as a rising leader in space. We look forward to taking our collaborations with Slovenia on science, technology, and innovation to new frontiers.”
In 2020, the United States and seven other countries established the Artemis Accords to establish guidelines for the peaceful exploration and use of outer space. The Accords reinforce and implement key obligations in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. They also strengthen the commitment by the United States and signatory nations to the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices NASA and its partners support, including the public release of scientific data.
