NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System

NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which can be readily obtained during an extended, low-activity mode of operations. 

While the science community is not currently aware of any reachable Kuiper Belt object, this new path allows for the possibility of using the spacecraft for a future close flyby of such an object, should one be identified. It also will enable the spacecraft to preserve fuel and reduce operational complexity while a search is conducted for a compelling flyby candidate. 

“The New Horizons mission has a unique position in our solar system to answer important questions about our heliosphere and provide extraordinary opportunities for multidisciplinary science for NASA and the scientific community,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The agency decided that it was best to extend operations for New Horizons until the spacecraft exits the Kuiper Belt, which is expected in 2028 through 2029.” 

This new, extended mission will be primarily funded by NASA’s Planetary Science Division and jointly managed by NASA’s Heliophysics and Planetary Science Divisions.

NASA will assess the budget impact of continuing the New Horizons mission so far beyond its original plan of exploration. As a starting point, funding within the New Frontiers program (including science research and data analysis) will be rebalanced to accommodate extended New Horizons operations, and future projects may be impacted.

Launched on January 18, 2006, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has helped scientists understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by visiting the dwarf planet Pluto (its primary mission) and then venturing farther out for a flyby of the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, a double-lobed relic of the formation of our solar system, and other more remote observations of similar bodies.  

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Marshall Space Flight Center Planetary Management Office provides the NASA oversight for the New Horizons. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Stern, and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Two NASA Goddard Earth Scientists Receive AGU Awards

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) announced this month that two Earth scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, were receiving medals from the organization. Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum was awarded a Joanne Simpson Medal for Mid-Career Scientists, and Dr. John Bolten received the AGU International Award. Kirschbaum is director of Goddard’s Earth Sciences Division, and Bolten leads the center’s Hydrological Sciences Lab.

“To receive an award named after such a prolific and impactful woman is a true honor,” Kirschbaum said. Dr. Joanne Simpson was the first woman to receive a doctorate in meteorology. As a tribute to her, AGU awards the medal to individuals with exceptional leadership qualities and an unwavering passion for scientific advancement for public service. Like Simpson’s groundbreaking research on tropical clouds and hurricanes, this award highlights mid-career scientists who have also made significant scientific breakthroughs. Kirschbaum is one of three recipients of AGU’s Simpson medal this year.

“When I was an intern and Ph.D. researcher, I was fortunate enough to work at NASA and actually sit in Joanne Simpson’s office,” Kirschbaum said. “She had since retired but I was surrounded by her awards, her publications, and her contributions to NASA. She was one of the key scientific leaders to campaign for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and after the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which is still flying today. I have worked on TRMM and then GPM for my entire scientific career, which was all enabled by her tenacity, creativity, intelligence, and insight.”

The award highlights the achievements of a broad Earth science team working to benefit humanity, Kirschbaum said. TRMM and GPM data, for example, has helped communities around the globe estimate where rainfall-triggered landslides may occur.

Bolten’s award likewise commemorates work with a global impact. AGU selected Bolten for their International Award “for dedication to improving lives in Southeast Asia and Africa through development and training in the use of hydrological datasets and tools,” according to their citation.

Bolten has developed several research products to aid in water resources management around the world. Much of the work has been supported by NASA’s Applied Science Program, which enables the agency’s data products to deliver societal benefits. Bolten served as the associate program manager for water resources in the program from 2014 to 2022.

“It is an incredible honor to serve the international community and to be recognized in this way,” Bolten said. “Thanks and kudos should be shared with the numerous NASA colleagues and collaborators I’ve had the privilege to work with. I am grateful for their contributions and am thrilled to be a part of the NASA family and make a positive impact in the world.”

Kirschbaum echoed the globally minded mentality: Among her priorities as director of Goddard’s Earth Sciences Division is to “bring together the best of what NASA provides for societal benefit,” she said. “Our team will continue to innovate and improve these capabilities to support the agency, the nation, and the world.”

Kirschbaum, who also received fellowship in AGU as part of her award, and Bolten will be recognized during the organization’s annual meeting in December.

Learn more about NASA’s landslide research at https://landslides.nasa.gov, and Goddard’s hydrology lab at https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/hydrology/.

By Angel Kumari
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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NASA Funds Eight Studies to Protect Astronaut Health on Long Missions 

NASA is funding eight new studies aimed at better understanding how the human body reacts to spaceflight. These studies will be done on Earth without the need for samples and data from astronauts.

Collectively, these studies will help measure physiological and psychological responses to physical and mental challenges that astronauts may encounter during spaceflight. With this information, NASA may be better able to mitigate risks and protect astronaut health and performance during future long-duration missions to the International Space Station, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. 

The selected research projects were chosen from 60 proposals submitted in response to the 2023 Human Exploration Research Opportunities, Appendix A solicitation. They will address numerous spaceflight risks related to muscle and bone health, sex differences, crew autonomy and behavior, balance and disorientation, and inflammation of the brain or spinal cord. 

Proposals were independently reviewed by subject matter experts in academia, industry, and government using a dual anonymous peer review process to assess scientific merit. Top scoring proposals were assessed by NASA for relevance to the agency’s Human Research Roadmap before final selections were made. The cumulative award totals about $1.2 million in funding, spread across the projects. Funding for each project will last up to one year.

The selected investigators and their teams are: 

• Heather Allaway, Louisiana State University and A&M College, “A time course of bone microarchitectural and material property changes in male and female mice during simulated unloading and spaceflight.” 
• Kelly Crowe, Xavier University, “Assessment of Sialylation in Skeletal Muscle Atrophy due to Simulated Microgravity.” 
• Anthony Lau, College of New Jersey, “Effects of Acute and Protracted Proton Radiation Exposure on Bone Health.” 
• Ranjana Mehta, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, “Characterizing and mitigating the interactive impacts of fatigue- and altered gravity-related stressors on sensorimotor, behavioral, and operational outcomes.” 
• Kathleen Mosier, Teamscape LLC, “Negotiating Crew Autonomy during Space Operations.” 
• Talmo Pereira, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, “Automated deep learning for spaceflight rodent behavior quantification and health phenotyping.” 
• Shubhankar Suman, Georgetown University, “Senescent cell targeting to alleviate space radiation-induced neuroinflammation.” 
• Danyal Turkoglu, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation – Space, “Radioisotope to Enable X-Ray Based Inflight Space Radiology.” 

______

NASA’s Human Research Program, or HRP, pursues the best methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, and the International Space Station, HRP scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research drives HRP’s quest to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready as space travel expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

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Science in Space: Week of Sept. 29, 2023 – Fire Safety in Space

Crew members aboard the International Space Station conducted a variety of scientific investigations during the week ending Sept. 29, 2023, including FLARE.

This JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) investigation explores the flammability of materials in microgravity. Current tests of materials that are used in crewed spacecraft do not consider gravity, which significantly affects combustion phenomena. The ability for flames to spread over solid materials, for example, is affected by the forces of buoyancy, which are absent in microgravity. Removing the effects of buoyancy by conducting combustion experiments in microgravity also gives researchers a better understanding of specific flame behaviors.

Other investigations on the space station have examined the behavior, spread, and growth of fire. This work helps guide selection of spacecraft cabin materials, improve understanding of early fire growth behavior, validate models used to determine material flammability, and identify optimal fire suppression techniques. Developing ways to prevent and extinguish fire is of critical importance to the safety of crew members and vehicles in space and in confined spaces such as aircraft on Earth. These settings limit the options for suppressing fires and can be difficult to evacuate from.

Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS) was one of the first investigations to examine how to extinguish a variety of fuels burning in microgravity. Putting out fires in space must consider the geometry of the flame and characteristics of the materials and methods used to extinguish it, as those used on the ground could be ineffective or even make the flame worse. Analysis of 59 BASS burn tests provided data on heat flow, flame size, effects of fuel mixture flow, and other important parameters.

BASS-II examined the burning and extinction characteristics of a variety of fuel samples to test the hypothesis that materials burn as well if not better in microgravity than in normal gravity, given adequate ventilation and identical conditions such as pressure, oxygen concentration, and temperature. A number of papers have been published based on results from BASS-II, with findings including a report on the differences between flame spread and fuel regression and comparison of flame spread rates.

Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction – Growth and Extinction Limit (SoFIE-GEL), a research collaboration between NASA and Roscosmos, analyzes how the temperature of a fuel affects material flammability. Researchers report that experimental observations agree with trends predicted by the models. This investigation is the first in a series using the SoFIE insert for the station’s Combustion Integrated Rack.

Saffire is a series of experiments conducted aboard uncrewed Cygnus cargo spacecraft after they depart the station. Using these cargo vehicles provides distance from the crewed station and enables tests of larger fires. Results have shown that a flame spreading over thin fabrics in microgravity reaches a steady spread rate and a limiting length, which can be used to establish the rate of heat release in a spacecraft, and found that reducing pressure slows down the flame spread.

Confined Combustion, sponsored by the ISS National Lab, examines the behavior of flame spread in confined spaces of different shapes. Confinement has been shown to have significant effects on fire characteristics and hazards. Researchers report specifics on interactions between a flame and its surrounding walls and the fate of the flame, such as growth or extinction. These data provide guidance for design of structures and fire safety codes and response in space and on Earth. Other results suggest that confinement can increase or decrease solid fuel flammability depending on conditions. Researchers also demonstrated that color pyrometry – capturing flame emission simultaneously at three broad spectral bands – can determine the temperature of a flame without disrupting its spread.

Flame studies help keep crews in space and people on Earth safe. This research also can lead to more efficient combustion, reducing impurities and producing greener and more efficient flames for uses on Earth such as heating and transportation.

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Near-Earth Asteroids as of September 2023

September 2023

Each month, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office releases a monthly update featuring the most recent figures on NASA’s planetary defense efforts, near-Earth object close approaches, and other timely facts about comets and asteroids that could pose an impact hazard with Earth. Here is the what we’ve found for September. 

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