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Lonnie Johnson holds his patent for the pump-action water gun he developed, now known as the Super Soaker

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Mechanical Engineering, NASA, Nuclear Engineering, STEM

Engineer Lonnie Johnson invented the massively popular Super Soaker water gun and is developing a thermoelectric device to convert solar energy into sustainable power.

Lonnie Johnson invented the Super Soaker in 1989 and has since dedicated his engineering skills to creating more efficient rechargeable batteries and sustainable solar power. As a child, Johnson learned to build toys from his father and was later inspired to make a career of his early talent by fellow Black inventor George Washington Carver. Since the debut of Johnson’s famous toy, hundreds of millions of Super Soakers have been sold, and the water gun was added to the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2015. Seven years later, Johnson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, in addition to working on batteries, the inventor and his team are developing the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC), an engine that converts heat from solar energy into electricity more effectively than current technology.

Lonnie George Johnson was born on October 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. His father was a World War II veteran who worked as a civilian driver at nearby Air Force bases, while his mother worked in a laundry and as a nurse’s aid. During the summers, both of Johnson’s parents also picked cotton on his grandfather’s farm.

Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

Growing up in Mobile in the days of legal segregation, Johnson attended Williamson High School, an all-Black facility, where he was told not to aspire beyond a career as a technician despite his precocious intelligence and creativity. Nevertheless, inspired by the story of famed African American inventor George Washington Carver, Johnson persevered in his dream of becoming an inventor.

Nicknamed “The Professor” by his high school buddies, Johnson represented his school at a 1968 science fair sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS). The fair took place at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where, just five years earlier, Governor George Wallace had tried to prevent two Black students from enrolling at the school by standing in the doorway of the auditorium.

The only Black student in the competition, Johnson debuted a compressed-air-powered robot, called “the Linex,” which he had painstakingly built from junkyard scraps over a year. Much to the chagrin of the university officials, Johnson won first prize. “The only thing anybody from the university said to us during the entire competition,” Johnson later recalled, “was ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Y’all drive safe, now.’”

After graduating with Williamson’s last segregated class in 1969, Johnson attended Tuskegee Institute (today Tuskegee University) on a scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1973, and two years later, he received a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the school.

After Johnson received his degrees, he joined the U.S. Air Force and became an important member of the government's scientific establishment. He was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program. Johnson moved on to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979, working as a systems engineer for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, before returning to the Air Force in 1982.

Despite his busy days, Johnson continued to pursue his [own] inventions in his spare time. One of his longtime pet projects was an environmentally friendly heat pump that used water instead of Freon. Johnson finally completed a prototype one night in 1982 and decided to test it in his bathroom. He aimed the nozzle into his bathtub, pulled the lever, and blasted a powerful stream of water straight into the tub. Johnson’s instantaneous and instinctive reaction, since shared by millions of kids around the world, was pure delight.

In 1989, after another seven years of tinkering and tireless sales-pitching, during which he left the Air Force to go into business for himself, Johnson finally sold his device to the Larami Corporation. The “Power Drencher” initially failed to make much of a commercial impact, but after additional marketing efforts and a name change, the “Super Soaker” became a massively successful item. It topped $200 million in sales in 1991 and went on to annually rank among the world’s top 20 best-selling toys.

Dr. Lonnie G. Johnson, Biography dot com

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Computer Engineering, Diversity in Science, Electrical Engineering, NASA, Robotics, STEM, Women in Science

Accomplished roboticist, entrepreneur, and educator Ayanna Howard, PhD, became dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering on March 1, 2021. Previously she was chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing, as well as founder and director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab (HumAnS).

Her career spans higher education, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the private sector. Dr. Howard is the founder and president of the board of directors of Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech spin-off company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs. Zyrobotics products are based on Dr. Howard’s research.

Among many accolades, Forbes named Dr. Howard to its America's Top 50 Women In Tech list. In 2021, the Association for Computing Machinery named her the ACM Athena Lecturer in recognition of her fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence, along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing. In 2022, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and was appointed to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC).

Dr. Howard also is a tenured professor in the college’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in Computer Science and Engineering. As dean, she holds the Monte Ahuja Endowed Dean's Chair, which was established in 2013 through a generous gift from Distinguished Alumnus Monte Ahuja '70. [View Dean Howard's full CV]

She is the first woman to lead the College of Engineering. Nationally, only 17% of engineering deans or directors across the country are female, according to the Society of Women Engineers. She also is the college’s second Black dean. George Mason University President Gregory Washington served as interim dean from 2008 to 2011. Throughout her career, Dr. Howard has been active in helping to diversify the engineering profession for women, underrepresented minorities, and individuals with disabilities.

Dr. Howard earned her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University, her master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, and her MBA from Claremont Graduate University.

The Ohio State University College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard

Born: Aug. 26, 1918
Died: Feb. 24, 2020
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Mathematics, NASA, Spaceflight, STEM, Women in Science

Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people consider one of their life’s most notable moments. Still, it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia. 

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president, Dr. John W. Davis, selected her and two men to be the first black students offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble.  She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband decided to move the family to Newport News, Virginia, to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into her tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson’s life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel. Johnson, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.  “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

Katharine Johnson Biography, Margot Lee Shetterly, NASA

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Ronald McNair (born October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina, U.S.—died January 28, 1986, in flight, off of Cape Canaveral, Florida) was an American physicist and astronaut who was killed in the Challenger disaster.

McNair received a bachelor’s degree in physics from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, in 1971 and a doctoral degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 1976. At MIT, McNair worked on the then recently invented chemical lasers, which used chemical reactions to excite molecules in a gas such as hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride and thus produced the stimulated emission of laser radiation. McNair became a staff physicist at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, where he continued studying lasers.

In 1978 McNair was selected as a mission specialist astronaut by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He, along with Guion S. Bluford, Jr., and Frederick Gregory, were the first African Americans selected as astronauts. His first spaceflight was on the STS-41B mission of the space shuttle Challenger (February 3–11, 1984). During that flight astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first person to perform a space walk without being tethered to a spacecraft. McNair operated the shuttle’s robotic arm to move a platform on which an astronaut could stand. This method of placing an astronaut in a specified position using the robotic arm was used on subsequent shuttle missions to repair satellites and assemble the International Space Station.

Britannica online: Dr. Ronald Erwin McNair

Ronald McNair, Guion Bluford, and Frederick Gregory, NASA's first Black astronauts, from the 1978 astronaut class.

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Frederick Drew Gregory is the first astronaut born, reared, and educated in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, which is also home to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. He is a veteran of three space shuttle missions and the first African American to pilot and command a mission in space. He is also the first African American to rise to the second-highest NASA leadership position, Deputy Administrator.

Gregory’s story is generationally entwined with the history of the District of Columbia (DC). In an era of profound racism and segregation, Gregory’s family were respected members of Washington’s influential Black community. When he was born in 1941, his family members were already making history, and Gregory followed suit in his own time.

Gregory’s uncle, Dr. Charles R. Drew, became famous for his medical research and innovation during World War II. His father, Francis Anderson Gregory, was locally prominent as assistant superintendent of DC Public Schools for many years and served as the first Black president of the Public Library’s Board of Trustees; the branch library in the Fort Davis neighborhood where the Gregory family lived is named in his honor. His mother, Nora Drew Gregory, a graduate of Dunbar High School, had a thirty-year career as a teacher in Washington’s elementary schools and led the library board after her husband. Her niece—Gregory’s cousin—Charlene Drew Jarvis served on the DC Council for more than two decades.

Gregory remembers his father taking him to Andrews Air Force Base for air shows and car races when he was a child; that was his earliest exposure to aviation. He also knew several Tuskegee Airmen who were friends of his father and often visited the Gregory's home, when he was too young to understand their historical significance but enjoyed their tales of flying. As a teenager, he made the connection between flying and the military and decided he wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and military aviator.

Gregory’s life became illustrious after he graduated from Anacostia High School—Washington’s schools were not yet integrated, but Gregory was active in an integrated Boy Scout troop. Nominated by civil rights activist and member of Congress Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Gregory attended the United States Air Force Academy, where he was the only Black cadet in his class and one of very few African Americans at the academy. He graduated with distinction and a degree in military engineering in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer into the Air Force.

When Gregory joined the Air Force, he first flew helicopters and then fighter aircraft, including the F-4 Phantom. He served in Vietnam, where he flew 550 combat rescue missions, and returned to enter the Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent, Maryland. While serving as an engineering and research test pilot for the Air Force and NASA, he earned a master’s degree in information systems from George Washington University, in his hometown. During his career, he logged 7,000 hours in more than 50 aircraft.

Washington, DC’s Renowned Astronaut, Col. Frederick D. Gregory, Valerie Neal, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Topics: African Americans, Astronautics, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, NASA, Space Shuttle, Spaceflight

Dr. Guion “Guy” S. Bluford Jr. (Colonel, USAF, Ret.) was the first African American to fly in space. He was also the first African American to return to space a second, third, and fourth time. As the first African American to be awarded United States Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings, he has logged over 5200 hours in high-performance jet aircraft and has flown 688 hours in space.

Bluford was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1942 and received a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 1964, a master of science degree in aerospace engineering with distinction from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1974, a doctor of philosophy degree in aerospace engineering with a minor in laser physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1978 and a master in business administration from the University of Houston, Clear Lake in 1987.

After graduating from Penn State, Bluford earned his Air Force pilot wings and then flew 144 combat missions in Southeast Asia as an F4C fighter pilot. From 1967 to 1972, he served as a T-38 instructor pilot at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas.

Astronauts Scholarship Foundation: Dr. Guion "Guy" S. Bluford Jr.

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civil Rights, Diversity in Science, Education, NASA, Space Exploration, STEM, Women in Science

The Honorable Aprille J. Ericsson was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology (S&T). In this role, she directed an organization responsible for the oversight, advocacy, and policy for the Department of Defense (DoD) S&T enterprise, including S&T workforce and laboratory infrastructure, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, and University-Affiliated Research Centers. The ASD(S&T) office oversees a broad portfolio of S&T programs, including basic research, Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), DoD Manufacturing Technology, and nine Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. Focused emerging technology areas include: advanced materials, biotechnology, quantum science, and FutureG, along with developing system capabilities for hypersonics, PNT, nuclear delivery, and human and unmanned platforms. Additionally, the ASD(S&T) office encourages inclusion, diversity, and equity through focused outreach and interaction with Historically Black Colleges & Universities, Minority Institutions, community colleges, and K-12 programs. Furthermore, the ASD(S&T) office is responsible for technology and program intellectual property protection.

Before joining the DoD, Dr. Ericsson worked in various positions for 30+ years at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Her last NASA role was the New Business Lead for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Instrument Systems and Technology Division. In this role, she fostered technical federal partnerships that enabled industry, small businesses, and academia collaborate for competitive opportunities to solve strategic R&D, technological, and space science challenges. Dr. Ericsson also served as the NASA GSFC program manager for SBIR/STTR within the Innovative Technology and Partnerships Office. Her additional roles at NASA include: GSFC Deputy to the Chief Technologist for the Engineering and Technology Directorate; HQs Program Executive for Earth Science; HQs Business Executive for Space Science, and GSFC Instrument Project Manager for missions that include the James Webb Space Telescope and ICESat-2. Her engineering roles include design, analysis, and build of attitude control systems, instruments, and robotics.

Dr. Ericsson is a champion for STEM education and the future workforce. Throughout her career, she has sat on many academic boards for the National Academies, universities, and K-12 institutions, mentored many NASA interns and students, been a college professor, and led the advisor for a National Society Black Engineers Jr. Chapter.

Dr. Ericsson received her Bachelor of Science in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received a master's and doctorate in mechanical engineering, and aerospace option from Howard University. Dr. Ericsson has obtained leadership and management certificates from Radcliffe University and Johns Hopkins University.

U.S. Department of Defense: Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson

Dr. George Carruthers, [right], and William Conway, a project manager at the Naval Research Institute, examine the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, the first Moon-based observatory Carruthers developed for the Apollo 16 mission. Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the moon in April 1972.

Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Instrumentation, NASA

Dr. George Carruthers, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, stands to the right of his invention, the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph. The first Moon-based observatory, Carruthers developed it for the Apollo 16 mission. He stands beside his colleague William Conway. Working for the Naval Research Laboratory, Carruthers had three years earlier received a patent for a Far Ultraviolet Electrographic Camera, which obtained images of electromagnetic radiation in short wavelengths.

Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the Moon in April 1972, where it sits today on the Moon’s Descartes highland region, in the shadow of the lunar module Orion. Asked to explain highlights of the instrument’s findings for a general audience, Dr. Carruthers said “The most immediately obvious and spectacular results were really for the Earth observations because this was the first time that the Earth had been photographed from a distance in ultraviolet (UV) light so that you could see the full extent of the hydrogen atmosphere, the polar auroras and what we call the tropical airglow belt.”

Dr. Carruthers made the first detection of molecular hydrogen in space, in 1970, using a sounding rocket. He developed a rocket instrument that obtained a UV image of Comet Halley, and an instrument with two cameras, with different far-UV wavelength sensitivities, used on the STS-39 space shuttle mission in 1991. He also worked on UV imaging of Earth’s polar auroras and of the faint photochemical luminescence found in the upper atmosphere, with an instrument, Global Imaging Monitor of the Ionosphere (GIMI), on a Department of Defense satellite, the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS), launched in 1999. In 2012, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technology achievement. Dr. Carruthers extended his work beyond his scientific endeavors; in the 1980s, he helped launch a program called the Science and Engineers Apprentice Program, allowing high school students to do research at the Naval Research Laboratory. He also taught science classes at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Carruthers passed away on Dec. 26, 2020, and is remembered for his contributions to physics, astronomy, and education.

Image Credit: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

The hills in Mars' Australe Scopuli region, located near the planet's south pole, are covered in carbon dioxide ice. The darker areas are layers of dust. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)

Topics: Astrophysics, Environment, ESA, Mars, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

Snow dots the Martian landscape in these images from ESA's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Hoping for a white Christmas this year? Well, even if there's no snow where you live, at least you can enjoy these images of a "winter" wonderland on Mars.

Taken by the German-built High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter in June 2022, and by NASA's NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on September 2022, these images showcase what appears to be a snowy landscape in the Australe Scopuli region of Mars, near the planet's south pole.

But the "snow" seen here is quite different from what we have on Earth.

In fact, it's carbon dioxide ice, and at Mars' south pole, there's a 26-foot-thick (8-meter-thick) layer of it year-round. (These images were actually taken near the summer solstice, not the winter one — it's very cold here all year long.)

So what looks like a beautiful pastoral winter scene in these Mars Express images is actually a dynamic summer scene, where gas jets spew dust across the surface. Hey, at least it's still cold outside — just a casual -193°F (-125°C).

Mars orbiters witness a 'winter wonderland' on the Red Planet (photos), Brett Tingley, Space.com

Heat trap The proposed nanoparticle warming method. (Courtesy: Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics)

Topics: Aerogels, Exoplanets, Mars, Materials Science, Nanomaterials, NASA, Planetary Science. Thermodynamics

Suffice it to say, Mr. Musk's nuking the Martian planet idea is impractical, and a nonstarter, but to show that he's mature about it, he has T-shirts, because that always makes bad ideas palatable, like a spoon [full] of sugar to help bitter medicine go down (Mary Poppins thought so). The "real-life Tony Stark" he's not.

If humans released enough engineered nanoparticles into the atmosphere of Mars, the planet could become more than 30 K warmer – enough to support some forms of microbial life. This finding is based on theoretical calculations by researchers in the US, and it suggests that “terraforming” Mars to support temperatures that allow for liquid water may not be as difficult as previously thought.

“Our finding represents a significant leap forward in our ability to modify the Martian environment,” says team member Edwin Kite, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago.

Today, Mars is far too cold for life as we know it to thrive there. But it may not have always been this way. Indeed, streams may have flowed on the red planet as recently as 600,000 years ago. The idea of returning Mars to this former, warmer state – terraforming – has long kindled imagination, and scientists have proposed several ways of doing it.

One possibility would be to increase the levels of artificial greenhouse gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons, in Mars’ currently thin atmosphere. However, this would require volatilizing roughly 100,000 megatons of fluorine, an element that is scarce on the red planet’s surface. This means that essentially all the fluorine required would need to be transported to Mars from somewhere else – something that is not really feasible.

An alternative would be to use materials already present on Mars’ surface, such as those in aerosolized dust. Natural Martian dust is mainly made of iron-rich minerals distributed in particles roughly 1.5 microns in radius, which are easily lofted to altitudes of 60 km and more. In its current form, this dust actually lowers daytime surface temperatures by attenuating infrared solar radiation. A modified form of dust might, however, experience different interactions. Could this modified dust make the planet warmer?

Nanoparticles designed to trap escaping heat and scatter sunlight

In a proof-of-concept study, Kite and colleagues at the University of Chicago, the University of Central Florida, and Northwestern University analyzed the atmospheric effects of nanoparticles shaped like short rods about nine microns long, which is about the same size as commercially available glitter. These particles have an aspect ratio of around 60:1, and Kite says they could be made from readily available Martian materials such as iron or aluminum.

To make Mars warmer, just add nanorods, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World

The completed VIPER rover awaits one of two fates: be sent to the Moon by an organization other than NASA or be cannibalized for its parts and instruments. Credit: NASA

Topics: Astrobiology, Astronautics, Astrophysics, Chemistry, COVID-19, NASA, Space Exploration, Spectrographic Analysis

"Boldly going" has budget constraints, but all is not lost. "Plan B" is at the link below.

The VIPER rover was meant to be a key scouting mission ahead of NASA’s Artemis program, collecting crucial information about water-ice reserves at the lunar south pole.

To the shock of the lunar science community, on July 17, NASA cancelled the much-anticipated Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission, which was expected to prospect for water ice on the Moon — a critical resource for future explorers.

VIPER was one of the highest profile missions in NASA’s ongoing Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which that is sending robotic missions to the Moon in support of future Artemis crews. Artemis targets landing near the lunar south pole, where the shallow angle of the Sun means many craters lie in permanent shadow. Scientists know that these craters contain water ice, which could be used as drinking water for astronauts and as a resource for rocket fuel and energy production. But we don’t know how much ice is there, nor how easy it will be to extract. VIPER’s mission was to answer those questions — and its cancellation deprives the Artemis program of critical data.

Equally shocking to the science community is that $450 million has already been spent designing and building VIPER and its suite of instruments. The completed VIPER only needed to pass its environmental tests to ensure it could survive in the Moon’s incredibly harsh, perpetually shadowed polar regions. The rover and the Astrobiotics Griffin lunar lander that was to deposit VIPER near the south pole were scheduled to launch in September 2025 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA has said it is open to handing VIPER over to another organization to fly it to the Moon — if it comes at no additional cost to NASA. If no takers emerge, current plans call for the dismantling of VIPER and cannibalizing its instruments for possible use in future missions.

NASA’s explanation for VIPER’s cancellation is that COVID-induced supply chain issues with both the rover and its Griffin lander escalated mission costs and have delayed its anticipated launch by two years. By cancelling the project, after already spending nearly half a billion dollars, NASA says it will save $84 million. At the same time, NASA will pay Astrobiotics $323 million to complete the Griffin lander and fly it to the Moon without VIPER. At this time, plans call for landing a “mass simulator,” or a dead weight, that will return no science data about the Moon.

NASA cancels fully built Moon rover, stunning scientists, Robert Reeves, Astronomy.com.

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. Credit: Maksym Bocharov

Topics: Astrobiology, Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science, Mars, NASA, Planetary Science

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.

Why is methane seeping on Mars? NASA scientists have new ideas, Lonnie Shekhtman, NASA, Phys.org.

An illustration of NASA's Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon. (Image credit: Lockheed Martin)

Topics: Astronautics, History, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

Between 1969 and 1972, the Apollo missions sent a total of a dozen astronauts to the surface of the moon — and that was before the explosion of modern technology. So why does it seem like our current efforts, as embodied by NASA's Artemis program, are so slow, halting and complex? 

There isn't one easy answer, but it comes down to money, politics, and priorities.

Let's start with the money. Yes, the Apollo missions were enormously successful — and enormously expensive. At its peak, NASA was consuming around 5% of the entire federal budget, and more than half of that was devoted to the Apollo program. Accounting for inflation, the entire Apollo program would cost over $260 billion in today's dollars. If you include project Gemini and the robotic lunar program, which were necessary precursors to Apollo, that figure reaches over $280 billion.

In comparison, today, NASA commands less than half a percent of the total federal budget, with a much broader range of priorities and directives. Over the past decade, NASA has spent roughly $90 billion on the Artemis program. Naturally, with less money going to a new moon landing, we're likely to make slower progress, even with advancements in technology.

Why is it so hard to send humans back to the moon? Paul Sutter, Space.com.

This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on September 21, 2023, the day of its maximum extent, as calculated by the NASA Ozone Watch team. Moderate ozone losses (orange) are visible amid widespread areas of more potent ozone losses (red).

NASA Earth Observatory

Topics: Antarctica, Atmospheric Science, NASA, Ozone Layer

Goddard Spaceflight Center: What is Ozone?

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify the ranking of the 2023 ozone hole.  It is the 12th largest single-day hole on record and the 16th largest when averaged from Sept 7 to Oct 13.

The 2023 Antarctic ozone hole reached its maximum size on Sept. 21, according to annual satellite and balloon-based measurements made by NASA and NOAA. At 10 million square miles, or 26 million square kilometers, the hole ranked as the 12th largest single-day ozone hole since 1979.

During the peak of the ozone depletion season from Sept. 7 to Oct. 13, the hole this year averaged 8.9 million square miles (23.1 million square kilometers), approximately the size of North America, making it the 16th largest over this period. 

“It’s a very modest ozone hole,” said Paul Newman, leader of NASA’s ozone research team and chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Declining levels of human-produced chlorine compounds, along with help from active Antarctic stratospheric weather, slightly improved ozone levels this year.”

2023 Ozone Hole Ranks 16th Largest, NASA and NOAA Researchers Find

The sample return capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. Keegan Barber/NASA

Topics: Asteroids, Astrobiology, Astrophysics, NASA, Space Exploration

Scientists are exulting over the safe arrival of a canister containing about a cup's worth of asteroid rocks, collected 200 million miles away, that landed in a Utah desert after a 7-year NASA mission sent to retrieve them.

The black pebbles and dirt are older than Earth and are undisturbed remnants of the solar system's early days of planet formation. As part of an asteroid named Bennu, these rocks traveled unsullied through space for eons.

While bits of asteroids regularly fall to our planet as meteorites, scientists want to study pristine asteroid material, stuff that's uncontaminated by our planet, to understand the early chemistry that might have contributed to the emergence of life.

NASA asteroid sample lands safely in Utah before being whisked away by helicopter, Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR

Artist's conception of the dwarf planet Sedna in the outer edges of the known solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC))

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, NASA, Space Exploration

Astronomers are racing to explain the peculiar orbits of faraway objects at the edge of our solar system.

Among the many mysteries that make the furthest reaches of our solar system, well, mysterious, is the exceptionally egg-shaped path of a dwarf planet called 90377 Sedna.

Its 11,400-year orbit, one of the longest of any resident of the solar system, ushers the dwarf planet to seven billion miles (11.3 billion km) from the sun, then escorts it out of the solar system and way past the Kuiper Belt to 87 billion miles (140 billion km), and finally takes it within a loose shell of icy objects known as the Oort cloud. Since Sedna's discovery in 2003, astronomers have struggled to explain how such a world could have formed in a seemingly empty region of space, where it is too far to be influenced by giant planets of the solar system and even the Milky Way galaxy itself.

Now, a new study suggests that a thus far undetected Earth-like planet hovering in that region could be deviating orbits of Sedna and a handful of similar trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which are the countless icy bodies orbiting the sun at gigantic distances. Many TNOs have oddly inclined and egg-shaped orbits, possibly due to being tugged at by a hidden planet, astronomers say.

Could an 'Earth-like' planet be hiding in our solar system's outer reaches? Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com

This map shows global temperature anomalies for July 2023 according to the GISTEMP analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperature anomalies reflect how July 2023 compared to the average July temperature from 1951-1980. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, NASA

Editor's Note: This release has been updated to add additional graphics and captions and to spell out the words degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius.

According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, July 2023 was hotter than any other month in the global temperature record.

“Since day one, President Biden has treated the climate crisis as the existential threat of our time,” said Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor. Against the backdrop of record-high temperatures, wildfires, and floods, NASA’s analysis puts into context the urgency of President Biden’s unprecedented climate leadership. From securing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history, to invoking the Defense Production Act to supercharge domestic clean energy manufacturing, to strengthening climate resilience in communities nationwide, President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history.”

Overall, July 2023 was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.24 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other July in NASA’s record, and it was 2.1 F (1.18 C) warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980. The primary focus of the GISS analysis is long-term temperature changes over many decades and centuries, and a fixed base period yields anomalies that are consistent over time. Temperature "normals" are defined by several decades or more - typically 30 years.

NASA Clocks July 2023 as Hottest Month on Record Ever Since 1880

Valentina Tereshkova. Credit: ESA

Topics: Astronautics, ESA, History, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Women in Science

The first female cosmonaut flew years before NASA put a man on the Moon and decades before any other country would send a woman into orbit.

On a drab Sunday in Moscow in November 1963, a dark-suited man stood beside his veiled bride, whose bashful smile betrayed the merest hint of nerves. Despite the extraordinarily lavish surroundings of the capital’s Wedding Palace, it might have been any normal wedding, but for one thing: Both groom and bride were cosmonauts, members of Russia’s elite spacefaring fraternity.

Two years earlier, that bride, Valentina Tereshkova, had been a factory seamstress and amateur parachutist with more than 100 jumps to her name when she’d volunteered for the cosmonaut program. Now, the 26-year-old, whom TIME magazine dubbed “a tough-looking Ingrid Bergman,” was among the most famous women in the world, an accolade she had earned just months ago by becoming the first female to leave the planet.

Sixty years on from her pioneering Vostok 6 mission, more than 70 women from around the globe have followed in Tereshkova’s footsteps, crossing that ethereal boundary between ground and space. Some have commanded space missions, helmed space stations, made spacewalks, spent more than a cumulative year of their lives in orbit, and even flown with a prosthesis. And women from Britain, Iran, and South Korea have become their countries’ first national astronauts, ahead of their male counterparts.

60 years ago today, Valentina Tereshkova launched into space, Ben Evans, Astronomy

The Artemis 2 crew, from left to right: Jeremy Hansen, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch. (NASA TV)

Topics: Astronautics, Astrophysics, International Space Station, NASA, Space Exploration

NASA has selected the four astronauts that will travel to the Moon during the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will be humanity’s first crewed return to the Moon in more than 50 years.

The four astronauts are Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

“The Artemis 2 crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson before announcing the crew during a live event broadcast on NASA TV. “This is their crew. This is our crew. This is humanity’s crew.”

Meet the Four Astronauts Who Will Soon Take a Trip to the Moon, Jake Parks, Discovery Magazine

Related: NC astronaut Christina Koch will be part of NASA Artemis II moon mission, Korie Dean, The Charlotte Observer

Topics: African Americans, Diversity in Science, NASA

The inclusion of women and people of color in NASA’s astronaut cadet program was unprecedented — and sometimes met fierce resistance.

The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel, Meredith Bagby, William Morrow (2023)

Growing up in racially segregated South Carolina in the 1950s, Ronald McNair saw door after door slammed in his face. The public pool was for white people only, so he could not learn to swim. When he was nine years old, a librarian called the police on him for trying to borrow calculus books.

McNair fought the racism and went on to study physics at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro — a historically Black institution — and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In 1978, NASA chose him as a finalist to be an astronaut, in the first group to contain women, people of color, and scientists. His pioneering class included Sally Ride, who would become the first US woman in space; Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American in space; and Guion Bluford, the first African American in space.

With The New Guys, Meredith Bagby, a film producer and former journalist has produced a broad and easily readable narrative about this group of US astronauts. She does not break new ground in outlining their experiences and the team’s role in space history. But she does illuminate the historic nature of their selection — and, significantly, how they helped to shape NASA’s space shuttle program, from its first flight in 1981 until its end in 2011.

NASA’s first astronaut class, chosen in 1959, was the iconic Mercury Seven which included John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Gus Grissom. The next six groups were similar: all white, male military pilots lionized for having “the right stuff.” Then came the class of 1978. Of the 35 new astronauts, 14 were civilians, 6 were women, and 4 were men of color.

It was a time of huge change for NASA. The Apollo Moon program had wound down, and NASA had set its sights on developing a reusable space plane that would launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. Astronauts on this vehicle would deploy military and scientific satellites into space. It was time for a new type of astronaut for a new type of spaceship.

Breaking through prejudice

Bagby views the shuttle era through the experiences of its astronauts, with a focus on women moving into new roles. They include Ride, a gay woman who remained in the closet while at NASA because the agency would not hire her otherwise; geologist Kathryn Sullivan; physicians Rhea Seddon and Anna Fisher; biochemist Shannon Lucid; and engineer Judith Resnik.

In the late 1970s, the view in much of NASA’s ranks was that the agency had lowered its standards to admit a more diverse class, and the class acquired the soubriquet “Those Fucking New Guys.” John Glenn and Chuck Yeager, the quintessential “right stuff” pilots, were among those who fought against hiring women as astronauts. Opposition from Yeager had probably helped to keep Ed Dwight, a Black test pilot, from joining a previous class.

Note: Younger me, off Dr. McNair's left shoulder looking down at the floor. Someone dropped their keys, I reacted, and the faux pas is preserved for all Internet eternity.

Source: https://journalnow.com/news/local/30-things-you-should-know-about-astronaut-ronald-mcnair/article_b6e2357c-8b07-550c-bf19-f4a713047e76.amp.html

How NASA’s breakthrough ‘class of ’78’ changed the face of space travel, Alexandra Witze, Nature