When reviewing a proposal, reviewers provide feedback in a variety of ways (e.g., via email, notes on a hardcopy, comments within the document). As a result, it's challenging and time consuming to combine all reviewer's comments into a useful summary. PDO is developing an automated web-based tool that simplifies this process. + LEARN MORE

The LaRC Engineering Design Studio (EDS) utilizes PDO resources for projects in all phases of design, from concept to flight, for collaborative communication and preliminary proposal development. The integration process between disciplines allows designers and analysts to directly mesh their inputs and outputs. + LEARN MORE

Bringing in new work to LaRC is a critical component of a successful business development process. PDO worked with Shipley Associates to create a business development lifecycle that closely aligns with SD's goals. This process, when closely aligned with SD's Strategic Plan, will result in greater proposal selection and a higher win rate. + LEARN MORE

New findings from a study led by NASA Langley's Dr. Liz Wiggins, of the Langley Aerosol Research Group (LARGE), were submitted to Geophysical Research Letters. The paper links satellite-measured fire intensity to changes in smoke plume trace gas and aerosol species (carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and black carbon). + LEARN MORE

Langley’s Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL) data contributed to a number of research papers and have improved knowledge of how aloft emissions interact with the surface layer that is critical for air quality agencies to assess impacts. The October 2020 edition of the Magazine for Environmental Managers (EM) magazine focused on coastal ozone challenges, and LMOL data was featured in two articles: "LISTOS: Toward a Better Understanding of New York City's Ozone Pollution Problem" and "OWLETS: An Enhanced Monitoring Strategy Directly within the Chesapeake Bay." + LEARN MORE[PDF]

DEMETER is the next-generation, free-flying, small sensorcraft solution that will measure the outgoing reflected solar and emitted thermal energy from the top-of-atmosphere. The DEMETER sensorcraft will preserve radiometric traceability of current observations being made by instruments such as the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES), while also significantly expanding scientific capabilities. + LEARN MORE

After more than 20 years in space, the five instruments aboard NASA’s Terra satellite continue their singular achievement of compiling a climate data record of Earth. CERES aboard TERRA measures reflected solar and emitted thermal infrared radiation from Earth. These data provide a better understanding of what drives Earth’s climate system and how it is changing.
“The energy exchange between Earth and space is fundamental to climate,” explains Dr. Norman Loeb, the CERES PI. “It’s a record you need to have for a long, long time.”
+ LEARN MORE

Engineers and fabrication specialists at Langley produced this 3D model of the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder (CLARREO-PF) — the first physical representation of what the fully assembled payload will look like. CLARREO-PF will make measurements from the International Space Station that are five to 10 times more accurate, and with higher spectral resolution, than those existing reflected solar sensors. It will also serve as an inter-calibration reference to other orbiting sensors. CLARREO-PF is currently scheduled to launch to the space station in 2023 and will take measurements for one year, followed by an additional year of data analysis. + LEARN MORE

A space-based laser that measures clouds and small atmospheric particles has provided a unique view of the massive Saharan dust plume that crossed the North Atlantic Ocean in June. The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite — a joint venture between NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) — observed the plume as it traveled across the ocean and eventually affected the mainland of the United States. + LEARN MORE

In August, NASA's Aerosol Cloud Meteorology Interactions Over the Western Atlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) eased into its second set of 2020 science flights out of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Those flights are took scientists over the western Atlantic Ocean to study how atmospheric aerosols and meteorological processes affect cloud properties. + LEARN MORE

NAAMES was a 5-year study employing ship, aircraft, float and drifter, and satellite observations across the annual plankton cycle to resolve these important processes in the North Atlantic Ocean. + LEARN MORE

NASA’s Langley Research Center is renowned for the development and use of lidar remote sensing technologies and is recognized worldwide for its expertise in lidar techniques and atmospheric measurements (encompassing aerosols, clouds, winds, water vapor, and trace gases, including methane and ozone), algorithm development, geophysical data retrievals, satellite validation, and, more recently, ocean profiling. + LEARN MORE

NASA’s SAGE IV Pathfinder is ‘science in a shoebox,’ which enables a sustainable way to monitor the health of Earth’s ozone layer at roughly 1/10 the cost and size of previous SAGE instruments. + LEARN MORE

The devastating southeastern Australian bushfires that started last September spewed smoke and aerosols higher into the atmosphere than some Earth-observing instruments have ever measured. Between November 2019 and the end of January 2020, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) III instrument, mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), saw a dramatic increase in the amount of stratospheric aerosols above Australia. + LEARN MORE

As MAIA & TEMPO progress closer to launch in 2022, we’ve published a StoryMap that features a clickable global map of the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) Mission target areas, which are key areas that the MAIA instrument will observe. For the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) Mission, scientists have created a ‘synthetic’ dataset of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), which is featured in the StoryMap as interactive data over the contiguous United States. + INTRODUCTION TO MAIA & TEMPO

On September 9, 2020, the fire known as ‘The August Complex‘ became the largest wildfire in California’s history. A few days earlier, on September 7, the joint NASA-CNES CALIPSO satellite observed smoke from an explosive pyrocumulus cloud that emerged from the Creek fire in California. The cloud lofted smoke 17 kilometers (10 miles) into the atmosphere, a record for a fire in North America and enough to carry smoke into the stratosphere. + LEARN MORE

Laura Judd gave an invited presentation titled, "Unveiling urban pollution patterns from a bird's-eye view," to the Physical Geographic Department Seminar at University College London on November 5, 2020. During this presentation, she shared her story of the air quality field studies involving the collection of high-spatiotemporal resolution NO2 data over coastal-urban environments from NASA's airborne spectrometers. She linked these results to the current satellite measurements and the preparatory work toward future capabilities of monitoring air quality from geostationary sensors like the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) satellite.

The ARCSTONE mission aims to establish the Moon as a reliable reference for high-accuracy on-orbit calibration in the visible, near-infrared, and shortwave infrared spectral region. This lunar reference will help to enable high-accuracy absolute calibration and inter-calibration of past, current, and future Earth-observing sensors, meteorological imagers, and long-term climate monitoring satellite systems. The ARCSTONE instrument is a compact spectrometer, which will be packaged on a CubeSat intended for low Earth orbit. + WATCH WEBCAST

Trutinor's instrument breadboard has been designed and is currently being built and tested. This work is novel and shows a direction for broadband imaging of the Earth with a compact instrument capable of continuing the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) record by flying in formation with an existing imager on another satellite platform. NASA’s Trutinor partners include Resonon Inc., Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, United States Geological Survey, Montana State University, and Quartus Engineering Inc.

On July 7, 2020, Granite Island moved from candidate to active and became a fully-operational Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) station. Along with being a surface validation site for the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite measurements, evaporation measurements are continuous at Granite Island and coupled with BSRN measurement standards, could return new understanding of Earth's energy budget. + ACCESS DATA

The publicly-available ESDIS Earthdata Forum provides a single forum for science data users to present questions and receive answers from subject matter experts related to mission data managed across the DAACs. The forum includes NASA Langley’s Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC), six other Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), more than thirty major projects, and nine data services. + LEARN MORE

In 2020, NASA Langley’s Atmospheric Science Center was named the Distributed Active Archive Center for FIREX-AQ, CAMP2Ex, OWLETS, LMOS, LISTOS, Aeolus Cal/Val, and AJAX. Throughout the year, we archived and published publicly-available atmospheric science data collected from flights. + LEARN MORE

Using an Australian Wildfires case study, NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) hosted a webinar to help find and download ASDC data, and enable your research and analysis needed to illustrate the importance and relevance of your work. Participants were able to learn about, search for, download, visualize, and analyze data for wildfire research. + LEARN MORE

A series of devastating bushfires taking place at the end of December 2019 and early January 2020, destroyed millions of acres of the Southeast Australian Forest in the states of New South Wales and Victoria. Smoke emitted by the fires had enormous impacts on air quality across major cities in Australia. NASA Langley coordinated NASA's Disaster program's response during this unprecedented event with support from Langley’s CALIPSO group and subject matter experts. We led discussions with Australian Partners from the Bureau of Meteorology to facilitate the use of NASA's satellite data in their air quality forecast system. + LEARN MORE

NASA Langley's Dave Borges provided the Keynote Address during the Initiative on Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (iCAR) 2020 Annual Workshop on November 12, 2020, titled, "NASA Disasters Program: Risk Reduction and Resilience Applications." He shared an overview of NASA Applied Sciences - Disasters activities with the iCAR (Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience) community, and focused on several examples that highlighted how the Disasters Program geospatially enables NASA science data and works with stakeholders and partners to lower technical barriers to using Earth science information towards coastal resilience objectives.

An abstract, written by NASA Langley's Dave Borges, has been selected to be developed into a Contributing Paper for the UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) 2022. The paper will document coherent and cross-cutting approaches that translate emerging trends in understanding hazards, exposure and vulnerability within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) communities based on Earth system science into proven disaster risk reduction measures.

An abstract, written by NASA Langley's Dave Borges, has been selected to be developed into a Contributing Paper for the UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) 2022. The paper will document coherent and cross-cutting approaches that translate emerging trends in understanding hazards, exposure and vulnerability within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) communities based on Earth system science into proven disaster risk reduction measures. + LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

DEVELOP participants worked on applied science feasibility projects that addressed a variety of environmental issues. This included transitioning to new virtual tools and participating in technical training, to collaborating and networking with partner organizations remotely. The DEVELOP Program engaged 217 participants and 95 partner organizations through 43 projects that took place either in-person and virtually through 11 node host locations. Teams at NASA Langley used Earth observations data to inform flood mitigation and resilience efforts in Puerto Rico and Kansas, identify hydrologic trends impacting mesquite forest mortality in Peru, assess salt marsh vulnerability in coastal South Carolina, and quantify urban heat in Sacramento, California.

NASA Langley's Laura Rogers and Louis Nguyen served as subject matter experts at NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) recent New Observing Strategies (NOS) strategic planning workshop held in Washington, D.C. The workshop brought together subject matter experts in the fields of distributed satellite missions, on-board processing, satellite data fusion, and a range of science domains in order to define gaps and research objectives for the future implementation of NOS. The larger goal of NOS is to synchronize multiple collaborative sensor nodes producing measurements integrated from multiple vantage points and in multiple dimensions to provide a dynamic and more complete picture of physical processes or natural phenomena.

The powerful, fast-moving, line of thunderstorms known as a derecho, blasted across Iowa Aug. 10 with extreme winds. The derecho did catastrophic damage to corn and soybean crops, caused widespread utility and property damage, and resulted in fatalities. NOAA estimates damage totals to be $7.5 billion, making it one of the most costly severe thunderstorm events in U.S. history. To help officials in Iowa better understand the scale and scope of the disaster, a team of NASA researchers, led by Kris Bedka, a severe storm expert at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and colleagues at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and the University of Oklahoma, analyzed the storm using data and imagery from multiple Earth-observing satellites and weather radars on the ground. + LEARN MORE

When a hail storm strikes, the damage can be catastrophic for homes, businesses, agriculture and infrastructure. In fact, with damage totals sometimes exceeding $1 billion, hailstorms are the costliest severe storm hazard for the insurance industry, making reliable, long-term data necessary to estimate insured damage and assess extreme loss risks. That’s why a team of NASA scientists is working with international partners to use satellite data to detect hailstorms, hail damage, and improve our understanding of hail frequency. + LEARN MORE

NASA Langley’s Amber Soja gave several interviews about extreme fire burning in Arizona and northeast Siberia, which resulted in several notes in articles and recordings in the press.
+ BUSH FIRE IN ARIZONA + FIRES IN SIBERIA

Through the use of NASA data the strenuous task of transporting water in a remote village of West Africa will soon be obsolete. The POWER web services platform, led by Dr. Paul Stackhouse, provides critical Earth Observations to assess solar array productivity. Direct Normal Radiation (DNR) observations provided by POWER enabled local management in West Africa to make informed decisions regarding the community water system powered by solar pumps.

Paul Stackhouse, the lead developer for NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER) project, was recently featured on an episode of the Squeaky Clean Energy podcast by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA). The episode, titled Solar In Space! Two NASA Leaders on The Cutting Edge of Clean Energy, dives into ways that work in NASA’s Earth Applied Sciences Program inspires and enables technology advances in public and private sectors. Stackhouse discussed how POWER, a clean energy data initiative, helps utility-scale solar developers site projects, as well as building efficiencies. POWER combines NASA Earth observations like solar radiation and temperature averages in a free, public portal to help inform new renewable energy projects and sustainable construction. + LEARN MORE

The Air & Waste Management Association's October 2020 Issue of the Magazine for Environmental Managers (EM) titled, "Analyzing Ozone Pollution Near Large Water Bodies," highlighted measurements and research from OWLETS, LISTOS and LMOS. The monthly magazine issue highlighted collaborative research studies about air quality in coastal regions in partnership with state and federal agencies and academia. Langley researchers contributed figures and expert knowledge gained from previous air quality studies of the Long Island Sound, the Chesapeake Bay, and Lake Michigan.

Since the early Viking missions, NASA Langley has led the agency for entry, descent and landing (EDL) simulations. Data gathered during the six-month flight allows the team of experts to adjust models to current conditions, replacing estimates in the process, and adjust the trajectory of the flight up until entering the Martian atmosphere.

In cooperation with NASA’s Ames Research Center, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (who leads the overall program), and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, SD is managing the engineering development and acquisition of a passive Earth entry vehicle for safe return of the samples from Mars. The Mars Sample Return mission is one of the most ambitious and exciting missions NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has ever attempted.

In 2020, NASA Langley's Science Directorate contributed to the Dragonfly mission through continued support of the entry system design and entry/descent system performance assessments. As the lead for entry and descent simulation analyses, as well as determining the design of parachute system, LaRC SD’s participation in the Dragonfly mission is instrumental in insuring the Dragonfly “octocopter” is released successfully and safely.

In 2020, we continued to develop SCALPSS (Read: Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies), which will capture video and still image data of the lander’s plume as the plume starts to impact the lunar surface until after engine shut off — a critical capability for future lunar and Mars vehicle designs. The SCALPSS hardware was completed in October 2020 and will be delivered to Intuitive Machines in February 2021. The SCALPSS team has already begun development of a second payload called SCALPSS 1.1. + LEARN MORE

We supported modeling efforts for GRAM (Global Reference Atmospheric Model), one of the most widely used engineering models of vehicles and atmospheric environments for many NASA projects where planetary spacecraft cannot be tested in the flight environment prior to a mission.

SABER on TIMED has observed a number of strong storms, which generate higher infrared signals. Molecular signals can essentially become “beacons of life” from exoplanets around young stars that may be readily observed on future space-based and ground-based telescopes. Observations of these infrared emissions confirm the existence of nitrogen, carbon, oxygen (both atomic and molecular) and hydrogen within an exoplanet’s atmosphere. The relative abundances of these in an exoplanet could be compared to those on Earth, providing powerful evidence for habitability and the probability of life. +LEARN MORE

Decisions made at the beginning of SABER instrument development in 1996 to emphasize calibration are paying off. After nearly 20 years on orbit, the SABER instrument has demonstrated that it remains radiometrically stable. Demonstration of instrument stability is a critical result as with the length of the dataset, long-term changes in the upper atmosphere are now apparent. Originally intended to last two years, SABER has now passed 19 years on orbit and is operating with no significant degradation in performance, systems, or subsystems. “Without the knowledge of stability, we might not know if we were looking at real changes or instrument changes,” said Marty Mlynczak, SABER’s Associate Principal Investigator, who, according to Google Scholar, has been cited more than 10,000 times -- or on average -- two times per day for the last decade. +LEARN MORE