Bringing in new work to LaRC is a critical component of a successful business development process. In collaboration with business experts Shipley Associates, PDO developed a process, framework, and templates for capturing new business, from strategic positioning and targeting, to capture and proposal development. We created a tailored, but flexible, business development capture process to meet the unique needs of SD. +Learn More

Researchers across the Center rely on the PDO cost estimating and schedule team to provide accurate and validated cost estimates and schedules. We work closely with proposal teams to understand their proposal’s specific cost and schedule needs. This allows us to provide tailored, timely, and accurate estimates and schedules in accordance with OCFO Center business rules. The Cost Team maintains and continuously updates the SD Cost Template, $Estimating Tool, and the Basis of Estimate (BOE) Tool. +Learn More

The Announcement of Opportunity (AO) Timeline is an Agency unique product that serves LaRC customers and is updated monthly on the PDO website. It is an easily accessible and informational Excel spreadsheet that identifies funding opportunities across the different NASA Divisions. It includes expected AO release dates, full descriptions of the AO, and additional details as available. +Learn More

We delivered a key part of the CLARREO Pathfinder payload, the Power Converter Unit (PCU), to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder, CO. We designed, built, and tested the PCU, which will serve as the power interface between CPF and the ISS, ensuring that the right level of power is delivered to the CLARREO Pathfinder payload. CLARREO Pathfinder will launch to the ISS in late 2023, where it will take measurements to help us better understand Earth’s changing climate. + Learn More

Scientists flew an airborne campaign out of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to contribute to a joint U.S.-Canadian air quality study. A community-organized effort led by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy named Michigan Ontario Ozone Source Experiment (MOOSE) is targeting the border region that's home to Detroit on the U.S. side and Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. The prime goal includes investigating attainment strategies for ozone air quality regulations. + Learn More

The doubling of the energy imbalance is the topic of a recent study, the results of which were published June 15 in Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists at NASA and NOAA compared data from two independent measurements. NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) suite of satellite sensors measure how much energy enters and leaves Earth's system. In addition, data from a global array of ocean floats, called Argo, enable an accurate estimate of the rate at which the world’s oceans are heating up. + Learn More

We delivered a key part of the CLARREO Pathfinder payload, the Power Converter Unit (PCU), to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder, CO. We designed, built, and tested the PCU, which will serve as the power interface between CPF and the ISS, ensuring that the right level of power is delivered to the CLARREO Pathfinder payload. CLARREO Pathfinder will launch to the ISS in late 2023, where it will take measurements to help us better understand Earth’s changing climate. + Learn More

Using spare parts from a program called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), Langley scientists recently completed work on an instrument called Athena. In April 2021, Athena was shipped to a California company called NovaWurks, which has developed a type of satellite called a Hyper-Integrated Satlet, or HISat. Taking cues from human biology, specifically the structure and interactions of cells, HISats are engineered to aggregate, share resources, and conform to different sizes and shapes. Following satellite integration and pre-flight testing, Athena is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than December 2022. + Learn More

The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) IV Pathfinder Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) project held its final review with the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) on January 13, 2021. The project, started in March 2017, was successful in its goal of developing a laboratory prototype of a solar occultation imager to enable a follow-on transition to a low-risk flight mission. The team is now pursuing funding opportunities for a flight mission to provide critical science data continuity.
Learn More: Science In A Shoebox: NASA’s SAGE IV Pathfinder

In partnership with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the SAGE III team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, released initial analyses of the SAGE III water vapor data version 5.1 in the paper “Near-Global Variability of Stratospheric Water Vapor Observed by SAGE III/ISS.” By looking at SAGE III data between 2017 and 2020, scientists were given some insight into the year-to-year variability of H2O during boreal summer monsoon season. A monsoon is a seasonal change in wind and rain patterns observed in certain parts of the world, including North America. + Learn More

Stratospheric intrusions can result in elevated ozone in the free troposphere and mix into the boundary layer where it has the potential to significantly impact air quality. The Langley Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL) team, alerted by Goddard's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) forecast system, quickly responded to a stratospheric intrusion event and measured elevated ozone features in the free troposphere over Hampton, Virginia on February 24, 2021.  The LMOL observations are expected to provide important feedback to improve model forecasts and satellite views of these type of events. + Learn More

A study was published in Nature Scientific Report by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology partners with European Institutes, the National Institute of Aerospace/Langley Research Center and the National Center for Atmospheric Research on the role of medium-to-large volcanic eruptions on the Indian Monsoon. The earth’s climate is often affected by large volcanic eruptions which trigger surface temperature cooling and modify precipitation patterns for several years at regional and/or around the globe. The consequences can have drastic impacts on precipitation during the Summer Asian Monsoon, vital for the livelihood of millions of people. + Learn More

During the 2021 Boeing ecoDemonstrator Emissions Ground test, first-time data was captured on the particulates in emissions coming from not only a low-emitting LEAP-1B engine, but also one that was burning 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). At the Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, researchers in NASA’s Langley Research Center’s Mobile Lab performed tests to differentiate emission reductions resulting from the LEAP’s advanced engine technology from those resulting from advanced jet fuel chemistry. The Lab’s comprehensive suite of instrumentation analyzed not only the gaseous emissions but also particulates – soot and other aerosols – by using a custom-built probe designed to interface with the blast fence behind the airplane. This research is important because particle and gas emissions from aircraft engines impact the air quality of communities near airports and contribute to climate warming. The quantitative results will help to alleviate aviation environmental challenges in the coming decades. +Learn More

DEMonstrating the Emerging Technology for Measuring the Earth’s Radiation (DEMETER) offers an advanced approach to measure Earth’s energy budget with increased data quality while reducing cost, size, mass and risks from current measurement techniques. (DEMETER) is currently under development at NASA Langley under the Earth Science Technology Office's (ESTO) funded Instrument Incubator Program. DEMETER could tentatively take flight in 2028. + Learn More

Fifteen years ago, on April 28, 2006, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite was launched. Despite its mission lifetime being estimated at just three years, the satellite is still flying around the Earth today, at an altitude of 705 km and offering an unprecedented view of the horizontal and vertical structure of aerosols and clouds. CALIPSO is a joint US (NASA) and French (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales/CNES) venture and was a founding member of the ‘A-train’ constellation of satellites. + Learn More

ARCSTONE, a hyperspectral instrument, has been designed for integration into a 6U CubeSat flying in low Earth orbit (LEO). It will provide lunar spectral reflectance measurements with a target accuracy sufficient to establish an absolute lunar calibration standard for past, current, and future Earth observing sensors. In 2021, the ARCSTONE team has submitted a proposal in response to the In-space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) solicitation from Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO). It was selected for funding on June 25, 2021. The ARCSTONE IIP project was completed successfully in July 2021, and the InVEST project has started in August 2021. Within the 3-year time-period of the InVEST project, the technology readiness level of ARCSTONE will increase from TRL5 to TRL7, which will be achieved by flying the ARCSTONE spacecraft in a sun-synchronous orbit, collecting and validating measurements of lunar spectral reflectance, producing Level-1B data products and demonstrating their utility for improving accuracy of the current lunar calibration approach. In November of 2021 the ARCSTONE team at LaRC has submitted a proposal to NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) to provide a launch opportunity for the ARCSTONE. In Fall 2021, the ARCSTONE InVEST project focused on implementing contracts with partners, long-term procurements, system engineering and requirements documentation, payload flight design and analysis, and TVAC testing of the Engineering Design Unit (EDU) instrument using LaRC facilities.

The Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) began the third of six planned flight campaigns — two campaigns each year beginning in 2020 and ending in 2022 — in late January at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Cloud formation in the atmosphere depends on the presence of tiny particles called aerosols. ACTIVATE scientists are working to understand how variations in these particles from human and natural sources affect low lying clouds over the ocean and how those clouds in turn affect the removal of these particles from the atmosphere. + Learn More

Following a severe storm outbreak that brought large hail, high winds and tornadoes to parts of Texas and Oklahoma on April 23 and 24, Langley scientists Kris Bedka and Konstantin Khlopenkov collaborated to create a 3D composite loop of satellite imagery collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-17 and GOES-16 satellites (visible above).
You can get the same immersive view if you have your own pair of red-blue 3D glasses: +Learn More

CRAVE consists of three measurement and validation sites (2 active and 1 legacy). At the CRAVE-GI site at Granite Island in Lake Superior, we installed a newly calibrated AERONET and broadband shortwave and longwave instruments. In addition, new instrumentation added were an Infrared Radiation Thermometer for lake temperature, a Photosynthetic Active Radiation (PAR) sensor and a shortwave spectral sunphotometer. Also, a 120-gallon water tank was added for automatic daily rinsing in the warm months. The CRAVE team completed a summer mentorship with a student who assisted in these tasks. At CRAVE-LRC site at NASA Langley we installed new thermo-electric coolers (TEC’s) for temperature control to an enclosure that houses the Micro-Pulse Lidar. A new PAR was installed in addition to a new weather station and newly calibrated broadband shortwave instruments. New control systems were developed for the absolute cavity radiometers which provide traceability to the World Radiation Reference. We conducted on-going data analysis and review of the COVE program data from the legacy site (Chesapeake Lighthouse) with the goal of making available a refined/quality controlled public consumable data set. All of these efforts will improve our contributions to the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) — the gold standard for surface radiation measurements. The active sites are 2 of only 63 BSRN sites operational in the world.

Shan Zeng's paper illustrating a new approach for, "Identifying Aerosol Subtypes from CALIPSO Lidar Profiles Using Deep Machine Learning," has now been published in a special issue of the journal Atmosphere focused on "Lidar Remote Sensing Techniques for Atmospheric Aerosols."  Written with NASA Langley co-authors Ali Omar, Mark Vaughan, Chip Trepte, Jason Tackett, Jeremy Yagle, Pat Lucker, Yong Hu, Dave Winker, Sharon Rodier, and Brian Getzewich, the paper describes the development and application of a machine learning technique that accurately identifies the subtypes (e.g., dust, smoke, etc.) of the aerosols detected in the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) lidar backscatter measurements. The paper is open access and publicly available at  https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12010010.

CERES is providing the first observations that enable the direct quantification of how sea ice loss is contributing to rapid Arctic warming. Sea ice is a substantial factor accelerating Arctic warming and these direct quantification is critical for improving and constraining predictions of Arctic climate change. The pace of Arctic warming has global implications and by substantially impacting sea level rise and coastal resilience and adaption activities.

As co-lead of the AIT for NASA’s AOS studies, LaRC led the aerosol applications for societal benefit and the development of the Applications Traceability Matrix (ATM), analyses of applications value, and production of benefit/utility scores for the proposed AOS architectures. In November 2021, they completed the internal draft of the Community Assessment Report (CAR). The goal of the CAR and its findings and recommendations are to provide the information on stakeholder organizations and their needs that can be used to inform AOS design considerations, algorithm needs, data latency, and data product generation. The LaRC team convened and chaired an AOS session at the Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in December 2021. In March 2021, the LaRC AIT organized an Air Quality Community workshop which was attended by more than 200 virtual participants.

NASA scientists coordinated an intensive air quality study in Houston, Texas during September 2021 exploring the effects of emissions and weather on air pollution, and how that air pollution relates to socioeconomic factors. During Tracking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment-Air Quality (TRACER-AQ), we collected ground-based measurements from Langley’s Mobile Ozone Lidar, along with airborne measurements of trace gases, aerosols, and the weather to help stakeholders and researchers better understand some of the intricacies of air quality in the Houston area as well as connections to future NASA satellite observations from TEMPO. + Learn More

Did you know active volcanoes lie beneath the ocean’s surface? The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) III on the International Space Station (ISS) instrument spotted remnants of the Fukutoku-Okanoba undersea volcanic 2021 eruption in Earth’s stratosphere. Fukutoku-Okanoba erupted vigorously in the Philippine Sea on Aug. 13, 2021. Although the volcano's summit is approximately 80 feet under water, the powerful eruption was still forceful enough to send ash and sulfate aerosol particles high above the sea's surface and well up into the lower stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 16 km. These are important observations for SAGE III to make, because they help scientists understand global climate change better. Stratospheric aerosols such as these act to cool the Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back to space. + Learn More

Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital research project to investigate the impacts of intense thunderstorms over the U.S. on the summertime stratosphere. NASA Langley's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - 16 and -17 (GOES-16 and -17) products were critical for determining where thunderstorm updrafts penetrated into the stratosphere and how high the updrafts reached. This information is critical for initializing trajectory models to determine where air masses injected into the stratosphere had travelled to in the days following a storm event, such that flight tracks could be designed to enable the ER-2 to sample these air masses. The image shows GOES identifications of updrafts that penetrated into the stratosphere accumulated across three days during DCOTSS in August 2021. Kristopher Bedka (LaRC), Konstantin Khlopenkov, and Doug Spangenberg (SSAI) were responsible for near-real time GOES-16/17 data product generation, and Bedka traveled to Salina, KS to serve as Mission Scientist for one flight and as a member of the DCOTSS Forecaster and Flight Planning team. Learn more about DCOTSS, the Summer 2021 deployment, and activities within the Forecasting Team at: http://www.dcotss.org and https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/mission-explores-intense-summer-thunderstorms.html and https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/2021/08/04/storm-outflow-chasing-high-up-in-the-stratosphere/.

On March 11, 2021, the Langley Mobile Ozone Lidar (LMOL) captured smoke and ozone increases due to wildfire emissions transport from fires occurring in North Carolina and South Carolina. The emissions forecasted had the potential to affect the Hampton roads air quality, resulting in a code yellow air quality alert. LMOL observations like these contribute to a better understanding of the transport of wildfire emissions and their impact on the local air quality.

ESTO awarded an Advanced Component Technology (ACT) grant to University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Optics and Photonics (PI: Dr. Rodrigo Correa) in partnership with NASA Langley's Lidar Science Branch members that include Tim Berkoff, John Smith, and Shane Seaman.   This investigation will examine an all-fiber telescope to detector architecture for a high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) that can be extended to wind, trace gas lidar systems. This approach is expected to significantly reduce optical alignment risk, size, and weight compared to traditional bulk-optics schemes.

In 2021 Langley Research Center supported the Convective Processes Experiment – Aerosols & Winds (CPEX-AW) campaign out of St. Croix on board the NASA DC-8. CPEX-AW was a joint effort between the NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) with the primary goal of conducting post-launch calibration and validation of the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission-Aeolus (ADM-AEOLUS) wind Lidar satellite. CPEX-AW also investigated the interactions of wind, aerosol, clouds, and precipitation and effects on long range dust transport and air quality over the western Atlantic. In particular, CPEX-AW set out to better understand how African easterly waves and jets and dry air and dust associated with Saharan Air Layer couple across different spatial scales to influence convective activity throughout the tropical Atlantic. Langley’s Doppler Aerosol WiNd Lidar (DAWN), High Altitude Lidar Observatory (HALO), and Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS or dropsondes) instruments alongside other radar and microwave sounding remote sensing instruments collected an unprecedented dataset across seven research flights including high spatial resolution observations of wind, water vapor, aerosol, and temperature profiles from the upper troposphere down to the marine boundary layer. Many scientists and engineers from NASA Langley supported instrument shipping, integration, and operations during the campaign. The mission will resume in September 2022 out of Sal Island, Cape Verde under a new mission title: Convective Processes Experiment – Cape Verde (CPEX-CV).

Launched to the station in February 2017, SAGE III is the most recent in a series of SAGE instruments that have measured stratospheric gases and aerosols from space. The SAGE family of instruments started in 1979 and is one of NASA’s longest-running Earth-observing programs. + Learn more about critical data collected by SAGE III

In March 2021, the SSAI ASDC team released the inaugural version of the Sub-Orbital Ordering Tool (SOOT) to the public. This version introduced a Power User Interface (UI) intended for experienced data users and science teams with extensive knowledge of sub-orbital data. This tool supports data discovery while also promoting sub-orbital research and analysis within the Earth science disciplines of radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, and tropospheric composition. Visit SOOT online at: https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/soot/power-user

In November 2020, the ASDC received the recommendation for an Authorization to Operate (ATO) from the OCIO assessment team. To obtain the ATO, operating systems and certs were updated, servers no longer needed were decommissioned, security scans were conducted on identified servers, Clam AV was installed on servers, an improved inventory system was implemented, hosts were configured to report to the Agency Splunk, documentation was updated, and the ASDC security plans were updated to include only plans specific to the ASDC DAAC.

The Earthdata Forum, implemented by ASDC personnel was expanded to include the Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System (LAADS) DAAC in February 2021, the Ocean Biology (OB) DAAC in March 2021, and the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) in June 2021. A soft launch for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was also completed in September 2021. The Earthdata Forum provides a central location where data users can interact with subject matter experts from multiple DAACs to discuss general questions about research needs and data applications, and receive help on specific queries about accessing, viewing, and manipulating NASA Earth observing data. Visit online at: https://forum.earthdata.nasa.gov/

In 2021, with the support of the U.S. Department of State, DEVELOP continued its contribution to NASA’s multiyear effort to strengthen STEM foundations in Bhutan. The effort, titled “Advancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math in Bhutan through Increased Earth Observation Capacity,” saw DEVELOP conduct five projects in 2021 that provided 21 opportunities for Bhutanese scholars to build analytical skills through the use of NASA Earth observations, as well as supported their professional development. These projects explored how satellite data could be applied to conservation, forest management, and crop monitoring.

• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/summer/BhutanWaterIII.html
• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/summer/SouthernBhutanEcoIII.html
• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/spring/BhutanWaterII.html
• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/spring/SouthernBhutanEcoForecastingII.html

DEVELOP addresses environmental and public policy issues through interdisciplinary feasibility studies that apply NASA Earth science information to community concerns. In 2021, the program conducted relevant and impactful projects in an entirely virtual environment. This year, DEVELOP built capacity to use geospatial information in 272 participants, 19 Fellows and Senior Fellows, and 173 partner organizations through 58 feasibility projects, which reached 47 states and 21 countries. DEVELOP project teams explored a wide variety of applications of NASA Earth science information to inform decision making, such as modelling urban cooling intervention methods in New York, mapping marsh migration in Delaware, and identifying suitable habitats for Venus flytraps in the Carolinas.

• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov
• • https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/summer/DelawareEco.html

After several months of increasing volcanic activity, The La Soufrière volcano in St. Vincent and Grenadines erupted on April, 9 2021, injecting ash and sulfur dioxide up into the lower stratosphere. We supported NASA’s Applied Sciences Disasters program to activate a response plan and provided damage proxy and ash deposition maps, plume heights information, from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) and the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR), and sulfur dioxide injected mass to local observatories such as the Seismic Research Center and Montserrat Volcano Observatory, as well as the Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs/ USAID and the American Red Cross.
+ Learn More

In the U.S. alone, starting in the 2000s, record-breaking fires have scorched and scarred a growing list of states that includes California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alaska, Texas, Florida and Montana. Fire was the subject of an October talk Soja delivered virtually as part of Langley's Colloquium series of lectures. Soja offered a broad and sobering overview of the current scientific understanding of Earth's fires, which are being fueled, in no small part, by the drier, warmer conditions brought on by human-caused climate change. In fact, climate models have predicted a worsening of fire activity similar to what we're seeing now. + Learn More

In 2021, in collaboration with Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, participants at the Marshall Space Flight Center used NASA SERVIR’s Hydrologic Remote Sensing Analysis for Floods (HYDRAFloods) to map flooding related to Hurricanes Eta and Iota after they made landfall in Central America in 2020. DEVELOP participants utilized NASA Earth observations to understand flooding intensity and longevity in areas affected by the hurricanes, precipitation trends during the hurricanes, and landcover retaining flood waters; offering their results and methodology to partners to prepare for future storm monitoring and disaster response.

The NASA Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) Project improves the accessibility and usage of NASA Earth Observations (EO) supporting community research in three focus areas: Renewable energy development, Building energy efficiency and Agroclimatology applications. The latest POWER version enhances its distribution systems to provide the latest NASA EO source data, be more resilient, support users more effectively, and provide data more efficiently. + Learn how you can use NASA solar and meteorological data for support of renewable energy, building energy efficiency and agricultural needs.

In the spring, a team of DEVELOP participants partnered with the organization Working Dogs For Conservation (WD4C) to explore the use of satellite data and modeling inputs in habitat suitability maps for mustelid species in western Montana’s riverine ecosystems. This helped WD4C more efficiently identify viable focal species habitat and select sampling sites for their detection dogs, thus maximizing survey efforts to understand environmental contaminants in the vast landscape of Western Montana.

• •https://develop.larc.nasa.gov/2021/spring/WesternMontanaEco.html
• • link

The critical issues of long-term change in the geospace environment evident in the SABER data were highlighted in this article, “An Observational Gap at the Edge of Space", that appeared in Eos, the periodical of the American Geophysical Union as the issue cover story and the lead discussion topic in the Editor’s introduction. The article also calls attention to the looming gap in satellite observations of the geospace environment and the need for continued observations to understand the extent and consequences of the long-term cooling of the upper atmosphere. Coincidentally, this issue also discusses a new type of aurora, known as the ‘dune’ aurora. SABER contributed to the analysis of the cause of these aurorae with the in a publication titled, “Large-Scale Dune Aurora Event Investigation Combining Citizen Scientists' Photographs and Spacecraft Observations.”

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. In 2021, new versions of all the existing Global Reference Atmospheric Models (GRAMs) including Venus, Mars, Earth, Titan and Neptune were released along with new models for Jupiter and Uranus. All have been fully rearchitected with new features and are available for use from the NASA Software Catalog.

It's a tiny technology with a big name — Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies, or SCALPSS for short — and it will journey to the Moon in early 2022 as a payload aboard an Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander spacecraft. The SCALPSS hardware was completed in late October 2021 and was delivered to Intuitive Machines in February 2022. The Science Directorate contributed to the development, assembly, testing and delivery of the flight hardware. + Learn More

In support of the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and in cooperation with NASA’s Ames Research Center, development of the Dragonfly entry capsule was continued through the experimental and computational characterization of the vehicle’s aerodynamics and integrated performance flight mechanics simulations. LaRC is also managing the engineering development and acquisition of the parachute system that will slow the capsule down through its descent at Titan. The center’s participation in the Dragonfly mission is instrumental in insuring the Dragonfly “octocopter” is released successfully and safely.

Center teams provided the aerodynamic, aerothermal and parachute flight data books for the Mars 2020 mission which landed on Mars February 18, 2021. In addition, the flight mechanics team led landing simulations for the mission and supplied operations support through the operational readiness tests and trajectory correction maneuvers to final landing.

Center discipline teams in partnership with ARC, led the multi-year development of an instrumentation suite for the Mars 2020 mission that obtained critical engineering data through the entry segment of the mission. The Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) System included seven pressure transducers, seventeen temperature sensors, 2 heat flux sensors and a radiometer along with the accompanying electronics. Flight measurements were then processed and analyzed post-mission to improve aerosciences prediction codes for future missions.

Center discipline teams in partnership with ARC, led the multi-year development of an instrumentation suite for the Mars 2020 mission that obtained critical engineering data through the entry segment of the mission. The Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) System included seven pressure transducers, seventeen temperature sensors, 2 heat flux sensors and a radiometer along with the accompanying electronics. Flight measurements were then processed and analyzed post-mission to improve aerosciences prediction codes for future missions.