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A portion of the upper left is purple with lines on it. 4 min read IXPE Untangles Theories Surrounding Historic Supernova Remnant article 1 day ago Highlights Frank Rubio, un hombre de pelo y ojos oscuros y con lentes, sonrAe y tiene los brazos cruzados. Va vestido con un polo oscuro y pantalones khaki. DetrA!s suyo se ve la atmA3sfera de la Tierra a travA(c)s de las ventanas de observaciA3n de la cAopula. 5 min read Mision record de astronauta ayuda a planificar viajes al espacio profundo article 1 month ago This image shows mixing at the interface of two shear-driven systems in a ground analog of hardware for Ring-Sheared Drop-IBP, which tests computer models for the behavior of high-concentration protein fluids. 4 min read Space Station Science Highlights: Week of May 15, 2023 article 5 months ago image of an astronaut taking photos inside the cupola of the space station with views of Earth in backdrop 5 min read Earth Observation From the Space Station article 5 months ago Highlights Engineers joined the two main components of NISAR in an ISRO clean room in Bengaluru, India, in June, 2023. The payload arrived from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March, 2023, while the bus was built at the ISRO facility. 4 min read Powerful NASA-ISRO Earth Observing Satellite Coming Together in India article 4 months ago Thanks to a wet winter, California saw tremendous gains in the amount of water in the San Joaquin, Sacramento, and Tulare river basins (outlined in yellow) from October 2022 to March 2023, GRACE-FO data shows. 4 min read US-German Satellites Show California Water Gains After Record Winter article 5 months ago Highlights [lunar-pathfinder] 2 min read NASA Delivers First Flight Hardware to ESA for Lunar Pathfinder article 3 months ago NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of "Marker Band Valley" at two times of day on April 8. 3 min read NASA's Curiosity Captures Martian Morning, Afternoon in New 'Postcard' article 5 months ago NASA scientists have made the first observation of a polar cyclone on Uranus. 3 min read NASA Scientists Make First Observation of a Polar Cyclone on Uranus article 5 months ago Featured View of Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system after DART impact. Webb's view, hued in red, shows a bright center and darker streaks emanating outward from it. 4 min read Webb, DART Missions Win AIAA 2023 Premier Awards article 5 months ago A planet covered with volcanic outbursts and spots of water takes up most of the left-hand foreground. In the distance, against the black background, is a faint blue planet. 5 min read NASA's Spitzer, TESS Find Potentially Volcano-Covered Earth-Size World article 5 months ago Highlights Against a clear sky, the vertical tail fins of three F-15 jets used by NASA are seen, some displaying a NASA logo. 1 min read Langley Aeronautics Research Directorate Leadership article 41 mins ago a group of doctors posing for a photo 1 min read Body Wise Health Talks article 4 hours ago NASA graphic showing basic path of TEMPO scanning. Image Credit: NASA 4 min read NASA Technologies Receive Multiple Nods in TIME Inventions of 2023 article 4 hours ago Highlights Joby Aviation's electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is pictured at Edwards Air Force Base in Edwards, California. 3 min read Government and Industry Collaboration Leads to First Air Taxi Delivery article 1 month ago Joe Piotrowski, Jr. smiles in front of NASA Armstrongs Airborne Science aircraft. 2 min read Joe Piotrowski, Jr.: One Engineer's (Flight) Path to Airborne Science article 1 month ago Children walk around the Darkstar prop made for the Top Gun: Maverick. The prop was on display at the 2022 Aerospace Valley Open House, Air Show, & STEM Expo in Edwards, California. 3 min read Forget Movie Magic, NASA Armstrong has the Real Thing article 1 month ago Highlights Two people wearing blue hooded parkas, waist deep in snow, manipulate tubes holding snow samples. equipment lies on the snow surface near them and in the background a line of dark trees 5 min read NASA Tech Lets Scientists See Snow-Water Through the Trees article 1 month ago A wide shot of a silvery piece of space hardware about the size of a car sitting on a silver platform. Three techs in white head-to-toe suits are pushing it from behind through a very large, arched doorway that leads to a dark room lined with dim lights. 3 min read Primary Instrument for NASA's Roman Completed, Begins Tests article 1 month ago A white device that looks like a TV remote with a big, red button is held a few inches above two green, potted plants in a cardboard frame. 5 min read STELLA: NASA's DIY Educational Gadget for Measuring Plant Health article 1 month ago Featured Students from the AIAA Orange Country Section team of Irvine, California, display their rocket to news media and the public during Rocket Fair - an annual showcase event of NASA's Student Launch competition April 2023. 3 min read NASA Announces Teams for 2024 Student Launch Challenge article 3 weeks ago Highlights (iss068e022435) NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio is pictured during a spacewalk tethered to the International Space Station's starboard truss structure. 5 min read Scientific Highlights of NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio's Year in Space article 1 month ago A man works on a scale model of the Mars Ascent Vehicle. 4 min read Historic Wind Tunnel Facility Testing NASA's Mars Ascent Vehicle Rocket article 1 month ago malapert massif 3 min read New NASA Report Looks at Societal Considerations for Artemis article 1 month ago Featured NASA astronaut Frank Rubio uses a tool in his right hand as he activates a space biology experiment that is studying how weightlessness affects genetic expression in microbes. 5 min read Ciencia destacada del ano en el espacio del astronauta Frank Rubio article 1 month ago Frank Rubio, un hombre de pelo y ojos oscuros y con lentes, sonrAe y tiene los brazos cruzados. Va vestido con un polo oscuro y pantalones khaki. DetrA!s suyo se ve la atmA3sfera de la Tierra a travA(c)s de las ventanas de observaciA3n de la cAopula. 5 min read Mision record de astronauta ayuda a planificar viajes al espacio profundo article 1 month ago monnikin 4 min read Pruebas de la NASA con maniqui de Artemis I aportan informacion para futuras misiones tripuladas article 3 months ago 4 min read NASA Tech Breathes Life Into Potentially Game-Changing Antenna Design Swati Patel Engineer Oct 26, 2023 Article * * * * Freefall in space above the Earth. FreeFall Tests Spherical Antennas at 159,000 feet on NASA's 60 million cubic foot stratospheric balloon. Credits: Dr. Christopher Walker, NIAC Fellow / FreeFall Aerospace Some 30 years ago, a young engineer named Christopher Walker was home in the evening making chocolate pudding when he got what turned out to be a very serendipitous call from his mother. Taking the call, he shut off the stove and stretched plastic wrap over the pot to keep the pudding fresh. By the time he returned, the cooling air in the pot had drawn the wrap into a concave shape, and in that warped plastic, he saw something - the magnified reflection of an overhead lightbulb - that gave him an idea that could revolutionize space-based sensing and communications. That idea became the Large Balloon Reflector (LBR), an inflatable device that creates wide collection apertures that weigh a fraction of today's deployable antennas. Now, with an assist from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, funded by the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which supports visionary innovations from diverse sources, Walker's decades-old vision is coming to fruition. The concept turns part of the inside surface of an inflated sphere into a parabolic antenna. A section comprising about a third of the balloon's interior surface is aluminized, giving it reflective properties. With NIAC funding, and a grant from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Walker was able to develop and demonstrate technologies for a 33-foot-diameter (10 meters) LBR that was carried to the stratosphere by a giant balloon. For comparison, the aperture of NASA's massive James Webb Space Telescope is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter. "There was no place other than NIAC within NASA to get this off the ground," says Walker, now a astronomy and optical engineering professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "At first, I was afraid to share the idea with colleagues because it sounded so crazy. You need a program within NASA that will actually look at the radical ideas, and NIAC is it." Parabolic dish antennas use their concave shape to capture and concentrate electromagnetic radiation. The larger the antenna's diameter, or aperture, the more effective it is for capturing light or radio waves and transmitting radio signals over great distances. In astronomy, there is a tremendous advantage to placing telescopes above the Earth's atmosphere, which tends to distort or degrade signals coming from space. The challenge is that traditional large reflector antennas are heavy, unwieldy, and difficult to stow, leading to launch constraints and risky in-space deployment schemes. The LBR design solves both problems. Made of a thin film structure, it inflates like a beachball, providing a stable parabolic-dish shape without the need for bulky and complex deployable hardware, and can fold into a tiny volume. In 2018, Freefall Aerospace, a company co-founded by Walker to develop and market the technology, demonstrated the LBR's potential aboard NASA's stadium-sized stratospheric balloon, which carried a 3.28-foot scale model to an altitude of 159,000 feet. Next up for the technology is a high-speed communications demonstration in low Earth orbit aboard a 6-unit CubeSat, about the size of a shoebox, called CatSat. It was selected for flight in 2019 as part of NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative. It is a joint effort involving NASA, Freefall Aerospace, the University of Arizona, and Rincon Research Corporation in Tucson, Arizona. After reaching low-Earth orbit, CatSat's inflatable antenna deployment system will deploy from its container, inflate to a diameter of about one-and-a-half feet, and begin transmitting back high-definition Earth photos. The mission is slated for launch with several other CubeSats on Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket as part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 43 mission. A more ambitious lunar mission concept is also being explored. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, would use the inflatable antenna in tandem with a new instrument called Terahertz Spectrometer for In-Situ Resource Utilization, a miniature, high-power laser precisely calibrated to detect water, a critical exploration resource. "The technology demonstrated by CatSat opens the door to the possibility of future lunar, planetary and deep-space missions using CubeSats," said Walker. It might be difficult to believe this all started because a young engineer's idea of dinner one evening was what most would consider dessert. Then again, one could say the proof was in the pudding. Diagram of inflatable telescope concept by combining a suborbital balloon and ground-based telescope technologies. STMD invested in the development of LBR through NASA NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program Credits: NASA/BryceTech @NASATechnology @NASA_Technology Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate [stmd] NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts [niac_magnetosphere] About Goddard [goddard-center] SmallSats and CubeSats These miniaturized spacecrafts are used to deliver small payloads into space. LTB (Lunar Trailblazer) is an example of a SmallSat... [NASA_logo] Share * * * * Details Last Updated Oct 26, 2023 Editor Loura Hall Contact Related Terms * Space Technology Mission Directorate NASA Logo The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA explores the unknown in air and space, innovates for the benefit of humanity, and inspires the world through discovery. * About NASA's Mission Join Us * Home * News & Events * Multimedia * NASA TV * Missions * Humans in Space * Earth & Climate * The Solar System * The Universe * Science * Aeronautics * Technology * Learning Resources * About NASA * NASA en Espanol Follow NASA * * * * * * More NASA Social Accounts * NASA Newsletters * Sitemap * For Media * Privacy Policy * FOIA * No FEAR Act * Office of the IG * Budget & Annual Reports * Agency Financial Reports * Contact NASA * Accessibility * Page Last Updated: Oct 26, 2023 * Page Editor: Loura Hall * Responsible NASA Official: Brian Dunbar