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Nvidia's Blackwell AI 'superchip' is the most powerful yet
Nvidia's Blackwell AI 'superchip' is the most powerful yet
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope mission — Live updates
Cannabis vaping liquids contain lead and other toxic metals
Cannabis vaping liquids contain lead and other toxic metals
Planetary Geophysics: What is it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth?
Universe Today has examined the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, and planetary atmospheres, and how these intriguing scientific disciplines can help scientists and the public better understand how we are pursuing life beyond Earth. Here, we will look inward and examine the role that planetary geophysics plays in helping scientists gain greater insight into our solar system and beyond, including the benefits and challenges, finding life beyond Earth, and how upcoming students can pursue studying planetary geophysics. So, what is planetary geophysics and why is it so important to study it?
“Planetary geophysics is the study of how planets and their contents behave and evolve over time,” Dr. Marshall Styczinski, who is an Affiliate Research Scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, tells Universe Today. “It is essentially the study of What Lies Below, focusing on what we can’t see and how it relates to what we can see and measure. Most of the planets (including Earth!) are hidden from view—geophysics is how we know everything about the Earth below the deepest we have dug down!”
As its name implies, geophysics is the study of understanding the physics behind geological processes, both on Earth and other planetary bodies, with an emphasis on interior geologic processes. This is specifically useful for planetary bodies that are differentiated, meaning they have several interior layers resulting from heavier elements sinking to the center while the lighter elements remain closer to the surface.
The planet Earth, for example, is separated into the crust, mantle, and core, with each having its own sub-layers, and understanding these interior processes help scientists piece together what the Earth was like billions of years ago and even make predictions regarding the planet’s environment in the far future. These interior processes drive the surface processes, including volcanism and plate tectonics, both of which are responsible for maintaining the Earth’s temperature and recycling materials, respectively. So, what are some of the benefits and challenges of studying planetary geophysics?
Dr. Styczinski tells Universe Today, “Geophysics gives us the tools to determine what exists beneath the visible surface of planetary bodies (planets, moons, asteroids, etc.). It’s our only way to learn about what we can’t see! Finding out what is inside a planet, and under what conditions, like how much pressure and heat for each layer, helps us build a history for the planet and know how it will continue to change over time.”
In contrast, Dr. Styczinski also emphasizes to Universe Today the challenges, noting the difficulty in reproducing geologic conditions that occur over millions of years, even with the most sophisticated laboratories in the world, due to their slow movements over vast amounts of time. Additionally, he notes that particle accelerators are sometimes required to reproduce the extreme conditions within gas giants, which are also differentiated, though with gas and liquid layers, as opposed to rock.
Artist’s illustration of gas giant interiors. (Credit: NASA/Lunar And Planetary Institute)But Earth is not the only rocky world in our solar system that exhibits differentiation, as all four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) exhibit some form of interior layering that has occurred over billions of years, though at smaller scales due to their sizes. In addition to the planets, many rocky moons throughout the solar system also exhibit differentiation, including Jupiter’s Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, and several of Saturn’s moons, including Titan, Enceladus, and Mimas. Of those moons, Europa, Titan, and Enceladus are currently targets for astrobiologists, as Europa and Enceladus have been confirmed to possess interior liquid water oceans, with Titan presenting strong evidence, as well. Additionally, Titan is the only moon with a dense atmosphere, and like Earth, it likely has interior geophysics driving it. But what can planetary geophysics teach us about finding life beyond Earth?
Artist’s illustration of terrestrial (rocky) planet interiors. (Credit: NASA) Artist’s illustration of the interior of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Carroll) Artist’s illustration of the interior of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)“We’ve learned from studying Mars that the surfaces of planets can be quite hostile to life as we know it,” Dr. Styczinski tells Universe Today. “If and when we are able to find life elsewhere in the solar system that we didn’t bring there ourselves, it will probably be found beneath the surface, where it can be protected from the harsh environment at the surface. Geophysics gives us the means to plan for expeditions into the subsurface, and the only method of finding liquid water that’s hidden from view on icy moons. These are the best places we know of to look for life beyond Earth.”
The reason why the surface of Mars is inhospitable to life as we know it is due to its lack of a thick atmosphere, which is responsible for preventing the Sun’s charged particles in the solar wind from reaching the planetary surface. While Mars once had a powerful magnetic field, Dr. Styczinski notes to Universe Today that “Some researchers think magnetic fields can actually strip away the atmosphere”, while quickly noting this “is a topic of fierce debate.” Mars once had a thicker atmosphere, which was lost along with its magnetic field over billions of years as the Red Planet’s interior cooled.
In addition to our solar system, Dr. Styczinski tells Universe Today that planetary geophysics also does an excellent job of helping scientists better understand exoplanets, specifically multi-planet systems like our own. While no exoplanet surface has yet been imaged, better understanding the geophysical processes of planetary bodies within our solar system helps scientists gain insights into how these same processes could occur on planets throughout the cosmos, including the magnetic field, as well.
A planet’s magnetic field is driven by the internal processes occurring in its outer core, which for Earth is comprised of churning, liquid metal fluid, whereas the inner core is a solid ball of compressed metal. As this outer core’s fluid churns and circulates, it creates electrical currents that produce the massive magnetic field that envelopes our small, blue world in a bubble of protection from harmful space weather. The Earth’s magnetic field traps charged particles in radiation belts in space nearby. The way the magnetic field protects our planet can be seen during magnetic storms from the Sun, when the magnetosphere bends and flexes in response, sending particles from these radiation belts close to the surface in the high northern and southern latitude regions. There, they interact with the Earth’s atmosphere to produce the breathtaking auroras often observed in Alaska, the Nordic countries, and Antarctica.
Rendition displaying the solar wind interacting with Mars, which does not possess a magnetic field, versus Earth and its very active magnetic field. The lack of a magnetic field means Mars is constantly bombarded by space weather, exposing its surface to harmful radiation, whereas Earth’s surface is almost entirely protected, allowing life to both survive and thrive across the planet. (Credit: NASA)However, while the Earth’s magnetic field is impressive, it’s only fitting that the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, equally has the largest magnetic field, whose “tail” extends as far as Saturn’s orbit, or approximately 400 million miles. Additionally, the internal processes responsible for generating magnetic fields on gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune could be starkly different than on Earth. Therefore, given all of these variables and processes, what is the most exciting aspect of planetary geophysics that Dr. Styczinski has studied during his career?
“The part of planetary geophysics that I find the most exciting is using the invisible magnetic field to sense subsurface oceans,” Dr. Styczinski tells Universe Today. “I continue to be blown away by how it all works when I really think about it. Salty ocean waters partially reflect the fields they are exposed to from their parent planet, as in Jupiter and its moon Europa. We use these measurements along with laboratory studies here on Earth and geophysics to understand the material layers inside Europa to work out the properties of the ocean. It still blows my mind that this process works as well as it does.”
Like most scientific fields, planetary geophysics encompasses a myriad of scientific disciplines and backgrounds with the goal of answering the universe’s toughest questions through constant collaboration and innovation. Geophysics is a combination of geology and physics but also incorporates mathematics, chemistry, atmospheric science, seismology, mineralogy, and many others with the goal of better understanding the interior processes of the Earth and other planetary bodies throughout the solar system and beyond. Therefore, what advice can Dr. Styczinski offer upcoming students who wish to pursue studying planetary geophysics?
“There are many paths into geophysics, and many different things to study and ways to study them,” Dr. Styczinski tells Universe Today. “Your past studies don’t have to be specific to geophysics or even involve geology at all. Perhaps the most productive move you can make is to ask for help, especially from someone studying a topic that interests you. Computer programming skills are invaluable. I recommend learning Python—it’s free and widely used all across science. There are many tutorials available, also for free. While not all geophysics will require a lot of programming, I think all geophysicists will benefit from having those skills.”
How will planetary geophysics help us better understand our place in the cosmos in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
The post Planetary Geophysics: What is it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth? appeared first on Universe Today.
SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites from California in dusky evening liftoff (video)
Marvel Comics' new series celebrates Boba Fett's Mandalorian dad
Student-Built Robots Clash at Competition Supported by NASA-JPL
Hand-crafted robots, constructed over the past two months by 44 high school teams, duked it out at the FIRST Robotics Los Angeles regional competition.
Student-made contraptions of a metal and a little magic battled each other in front of cheering and dancing high schoolers at the annual Los Angeles regional FIRST Robotics Competition over the weekend, an event supported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Of the 44 participating teams, five triumphed, earning the chance to compete this April at the FIRST international championship tournament in Houston.
The raucous event at the Da Vinci Schools campus in El Segundo saw six 125-pound robots racing around the playing field during each 2 ½-minute match as pounding music filled the room and a live announcer narrated the action. Working in alliances of three teams on each side, the robots jockeyed for position and banged into each other, using a variety of mechanical devices to retrieve large, foam rings from the floor and launch them into two target chutes. In the final seconds of each round, the bots could earn extra points by hoisting themselves off the ground to dangle from a metal chain.
“The energy in the room was amazing this year,” said Kim Lievense, the manager of JPL’s Public Services Office, who coordinates some 100 volunteers for the event every year. “These teams and their bots really left it all on the field, and it was so great to be there to see it yet again.”
The 24th year for this L.A.-area competition, the event is one of many under the umbrella of the nonprofit FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which pairs students with STEM professionals. The competitions give students hands-on experience with engineering and problem-solving, team-building, fundraising, and other business skills.
Teams receive the rules of the game – titled “Crescendo” this year and themed around arts and entertainment – in January. Using FIRST’s technical specifications, students have just weeks to design, build, and test their robots, devoting hours after school and on weekends to the project.
“There were a lot of really impressive robots, and students, this year. The engineering, the manufacturing, the programming in the software these kids are writing – it’s quite complex,” said Julie Townsend, one of three event judges from JPL. She has been volunteering with FIRST for nearly 20 years as a judge and coach and is JPL’s point of contact for the NASA Robotics Alliance Project, which supports NASA “house” youth robotics teams across the country.
“Without these programs like FIRST, high school students don’t have the opportunity to do this kind of engineering,” Townsend added. “It’s hard, but they eventually get to experience the joy of a functioning system that you designed. You failed 16 times and then you get to see it work flawlessly.”
In the end, the winning alliance joined together a team from Hawaii with two Southern California teams: Team 368 (“Team Kika Mana”) of McKinley High School in Honolulu, Team 9408 (“Warbots”) of Warren High in Downey, and Team 980 (“ThunderBots”) of Burbank and Burroughs high schools in Burbank, which is a NASA house team supported by JPL.
Two other L.A.-area teams won awards that mean they’ll get to compete in Houston as well: Team 687 (“The Nerd Herd”) of California Academy of Math and Science in Carson, and Team 3473 (“Team Sprocket”) of Diamond Bar High.
For more information about the FIRST Los Angeles regional, visit:
https://cafirst.org/frc/losangeles/
News Media ContactMelissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-028
Share Details Last Updated Mar 18, 2024 Related Terms Explore More 4 min read Leslie Livesay Named Deputy Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Article 11 hours ago 3 min read NASA Wallops Offers Career Inspiration to Delmarva Students Article 14 hours ago 5 min read NASA Unveils Design for Message Heading to Jupiter’s Moon Europa Article 2 weeks agoNASA’s Swift Temporarily Suspends Science Operations
1 min read
NASA’s Swift Temporarily Suspends Science Operations Swift, illustrated here, is a collaboration between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Penn State in University Park, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory in Italy, and the Italian Space Agency.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterOn March 15, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory entered into safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations due to degrading performance from one of its three gyroscopes (gyros), which are used to point the observatory for making observations. The rest of the spacecraft remains in good health.
Swift is designed to successfully operate without one of its gyros if necessary; however, a software update is required. The team is working on the flight software update that would permit the spacecraft to continue science operations using its two remaining gyros. The team is working to return Swift to science observations as soon as possible.
Launched in 2004, Swift has been observing the high-energy universe for nearly 20 years. Stay tuned to nasa.gov/swift for more updates.
Share Details Last Updated Mar 18, 2024 EditorJamie Adkins Related TermsNASA Administrator Pays Tribute to Space Pioneer Thomas Stafford
The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday’s passing of Thomas Stafford, a lifelong space exploration advocate, former NASA astronaut, and U.S. Air Force general:
“Today, General Tom Stafford went to the eternal heavens, which he so courageously explored as a Gemini and Apollo astronaut as well as a peacemaker in the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Those of us privileged to know him are very sad but grateful we knew a giant.
“Tom was critical to the earliest successes of our nation’s space program and was instrumental in developing space as a model for international cooperation. He also helped us learn from our tragedies and grow and reach for the next generation of achievement. He was intimately involved with the space program, sharing his thoughts and suggestions on NASA missions until the end of his life.
“Tom was a gentleman and a daredevil. He flew our first rendezvous in space on Gemini 6, and piloted Gemini 9’s path to Earth with pencil and paper when the spacecraft’s guidance computer failed in orbit. He commanded Apollo 10, the first flight of the lunar module to the Moon, a critical test flight that resulted in the successful landing on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Tom also flew more than 100 different types of aircraft throughout his career as he pushed the edge of the envelope of our achievement in air and space. He was an extraordinary peacemaker who commanded NASA’s first rendezvous of an international spacecraft on the Apollo-Soyuz mission. His counterpart, General Alexei Leonov, became a best friend over the years. Tom gave Alexei’s eulogy in 2019 at the Russian state funeral.
“Tom’s dedication to NASA never wavered. In later years, he chaired a team to independently advise NASA on how to carry out President H.W. Bush’s space policy and completed the study ‘America at the Threshold’ about the nation’s potential future with humans in space. He also was co-chairman of the Stafford-Covey Space Shuttle Return to Flight Task Group that assessed NASA’s implementation of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Space Shuttle Return to Flight recommendations.
“Our nation will be forever grateful to an explorer who never lost his sense of wonder. About his time in space, he said, ‘It changes you, oh sure. Changes your outlook…As you look back, you see a little blue and white baseball, actually, it’s smaller than a baseball. But it’s hard to envision that is where all the people you’ve known all your life are, where you went to school, your friends, your family. It’s also hard to envision that there are three billion people on that blue and white baseball.’
“Godspeed, Tom Stafford.”
For more information about Stafford’s NASA career, and his agency biography, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-thomas-stafford/
-end-
Faith McKie / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
faith.d.mckie@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov
Ep. 712: How Peer Review Fails
You’ve probably heard that the best kind of science is peer-reviewed research published in a prestigious journal. But peer review has problems of its own. We’ll talk about that today.
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NASA Wallops Supports Rocket Lab Launch for NRO From Virginia
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia will support commercial launch provider Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launch no earlier than March 21 at 2:40 a.m. EDT. The four-hour launch window runs through 6:30 a.m.
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket stands atop the company’s Launch Complex-2 on NASA’s Wallops Island.Rocket LabThe mission, named NROL-123, is a dedicated launch for NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). The 59-foot-tall Electron rocket will lift off from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island.
For those interested in seeing the launch in person, viewing locations on Chincoteague Island include Robert Reed Park, Curtis Merritt Harbor, and the Beach Road causeway between Chincoteague and Assateague islands. The NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center and grounds will not be open for launch viewing.
The launch may be visible, weather permitting, to residents throughout much of the East Coast of the United States. The launch can also be viewed online through Rocket Lab’s of the event on their YouTube channel. The stream will begin about 40 minutes before the opening of the launch window.
Share Details Last Updated Mar 18, 2024 Related TermsThis New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool
Quasars are the brightest objects in the Universe. The most powerful ones are thousands of times more luminous than entire galaxies. They’re the visible part of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of a galaxy. The intense light comes from gas drawn toward the black hole, emitting light across several wavelengths as it heats up.
But quasars are more than just bright ancient objects. They have something important to show us about the dark matter.
Large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers. Even those only casually familiar with space know that black holes can suck everything in, even light. But as black holes draw nearby gas towards themselves, the gas doesn’t all go into the hole, past the event horizon and into oblivion. Instead, much of the gas forms a rotating accretion disk around the black hole.
SMBHs aren’t always actively drawing material to them, an act known as ‘feeding.’ But when an SMBH is actively feeding, it’s called an active galactic nucleus (AGN.) When the material in the disk rotates, it heats up. As it heats, it emits different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. It can also emit jets.
When astronomers first began to detect this light, they only knew they were seeing objects that emitted radio waves. The name quasar means quasi-stellar radio source. But as time went on astronomers learned more, and the term active galactic nucleus was adopted. The term quasar is still used, but they’re now a sub-class of AGN that are the most luminous AGN.
Quasars inhabit galaxies that are surrounded by enormous haloes of dark matter. Astronomers think there’s a link between the dark matter haloes (DMH) and the quasars. The DMH may direct more matter toward the center of the galaxy, feeding the SMBH and igniting a quasar, and even aiding the formation of more massive galaxies.
Artist rendering of the dark matter halo surrounding our galaxy. Credit: ESO/L. CalçadaA team of researchers has created a new catalogue of quasars that will be a powerful tool for probing quasars, DMHs, and SMBHs. Their results are in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal titled “Quaia, the Gaia-unWISE Quasar Catalog: An All-sky Spectroscopic Quasar Sample.” The lead author is Kate Storey-Fisher, a postdoctoral researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center in Spain.
“This quasar catalogue is different from all previous catalogues in that it gives us a three-dimensional map of the largest-ever volume of the universe,” said map co-creator David Hogg, a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City and a professor of physics and data science at New York University. “It isn’t the catalogue with the most quasars, and it isn’t the catalogue with the best-quality measurements of quasars, but it is the catalogue with the largest total volume of the universe mapped.”
This infographic helps explain Quaia, the new catalogue of 1.3 million quasars. Image Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024The fact that the new catalogue captures the largest total volume of the Universe mapped and all the quasars in that space is key to understanding its purpose. It’s not meant as a survey that captures the largest number of quasars. The catalogue is meant to be a tool astrophysicists can use to understand the relationships between quasars, dark matter, black holes, and galaxies.
They call their catalogue Quaia because the data comes from the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Gaia’s mission is to map about one billion objects in the Milky Way, mostly stars. And it’s going about its mission with extreme accuracy. But among the multitudes of stars Gaia has mapped is a large number of quasars well beyond the Milky Way. That generated the name “Quaia.”
“We were able to make measurements of how matter clusters together in the early universe that are as precise as some of those from major international survey projects — which is quite remarkable given that we got our data as a ‘bonus’ from the Milky Way–focused Gaia project,” Storey-Fisher says.
Dark matter tends to clump in haloes around galaxies, and studying the distribution of quasars can help explain the distribution of dark matter. In the large scale of the Universe, dark matter is organized as a web, and the catalogue of quasars helps map that web.
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a strong piece of evidence for the Big Bang, is also part of this. As the light from the CMB travels toward us through space, the dark matter web’s massive gravitational power bends the light. Scientists can compare the CMB light we receive with the map of quasars and compare the two. The comparisons will them about the relationship between dark matter and quasars and how matter clumps together in the Universe.
Since quasars trace the cosmic web, their distribution gives information about the web that other sources can’t. For example, it can trace the distribution of matter at higher redshifts than galaxies can. And since it’s space-based, it avoids some of the data contamination that other quasar surveys suffer from, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS.)
This is not the first quasar map/catalogue to be created. There are several others, including one from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
This figure shows five different quasar maps created by scientists using different data and methodologies. The creators of Quaia say that its redshifts are more accurate than the others, along with other properties. Image Credit: K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024As the animation below shows, Quaia is more complete than the SDSS’s DR16Q, the SDSS’s quasar catalogue that accompanied its data release 16.
Though the Gaia mission itself doesn’t generate many of its own headlines, it’s at the foundation of modern space science. Its data is behind lots of published research.
“This quasar catalogue is a great example of how productive astronomical projects are,” says Hogg. “Gaia was designed to measure stars in our own galaxy, but it also found millions of quasars at the same time, which give us a map of the entire universe.”
Now, the new Quaia catalogue is playing a similar role. The data it contains is already being used by other researchers.
“It has been very exciting to see this catalogue spurring so much new science,” Storey-Fisher says. “Researchers around the world are using the quasar map to measure everything from the initial density fluctuations that seeded the cosmic web to the distribution of cosmic voids to the motion of our solar system through the universe.”
The post This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool appeared first on Universe Today.
NASA Challenge Invites Artemis Generation Coders to Johnson Space Center
NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement has selected seven student teams to participate in a culminating event for the 2024 App Development Challenge (ADC), one of the agency’s Artemis Student Challenges, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The coding challenge invites middle and high school student teams to contribute to deep space exploration missions by developing solutions to real-world technical problems.
Screenshot of the app submitted by ADC Top Team, Team Spaghetti Code from Trinity Christian School in Morgantown, West Virginia.The ADC, a part of NASA’s Next Gen STEM project, gives students an opportunity to participate in NASA’s endeavors to land American astronauts, including the first woman and the first person of color, on the Moon. Artemis Generation students are prompted to create an application to visualize the Moon’s South Pole region and display essential information for navigating the lunar surface and receiving signals from Earth. NASA will make history by sending the first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole on Artemis III.
“Working on this application gave us a simplified understanding and real-world experience of how professionals approach similar problems in the work-field,” stated Team Frostbyte, from North High School in Des Moines, Iowa, “Engaging in this hands-on project has deepened our passion for innovative utilization of technology. Our participation in this challenge has only further affirmed our goals to pursue careers in these fields.”
Over the 10-week challenge, participating teams joined subject matter expert talks, attended ADC office hours, researched lunar landing regions and mathematical concepts, and spent hundreds of hours coding to develop their applications. Additionally, students learned about the complexities of communicating from the lunar surface with Earth-based assets from NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) team.
The following five teams excelled in their application and interview, thereby earning the chance to showcase their work to NASA leadership, tour NASA’s unique facilities, and meet industry leaders, in April 2024 at NASA Johnson:
- Baton Rouge Magnet High School: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- Dougherty Valley High School: San Ramon, California
- North High School: Des Moines, Iowa
- Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies: Reseda, California
- Trinity Christian School: Morgantown, West Virginia
In addition, two more schools were selected as honorable mentions to present their work virtually to NASA leadership in April 2024.
- Edison Academy Magnet School: Edison, New Jersey
- Falcon Cove Middle School: Weston, Florida
In addition to being named as Honorable Mentions, Edison Academy Magnet School was awarded Most Realistic Visualization of Technical Features and Falcon Cove Middle School was awarded Best Middle School Team.
“Given that participating in the NASA ADC gave us insights on outreach, technical programming, app development, and working as a team, it has overall made us feel more prepared for future projects and even future jobs,” stated Team Lunarsphere from Baton Rouge Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Previous YearsADC 2023: Artemis Generation Coders Earn Invite to Johnson Space Center
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