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25 Years Strong: NASA’s Student Launch Competition Accepting 2025 Proposals
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Student Launch, a STEM competition, officially kicks off its 25th anniversary with the 2025 handbook.By Wayne Smith
NASA’s Student Launch competition kicks off its 25th year with the release of the 2025 handbook, detailing how teams can submit proposals by Wednesday, Sept. 11, for the event scheduled next spring near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Student Launch is an annual competition challenging middle school, high school, and college students to design, build, test, and launch a high-powered amateur rocket with a scientific or engineering payload. After a team is selected, they must meet documentation milestones and undergo detailed reviews throughout the school year.
Each year, NASA updates the university payload challenge to reflect current scientific and exploration missions. For the 2025 season, the payload challenge will again take inspiration from the Artemis missions, which seek to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.
As Student Launch celebrates its 25th anniversary, the payload challenge will include “reports” from STEMnauts, non-living objects representing astronauts. The 2024 challenge tasked teams with safely deploying a lander mid-air for a group of four STEMnauts using metrics to support a survivable landing. The lander had to be deployed without a parachute and had a minimum weight limit of five pounds.
“This year, we’re shifting the focus to communications for the payload challenge,” said John Eckhart, technical coordinator for Student Launch at Marshall. “The STEMnaut ‘crew’ must relay real-time data to the student team’s mission control. This helps connect Student Launch with the Artemis missions when NASA lands astronauts on the Moon.”
Thousands of students participated in the 2024 Student Launch competition – making up 70 teams representing 24 states and Puerto Rico. Teams launched their rockets to an altitude between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, while attempting to make a successful landing and executing the payload mission. The University of Notre Dame was the overall winner of the 2024 event, which culminated with a launch day open to the public.
Student Launch began in 2000 when former Marshall Director Art Stephenson started a student rocket competition at the center. It started with just two universities in Huntsville competing – Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville – but has continued to soar. Since its inception, thousands of students have participated in the agency’s STEM competition, with many going on to a career with NASA.
“This remarkable journey, spanning a quarter of a century, has been a testament to the dedication, ingenuity, and passion of countless students, educators, and mentors who have contributed to the program’s success,” Eckhart said. “NASA Student Launch has been at the forefront of experiential education, providing students from middle school through university with unparalleled opportunities to engage in real-world engineering and scientific research. The program’s core mission – to inspire and cultivate the next generation of aerospace professionals and space explorers – has not only been met but exceeded in ways we could have only dreamed of.”
To encourage students to pursue degrees and careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), Marshall’s Office of STEM Engagement hosts Student Launch, providing them with real-world experiences. Student Launch is one of NASA’s nine Artemis Student Challenges – a variety of activities that expose students to the knowledge and technology required to achieve the goals of Artemis.
In addition to the NASA Office of STEM Engagement’s Next Generation STEM project, NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate, Northrup Grumman, National Space Club Huntsville, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Association of Rocketry, Relativity Space and Bastion Technologies provide funding and leadership for the competition.
“These bright students rise to a nine-month challenge for Student Launch that tests their skills in engineering, design, and teamwork,” said Kevin McGhaw, director of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement Southeast Region. “They are the Artemis Generation, the future scientists, engineers, and innovators who will lead us into the future of space exploration.”
For more information about Student Launch, please visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/studentlaunch
Taylor Goodwin
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov
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Dark matter could be hiding inside strange failed stars
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September’s Night Sky Notes: Marvelous Moons
NASA
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
September brings the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn back into view, along with their satellites. And while we organize celebrations to observe our own Moon this month, be sure to grab a telescope or binoculars to see other moons within our Solar System! We recommend observing these moons (and planets!) when they are at their highest in the night sky, to get the best possible unobstructed views.
The More the MerrierAs of September 2024, the ringed planet Saturn has 146 identified moons in its orbit. These celestial bodies range in size; the smallest being a few hundred feet across, to Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system.
The Saturnian system along with various moons around the planet Saturn: Iapetus, Titan, Enceladus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione. Stellarium WebEven at nearly 900 million miles away, Titan can be easily spotted next to Saturn with a 4-inch telescope, under urban and suburban skies, due to its sheer size. With an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen with traces of hydrogen and methane, Titan was briefly explored in 2005 with the Huygens probe as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission, providing more information about the surface of Titan. NASA’s mission Dragonfly is set to explore the surface of Titan in the 2030s.
Enceladus is an icy world much like Hoth, except that it has an ocean under its frozen crust. Astronomers believe this moon of Saturn may be a good candidate for having extraterrestrial life beneath its surface. NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science InstituteSaturn’s moon Enceladus was also explored by the Cassini mission, revealing plumes of ice that erupt from below the surface, adding to the brilliance of Saturn’s rings. Much like our own Moon, Enceladus remains tidally locked with Saturn, presenting the same side towards its host planet at all times.
The Galilean GangThe King of the Planets might not have the most moons, but four of Jupiter’s 95 moons are definitely the easiest to see with a small pair of binoculars or a small telescope because they form a clear line. The Galilean Moons – Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa – were first discovered in 1610 and they continue to amaze stargazers across the globe.
The Jovian system: Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Stellarium Web- Ganymede: largest moon in our solar system, and larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede has its own magnetic field and a possible saltwater ocean beneath the surface.
- Callisto: this heavily cratered moon is the third largest in our solar system. Although Callisto is the furthest away of the Galilean moons, it only takes 17 days to complete an orbit around Jupiter.
- Io: the closest moon and third largest in this system, Io is an extremely active world, due to the push and pull of Jupiter’s gravity. The volcanic activity of this rocky world is so intense that it can be seen from some of the largest telescopes here on Earth.
- Europa: Jupiter’s smallest moon also happens to be the strongest candidate for a liquid ocean beneath the surface. NASA’s Europa Clipper is set to launch October 2024 and will determine if this moon has conditions suitable to support life. Want to learn more? Rewatch the July 2023 Night Sky Network webinar about Europa Clipper here.
Be sure to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night here on Earth September 14, 2024, leading up to the super full moon on September 17th! You can learn more about supermoons in our mid-month article on the Night Sky Network page!
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New Limits on Dark Matter
As it’s name suggests, dark matter is dark! That means it’s largely invisible to us and only detectable through its interaction with gravity. One of the leading theories to explain the stuff that makes up the majority of the matter in the Universe are WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. They are just theories though and none have been detected. An exciting new experiment called LUX-ZEPLIN has just completed 280 days of collecting data but still, no WIMPs have been detected above 9 Gev/c2. There are plans though to narrow the search.
The concept of dark matter was first proposed by Fritz Zwicky in 1930’s who noticed that galaxies were moving too fast to be held together by ‘normal’ visible matter. His work was expanded upon by Vera Rubin in the 1970’s who confirmed that stars around the outer regions of galaxies were moving faster than expected. The conclusion of these observations is that there was some form of invisible matter making up about 85% of the mass of the Universe. New results from LUX-ZEPLIN are homing in on the WIMP model to describe the nature of dark matter.
Fritz Zwicky. Image Source: Fritz Zwicky Stiftung websiteLUX-ZEPLIN is an instrument designed to detect dark matter. Located 1.6km underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, it’s a massive tank filled with 10 tons of liquid xenon waiting and watching for tiny interactions between dark matter and normal particles. It is shielded from cosmic radiation and other background noise by an onion layer design with each layer blocking out radiation or tracking particle interactions to rule out erroneous dark matter interactions. The principle is simple, a passing WIMP could knock into a xenon nucleus causing it to move and emit light and electrons in the process. It is these signals the teams are looking for. Along with new analytical techniques the teams using it hope they will finally unlock the mysteries of dark matter.
A view of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter detector. Shown are photomultiplier tubes that can ferret out single photons of light. Signals from these photons told physicists that they had not yet found Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) Credit: Matthew Kapust / South Dakota Science and Technology AuthorityFollowing 280 days worth of data, no dark matter WIMPs were detected. Focussing their attention on WIMPs with a mass above 9 Gev/c2 the team found nothing despite the sensitivity of the detector. Having explored 9 Gev/c2 the team plans to start probing different energy levels as the hunt continues. The results had been announced at two physics conferences on 26 August TeV Particle Astrophysics 2024 in Chicago and LIDINE 2024 in São Paulo.
The team applied an interesting new technique called ‘salting’ which adds fake WIMP signals during the collection of the data. The approach hides real data until the very end when an ‘unsalting’ technique removes them. This avoids unconscious bias and stops researchers from overly interpreting the data.
Over the few years and by 2028, the team plan to collect at least 1,000 days of data which will be analysed using the new techniques. They will be using the data to study other rare phenomenon like the decay of xenon atoms, neutrino-less double beta decay and born-8 neutrinos from the Sun. There is still much work to do but the 250 scientists at LUX-ZEPLIN are hopeful. LUX-ZEPLIN’s physics coordinator Scott Kravitz from the University of Texas summed it up beautifully ‘Our ability to search for dark matter is improving at a rate faster than Moore’s Law. If you look at an exponential curve, everything before now is nothing. Just wait until you see what comes next.’
Source : Experiment sets new record in search for dark matter
The post New Limits on Dark Matter appeared first on Universe Today.
Read an extract from Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower
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N.K. Jemisin on the prescience and brilliance of Parable of the Sower
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Sentinel-2C: ready for liftoff
Sentinel-2C is ready for launch! The new satellite will soon join its Copernicus Sentinel-2 family in orbit – where it will continue to provide detailed views of Earth’s land and coastal waters.
The mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites: Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B. The constellation was originally designed to monitor land surfaces – but its scope has since expanded.
It now covers a wide range of applications including deforestation, water quality, monitoring natural disasters, methane emissions and much more.
Sentinel-2C, once in orbit, will replace the Sentinel-2A unit – prolonging the life of the Sentinel-2 mission – ensuring a continuous supply of data for Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the EU Space Programme.
Tune in to ESA WebTV on 4 September from 03:30 CEST to watch the satellite soar into space on the last Vega rocket to be launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
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European drill and mini lab secure ride to the Moon
ESA's Prospect package, including drill and a miniaturised laboratory, will fly to the Moon’s South Polar region in search of volatiles, including water ice, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
Remember those Impossible Galaxies Found by JWST? It Turns Out They Were Possible After All
When the James Webb Space Telescope provided astronomers with a glimpse of the earliest galaxies in the Universe, there was some understandable confusion. Given that these galaxies existed during “Cosmic Dawn,” less than one billion years after the Big Bang, they seemed “impossibly large” for their age. According to the most widely accepted cosmological model—the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model—the first galaxies in the Universe did not have enough time to become so massive and should have been more modestly sized.
This presented astronomers with another “crisis in cosmology,” suggesting that the predominant model about the origins and evolution of the Universe was wrong. However, according to a new study by an international team of astronomers, these galaxies are not so “impossibly large” after all, and what we saw may have been the result of an optical illusion. In short, the presence of black holes in some of these early galaxies made them appear much brighter and larger than they actually were. This is good news for astronomers and cosmologists who like the LCDM the way it is!
The study was led by Katherine Chworowsky, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellow. She was joined by colleagues from UT’s Cosmic Frontier Center, NSF’s NOIRLab, the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), the Niels Bohr Institute, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and other prestigious universities and institutes. The paper that details their findings recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal.
The first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, featuring the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScIThe data was acquired as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy at UT and a study co-author. In a previous study, Avishai Dekel and his colleagues at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) argued that the prevalence of low-density dust clouds in the early Universe allowed for rapid star formation in galaxies. Dekel and Zhaozhou Li (a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at HUJI) were also co-authors of this latest study.
As Chworowsky and her colleagues explained, the observed galaxies only appeared massive because their central black holes were rapidly consuming gas. This process causes friction, causing the gas to emit heat and light, creating the illusion of there being many more stars and throwing off official mass estimates. These galaxies appeared as “little red dots” in the Webb image (shown below). When removed from the analysis, the remaining galaxies were consistgent with what the standard LCDM model predicts.
“So, the bottom line is there is no crisis in terms of the standard model of cosmology,” Finkelstein said in a UT News release. “Any time you have a theory that has stood the test of time for so long, you have to have overwhelming evidence to really throw it out. And that’s simply not the case.”
However, there is still the matter of the number of galaxies in the Webb data, which are twice as many as the standard model predicts. A possible explanation is that stars formed more rapidly in the early Universe. Essentially, stars are formed from clouds of dust and gas (nebulae) that cool and condense to the point where they undergo gravitational collapse, triggering nuclear fusion. As the star’s interior heats up, it generates outward pressure that counteracts gravity, preventing further collapse. The balance of these opposing forces makes star formation relatively slow in our region of the cosmos.
The galaxy cluster SMACS0723, with the five galaxies selected for closer study. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI / Giménez-Arteaga et al. (2023), Peter Laursen (Cosmic Dawn Center).According to some theories, the Universe was much denser than it is today, which prevented stars from blowing out gas during formation, thus making the process more rapid. These findings echo what Dekel and his colleagues argued in their previous paper, though it would account for there being more galaxies rather than several massive ones. Similarly, the CEERS team and other research groups have obtained spectra from these black holes that indicate the presence of fast-moving hydrogen gas, which could mean that they have accretion disks.
The swirling of these disks could provide some of the luminosity previously mistaken for stars. In any case, further observations of these “little red dots” are pending, which should help resolve any remaining questions about how massive these galaxies are and whether or not star formation was more rapid during the early Universe. So, while this study has shown that the LCDM model of cosmology is safe for now, its findings raise new questions about the formation process of stars and galaxies in the early Universe.
“And so, there is still that sense of intrigue,” said Chworowsky. “Not everything is fully understood. That’s what makes doing this kind of science fun, because it’d be a terribly boring field if one paper figured everything out, or there were no more questions to answer.”
Further Reading: UT News, The Astronomical Journal
The post Remember those Impossible Galaxies Found by JWST? It Turns Out They Were Possible After All appeared first on Universe Today.
For Their Next Trick, Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Collapsing Stars
The merging of black holes and neutron stars are among the most energetic events in the universe. Not only do they emit colossal amounts of energy, they can also be detected through gravitational waves. Observatories like LIGO/Virgo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) and KAGRA (The Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) have detected their gravitational waves but new gravitational wave observatories are now thought to be able to detect the collapse of a massive rapidly spinning star before it becomes a black hole. According to new research, collapsing stars within 50 million light years should be detectable.
The acceleration of massive objects can create ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. They were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915 in his General Theory of Relativity. The waves are thought to travel at the speed of light and carry energy across the cosmos. Unlike electromagnetic waves, the gravitational waves seem to interact weakly with matter which allows them to pass unimpeded through stars, planets and galaxies. In 2015, the first gravitational waves were detected by the LIGO.
LIGO ObservatoryBlack holes and neutron stars are the remains of the death of stars. When supermassive stars reach the end of their lives they create astronomically (pardon the pun) dense objects. Neutron stars are stellar cores where the space between neutrons has been squeezed out leaving behind one great big neutron, often just a few tens of kilometres across. The remains of even more massive stars get compressed to an object of infinitely small size, a singularity, the power house of a black hole.
In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Ore Gottlieb and team, it proposes how the collapse and death of massive stars (of the region 15 to 20 times the mass of the Sun) can generate gravitational waves. As the star ends its life, the core runs out of fuel and no longer generates the thermonuclear force to stop the collapse. The collapse leaves behind a large disk that quickly spirals around before falling into the black hole and it is this that it is thought, generates gravitational waves. The team goes on to suggest that the various gravity wave detectors on Earth may well be able to detect them.
An artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole (SMBH.) The SMBH in a distant galaxy expelled all the material in its accretion disk, clearing out a vast area. Image Credit: ESATo date, only merger events have been observed through gravitational waves. The simulations from the study took into account stellar evolution models including magnetic fields and cooling rates in the moments after core collapse. The simulations showed that the collapse events produce gravitational waves powerful enough to be detected from a distance of 50 million light years. The more powerful events already detected are ten times more powerful.
The results are a surprise to the team that expected the results to show a jumble of waves that would be difficult to discern above the background noise of the universe. They even suggest that it’s possible that existing data may already hold observations of such events.
To fully model the collapse events and how the gravity wave data may present itself, an estimated 1 million collapse simulations need to be run. Alas this is an expensive undertaking and unlikely to secure funding. Instead gravity wave astronomers are searching through existing data, looking for signals that are similar to the simulations the team have already run. One approach is to search for supernova events and to see if gravity wave observations detected any signals at the same time. The task however, is a daunting one but the hunt continues.
Source : New Detectable Gravitational Wave Source From Collapsing Stars Predicted From Simulations
The post For Their Next Trick, Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Collapsing Stars appeared first on Universe Today.
