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Lunar Photobioreactors Could Provide Food And Oxygen On The Moon
Astronauts exploring the Moon will need all the help they can get, and scientists have spent lots of time and plenty of money coming up with different systems to do so. Two of the critical needs of any long-term lunar mission are food and oxygen, both of which are expensive to ship to the Moon from Earth. So, a research team from the Technical University of Munich spent some of their time analyzing the effectiveness of using local lunar resources to build a photobioreactor (PBR), the results of which were recently published in a paper in Acta Astronautica.
Simulating Ice Worlds in the Lab
Many objects in the outer Solar System contain large amounts of water ice, leading to a thick icy shell surrounding an ocean of liquid water. This water behaves like lava on Earth, reshaping their surfaces through a process called cryovolcanism. To better understand this process, researchers have created a low-pressure chamber that simulates the near-vacuum conditions on the surfaces of worlds like Europa and Enceladus. They could watch water create features we see across the Solar System.
Modeling Planet Formation With Water Tornadoes
Sometimes the easiest way to understand the physics of a phenomenon is to make a physical model of it. But how do you make a model of a system as large as, say, a protoplanetary disc? One technique, suggested in a recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the University of Griefswald, would be familiar to any grade schooler who took a science class - spin water around in a circle really fast.
Webb Revists Hubble's Classic Ultra Deep Field
This image from the James Webb Space Telescope revisits one of the most iconic regions of the sky, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The result is a detailed view of thousands of distant galaxies, some dating back to the earliest periods of cosmic history.
The biggest black hole ever seen? Scientists find one with mass of 36 billion suns
A laser-propelled mini spacecraft could travel to a nearby black hole, astrophysicist says
China's lunar lander aces touchdown and takeoff tests ahead of planned 2030 crewed moon mission (video)
Molecule's tiny quantum jiggle imaged in unprecedented detail
Molecule's tiny quantum jiggle imaged in unprecedented detail
Common asthma drug could prevent life-threatening allergic reactions
Common asthma drug could prevent life-threatening allergic reactions
'Star Wars: A New Hope' will return to theaters to celebrate its 50th anniversary, but Disney didn't say which version
Linking Local Lithologies to a Larger Landscape
- Perseverance Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
2 min read
Linking Local Lithologies to a Larger Landscape This image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument’s right eye, shows a collection of ridge-forming boulders. The rover acquired this image looking south along the ridge while exploring the “Westport” region of the outer crater rim on July 18, 2025 — Sol 1568, or Martian day 1,568 of the Mars 2020 mission — at the local mean solar time of 11:53:04. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is continuing to explore a boundary visible from orbit dividing bright, fractured outcrop from darker, smoother regolith (also known as a contact). The team has called this region “Westport,” (a fitting title, as the rover is exploring the western-most rim of Jezero), which hosts a contact between the smoother, clay-bearing “Krokodillen” unit and an outcrop of olivine-bearing boulders that converge to form a ridge on the outer Jezero crater rim. To learn more about the nature of this contact, see this blog post by Dr. Melissa Rice. Piecing together geologic events like the formation of this olivine-bearing material on Jezero’s crater rim may allow us to better understand Mars’ most ancient history.
The rover has encountered several olivine-bearing rocks while traversing the rim, but it is unclear if, and how these rocks are all connected. Jezero crater is in a region of Mars known as Northeast Syrtis, which hosts the largest contiguous exposure (more than 113,000 square kilometers, or more than 43,600 square miles) of olivine-rich material identified from orbit on Mars (about the same square mileage as the state of Ohio!). The olivine-rich materials are typically found draping over older rocks, often infilling depressions, which may provide clues to their origins. Possible origins for the olivine-rich materials in Northeast Syrtis may include (but are not limited to): (1) intrusive igneous rocks (rocks that cool from magma underground), (2) melt formed and deposited during an impact event, or (3) pyroclastic ash fall or flow from a volcanic eruption.
The Perseverance rover’s investigation of the olivine-bearing materials on the rim of Jezero crater may allow us to better constrain the history of the broader volcanic units present in the Northeast Syrtis region. Olivine-rich material in Northeast Syrtis is consistently sandwiched between older, clay-rich rock and younger, more olivine-poor material (commonly referred to as the “mafic capping” unit), and may act as an important marker for recording early alteration by water, which could help us understand early habitable environments on Mars. We see potential evidence of all of these units on Jezero crater’s rim based on orbital mapping. If the olivine-bearing rocks the Perseverance rover is encountering on the rim are related to these materials, we may be able to better constrain the age of this widespread geologic unit on Mars.
Learn more about Perseverance’s science instruments
For more Perseverance blog posts, visit Mars 2020 Mission Updates
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Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
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The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
Linking Local Lithologies to a Larger Landscape
- Perseverance Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
2 min read
Linking Local Lithologies to a Larger Landscape This image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument’s right eye, shows a collection of ridge-forming boulders. The rover acquired this image looking south along the ridge while exploring the “Westport” region of the outer crater rim on July 18, 2025 — Sol 1568, or Martian day 1,568 of the Mars 2020 mission — at the local mean solar time of 11:53:04. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASUWritten by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is continuing to explore a boundary visible from orbit dividing bright, fractured outcrop from darker, smoother regolith (also known as a contact). The team has called this region “Westport,” (a fitting title, as the rover is exploring the western-most rim of Jezero), which hosts a contact between the smoother, clay-bearing “Krokodillen” unit and an outcrop of olivine-bearing boulders that converge to form a ridge on the outer Jezero crater rim. To learn more about the nature of this contact, see this blog post by Dr. Melissa Rice. Piecing together geologic events like the formation of this olivine-bearing material on Jezero’s crater rim may allow us to better understand Mars’ most ancient history.
The rover has encountered several olivine-bearing rocks while traversing the rim, but it is unclear if, and how these rocks are all connected. Jezero crater is in a region of Mars known as Northeast Syrtis, which hosts the largest contiguous exposure (more than 113,000 square kilometers, or more than 43,600 square miles) of olivine-rich material identified from orbit on Mars (about the same square mileage as the state of Ohio!). The olivine-rich materials are typically found draping over older rocks, often infilling depressions, which may provide clues to their origins. Possible origins for the olivine-rich materials in Northeast Syrtis may include (but are not limited to): (1) intrusive igneous rocks (rocks that cool from magma underground), (2) melt formed and deposited during an impact event, or (3) pyroclastic ash fall or flow from a volcanic eruption.
The Perseverance rover’s investigation of the olivine-bearing materials on the rim of Jezero crater may allow us to better constrain the history of the broader volcanic units present in the Northeast Syrtis region. Olivine-rich material in Northeast Syrtis is consistently sandwiched between older, clay-rich rock and younger, more olivine-poor material (commonly referred to as the “mafic capping” unit), and may act as an important marker for recording early alteration by water, which could help us understand early habitable environments on Mars. We see potential evidence of all of these units on Jezero crater’s rim based on orbital mapping. If the olivine-bearing rocks the Perseverance rover is encountering on the rim are related to these materials, we may be able to better constrain the age of this widespread geologic unit on Mars.
Learn more about Perseverance’s science instruments
For more Perseverance blog posts, visit Mars 2020 Mission Updates
Share Details Last Updated Aug 07, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4622-4623: Kicking Off (Earth) Year 14 With an Investigation of Veins
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18 hours ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4618-4619: The Boxwork Structures Continue to Call to Us
Article
2 days ago
3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4620-4621: Among the Hollows and the Ridges
Article
2 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The SWOT satellite caught the leading edge of the tsunami wave (red) that rolled through the Pacific Ocean on July 30. Sea level data, shown in the highlighted swath, is plotted against a NOAA tsunami forecast model in the background. A red star marks the location of the earthquake that spawned the tsunami.NASA/JPL-Caltech
Data provided by the water satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency, is helping to improve tsunami forecast models, benefitting coastal communities.
The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the tsunami spawned by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30, 11:25 a.m. local time. The satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), recorded the tsunami about 70 minutes after the earthquake struck.
Disturbances like an earthquake or underwater landslide trigger a tsunami when the event is large enough to displace the entire column of seawater from the ocean floor to the surface. This results in waves that ripple out from the disturbance much like dropping a pebble into a pond generates a series of waves.
“The power of SWOT’s broad, paintbrush-like strokes over the ocean is in providing crucial real-world validation, unlocking new physics, and marking a leap towards more accurate early warnings and safer futures,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, NASA Earth lead and SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
This visualization depicts the leading edge of the tsunami based on sea surface height data from SWOT looking from south to north, when the leading edge was more than 1.5 feet (45 centimeters) high, east of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.NASA/JPL-Caltech
Data from SWOT provided a multidimensional look at the leading edge of the tsunami wave triggered by the Kamchatka earthquake. The measurements included a wave height exceeding 1.5 feet (45 centimeters), shown in red in the highlighted track, as well as a look at the shape and direction of travel of the leading edge of the tsunami. The SWOT data, shown in the highlighted swath running from the southwest to the northeast in the visual, is plotted against a forecast model of the tsunami produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Tsunami Research. Comparing the observations from SWOT to the model helps forecasters validate their model, ensuring its accuracy.
“A 1.5-foot-tall wave might not seem like much, but tsunamis are waves that extend from the seafloor to the ocean’s surface,” said Ben Hamlington, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “What might only be a foot or two in the open ocean can become a 30-foot wave in shallower water at the coast.”
The tsunami measurements SWOT collected are helping scientists at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research improve their tsunami forecast model. Based on outputs from that model, NOAA sends out alerts to coastal communities potentially in the path of a tsunami. The model uses a set of earthquake-tsunami scenarios based on past observations as well as real-time observations from sensors in the ocean.
The SWOT data on the height, shape, and direction of the tsunami wave is key to improving these types of forecast models. “The satellite observations help researchers to better reverse engineer the cause of a tsunami, and in this case, they also showed us that NOAA’s tsunami forecast was right on the money,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer.
The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research tested their model with SWOT’s tsunami data, and the results were exciting, said Vasily Titov, the center’s chief scientist in Seattle. “It suggests SWOT data could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecasts — a capability sought since the 2004 Sumatra event.” The tsunami generated by that devastating quake killed thousands of people and caused widespread damage in Indonesia.
More About SWOTThe SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA JPL, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
News Media ContactsJane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
ane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-103
Share Details Last Updated Aug 07, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 4 min read NASA Supercomputers Take on Life Near Greenland’s Most Active Glacier Article 5 days ago 4 min read NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Mars Vista As Clear As Day Article 5 days ago 1 min read NASA’s Black Marble: Stories from the Night SkyStudying the glowing patterns of Earth’s surface helps us understand human activity, respond to disasters,…
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US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The SWOT satellite caught the leading edge of the tsunami wave (red) that rolled through the Pacific Ocean on July 30. Sea level data, shown in the highlighted swath, is plotted against a NOAA tsunami forecast model in the background. A red star marks the location of the earthquake that spawned the tsunami.NASA/JPL-CaltechData provided by the water satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency, is helping to improve tsunami forecast models, benefitting coastal communities.
The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the tsunami spawned by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30, 11:25 a.m. local time. The satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), recorded the tsunami about 70 minutes after the earthquake struck.
Disturbances like an earthquake or underwater landslide trigger a tsunami when the event is large enough to displace the entire column of seawater from the ocean floor to the surface. This results in waves that ripple out from the disturbance much like dropping a pebble into a pond generates a series of waves.
“The power of SWOT’s broad, paintbrush-like strokes over the ocean is in providing crucial real-world validation, unlocking new physics, and marking a leap towards more accurate early warnings and safer futures,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, NASA Earth lead and SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
This visualization depicts the leading edge of the tsunami based on sea surface height data from SWOT looking from south to north, when the leading edge was more than 1.5 feet (45 centimeters) high, east of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.NASA/JPL-CaltechData from SWOT provided a multidimensional look at the leading edge of the tsunami wave triggered by the Kamchatka earthquake. The measurements included a wave height exceeding 1.5 feet (45 centimeters), shown in red in the highlighted track, as well as a look at the shape and direction of travel of the leading edge of the tsunami. The SWOT data, shown in the highlighted swath running from the southwest to the northeast in the visual, is plotted against a forecast model of the tsunami produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Tsunami Research. Comparing the observations from SWOT to the model helps forecasters validate their model, ensuring its accuracy.
“A 1.5-foot-tall wave might not seem like much, but tsunamis are waves that extend from the seafloor to the ocean’s surface,” said Ben Hamlington, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “What might only be a foot or two in the open ocean can become a 30-foot wave in shallower water at the coast.”
The tsunami measurements SWOT collected are helping scientists at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research improve their tsunami forecast model. Based on outputs from that model, NOAA sends out alerts to coastal communities potentially in the path of a tsunami. The model uses a set of earthquake-tsunami scenarios based on past observations as well as real-time observations from sensors in the ocean.
The SWOT data on the height, shape, and direction of the tsunami wave is key to improving these types of forecast models. “The satellite observations help researchers to better reverse engineer the cause of a tsunami, and in this case, they also showed us that NOAA’s tsunami forecast was right on the money,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer.
The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research tested their model with SWOT’s tsunami data, and the results were exciting, said Vasily Titov, the center’s chief scientist in Seattle. “It suggests SWOT data could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecasts — a capability sought since the 2004 Sumatra event.” The tsunami generated by that devastating quake killed thousands of people and caused widespread damage in Indonesia.
More About SWOTThe SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA JPL, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
News Media ContactsJane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
ane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-103
Share Details Last Updated Aug 07, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 4 min read NASA Supercomputers Take on Life Near Greenland’s Most Active Glacier Article 5 days ago 4 min read NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Mars Vista As Clear As Day Article 5 days ago 1 min read NASA’s Black Marble: Stories from the Night SkyStudying the glowing patterns of Earth’s surface helps us understand human activity, respond to disasters,…
Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related TopicsMissions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System