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Fractals are common in nature because of the surprisingly simple way they are made. Mathematically, they also help us make sense of complexity and chaos – and maybe even quantum weirdness

The world's biggest AI companies have made artificial general intelligence, or AGI, their goal. But it isn't always clear what AGI means, and there is debate about whether it is a valuable idea

It seemed like night, but part of the sky glowed purple.

North Celestial Aurora

This

A familiar sight from Georgia, USA, the

What did the monster active region that created the recent auroras look like when at the Sun's edge?

Can a gas cloud eat a galaxy?

Neurodiversity reframes neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD as differences to be embraced rather than treated – but that doesn’t mean abandoning diagnosis and intervention altogether

On May 16, 2024, a crowd of more than 500 people gathered at Space Center Houston’s IMAX theater for the Expedition 70 crew debrief and awards ceremony. Crew members from NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 and Soyuz MS-24 missions shared reflections from their voyage aboard the International Space Station and bestowed well-deserved recognition upon Johnson Space Center employees and partners whose dedication and support contributed to the expedition’s success. 

A group photo of participants from the Expedition 70 crew debrief and awards ceremony on May 16, 2024, at Space Center Houston’s IMAX theater. Credit: NASA/David DeHoyos

The special event featured four Expedition 70 astronauts: 

• Jasmin Moghbeli, Crew-7 commander and Expedition 70 flight engineer, NASA 
• Loral O’Hara, Soyuz MS-24 and Expedition 70 flight engineer, NASA 
• Andreas Mogensen, Crew-7 pilot and Expedition 70 commander, ESA (European Space Agency) 
• Satoshi Furukawa, Crew-7 mission specialist and Expedition 70 flight engineer, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) 

NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen kicked off the event by striking the ceremonial bell to complete the 70th voyage to the orbiting laboratory. 

Johnson Deputy Director Stephen Koerner honored the crew’s achievements. “Through the Johnson Space Center’s Dare | Unite | Explore initiatives, we are called to unite with our partners to complete these bold missions,” said Koerner. “Tonight, we are celebrating the completion of one of those such missions.” 

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 crew inside the vestibule in between the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft and the International Space Station’s Harmony module. From left are Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa. Credit: NASA

The Crew-7 mission was the first in the history of the Commercial Crew Program to have each seat in the Dragon spacecraft occupied by a different international partner.  

The Expedition 70 crew successfully conducted 286 experiments and received five cargo resupply missions that delivered thousands of pounds of scientific research, supplies, and hardware to the orbital outpost.  

The astronauts performed numerous science experiments and technology demonstrations, including the first robotic surgery (on simulated tissue) in space. The crew also encountered several other notable firsts. O’Hara and Moghbeli undertook their inaugural spacewalk together, while ESA astronaut Andy Mogensen became the first non-US pilot to fulfill that role on the Dragon vehicle. The crew also welcomed the third private astronaut mission, Ax-3, aboard the orbiting laboratory, along with Marina Vasilevskaya, the first female Belarusian in space as a spaceflight participant. 

“Even after more than 25 years of operations, we continue to experience exciting firsts aboard station,” said Dana Weigel, program manager for the International Space Station Program. “On behalf of the ISS Program, I want to thank the crew and the ground teams around the world for your passion and commitment to the International Space Station mission. The incredible advancements we make that benefit life here on Earth and inspire future generations are a direct result of your work.” 

Watch below to recap the Expedition 70 crew members’ unique journey aboard the International Space Station and to celebrate those who helped make the mission a success. 

In an ongoing swarm of earthquakes that began hitting Japan in 2020, the shifting weight of surface water may have spurred the shaking

With tentative evidence for long-lasting quantum phenomena inside cells, researchers are beginning to rethink what we need to look for to find clinching evidence of quantum biology

Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy are hosting an employee town hall at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, May 22, to discuss how the agency is using and developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to advance missions and research.

The event will steam live on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website.

The town hall also will feature the NASA experts pioneering and leading the use of AI across the agency, including:

• A.C. Charania, chief technologist
• David Salvagnini, chief artificial intelligence officer
• Jeff Seaton, chief information officer
• Kate Calvin, chief scientist

A wide variety of AI tools are used by NASA to benefit humanity from supporting missions and research projects across the agency, analyzing data to reveal trends and patterns, and developing systems capable of supporting spacecraft and aircraft autonomously.

On May 13, Nelson named Salvagnini as NASA’s first chief artificial intelligence officer. The agency continues developing recommendations on leveraging emerging AI technology for a variety of missions including sifting through Earth science imagery to identifying areas of interest, to searching for data on planets outside our solar system from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduling communications from the Perseverance Mars rover through the Deep Space Network, and more.

Learn more about artificial intelligence at NASA at:

https://www.nasa.gov/artificial-intelligence

-end-

Faith McKie / Jennifer Dooren
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
faith.d.mckie@nasa.gov / jennifer.m.dooren@nasa.gov

Hillary Smith
Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley
650-604-4789
hillary.smith@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated May 21, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

• NASA Headquarters
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)

Astronomers have found that one of the lightest exoplanets ever seen, the young 'cotton candy' world V1298 Tau b, may be shrinking from the size of Jupiter to the width of a super-Earth.

5 min read

NASA “Wildfire Digital Twin” Pioneers New AI Models and Streaming Data Techniques for Forecasting Fire and Smoke

NASA’s “Wildfire Digital Twin” project will equip firefighters and wildfire managers with a superior tool for monitoring wildfires and predicting harmful air pollution events and help researchers observe global wildfire trends more precisely.

The tool, developed with funding from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and NASA’s FireSense Program, will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to forecast potential burn paths in real time, merging data from in situ, airborne, and spaceborne sensors to produce global models with high precision.

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A wildfire simulation describing the spread of PM 2.5 aerosols during a recent controlled burn, generated using the WRF-SFIRE model. “Wildfire Digital Twin” will build on this and other models to simulate active burns with unprecedented resolution. Credit: Kathleen Clough/San Jose State University

Whereas current global models describing the spread of wildfires and smoke have a spatial resolution of about 10 kilometers per pixel, the Wildfire Digital Twin would produce regional ensemble models with a spatial resolution of 10-to-30 meters per pixel, an improvement of two orders of magnitude.

These models could be generated in a span of mere minutes. By comparison, current global models can take hours to produce.

Models with such high spatial resolution produced at this speed would be immensely valuable to first-responders and wildfire managers trying to observe and contain dynamic burns.

Milton Halem, a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, leads the Wildfire Digital Twin project, which includes a team of more than 20 researchers from six universities.

“We want to be able to provide firefighters with useful, timely information,” said Halem, adding that in the field, “there is generally no internet, and no access to big supercomputers, but with our API version of the model, they could run the digital twin not just on a laptop, but even a tablet,” he said.

NASA’s FireSense project is focused on leveraging the agency’s unique Earth science and technological capabilities to achieve improved wildfire management across the United States.

NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office supports this effort with its newest program element, Technology Development for support of Wildfire Science, Management, and Disaster Mitigation (FireSense Technology), which is dedicated to developing novel observation capabilities for predicting and managing wildfires –including technologies like Earth System Digital Twins.

Earth System Digital Twins are dynamic software tools for modeling and forecasting climate events in real time. These tools rely on data sources distributed across multiple domains to create ensemble predictions describing everything from floods to severe weather.

In addition to assisting first responders, an Earth System Digital Twin dedicated to modeling wildfires would also be valuable to scientists monitoring wildfire trends globally. In particular, Halem hopes Wildfire Digital Twins will improve our ability to study wildfires across global boreal forests of cold-hardy conifers, which sequester vast amounts of carbon.

When these forests burn, all of that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. One study, released in August of 2023, found that boreal wildfires alone accounted for 25% of all global CO2 emissions for that year to date.

“The reason CO2 emissions from Boreal wildfires are taking place at an increasing yearly rate is because global warming is rising faster at high latitudes than the rest of the planet, and as a result, boreal summers there are becoming longer,” said Halem. “Whereas the rest of the planet may have warmed one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial revolution, this region has warmed well over two degrees.”

Halem’s work builds on other wildfire models, particularly the NASA-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NUWRF) model, developed by NASA, and WRF-SFIRE, developed by a team of researchers with support from the National Science Foundation. These models simulate phenomena like wind speed and cloud cover, which makes them the perfect foundation for a Wildfire Digital Twin.

Specifically, Halem’s team is working on new satellite data assimilation techniques that will blend information from space-based remote sensors into their Wildfire Digital Twin, enabling improved global data forecasts that will be useful for emergencies and science missions alike.

In October, Halem’s team participated in the first FireSense field campaign in collaboration with the National Forest Service’s Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) to observe smoke as it traveled more than 10 miles during a controlled burn in Utah, using a ceilometer. Now the team is feeding that data into their modeling software to help it track plumes more accurately.

They’re especially interested in tracking particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which are small enough to pass through a person’s lungs and enter the bloodstream. These particles, also known as PM 2.5, can cause serious health issues even if a person is nowhere near an active burn.

“When these fires ignite and start to burn, they produce smoke, and this smoke travels considerable distances. It affects people not only locally, but also at distances of thousands of kilometers or more,” said Halem.

Data from the controlled burn will also help Halem and his team quantify the relationship between aerosols and precipitation. Increased aerosols from wildfires have a huge impact on cloud formation, which in turn impacts how precipitation occurs downstream of an affected fire burn.

Assimilating all this information as it streams from sensors in real time is essential for detailing the full impact of wildfires at local, regional, and global scales.

PROJECT LEAD

Milton Halem, University of Maryland at Baltimore County

SPONSORING ORGANIZATION

NASA’s FireSense Technology Program, a part of the agency’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), funds this project.

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Last Updated

May 21, 2024

Related Terms

• Earth Science
• Earth Science Technology Office
• Science-enabling Technology
• Technology
• Technology Highlights
• Wildfires

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