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#790: Meteorites From Other Worlds
Even though humanity has returned samples from a fraction of the worlds in the solar system, the cosmos has delivered many more without us having to lift a finger. Meteorites. We have meteorites from the Moon, Vesta and even Mars! What have we learned about these rocks from other worlds? Space missions to other worlds cost millions to billions of dollars, and if we want to know exactly where space rock samples come from, we need to spend the big bucks for sample return. But, if it's good enough to know "this rock came from somewhere on that world," space offers an amazing delivery system in the form of meteorites. Come learn about the search for, identification, and science of meteorites from other worlds.
Show Notes- Meteorites as samples: Natural delivery from Moon, Mars, Vesta, asteroids
- Impact ejection: Collisions launch rocks into space at escape velocity
- Scientific value: Reveal early Solar System chemistry & planetary history
- Limitations: Unknown exact origin, shock damage, Earth contamination
- Identification methods: Spectroscopy, composition matching, trapped gases
- Crater studies: Tektites, shock features, and local knowledge
- Life debate: Controversy over possible biosignatures (ALH meteorite)
- Sample return vs meteorites: Precision vs accessibility
- Possible sources: Mars, Moon, Vesta, Phobos, maybe beyond
- Interstellar material: Difficult to identify but potentially present
- Key takeaway: Meteorites = accessible clues to planetary and cosmic history
Fraser Cain:
Astronomy Cast, Episode 790 Meteorites from Other Worlds. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, your weekly facts-based journey through the Cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Keane, I'm the publisher of Universe Today.
With me as always is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of CosmoQuest. Hello, Pamela.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Hello, Fraser. I have a new favourite moment in Rule Breaking. Can I share it?
Yes. So, Astronaut Commander Reed from the Artemis II Integrity Capsule was supposed to leave RISE, the little round plushie that they had as a zero-g indicator. He was supposed to leave it on board Integrity as it floated in the ocean, hopefully to be rescued, and he couldn't do it.
He couldn't leave behind RISE. So he stole it.
Fraser Cain:
You don't leave a crew member behind. Right.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Snuck it out. So RISE now is Commander Reed's, and he's been just like kind of carrying it around in lots of different... It is my favourite moment.
Fraser Cain:
Isn't it supposed to end up at a school, though, at some point? Like it's going to end up with some... I forget how...
Dr. Pamela Gay:
I don't know. I just know it wasn't left behind on the capsule, and there are so many adorable photos. And yeah.
Fraser Cain:
Man, that mission was so great. I was just transported to a younger version of me watching sort of the one that actually felt most significant to me was the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner mission. That was the one that I was really just glued to the live streams, watching every moment.
And this brought me back to that world, watching all of these key moments, even just sort of switching back to see the live stream, the quiet view of the porthole of the Orion capsule to see either the Moon or the Earth. It was absolutely incredible. And it just shows us the best of what humanity can do.
And obviously, there are details about the $4 billion that it cost to launch these things, the delays in the launch, the potential competition from reasonable rocket companies and so on and so forth. But still, this was just... Humanity went farther than humanity has ever gone, and I was there for it, and it was incredible.
I think we should do an episode about Artemis 2 when we have a little bandwidth. Even though humanity has returned samples from a fraction of the worlds in the solar system, the cosmos has delivered many more without us having to lift a finger. Meteorites.
We have meteorites from the Moon, Vesta, and even Mars. What have we learned about these rocks from other worlds? Meteorites.
Meteorites. Which worlds do we have meteorites from that have fallen down here on Earth?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Mars, the Moon, Vesta series, a whole bunch of the other asteroids, but they come in families, which makes it a whole lot harder to say exactly which one they came from.
Fraser Cain:
Right. They came from this family. Who knows if it was...
Which of the specific rocks?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
I'm pretty sure we don't have any from Venus, but...
Fraser Cain:
No, we don't.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Okay. You often prove me wrong, so I have learned to add caveats.
Fraser Cain:
That would be wise, yeah. No. From what I understand, there are none from Mercury, none from Venus.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
The energy from Mercury is not realistic, and Venus's atmosphere is just super thick.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. Nothing's getting out of either of those. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. And that is incredible.
So how do they get here?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Well, when a rock hits a rock, transfer of momentum is expletive. So what ends up happening, and this is part of my favorite caption that has ever existed in a print magazine. There is this amazing caption that I believe based on the formatting of the page that I found on Reddit, came from Scientific American.
I've not been able to find the actual article. The caption basically reads that when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs struck Earth, the shock wave flung at escape velocities, dirt, trees, and dinosaurs. And...
Fraser Cain:
What a way to go.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. Yeah. So the first life forms to leave the planet Earth were very dead dinosaurs.
Fraser Cain:
Right.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
But...
Fraser Cain:
I mean, probably very dead.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Many other things.
Fraser Cain:
Many other things. Yeah. When you think about the giant impacts that have happened in the history of planet Earth, there was some early first astronaut.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
So when space rock comes down, whether it be something tiny that just becomes a meteorite or something bigger where you just keep calling it an asteroid, when it collides, that kinetic energy from its motion ends up getting translated into heat, into noise, into compression waves moving through the ground. And that energy excavates the crater, melts a lot of stuff, flings boulders in all directions as it does its excavating. And some of those things that it flings are going to be going at escape velocities from whatever world is getting hit.
And those excavated chunks of world are then on their own orbits that could include a trajectory that heads them straight towards us. And this leads to all sorts of mixing of early solar system substances back when collisions were much more common between the early forming worlds that, well, Venus, Earth, and Mars were all settling into habitability at about the same point before Mars decided to become too cold and Venus decided to become way too hot.
Fraser Cain:
So let's talk about some of the samples that have been found and some of the most interesting ones. And I mean, I think, I mean, this is not the same as a meteorite that is out in space. This is not the same as us retrieving a sample from an asteroid or from a comet.
When you think about, say, Hayabusa, Hayabusa 2, Cyrus Rex, they pulled a chunk, they pulled material off of these objects. And these were in a pristine state. I mean, obviously they're rubble pile asteroids, they've gone through, they've seen some things, but they haven't sort of experienced the same kind of shock and damage that has happened from something that was actually scoured out of another planet.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. We have three scientific problems with donated samples from other worlds. One is we don't know exactly where on that other world it came from.
Fraser Cain:
But even, well, so hold on, I was going to bring that up, but actually they're starting to get a sense of where some of those samples came from.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
For some worlds, but we can't consistently do it.
Fraser Cain:
The Mars ones, they're getting a sense based on the kind of, I mean, we know so much about the rock on Mars that we can guess where those samples might've come from roughly.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
But we can't do the kinds of things that we do with like collected lunar rocks where we take them into a lab, we measure exactly how old they are, and then we can use them to calibrate our understanding of how old different surfaces on the moon are. We can't do that.
Fraser Cain:
No. And then like think about what's happening with Perseverance as it is going across the landscape of Mars, looking for the perfect rock and then drilling a sample, holding it closely inside its sample container, moving on. Like that is precision in what you get as opposed to what you get with just random rocks being hurled at the planet.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Right, right.
Fraser Cain:
So that's the first challenge. You don't know where they came from.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Right. So first challenge is you don't know where they came from. Second challenge is they're getting altered by the space environment a whole lot.
So there was whatever excavated them was a high energy event. They traveled through space, which causes surface weathering. And then they went through our atmosphere, which causes its own form of challenge as it gets heated up and then smashes into whatever it smashes into.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. And that's probably not the worst part of the contamination. The worst part is that they then sit on the surface of the earth for an unknown amount of time being infested by our local life forms.
And that one of these meteorites can be hidden for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Hundreds of thousands is pushing it because we do get them from places like deserts and ice flows and our planet has had weather cycles.
Fraser Cain:
Right. But the point being that that's plenty of time for occupation to occur. Yeah.
I mean, what probably happens is that the various weathering process that we have on the earth dismantle the meteorites within that timeframe. So it's the ones that we get to them before they're completely faded away. But still we can do science.
What kind of science can we do with these samples?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
So there's the straightforward, which is you take them into a lab, you cut them into very thin slices and you study what is the stuff inside them. What is the components? And this is useful for two different reasons.
One is we can also shine light at them and reflect the light off and match them to other worlds. This is actually how we figure out what meteorite came from, where, when it comes to the asteroids is we know the asteroids really well in reflected sunlight. You take a space rock, take it into your lab, reflect sunlight, sun, light off of it and see what it matches.
And that's its parent body. And then, because we don't have samples of Vesta, we don't have samples of Ceres, we don't have samples of like all but just the tiniest handful of asteroids. So then we take them apart and look at them to measure the various mineral structures, to measure the various, how does all of this stuff come together and then shred them completely in a mass spectrometer to get at the atom by atom understanding.
And some of the thin cuts that they do through these and then shine light through look like the most amazingly chaotic stained glass. So our solar system is out there creating chaotic stained glass and sending it our way.
Fraser Cain:
But I think one of the most exciting things is that there is gas trapped within these rocks.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yes, I have to admit that is one of the things I am, I am weirdly just less interested in. But we have found both liquid and gas trapped inside the crystalline structure of various minerals. It turns out things like diamonds in particular are very good at holding stuff in their inclusions.
So when we get particularly lucky, we're not looking for amber containing animals, we're looking for minerals containing gas, containing liquid, containing a moment in the history of another world.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, this is just incredible when you think about this, that a giant asteroid smashed into Mars, scoured out material, sent it into orbit. These rocks have been floating around in the solar system.
And then some part portion of them found their way to the Earth's atmosphere, enter the atmosphere, reached the ground, a scientist found it, and then sliced it open. And there were bits, there were tiny bits of trapped Mars atmosphere in that meteorite that you can then use to study the atmosphere of Mars at the time that the space rock was hurled into space. What have we learned, do you think, about being able to study these samples from other worlds?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
One of the first things we've learned is what makes someone a scientist is when they find something cool, they report it. Because so many of the meteorites that have been found that weren't in Antarctica where we send groups of humans who have been trained to find meteorites to go find meteorites. A lot of the other ones that have been found are like someone's back pasture, someone's back 40.
So farmers are one of the great sources of meteorites. Yeah, all over the world, people find meteorites and when we're lucky, they report what they found and they share and we get to go get samples. We have learned that there are a whole lot of unique rocks that allow us to look at things and go, this is actually a crater right here.
Because when the impactor is big enough, it creates tektites, which are melty bits of the rock that was already there that now become new rocks. And it creates these shocked rocks where you can actually look at them and see through, they're called shock cones, go figure, we're not exciting in how we name things. So there's all these local ways geology gets wrecked when big things hit and it changes the landscape.
And there's this one really funny case of a winery in France that was creating meteorite wine. And they were claiming that their vineyard, which is in this cool circular indentation, was a meteorite crater and everyone was like, ha, ha, ha. And it turned out that some geologists who were traveling, who of course went because it was funny, were like, oh, oh, wait, this might be a crater.
And so they went back and it was actually a crater. And I'm super sad because you can't get this wine in the United States and I really want a bottle. So folks in France, I really want a bottle of this wine.
And so we have learned that we need to listen to the locals. We need to listen to their stories. We need to listen to like oral traditions are a great way to figure out where craters formed in the past at various points in history.
And then when we pick up these rocks, we also learn to be slightly afraid because they could be carrying stuff from a point in time where life existed on other worlds than this.
Fraser Cain:
Right. And I think we need to talk about one of the most controversial rocks found from another planet, Allen Hills. So this is going to be a moment that is kind of seared into everybody's memory.
And this happened at roughly the same time that I was enthusiastic about watching the Mars Pathfinder mission complete its various operations. Shortly after that, we saw the announcement of life on Mars. Thanks to the Allen Hills meteorite.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. And back in 1984, this meteorite was found on Allen Hill in Antarctica. And it takes a while for them to get through all the different meteorites they find and do research on them.
And this particular one, they found it, they sorted it. And then Roberta Skor, who's the lab manager at Johnson Space Center, she was the one who found it. And it was claimed to be the oldest Martian meteorite that had been found to be 4 billion years old.
And when folks started studying it, one of the things that the research team did was they cut it, they gold plated it, they put it through an electron scanning microscope. So the gold plating was to make the electron scanning microscope work better. And when they looked at the images that came out of the electron scanning microscope, they saw what looked like little tiny nanobacteria nodules that were similar to what had been studied at places like Yellowstone.
And the claim was made that life had been found in the Allen Hills meteorite. Now this was super controversial for a number of different reasons. One was it turns out if you're not like the absolute nicest person on the entire planet, people are going to show more skepticism to your research.
And when we were all going to see the talks on this, the person presenting, whose name I'm not going to name, would show the meteorite, would then show pictures of his grad students in skimpy clothes next to where they collected the nanobacteria from field sites. And that didn't sit well with many of us. And so there's that underlying, blech, that just like kind of went into how you looked at the research.
And then there was like the knowledge that if you screw up your gold plating, you get artifacts that look exactly like what they were saying was nanobacteria. And then there's like the fact that just sometimes minerals do stuff. And they haven't really allowed the experiment to be replicated.
So you have this situation where no other means of exploration have been able to replicate what they found. Other work done on the same meteor didn't find indications of life. And there was just kind of this overall, blech, involved in the research.
So, yeah, they might have found something. But until it gets found in a more credible way, and likely until it's presented by someone that doesn't leave all of us feeling slightly creepy, it's life hasn't been discovered.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. And I mean, I think you've got to sort of compare this to what happened with, say, the Hayabusa and the OSIRIS-REx mission. You had these samples returned.
They were sent out around the world to dozens of teams with some of the world's best labs. And they've been trickling back their information, confirming each other's discoveries, finding all these amino acids and all of this sort of measuring the amount of water in these samples, and determining a lot of really interesting things about the early history of the solar system. And that this is, you know, partly that when a rock from space lands on Earth, it is just one rock.
And then it's up to the team who claims it to work on it to sort of decide how the information is sort of parceled out. And that if you have a really bombastic discovery, it is tricky to then put yourself to that level of scrutiny. And yet that's what science demands.
That's how science works. As opposed to this sort of top-down, hey, we've got all these samples, here you go everybody, get back to some of what you found. And then they're kind of double-checking each other.
So it's, yeah, it's, unfortunately, I mean, we have a lot of examples of this. We have the Viking, we have the Allen Hills meteorite, we have the discovery of phosphine in Venus, we have the detection of methane on Mars, we have Mono Lake, yeah, we have all these times where life was found, and yet it just didn't hold up to scrutiny. The wow signal, like it just, it goes on and on and on.
The discovery of satellites in orbit around the Earth before the first artificial satellites were launched.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
The Japanese UFO on an archaeological thing, yeah.
Fraser Cain:
Boyajian's sort of dust ring, like it goes on and on and on. And it just shows that when the potential consequences of the discovery are big, then the level of rigor and the amount of sort of ego setting aside needs to be done is astronomical. And few are up to that task.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
And you really need to have no clear alternative answers because Occam's Razor is a thing. And when you can say, yeah, but if you gold-plated it not perfectly, that's exactly what it looks like. That is such an easy explanation for what they saw, and it's not like you can un-gold-plate the meteorite.
Fraser Cain:
Right. Yeah. So let's talk about kind of hypothetical meteorites.
Yes. Could there be meteorites from Mercury, Venus, Phobos, Io here on Earth somewhere?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Phobos, yes, that's easy. Io, I mean, it could happen, but it's going to take a whole lot. And the idea of something being big enough, having come off of Io, traveled this way and made it through our atmosphere, my brain is going, but it's a gooey world.
I mean, it's not all gooey, but that's where my brain went is it's gooey. Yeah.
Fraser Cain:
I mean, it's covered in rock.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah.
Fraser Cain:
You hit it with an asteroid, it's going to blow up rocky chunks into space. They're not going to remain lava.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. You just have to hit it really, really hard because of Jupiter's gravity.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. Yeah. You have to escape Jupiter.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. You have to escape Jupiter's gravity, which means that you have to somehow dig deep enough to get a whole lot of boulders sent out at a whole lot of velocity. So, Io is giant question mark of could it happen?
Well, a lot of things can happen, but I put the probability on that one super low. Venus.
Fraser Cain:
What about? Oh, Venus.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Okay. Yeah. Venus depends on when.
So, Venus hasn't always had the atmosphere it currently has. And so, if you hit it really, really hard when it didn't have that super thick atmosphere, but had already solidified and before it got its prior atmosphere flung off, yes. So, I mean, it's always had an atmosphere.
It just hasn't always had its current atmosphere.
Fraser Cain:
But it is tricky to climb up that gravitational well.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
But if you can fling dinosaurs that escape velocity off of the planet Earth.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. But you not only have to fling them off of a world that is as much as.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
You have to escape the sun.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. You have to escape the sun.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah.
Fraser Cain:
That is the challenge. You have to get, you have to climb, like people always sort of imagine Venus in this sort of, or these worlds in this sort of perfect balance and you just drift away from one to the other. But no, the sun is this giant gravitational well.
It is at the bottom of this gravitational well. Mercury has partially climbed out of this gravitational well. Venus is a little better and Earth is a little higher.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah.
Fraser Cain:
But to go from Venus up to Earth, it literally is up to you. You've got to climb a mountain and that is a challenge. Of course, it's also difficult to climb down the mountain.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Right.
Fraser Cain:
Both are challenges.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
And this is where you have to be looking for things that are on elliptical orbits that intersect both Venus's orbit and Earth's orbit because that is easier to accomplish. And as always, your friendly reminder that it is far easier to yeet things out of the solar system than to yeet them into the sun.
Fraser Cain:
Right. What about an interstellar object?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Oh, yeah. I'm sure we have interstellar objects on our world. Yeah.
We just don't have a reflection spectrum to match them to. So it's probably like unlabeled mystery rock.
Fraser Cain:
Right. But you can imagine someone doing, say, a sample of it, looking for the radioactive decay and then going, wait a minute, this sample is 8 billion years old. Right.
This rock is 8 billion years old. Like in theory that it's never been found. Right.
All of the meteorites ever been tested have always been exactly the same age, the age of the solar system. But out there somewhere, there is a meteorite that will, when you test it. Now, they've found pre-solar grains in meteorites that are older than the solar system.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
But those are grains.
Fraser Cain:
Grains. Not full meteorites. And yet you think, you know, we have, we've seen three interstellar objects passing through the solar system.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Models show there should be like 6 to 12 a year.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. And there should be probably 10,000 plus just going through the solar system at any one time. And so at some point in the past, an interstellar object has struck the earth and it's there somewhere on the planet for the finding.
Yeah. And then can you imagine what we could learn studying a rock that came from another planet in the galaxy?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
The frustration of not knowing its provenance is the great frustration.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. Yeah.Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, you know, it's made of different stuff.
I mean, it would still be made of the same kinds of material. But the ratios will be different. Slightly different ratios.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's older.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Right.
Fraser Cain:
Be like, oh, it formed a billion years ago. But we don't know where. Like maybe you could look at the chemistry of stars out there and find one that it's We can't even find our own siblings.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Yeah. We orbit the center of the galaxy, I think every 250 million years.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. Yeah. And so a lot of potential siblings of the sun have been found.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Right. But we can'tprove it because we've scattered to the four directions, inward, outward, forward and back. Yeah.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah. Yeah. But that'll be that'll be incredible if there's some time like people have proposed that the trajectories of certain meteorites coming in, hit the atmosphere, that they were on an interstellar trajectory.
There was a search by Avi Loeb and others to try and find a meteorite, but the results were inconclusive. So we are still waiting for that. And then probably the best thing is to just chase down an interstellar object and sample it directly and bring a piece home.
That will be the greatest accomplishment of humanity, I think, is to be able to chase down.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
And you just did a video on that. Have I? You just did a video on chasing down meteorites.
Fraser Cain:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, those are ones in the Earth's atmosphere.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Okay. That's true.
Fraser Cain:
That's true.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
So the meteor, meteorite, meteoroid set of words.
Fraser Cain:
Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Just put all of this into your heads. Meteoroids, asteroids are space rocks still in space. Meteor is while they're going through the atmosphere.
Meteorite is once you've picked them up because minerals and an ite. Yeah. So these words are evil.
I just call them space rocks.
Fraser Cain:
Yes. And people love to give you a hard time if you... Confuse them.
...don't get it perfectly right. But I think there's a lot of edge cases where you kind of wonder, you know, does a meteor hit the moon?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
A meteoroid hits the moon.
Fraser Cain:
Yes. But what if it's a kilometer across?
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Then it's an asteroid.
Fraser Cain:
It's not a meteoroid. I think, you know, I think meteors can hit the moon.
I think, you know, I think meteors can hit the moon. I think if they're on a collision course with the world, that that's when they become a meteor, in my opinion. But anyway, I think we've wrapped up this topic.
We're now starting to rabbit hole. So thanks, Pamela.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Thank you, Fraser. And thank you so much to all of you out there. Being able to continue doing science communications in this day and age where we're seeing NASA literally cancel the entire office of science communications.
It is an honor and a pleasure. This week, I would like to thank our patrons over on patreon.com slash astronomycast, who allow us to have Rich, Ali and others, Aviva, making sure we don't sound terrible. This week, we are pleased to thank the following people whose names I shall now mangle.
Our show wouldn't be here without the wonderful support of so many of you over on patreon.com slash astronomycast. This week, I'm going to thank you the best way I have, which is by probably mispronouncing your name. Thank you so much to Antisor, ArcticFox, AstroSets, Benjamin Mueller, Bob Zatzke, BoogieNut, Breznik, Brian Kilby, Cody Rose, Conrad Holling, Daniel Schechter, David, David Gates, David Green, Diane Philippon, G.
Caleb Sexton, Galactic President Scooper McScoopsalot, Glenn Phelps, Gold, Jared Heal, Janelle, Jason Kwong, Jeremy Kerwin, Jim Schooler, John M, Jordan Turner, Laura Kettleson, Lee Harbourn, Lana Spencer, Marco Irrasi, Matt Rucker, Michelle Purcell, Michelle Wichman, Nala, Nate Detweiler, Older, Patricia Hope, Paul D. Disney, Randall, Richard Drumm, Robert Palasma, Sachi Takaba, Sandra Stantz, Sean Matz, Siggy Kemmler, Slug, TC Starboy, Thomas Gutzeta, Tiffany Rogers, Timeroid Iroh, Tricor, Tricia McKinney, and Vettely. Thank you all so very much.
And I'm so sorry for my failure to pronounce things.
Fraser Cain:
All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next week.
Dr. Pamela Gay:
Bye-bye, everyone.
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Johnson Leaders Honored by National Space Club & Foundation
The National Space Club & Foundation announced its annual award recipients March 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Two dedicated leaders from NASA’s Johnson Space Center were recognized for their contributions to human spaceflight.
Orion Program Manager Howard Hu receives the Norman L. Baker Astronautics Engineer Award. National Space Club & Foundation
Orion Program Manager Howard Hu received the Norman L. Baker Astronautics Engineer Award for sustained technical contributions to multiple human spaceflight efforts.
Hu leads the design, development, production, and operations of Orion, NASA’s spacecraft for Artemis missions to the Moon. He has held several leadership roles within the Orion program, including deputy program manager, a manager of the Avionics, Power, and Software Office, and deputy manager of the Vehicle Integration Office. Hu has supported Orion since its inception, beginning as the Vehicle System Performance and Analysis lead.
On April 1, 2026, Artemis II launched on a 10-day voyage around the Moon, marking the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down safely inside Orion April 10 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. At their farthest point, the crew and spacecraft traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, setting a new record for the greatest distance traveled by humans in space.
The mission successfully proved the capability of Orion’s critical systems such as life support with humans aboard. Data from Artemis II will help refine mission operations and further evaluate Orion’s performance in deep space, supporting future Artemis missions.
NASA and its partners are now shifting their focus to Artemis III, which will test integrated operations between Orion and the human landing system in lunar orbit and advance plans to return astronauts to the Moon.
Before joining Orion, Hu served in multiple technical and leadership roles at Johnson, including chief engineer for exploration in the Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division, project manager and co-developer of shuttle abort flight management software for the Space Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrades Program, and deputy guidance, navigation, and control system manager for the International Space Station program.
International Space Station Program Manager Dana Weigel receives the Eagle Manned Mission Award. National Space Club & Foundation
International Space Station Program Manager Dana Weigel received the Eagle Manned Mission Award. She leads development, integration, and operations for the International Space Station. The space station celebrated a historic milestone on Nov. 2, 2025, marking 25 years of continuous human habitation. The orbiting laboratory remains a critical testbed for future commercial destinations in low Earth orbit and for deep space exploration, supporting Artemis missions and future human missions to Mars.
Weigel has held several leadership roles within the program, including deputy chief of the Flight Director Office, where she led the Extravehicular Activity Recovery Team following a major in-flight spacewalk anomaly. She also served as a NASA flight director for STS-123 and led the agency’s geosynchronous Earth orbit satellite servicing habitat study.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche attends the 69th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner with her husband George Wyche Jr. National Space Club & Foundation
Selected by panels of experts across industry, government, and academia, the awards reflect achievements that advance aerospace and national interests. Honorees were recognized at the 69th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner at the Washington Hilton.
“Dana Weigel and Howard Hu’s contributions to human space exploration, through their leadership and roles within the agency, are paramount,” said Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche. “It was a privilege to be there in person to celebrate and champion them as they were recognized for the lasting impact of their work. Congratulations to Dana, Howard, and all the award recipients on this well-deserved recognition.”
Hu and Weigel’s service exemplifies the leadership and technical excellence that continue to advance U.S. human space exploration.
Explore More 3 min read I Am Artemis: Peter Rossoni Article 1 day ago 3 min read NASA Welcomes Jordan as 63rd Artemis Accords Signatory Article 2 days ago 4 min read Liquid Lifeline: NASA Tech Could Create IV Fluid In Space Article 2 days agoJohnson Leaders Honored by National Space Club & Foundation
The National Space Club & Foundation announced its annual award recipients March 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
Two dedicated leaders from NASA’s Johnson Space Center were recognized for their contributions to human spaceflight.
Orion Program Manager Howard Hu receives the Norman L. Baker Astronautics Engineer Award. National Space Club & FoundationOrion Program Manager Howard Hu received the Norman L. Baker Astronautics Engineer Award for sustained technical contributions to multiple human spaceflight efforts.
Hu leads the design, development, production, and operations of Orion, NASA’s spacecraft for Artemis missions to the Moon. He has held several leadership roles within the Orion program, including deputy program manager, a manager of the Avionics, Power, and Software Office, and deputy manager of the Vehicle Integration Office. Hu has supported Orion since its inception, beginning as the Vehicle System Performance and Analysis lead.
On April 1, 2026, Artemis II launched on a 10-day voyage around the Moon, marking the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen splashed down safely inside Orion April 10 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. At their farthest point, the crew and spacecraft traveled 252,756 miles from Earth, setting a new record for the greatest distance traveled by humans in space.
The mission successfully proved the capability of Orion’s critical systems such as life support with humans aboard. Data from Artemis II will help refine mission operations and further evaluate Orion’s performance in deep space, supporting future Artemis missions.
NASA and its partners are now shifting their focus to Artemis III, which will test integrated operations between Orion and the human landing system in lunar orbit and advance plans to return astronauts to the Moon.
Before joining Orion, Hu served in multiple technical and leadership roles at Johnson, including chief engineer for exploration in the Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division, project manager and co-developer of shuttle abort flight management software for the Space Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrades Program, and deputy guidance, navigation, and control system manager for the International Space Station program.
International Space Station Program Manager Dana Weigel receives the Eagle Manned Mission Award. National Space Club & FoundationInternational Space Station Program Manager Dana Weigel received the Eagle Manned Mission Award. She leads development, integration, and operations for the International Space Station. The space station celebrated a historic milestone on Nov. 2, 2025, marking 25 years of continuous human habitation. The orbiting laboratory remains a critical testbed for future commercial destinations in low Earth orbit and for deep space exploration, supporting Artemis missions and future human missions to Mars.
Weigel has held several leadership roles within the program, including deputy chief of the Flight Director Office, where she led the Extravehicular Activity Recovery Team following a major in-flight spacewalk anomaly. She also served as a NASA flight director for STS-123 and led the agency’s geosynchronous Earth orbit satellite servicing habitat study.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche attends the 69th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner with her husband George Wyche Jr. National Space Club & FoundationSelected by panels of experts across industry, government, and academia, the awards reflect achievements that advance aerospace and national interests. Honorees were recognized at the 69th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner at the Washington Hilton.
“Dana Weigel and Howard Hu’s contributions to human space exploration, through their leadership and roles within the agency, are paramount,” said Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche. “It was a privilege to be there in person to celebrate and champion them as they were recognized for the lasting impact of their work. Congratulations to Dana, Howard, and all the award recipients on this well-deserved recognition.”
Hu and Weigel’s service exemplifies the leadership and technical excellence that continue to advance U.S. human space exploration.
Explore More 3 min read I Am Artemis: Peter Rossoni Article 1 day ago 3 min read NASA Welcomes Jordan as 63rd Artemis Accords Signatory Article 2 days ago 4 min read Liquid Lifeline: NASA Tech Could Create IV Fluid In Space Article 2 days agoInterstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Left a Trail of Methane in its Wake
A new analysis of data obtained by JWST on 3I/ATLAS as it was on its way out of the Solar System (in December 2025) showed that its interior is rich in methane ice.
New Research Reveals That Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Formed in a System Far Colder Than Our Own
The interplanetary comet 3I/ATLAS is remarkably rich in a specific type of water that contains deuterium, meaning it came from somewhere colder and with lower levels of radiation than our early Solar System.
NASA Shares SpaceX Crew-13 Assignments for Space Station Mission
As part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, four crew members from three space agencies will launch no earlier than mid-September to the International Space Station for a long-duration science expedition.
NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. They will be joined by CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, who will serve as mission specialists. After arriving at the orbiting laboratory, Crew-13 will become members of the space station’s Expedition 75.
This flight is the 13th crew rotation with SpaceX to the space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA is advancing the launch date of Crew-13 from November to help increase the frequency of U.S. crew rotation missions to the space station. The crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, and benefit people on Earth.
This will be the second flight to the space station for Watkins, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. Watkins grew up in Lafayette, Colorado, and earned an undergraduate degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University, as well as a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a geologist, she studied the Martian surface and was a member of the Curiosity rover science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Watkins first launched to the space station as a crew member aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission, spending a total of 170 days in space across Expeditions 67/68 in 2022. She will be the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft twice.
Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, Delaney earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of North Florida and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School. The Florida native is a distinguished naval aviator who participated in exercises throughout the Asia Pacific region and conducted missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As a test pilot, Delaney evaluated developmental aircraft systems and served as a test pilot instructor. He also worked as a research pilot at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where he supported airborne science missions. This is the first spaceflight for Delaney.
The Crew-13 mission also is the first spaceflight for Kutryk. Prior to his selection as a CSA astronaut in 2017, he served as a CF-18 fighter pilot, flying missions in support of Canada’s NATO, U.N., and North American Aerospace Defense Command commitments. A native of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Kutryk also worked as an experimental and operational test pilot at the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, Alberta. Kutryk received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and he is a distinguished graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot school in Edwards, California. He has master’s degrees in space studies, flight test engineering, and defense studies.
Crew-13 will be Teteryatnikov’s first trip to the orbiting laboratory. He graduated from the Naval Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2011 as an engineer specializing in ship power plant operations. Before his selection as a test cosmonaut, Teteryatnikov served in various naval engineering roles, including undersea vessels and specialized engine room operations. He was selected for the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center Cosmonaut Corps in 2021 and has served as a test cosmonaut since 2023.
For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that aren’t possible on Earth. The space station helps NASA understand and overcome the challenges of human spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and build on the foundation for long-duration missions to the Moon, as part of the Artemis program, and to Mars.
Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:
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Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Anna Schneider / Mary Pfister
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov / mary.m.pfister@nasa.gov