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Johnson Celebrates AA and NHPI Heritage Month: Anima Patil-Sabale
Anima Patil-Sabale has been shooting for the stars since she was a little girl growing up in India. Inspired by books about the Apollo-era space program, Patil-Sabale decided she would be an astronaut one day.
For the first step on her journey to space, Patil-Sabale hoped to become a fighter pilot, but India did not allow women to serve in these combat roles at the time. (The Indian Air Force began accepting female candidates in 2015.) Instead, Patil-Sabale pursued degrees in physics and computer applications and worked as a software engineer in Mumbai before getting a job as a software consultant in San Jose, California. Her proximity to NASA’s Ames Research Center inspired her to pursue another master’s degree, in aerospace engineering, and to apply for opportunities with the agency. Her first job with NASA was working as a software and operations engineer supporting the Kepler space telescope at Ames. She has held a variety of positions at Ames and Johnson since then.
Anima Patil-Sabale’s passion for astronautics is fulfilled through her work at NASA and her participation in a variety of external research projects. Here she is pictured boarding a Falcon 20 aircraft to conduct spacesuit performance tests while flying more than 50 parabolas.Image courtesy of Anima Patil-Sabale
Patil-Sabale currently serves as a private astronaut mission (PAM) integrator for the International Space Station Program’s Avionics and Software Office. In that role, she works closely with Axiom Space team members to understand and integrate requirements for their PAMs into the space station’s onboard computers, laptops, and networking systems. It is a relatively new position, meaning Patil-Sabale is often charting new territory in her day-to-day work. “The challenges of working on something new that has not been done before on the International Space Station and the possibilities it creates for future commercialization – being a part of that all makes the job rewarding and fun,” she said.
Patil-Sabale’s time at NASA has also provided opportunities to sample the dreamed-of astronaut experience. In 2015, she was selected to serve as commander for the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) Campaign 2 Mission 3. The mission marked her first trip to Johnson. “Coming to the home of astronauts was exciting and emotional for me,” she said, adding that she has participated in several research projects and missions since HERA. “I love the fact that in addition to the amazing work I do at NASA, I get to contribute to the human spaceflight program as a human test subject. Time will tell if I get to fly to space, but meanwhile I am happy to contribute – even if a tiny bit – to an active area of research that will help us live and thrive on Mars and eventually become a space-faring species.”
The Human Exploration Research Analog Campaign 2 Mission 3 crew, from left: Mission Specialist II Debra Hodges, Flight Engineer Samuel Wald, Mission Specialist I Samson Phan, and Commander Anima Patil-Sabale.NASA/Bill Stafford
Patil-Sabale first engaged with Johnson’s ASIA ERG in 2019, when the group invited her to give a presentation about her personal and professional journey. She currently serves as the group’s Social/Culture Committee lead. “I love bringing people together,” she said. “I believe people enjoy not just talking about each other’s cultures and traditions, but also being a part of them.”
That belief inspired her to spearhead a Johnson-based Diwali celebration in 2023, in addition to participating in the agencywide event organized by NASA Headquarters. Johnson’s celebration included several dance and musical performances, a fashion show, and delicious food.
“These cultural events give us an opportunity to bond in a very different way,” she said. “We get to know many sides of each other that we wouldn’t discover as strictly work colleagues.” ERG events also help people from different teams connect. “For my Diwali dance performance, I had seven people from seven different teams who did not know each other or about their work, and they got to connect during our practice sessions.”
Anima Patil-Sabale (foreground) with her dance performance team members during Johnson Space Center’s 2023 Diwali celebration.Image courtesy of Anima Patil-Sabale
Patil-Sabale hopes to see more cultural celebrations hosted at Johnson in the future and encouraged others to take the initiative to organize events and involve as many colleagues as possible. She also believes it is important for ERGs to continue offering these social and cultural opportunities, in addition to professional development programs. “Giving us these opportunities means so much to people like me,” she said.
Patil-Sabale appreciates any event that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well. She regularly meets with high school girls to encourage their interest in STEM careers and often speaks at International Women’s Day celebrations, where she urges women of all ages to pursue their dreams. “It’s never too late to pursue your interests, your passions,” she said.
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Webb Cracks Case of Inflated Exoplanet
Why is the warm gas-giant exoplanet WASP-107 b so puffy? Two independent teams of researchers have an answer.
Data collected using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, combined with prior observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show surprisingly little methane (CH4) in the planet’s atmosphere, indicating that the interior of WASP-107 b must be significantly hotter and the core much more massive than previously estimated.
The unexpectedly high temperature is thought to be a result of tidal heating caused by the planet’s slightly non-circular orbit, and can explain how WASP-107 b can be so inflated without resorting to extreme theories of how it formed.
The results, which were made possible by Webb’s extraordinary sensitivity and accompanying ability to measure light passing through exoplanet atmospheres, may explain the puffiness of dozens of low-density exoplanets, helping solve a long-standing mystery in exoplanet science.
Image: Warm Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-107 b (Artist’s Concept) This artist’s concept shows what the warm Neptune exoplanet WASP-107 b could look like based on recent data gathered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope along with previous observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Observations captured by Hubble’s WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3), Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), and Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) suggest that the planet has a relatively large core surrounded by a relatively small mass of hydrogen and helium gas, which has been inflated due to tidal heating of the interior. The Problem with WASP-107 b
At more than three-quarters the volume of Jupiter but less than one-tenth the mass, the “warm Neptune” exoplanet WASP-107 b is one of the least dense planets known. While puffy planets are not uncommon, most are hotter and more massive, and therefore easier to explain.
“Based on its radius, mass, age, and assumed internal temperature, we thought WASP-107 b had a very small, rocky core surrounded by a huge mass of hydrogen and helium,” explained Luis Welbanks from Arizona State University (ASU), lead author on a paper published today in Nature. “But it was hard to understand how such a small core could sweep up so much gas, and then stop short of growing fully into a Jupiter-mass planet.”
If WASP-107 b instead has more of its mass in the core, the atmosphere should have contracted as the planet cooled over time since it formed. Without a source of heat to re-expand the gas, the planet should be much smaller. Although WASP-107 b has an orbital distance of just 5 million miles (one-seventh the distance between Mercury and the Sun), it doesn’t receive enough energy from its star to be so inflated.
“WASP-107 b is such an interesting target for Webb because it’s significantly cooler and more Neptune-like in mass than many of the other low-density planets, the hot Jupiters, we’ve been studying,” said David Sing from the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), lead author on a parallel study also published today in Nature. “As a result, we should be able to detect methane and other molecules that can give us information about its chemistry and internal dynamics that we can’t get from a hotter planet.”
A Wealth of Previously Undetectable MoleculesWASP-107 b’s giant radius, extended atmosphere, and edge-on orbit make it ideal for transmission spectroscopy, a method used to identify the various gases in an exoplanet atmosphere based on how they affect starlight.
Combining observations from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), and Hubble’s WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3), Welbanks’ team was able to build a broad spectrum of 0.8- to 12.2-micron light absorbed by WASP-107 b’s atmosphere. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), Sing’s team built an independent spectrum covering 2.7 to 5.2 microns.
The precision of the data makes it possible to not just detect, but actually measure the abundances of a wealth of molecules, including water vapor (H2O), methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ammonia (NH3).
Image:Warm Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-107 b Transmission Spectrum (Hubble WFC3, Webb NIRCam, and Webb MIRI This transmission spectrum, captured using NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, shows the amounts of different wavelengths (colors) of starlight blocked by the atmosphere of the gas-giant exoplanet WASP-107 b. The spectrum includes light collected over four separate observations using a total of three different instruments: Hubble’s WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3) Grism Spectrometer in green, Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) Grism Spectrometer in orange, and Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) Low-Resolution Spectrometer in pink. This spectrum shows clear evidence for water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ammonia (NH4) in the planet’s atmosphere, allowing researchers to estimate the interior temperature and mass of the core. Image:Warm Gas-Giant Exoplanet WASP-107 b (Transmission Spectrum: Webb NIRSpec) This transmission spectrum, captured using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Bright Object Spectrometer, shows the amounts of different wavelengths (colors) of near-infrared starlight blocked by the atmosphere of the gas-giant exoplanet WASP-107 b. The spectrum shows clear evidence for water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the planet’s atmosphere, allowing researchers to estimate the interior temperature and core mass. Roiling Gas, Hot Interior, and Massive Core
Both spectra show a surprising lack of methane in WASP-107 b’s atmosphere: one-thousandth the amount expected based on its assumed temperature.
“This is evidence that hot gas from deep in the planet must be mixing vigorously with the cooler layers higher up,” explained Sing. “Methane is unstable at high temperatures. The fact that we detected so little, even though we did detect other carbon-bearing molecules, tells us that the interior of the planet must be significantly hotter than we thought.”
A likely source of WASP-107 b’s extra internal energy is tidal heating caused by its slightly elliptical orbit. With the distance between the star and planet changing continuously over the 5.7-day orbit, the gravitational pull is also changing, stretching the planet and heating it up.
Researchers had previously proposed that tidal heating could be the cause of WASP-107 b’s puffiness, but until the Webb results were in, there was no evidence.
Once they established that the planet has enough internal heat to thoroughly churn up the atmosphere, the teams realized that the spectra could also provide a new way to estimate the size of the core.
“If we know how much energy is in the planet, and we know what proportion of the planet is heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, versus how much is hydrogen and helium, we can calculate how much mass must be in the core,” explained Daniel Thorngren from JHU.
It turns out that the core is at least twice as massive as originally estimated, which makes more sense in terms of how planets form.
All together, WASP-107 b is not as mysterious as it once appeared.
“The Webb data tells us that planets like WASP-107 b didn’t have to form in some odd way with a super small core and a huge gassy envelope,” explained Mike Line from ASU. “Instead, we can take something more like Neptune, with a lot of rock and not as much gas, just dial up the temperature, and poof it up to look the way it does.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
DownloadsRight click the images in this article to open a larger version in a new tab/window.
Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The research results are published in Nature.
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Margaret Carruthers mcarruthers@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Research Paper: “A high internal heat flux and large core in a warm Neptune exoplanet” by L. Welbanks, et al
Research Paper: “A warm Neptune’s methane reveals core mass and vigorous atmospheric mixing” by D. Sing, et al
Research Paper: “MIRI observation of WASP-107 b: SO2, silicate clouds, but no CH4 detected in a warm Neptune” by A. Dyrek, et al
VIDEO: How do we learn about a planets Atmosphere?
Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/
More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/
Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/
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Share Details Last Updated May 20, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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Stunning meteor captured by ESA's fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain
ESA's fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain, captured this stunning meteor during the night of 18—19 May 2024 (00:46 CEST 19 May / 22:46 UTC 18 May).
The camera is operated by ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and is part of the AllSky7 fireball network.
ESA’s planetary defenders began investigating the impact shortly after it was first reported. Their analysis of the object’s trajectory has revealed that it is likely to have been a small piece of a comet.
They estimate that it flew over Spain and Portugal travelling at roughly 45 km/s (162 000 km/h) before burning up over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of approximately 60 km.
Using data on the amount of energy released during the impact, they estimate that the object was roughly 1 m in size and had a mass of 500—1000 kg.
The likelihood of any meteorites from this even being discovered is very low.
The object was not detected before impact. This is likely because it approached Earth from a region of the sky that is particularly crowded with stars of the Milky Way galaxy.