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Ways Community College Students Can Get Involved With NASA
For many students, the path to a NASA career begins at a community college. These local, two-year institutions offer valuable flexibility and options to those aspiring to be part of the nation’s next generation STEM workforce. NASA offers several opportunities for community college students to expand their horizons, make connections with agency experts, add valuable NASA experiences to their resumes, and home in on the types of STEM roles that best fit their skills and interests. Below are some of the exciting NASA activities and experiences available to community college students.
NASA Community College Aerospace ScholarsGet an introduction to NASA, its missions, and its workplace culture through NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS). This three-part series enables students to advance their knowledge of the agency, grow their STEM capabilities, interact with NASA experts, and learn about the different pathways to a NASA career.
Mission 1: Discover is a five-week, online orientation course that serves as an introduction to NASA.
Mission 2: Explore is a gamified mission to the Moon or Mars in which students develop a design solution while learning about the agency as a workplace.
Mission 3: Innovate is a three-week hybrid capstone project consisting of two weeks of online preparation and one week participating in a hands-on engineering design challenge at a NASA center.
NCAS begins with Mission 1 and students must complete each mission to be eligible for the next.
Members of a college student team monitor the performance of their robot during a NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) Mission 3: Innovate robotics competition.
NASA Student Challenges
NASA’s student challenges and competitions invite students across a range of ages and education levels to innovate and build solutions to many of the agency’s spaceflight and aviation needs – and community college students across the U.S. are eligible for many of these opportunities. In NASA’s Student Launch challenge, each team designs, builds, and tests a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload. In the MUREP Innovation Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTIC)Teams from U.S.-designated Minority-Serving Institutions, including community colleges, have the opportunity to brainstorm and pitch new commercial products based on NASA technology.
NASA’s student challenges and competitions are active at varying times throughout the year – new challenges are sometimes added, and existing opportunities evolve – so we recommend students visit the NASA STEM Opportunities and Activities page and research specific challenges to enable planning and preparation for future participation.
NASA’s Student Launch tasks student teams from across the U.S. to design, build, test, and launch a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload. The annual challenge culminates with a final launch in Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
NASA NASA RockOn! and RockSat Programs
Build an experiment and launch it aboard a sounding rocket! Through the hands-on RockOn! and RockSat programs, students gain experience designing and building an experiment to fly as a payload aboard a sounding rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. In RockOn!, small teams get an introduction to creating a sounding rocket experiment, while RockSat-C and RockSat-X are more advanced experiment flight opportunities.
Students watch as their experiments launch aboard a sounding rocket for the RockSat-X program from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Aug. 11, 2022, at 6:09 p.m. EDT. The Terrier-Improved Malemute rocket carried the experiments to an altitude of 99 miles before descending via a parachute and landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
NASA Wallops/Terry Zaperach NASA Internships
Be a part of the NASA team! With a NASA internship, students work side-by-side with agency experts, gaining authentic workforce experience while contributing to projects that align with NASA’s goals. Internships are available in a wide variety of disciplines in STEM and beyond, including communications, finance, and more. Each student has a NASA mentor to help guide and coach them through their internship.
NASA interns gain hands-on experience while contributing to agency projects under the guidance of a NASA mentor.
NASA National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program
The National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project, better known as Space Grant, is a national network of colleges and universities working to expand opportunities for students and the public to participate in NASA’s aeronautics and space projects. Each state has its own Space Grant Consortium that may provide STEM education and training programs; funding for scholarships and/or internships; and opportunities to take part in research projects, public outreach, state-level student challenges, and more. Programs, opportunities, and offerings vary by state; students should visit their state’s Space Grant Consortium website to find out about opportunities available near them.
Students from the Erie Huron Ottawa Vocational Education Career Center are pictured at the 3KVA Mobile Photovoltaic Power Plant at NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
NASA Additional Resources
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ESA Space Environment Report 2025
Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?
Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?
The European Space Agency’s short documentary film ‘Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?’ on the state of space debris premiered at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris on 1 April 2025.
Earth is surrounded by thousands of satellites carrying out important work to provide telecommunications and navigation services, help us understand our climate, and answer fundamental questions about the Universe.
However, as our use of space accelerates like never before, these satellites find themselves navigating increasingly congested orbits in an environment criss-crossed by streams of fast-moving debris fragments resulting from collisions, fragmentations and breakups in space.
Each fragment can damage additional satellites, with fears that a cascade of collisions may eventually render some orbits around Earth no longer useable. Additionally, the extent of the harm of the drastic increase in launches and number of objects re-entering our atmosphere and oceans is not yet known.
So, does space debris already represent a crisis?
The documentary explores the current situation in Earth’s orbits and explains the threat space debris poses to our future in space. It also outlines what might be done about space debris and how we might reach true sustainability in space, because our actions today will have consequences for generations to come.
ESA’s Space Safety Programme
ESA’s Space Safety Programme aims to safeguard the future of spaceflight and to keep us, Earth and our infrastructure on the ground and in space safe from hazards originating in space.
From asteroids and solar storms to the human-made problem of space debris, ESA works on missions and projects to understand the dangers and mitigate them.
In the longer term, to ensure a safe and sustainable future in space, ESA aims to establish a circular economy in space. To get there, the Agency is working on the technology development necessary to make in-orbit servicing and zero-debris spacecraft a reality.
Earth Bacteria Could Survive on the Moon for Decades
Could microbes survive in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the Moon? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the likelihood of long-term survival for microbes in the PSR areas of the Moon, which are craters located at the poles that don’t see sunlight due to the Moon’s small axial tilt. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand unlikely locations where they could find life as we know it throughout the solar system.
Sampling the Plumes of Jupiter’s Volcano Moon, Io
What can a sample return mission from Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, teach scientists about planetary and satellite (moon) formation and evolution? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an international team of more than two dozen scientists discussed the benefits and challenges of a mission to Io with the goal of sampling its volcanic plumes that eject from its surface on a regular basis.
Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step
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Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest to ours after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard’s is the nearest single star.
Key FactsBarnard’s Star, six light-years away, is notorious among astronomers for a history of false planet detections. But with the help of high-precision technology, the latest discovery — a family of four — appears to be solidly confirmed. The tiny size of the planets is also remarkable: Capturing evidence of small worlds at great distance is a tall order, even using state-of-the-art instruments and observational techniques.
DetailsWatching for wobbles in the light from a star is one of the leading methods for detecting exoplanets — planets orbiting other stars. This “radial velocity” technique tracks subtle shifts in the spectrum of starlight caused by the gravity of a planet pulling its star back and forth as the planet orbits. But tiny planets pose a major challenge: the smaller the planet, the smaller the pull. These four are each between about a fifth and a third as massive as Earth. Stars also are known to jitter and quake, creating background “noise” that potentially could swamp the comparatively quiet signals from smaller, orbiting worlds.
Astronomers measure the back-and-forth shifting of starlight in meters per second; in this case the radial velocity signals from all four planets amount to faint whispers — from 0.2 to 0.5 meters per second (a person walks at about 1 meter per second). But the noise from stellar activity is nearly 10 times larger at roughly 2 meters per second.
How to separate planet signals from stellar noise? The astronomers made detailed mathematical models of Barnard’s Star’s quakes and jitters, allowing them to recognize and remove those signals from the data collected from the star.
The new paper confirming the four tiny worlds — labeled b, c, d, and e — relies on data from MAROON-X, an “extreme precision” radial velocity instrument attached to the Gemini Telescope on the Maunakea mountaintop in Hawaii. It confirms the detection of the “b” planet, made with previous data from ESPRESSO, a radial velocity instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And the new work reveals three new sibling planets in the same system.
Fun FactsThese planets orbit their red-dwarf star much too closely to be habitable. The closest planet’s “year” lasts a little more than two days; for the farthest planet, it’s is just shy of seven days. That likely makes them too hot to support life. Yet their detection bodes well in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists say small, rocky planets like ours are probably the best places to look for evidence of life as we know it. But so far they’ve been the most difficult to detect and characterize. High-precision radial velocity measurements, combined with more sharply focused techniques for extracting data, could open new windows into habitable, potentially life-bearing worlds.
Barnard’s star was discovered in 1916 by Edward Emerson Barnard, a pioneering astrophotographer.
The DiscoverersAn international team of scientists led by Ritvik Basant of the University of Chicago published their paper on the discovery, “Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO,” in the science journal, “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” in March 2025. The planets were entered into the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 13, 2025.
Share Details Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Universe
Exoplanets
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Exoplanet Catalog
This exoplanet encyclopedia — continuously updated, with more than 5,600 entries — combines interactive 3D models and detailed data on…
Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step
- Exoplanets Home
- Exoplanets Overview
- Search for Life
- Discoveries
- Immersive
- News
- Resources
- More
Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest to ours after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard’s is the nearest single star.
Key FactsBarnard’s Star, six light-years away, is notorious among astronomers for a history of false planet detections. But with the help of high-precision technology, the latest discovery — a family of four — appears to be solidly confirmed. The tiny size of the planets is also remarkable: Capturing evidence of small worlds at great distance is a tall order, even using state-of-the-art instruments and observational techniques.
DetailsWatching for wobbles in the light from a star is one of the leading methods for detecting exoplanets — planets orbiting other stars. This “radial velocity” technique tracks subtle shifts in the spectrum of starlight caused by the gravity of a planet pulling its star back and forth as the planet orbits. But tiny planets pose a major challenge: the smaller the planet, the smaller the pull. These four are each between about a fifth and a third as massive as Earth. Stars also are known to jitter and quake, creating background “noise” that potentially could swamp the comparatively quiet signals from smaller, orbiting worlds.
Astronomers measure the back-and-forth shifting of starlight in meters per second; in this case the radial velocity signals from all four planets amount to faint whispers — from 0.2 to 0.5 meters per second (a person walks at about 1 meter per second). But the noise from stellar activity is nearly 10 times larger at roughly 2 meters per second.
How to separate planet signals from stellar noise? The astronomers made detailed mathematical models of Barnard’s Star’s quakes and jitters, allowing them to recognize and remove those signals from the data collected from the star.
The new paper confirming the four tiny worlds — labeled b, c, d, and e — relies on data from MAROON-X, an “extreme precision” radial velocity instrument attached to the Gemini Telescope on the Maunakea mountaintop in Hawaii. It confirms the detection of the “b” planet, made with previous data from ESPRESSO, a radial velocity instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And the new work reveals three new sibling planets in the same system.
Fun FactsThese planets orbit their red-dwarf star much too closely to be habitable. The closest planet’s “year” lasts a little more than two days; for the farthest planet, it’s is just shy of seven days. That likely makes them too hot to support life. Yet their detection bodes well in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists say small, rocky planets like ours are probably the best places to look for evidence of life as we know it. But so far they’ve been the most difficult to detect and characterize. High-precision radial velocity measurements, combined with more sharply focused techniques for extracting data, could open new windows into habitable, potentially life-bearing worlds.
Barnard’s star was discovered in 1916 by Edward Emerson Barnard, a pioneering astrophotographer.
The DiscoverersAn international team of scientists led by Ritvik Basant of the University of Chicago published their paper on the discovery, “Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO,” in the science journal, “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” in March 2025. The planets were entered into the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 13, 2025.
Share Details Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Universe
Exoplanets
Search for Life
Exoplanet Catalog
This exoplanet encyclopedia — continuously updated, with more than 5,600 entries — combines interactive 3D models and detailed data on…
Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’
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2 min read
Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’ NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the upcoming “boxwork” structures to its west, using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The ChemCam instrument studies the chemical composition of rocks and soil, using a laser to vaporize materials, then analyze their elemental composition using an on-board spectrograph. The ChemCam RMI is a high-resolution camera atop the rover’s mast. Curiosity captured this image on March 27, 2025 — Sol 4493, or Martian day 4,493 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:35:21 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025
Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as tight as they are, though, keeping the arm stowed freed up more time to check some lines off our rover’s weekend list. To do: SAM activity to exercise Oven 2 (check!), Navcam 360-degree “phase function” sky movie to monitor scattering of Martian clouds (check!), APXS atmospheric measurements of argon (check!), ChemCam passive sky measurements of oxygen (check!), and a drive of about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest (check!). Curiosity gets busy on the weekends so us PULs (Payload Uplink Leads) can do some lounging.
On the Mastcam team, we’ve been pretty busy in the layered sulfate unit. The rocks are rippled, layered, fractured, and surrounded by sandy troughs. Where did it all come from? What current and past processes are at play in this area? This weekend we’re collecting 70 images to help figure that out. ChemCam is helping by collecting chemistry measurements of the lowest block in this Navcam image, with two targets close by aptly named “Solana Beach” and “Del Mar.” To help conserve power, we’ve been trying to parallelize our activities as much as possible. Recently this means Mastcam has been taking images while ChemCam undergoes “TEC Cooling” (with the Thermo-Electric Cooler) to get as cold as possible before using their laser.
We’re all hoping the arm can come back from vacation next week.
Share Details Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 3 min read Visiting Mars on the Way to the Outer Solar SystemArticle
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Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Mars
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Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’
- Curiosity Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
2 min read
Sols 4495-4497: Yawn, Perched, and Rollin’ NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the upcoming “boxwork” structures to its west, using its Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). The ChemCam instrument studies the chemical composition of rocks and soil, using a laser to vaporize materials, then analyze their elemental composition using an on-board spectrograph. The ChemCam RMI is a high-resolution camera atop the rover’s mast. Curiosity captured this image on March 27, 2025 — Sol 4493, or Martian day 4,493 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:35:21 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANLWritten by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Earth planning date: Friday, March 28, 2025
Womp, womp. Another SRAP (Slip Risk Assessment Process) issue due to wheels being perched on these massive layered sulfate rocks. With our winter power constraints as tight as they are, though, keeping the arm stowed freed up more time to check some lines off our rover’s weekend list. To do: SAM activity to exercise Oven 2 (check!), Navcam 360-degree “phase function” sky movie to monitor scattering of Martian clouds (check!), APXS atmospheric measurements of argon (check!), ChemCam passive sky measurements of oxygen (check!), and a drive of about 50 meters (about 164 feet) to the southwest (check!). Curiosity gets busy on the weekends so us PULs can do some lounging.
On the Mastcam team, we’ve been pretty busy in the layered sulfate unit. The rocks are rippled, layered, fractured, and surrounded by sandy troughs. Where did it all come from? What current and past processes are at play in this area? This weekend we’re collecting 70 images to help figure that out. ChemCam is helping by collecting chemistry measurements of the lowest block in this Navcam image, with two targets close by aptly named “Solana Beach” and “Del Mar.” To help conserve power, we’ve been trying to parallelize our activities as much as possible. Recently this means Mastcam has been taking images while ChemCam undergoes “TEC Cooling” to get as cold as possible before using their laser.
We’re all hoping the arm can come back from vacation next week.
Share Details Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 3 min read Visiting Mars on the Way to the Outer Solar SystemArticle
4 days ago
2 min read Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around
Article
4 days ago
2 min read Sols 4491-4492: Classic Field Geology Pose
Article
5 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…
SpaceX launches private Fram2 astronauts on historic spaceflight over Earth's poles
ARMD Solicitations (ULI Proposals Invited)
7 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA / Lillian Gipson/Getty Images
This ARMD solicitations page compiles the opportunities to collaborate with NASA’s aeronautical innovators and/or contribute to their research to enable new and improved air transportation systems. A summary of available opportunities with key dates requiring action are listed first. More information about each opportunity is detailed lower on this page.
University Leadership Initiative
Step-A proposals due by June 26, 2025.
University Student Research Challenge
Proposals for Cycle 3 are due by June 26, 2025.
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations is using this request for information to identify technologies that address current challenges facing the wildland firefighting community. NASA is seeking information on data collection, airborne connectivity and communications solutions, unmanned aircraft systems traffic management, aircraft operations and autonomy, and more. This will support development of a partnership strategy for future collaborative demonstrations.
Interested parties were requested to respond to this notice with an information package no later than 4 pm ET, October 15, 2023, that shall be submitted via https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/acero-rfi. Any proprietary information must be clearly marked. Submissions will be accepted only from United States companies.
View the full RFI Announcement here.
Advanced Air Mobility MissionGENERAL ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY
ANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
This request for information (RFI) is being used to gather market research for NASA to make informed decisions regarding potential partnership strategies and future research to enable Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). NASA is seeking information from public, private, and academic organizations to determine technical needs and community interests that may lead to future solicitations regarding AAM research and development.
This particular RFI is just one avenue of multiple planned opportunities for formal feedback on or participation in NASA’s AAM Mission-related efforts to develop these requirements and help enable AAM.
The respond by date for this RFI closed on Feb. 1, 2025, at 6 p.m. EST.
View the full RFI announcement here.
NASA Research Opportunities in AeronauticsNASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) uses the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) process to solicit proposals for foundational research in areas where ARMD seeks to enhance its core capabilities.
Competition for NRA awards is open to both academia and industry.
The current open solicitation for ARMD Research Opportunities is ROA-2023 and ROA-2024.
Here is some general information to know about the NRA process.
- NRA solicitations are released by NASA Headquarters through the Web-based NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES).
- All NRA technical work is defined and managed by project teams within these four programs: Advanced Air Vehicles Program, Airspace Operations and Safety Program, Integrated Aviation Systems Program, and Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program.
- NRA awards originate from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, Ames Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.
- Competition for NRA awards is full and open.
- Participation is open to all categories of organizations, including educational institutions, industry, and nonprofits.
- Any updates or amendments to an NRA is posted on the appropriate NSPIRES web pages as noted in the Amendments detailed below.
- ARMD sends notifications of NRA updates through the NSPIRES email system. In order to receive these email notifications, you must be a Registered User of NSPIRES. However, note that NASA is not responsible for inadvertently failing to provide notification of a future NRA. Parties are responsible for regularly checking the NSPIRES website for updated NRAs.
Amendment 1
Amendment 1 to the NASA ARMD Research Opportunities in Aeronautics (ROA) 2024 NRA has been posted on the NSPIRES web site at https://nspires.nasaprs.com.
The announcement solicits proposals from accredited U.S. institutions for research training grants to begin the academic year. This NOFO is designed to support independently conceived research projects by highly qualified graduate students, in disciplines needed to help advance NASA’s mission, thus affording these students the opportunity to directly contribute to advancements in STEM-related areas of study. AAVP Fellowship Opportunities are focused on innovation and the generation of measurable research results that contribute to NASA’s current and future science and technology goals.
Research proposals are sought to address key challenges provided in Elements of Appendix A.8.
Notices of Intent (NOIs) are not required.
A budget breakdown for each proposal is required, detailing the allocation of the award funds by year. The budget document may adhere to any format or template provided by the applicant’s institution.
Proposals were due by April 30, 2024, at 5 PM ET.
Amendment 2
UPDATED ON MARCH 31, 2025
University Leadership Initiative (ULI) provides the opportunity for university teams to exercise technical and organizational leadership in proposing unique technical challenges in aeronautics, defining multi-disciplinary solutions, establishing peer review mechanisms, and applying innovative teaming strategies to strengthen the research impact.
Research proposals are sought in six ULI topic areas in Appendix D.4.
Topic 1: Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations (Strategic Thrust 1)
Topic 2: Innovation in Commercial High-Speed Aircraft (Strategic Thrust 2)
Topic 3: Ultra-Efficient Subsonic Transports (Strategic Thrust 3)
Topic 4: Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles (Strategic Thrust 4)
Topic 5: In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance (Strategic Thrust 5)
Topic 6: Assured Autonomy for Aviation Transformation (Strategic Thrust 6)
This NRA will utilize a two-step proposal submission and evaluation process. The initial step is a short mandatory Step-A proposal, which is due June 26, 2025. Those offerors submitting the most highly rated Step-A proposals will be invited to submit a Step-B proposal. All proposals must be submitted electronically through NSPIRES at https://nspires.nasaprs.com. An Applicant’s Workshop will be held on Thursday April 30, 2025; 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET (https://uli.arc.nasa.gov/applicants-workshops/workshop9) (Page will be live closer to the event.)
An interested partners list for this ULI is at https://uli.arc.nasa.gov/partners. To be listed as an interested lead or partner, please send electronic mail to hq-univpartnerships@mail.nasa.gov with “ULI Partnerships” in the subject line and include the information required for the table in that web page.
Amendment 3
Commercial Supersonic Technology seeks proposals for a fuel injector design concept and fabrication for testing at NASA Glenn Research Center.
The proposal for the fuel injector design aims to establish current state-of-the-art in low NOx supersonic cruise while meeting reasonable landing take-off NOx emissions. The technology application timeline is targeted for a supersonic aircraft with entry into service in the 2035+ timeframe.
These efforts are in alignment with activities in the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate as outlined in the NASA Aeronautics Strategic Implementation Plan, specifically Strategic Thrust 2: Innovation in Commercial High-Speed Aircraft.
Proposals were due by May 31, 2024 at 5 pm EDT.
Amendment 4
UPDATED ON JANUARY 16, 2025
University Student Research Challenge seeks to challenge students to propose new ideas/concepts that are relevant to NASA Aeronautics. USRC will provide students, from accredited U.S. colleges or universities, with grants for their projects and with the challenge of raising cost share funds through a crowdfunding campaign. The process of creating and implementing a crowdfunding campaign acts as a teaching accelerator – requiring students to act like entrepreneurs and raise awareness about their research among the public.
The solicitation goal can be accomplished through project ideas such as advancing the design, developing technology or capabilities in support of aviation, by demonstrating a novel concept, or enabling advancement of aeronautics-related technologies.
Notices of Intent are not required for this solicitation.
Proposals for Cycle 3 are due June 26, 2025.
Proposals can also be submitted later and evaluated in the second and third cycles.
The USRC Q&A/Info Session and Proposal Workshop will be held on the days/times below. Please join us on TEAMS using the Meeting Link, or call in via +1 256-715-9946,,317928116#.
USRC CycleInformation Session/Q&A DateProposal Due DateCycle 1Sept. 20, 2024 at 2 pm ETNov. 7, 2024Cycle 2Jan. 27, 2025 at 2 pm ETMarch 13, 2025Cycle 3May 12, 2024 at 2 pm ETJune 26, 2025 Keep Exploring See More About NASA AeronauticsAeronautics STEM
Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate
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Aeronáutica en español
Share Details Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactJim Bankejim.banke@nasa.gov Related TermsARMD Solicitations (ULI Proposals Invited)
7 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA / Lillian Gipson/Getty ImagesThis ARMD solicitations page compiles the opportunities to collaborate with NASA’s aeronautical innovators and/or contribute to their research to enable new and improved air transportation systems. A summary of available opportunities with key dates requiring action are listed first. More information about each opportunity is detailed lower on this page.
University Leadership Initiative
Step-A proposals due by June 26, 2025.
University Student Research Challenge
Proposals for Cycle 3 are due by June 26, 2025.
GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations is using this request for information to identify technologies that address current challenges facing the wildland firefighting community. NASA is seeking information on data collection, airborne connectivity and communications solutions, unmanned aircraft systems traffic management, aircraft operations and autonomy, and more. This will support development of a partnership strategy for future collaborative demonstrations.
Interested parties were requested to respond to this notice with an information package no later than 4 pm ET, October 15, 2023, that shall be submitted via https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/acero-rfi. Any proprietary information must be clearly marked. Submissions will be accepted only from United States companies.
View the full RFI Announcement here.
Advanced Air Mobility MissionGENERAL ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY
ANNOUNCEMENT OF REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
This request for information (RFI) is being used to gather market research for NASA to make informed decisions regarding potential partnership strategies and future research to enable Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). NASA is seeking information from public, private, and academic organizations to determine technical needs and community interests that may lead to future solicitations regarding AAM research and development.
This particular RFI is just one avenue of multiple planned opportunities for formal feedback on or participation in NASA’s AAM Mission-related efforts to develop these requirements and help enable AAM.
The respond by date for this RFI closed on Feb. 1, 2025, at 6 p.m. EST.
View the full RFI announcement here.
NASA Research Opportunities in AeronauticsNASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) uses the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) process to solicit proposals for foundational research in areas where ARMD seeks to enhance its core capabilities.
Competition for NRA awards is open to both academia and industry.
The current open solicitation for ARMD Research Opportunities is ROA-2023 and ROA-2024.
Here is some general information to know about the NRA process.
- NRA solicitations are released by NASA Headquarters through the Web-based NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES).
- All NRA technical work is defined and managed by project teams within these four programs: Advanced Air Vehicles Program, Airspace Operations and Safety Program, Integrated Aviation Systems Program, and Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program.
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Share Details Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactJim Bankejim.banke@nasa.gov Related Terms#749: Dark Energy Changing Over Time
We thought Dark Energy was constant with time, but new results from DESI say maybe not, and honestly, if it wasn’t constant the Hubble Tension would be a whole lot easier to solve.
Show Notes- Hubble Tension Definition
- Historical Debate & the current state
- Cosmological Constant Rediscovery
- Dark Energy Implication
- Implications for Dark Energy
- New Physics Possibility
- Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
- Black Hole Growth Model
- Dark Energy Evidence
- DESI’s Contributions
- Dark Energy Evolution
- Exciting Developments in Cosmology
- Upcoming Observatories and Missions
- Scientific Progress and Openness
Fraser Cain: AstronomyCast, Episode 749, is Dark Energy Changing Over Time. Welcome to AstronomyCast, our 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 Cain, 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. Hey Pamela, how are you doing?
Good.
Dr. Pamela Gay: I am feeling like I wasted my weekend by doing nothing but reading a book, but at the same time that was like the absolute best way I could spend my weekend.
Fraser Cain: Yes.
Dr. Pamela Gay: So folks, there are books out there. Yes. Read them.
I’m currently reading Ancillary Justice and it’s two sequels, I did not know it was a trilogy.
Fraser Cain: That’s on my list.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah, I really want to read that book.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Pamela Gay: It’s totally worth it.
Fraser Cain: Okay.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Occasionally you have to go back and re-read things because the context changes on you and it’s like, oh.
Fraser Cain: Oh, so you have to concentrate?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Oh, that’s a big ask right now, but sure.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah, it’s like that and the giddy and the ninth books require concentration, but they’re all totally worth it. No regrets. So I would like to say to all of you, if you, like me, need to occasionally escape this timeline, I’m not sure how we landed on books.
Fraser Cain: Yes. Read a book. It’s good for you.
The Hubble tension is a vexing problem, with astronomers measuring the expansion of the Universe at different points in its history and getting different results. Errors have mostly been ruled out, which leaves the potential for new physics. Has the strength of dark energy been changing over time?
And we will talk about it in a second, but it’s time for a break. And we’re back. So I guess we should first explain the Hubble tension, the crisis in cosmology, and then we can use that then to continue on this conversation.
So what is the Hubble tension?
Dr. Pamela Gay: All right. So since Edwin Hubble figured out that our Universe is expanding, people have been trying to figure out at what rate it’s been expanding. And there has always been debate.
When I was an undergraduate, they were like, it’s somewhere between 50 and 100, and we’re going to use 100, because that makes the math easier, like literally professors would say that.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. Who doesn’t love easy math?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah, exactly. By the time I got into graduate school, they were like, it’s probably between 60 and 80, and it’s been slowly narrowing down ever since. And the tension at that point in time was not called the Hubble tension, it was called the debate.
And there was always multiple people yelling at each other in the literature, usually calling each other…
Fraser Cain: Politely, academically?
Dr. Pamela Gay: No.
Fraser Cain: No? They’re mean about it?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah, super mean. People didn’t want to be in the same place as each other, levels of yelling at each other. De Vaucouleurs was a small Frenchman with a loud voice who apparently by sheer force of will maintained the debate until he died.
Fraser Cain: Wow.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah. So, finally, De Vaucouleurs died. We thought we were on a path to figuring this out.
The arguments, Alan Sandage was the other person on that debate. Things seemed to be calming down. We got the WMAP data, we had the supernova data trickling in, trickling in.
Sorry, it wasn’t WMAP at this point. We had other microwave data before that. So things were coming in.
It was looking good. And then in 1998, two different supernovae programs. This was the HI-Z Supernova Program and the Supernova Cosmology Project.
I both realized, oh, expletive. If you do a plot of supernova apparent brightness versus distance, and they should all have the same luminosity. So how bright something appears tells you how far away it is.
So if you do brightness versus redshift, that tells you the expansion rate of the universe. And they were expecting a straight line, or they were expecting the expansion of the universe to be slowing with time as gravity slowed it back down. But both surveys found that instead of the universe slowing with time, instead of the universe being constantly expanding with time, our universe has decided it is going to accelerate and expand faster with time, which was not on the menu.
Fraser Cain: Right. Nobel Prize is all around.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Nobel Prize is all around. In 2011, so the paper came out in 98, and 2011 already they got the Nobel Prize, which is pretty darn fast. So this led to the realization that we need to be even more careful in how we make these measurements to try and figure out what’s going on.
Because we name things without understanding them, the name dark energy was given to whatever the thing is that’s pushing the universe apart. When they ran the equations looking at the mass energy distribution of the universe, they figured out 68% of the mass energy distribution is dark energy, 27% is dark matter, and the remaining 5% is the normal baryonic matter like we’re made of.
Fraser Cain: Right. Right. I mean, I think it’s important to distinguish for people that you get this measurement of the expansion rate of the universe, this Hubble constant, and this has been measured nearby using Cepheid variables, and they get one number, 73, was it megaparsecs?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Kilometers per second per megaparsec.
Fraser Cain: Kilometers per second per megaparsec. And then when you do the same measurements in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, you get more like 67, 68.
Dr. Pamela Gay: I thought they were both in the 70s now?
Fraser Cain: No, no.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Sorry, both in the 60s rather. I thought they were both in the 60s.
Fraser Cain: No, no. 73 for the Cepheids and 68-ish, 67 and a half for the CMB. But for the longest time, the error bars overlapped, and so you could say, well, it’s probably somewhere in between.
But most recently, thanks to the Planck mission, you got the most accurate measurement of the CMB version. And thanks to James Webb and Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess continuing his work, he was able to narrow it down. It’s like 73.0. The error bars are almost gone, and the error bars don’t overlap. But I hope people understand, if dark energy is this force that is appearing in the universe over time as there is more universe, then you would expect those numbers to diverge because you’re getting this accelerating expansion in the universe. But this is accounted for, right? This is the expansion subtracting the dark energy.
Dr. Pamela Gay: So the Hubble constant we’re looking at is the current expansion rate of the universe. So when you run the equations, you are supposed to be able to run things backwards to get to the Big Bang. We have various signposts, like when the Cosmic Microwave Background formed, that you can’t really move around in time very much.
And so the idea was that you should be able to look at the hot and cold spots in the microwave background. We know exactly when those should have appeared the moment the universe became neutral. We know exactly how big they should be, based on the mean free path that photons could travel.
And that should allow us to calculate, knowing the geometry of the universe, knowing when that occurred, what the expansion rate is by how big they appear.
Fraser Cain: All right, we’re going to continue this conversation, but it is time for another break. And we’re back. So this all assumes that dark energy is a constant in the universe.
And let’s understand what that means by a constant in the universe.
Dr. Pamela Gay: It’s one of the weirdest things.
Fraser Cain: There’s more dark energy now than there was early on in the universe, right? So how can you have constant dark energy, but now have more dark energy?
Dr. Pamela Gay: It’s constant density. So from looking at all of the initial dark energy measurements that are looking at the past few billion years, it looked like the rate of change in the expansion rate was constant. And it implied that every cubic meter of the universe has about a proton of energy in it, give or take, and that that amount of energy per cubic meter was constant.
And so the more cubic meters you add to the universe, the more dark energy there is, because there’s more universe with more cubic meters.
Fraser Cain: Got it. So the more universe that opens up thanks to the expansion and the acceleration, thanks to dark energy, the more you get more of that pushing force that’s coming from all that additional space that’s been created. And so then, once we learned about the Hubble tension and once we saw that the error bars had overlapped, then astronomers needed to look for new physics as one possibility.
If we know that the measurements are accurate and they’ve been double checked and triple checked, then where do the new physics, what kinds of new physics would explain this?
Dr. Pamela Gay: So we were looking for basically three different potential solutions. The most straightforward and least likely, as near as we can tell, is that we don’t understand gravity, that gravity at the largest scales doesn’t work the way we suspect it does. And we know from the fact that general relativity breaks down in the cores of black holes that there is something lacking in our understanding of gravity.
We know from the fact that we can’t unify gravity with the other forces that there’s something different in how we need to understand it than the way we currently understand it.
Fraser Cain: Right. But our observations of gravity at the largest scales, at the smallest scales, hold consistent.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah. So the only place that gravity so far doesn’t work so well for us is the cores of black holes. So the next place that we start looking is maybe our observations are foobarred.
And Adam Riess has single-handedly been driving the entire field to re-evaluate in excruciatingly painful detail all possible errors in our measurements of all standard candles. So our understanding of what is the period luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables has been re-examined in excruciating detail.
Fraser Cain: With Webb.
Dr. Pamela Gay: With everything over time. He has figured out how to do things with Hubble. Hubble was not designed for to get better photometry out of it.
Right.
Fraser Cain: But every time a new tool appears, he says, let me just check the distance ladder with that tool, please. And has made the most accurate version. He did it for Cepheid variables and he recently completed it for Type 20 supernova.
If something better comes along, he’ll use that too.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah. And so far that hasn’t been a source of error that we can rely on. Which is a really strange statement.
But like we want to find some source of error that is systematic over distance that allows us to know that the supernovae results or something are wrong. So we just haven’t found that. So then the next place to look is, OK, if if we go and we look in even greater detail than what we’re currently doing, if we push our measurements back further in the universe, if we look at earlier times, can we bridge between the cosmological results from the baryon acoustic oscillations, the hot and cold spots in the cosmological background?
Can we bridge that result with our modern results just by starting to fill in more of the data? Right.
Fraser Cain: And there’s like a six billion light year gap, six billion year gap between where the Type 20 supernovae end and where the CMB begins. And there just isn’t anything great in that. People look at quasars, people consider gravitational waves from colliding black holes and these get you part of the way.
But their error bars are too big that they’re not helpful in resolving this issue.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And so we occasionally find one off good things that we can use the timing of gravitationally lens multiple time background galaxies, things like that. But there’s just not enough of this. So the slow and study work we’re doing, because when all else fails, do the slow and study really hard stuff.
This is where the dark energy spectroscopic instrument. This is where the Nancy Grace Roman telescope, all of these instruments are being built to slowly and carefully map out the positions of millions and millions of galaxies going back in time to look at the evolution of the large scale structure of the universe.
Fraser Cain: We just got an image from the Euclid mission, which is also a part of this team where they had done their version of their first version of the deep field, which is kind of like the Hubble deep field. I think Hubble deep field, its original one, gave us 100000 galaxies in this little spot in the sky. You could give us 26 million galaxies in a lot of galaxies in its deep field.
So the capability of the we’ve got the right tools at the right time for the right mystery. And we will continue this conversation in a second, but it’s time for another break and we’re back. All right.
So we’re going to talk about Desi and we’re going to talk about some of the other ones as well. But the question I guess is if dark energy changes over time, then that will beautifully explain this discrepancy between what we saw in the CMB and what we see today. Because the amount of dark matter, dark energy, the amount of dark energy flowing into the universe could have been variable and then done.
You have your explanation.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And this is where researchers, theorists in particular, are working really hard to see was there something that happened around when the cosmic microwave background formed between then and when the universe was a couple of billion years old? Was there something in that window where some force came into being that hadn’t previously existed that can explain this? And one of the things that like I totally went down a rabbit hole one weekend, I messaged you this could be a Nobel Prize.
There’s a team looking at the way that we model black holes in the Robertson-Walker metric and they were looking at how our models weren’t correctly taking into account rotation. There’d been some assumptions made to simplify things and reworking their equations, adding in details instead of assumptions. They were able to come up with a model that basically said the formation of black holes coupled to space-time allows black holes to grow faster than current models would have predicted and that in the process of them growing, this would be counterbalanced with a repulsive dark energy-like force.
And looking at data, they were able to go through and seemingly demonstrate that black holes had grown in ways that weren’t predicted by the morphology of the galaxies that they occupied. But there’s also a whole bunch of papers in the literature saying no, no, they cherry-picked, they cherry-picked, don’t go there. And so we’re now in this point where, yes, there are clearly some black holes that are not what we would have expected, but there’s others that aren’t.
What does this mean? Is this the right road to go down? And maybe, but probably incomplete at this point.
Fraser Cain: And it’s pretty weird to imagine that the bigger the black holes are, there’s some connection between black holes and dark energy. I’ve interviewed people who have been pitching the science and I’m like, okay, so what’s the mechanism? And they’re like, we don’t know.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah, it falls out of the math. That’s all we know is it falls out of the math.
Fraser Cain: Yeah, yeah. All we see is that there’s a correlation. Yeah.
And so I think, you know, bringing the story back around, there’s where DESI, you know, from the dark energy spectroscopic instrument, you get this. This correlation seems to be there. But, but in more general, the, the, you know, we’re, we’ve gotten the first data results from DESI, the first of what will become many years of this there, this is their first crack at it.
And that you are seeing support for the model that dark energy is variable and not constant. And this is, and this is being revealed in the data that is getting released from DESI.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And this is based on the distribution of large scale structure as a function of time, looking at the distribution of galaxies in the DESI sample.
Fraser Cain: Right. And so one thing, and that’s the gold standard.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Right. That, that seeing the large, seeing the expansion of the large scale structures in the universe, what began as those baryonic acoustic oscillations, as you mentioned, those hot and cold spots turned into filaments of galaxies at the largest scales that we see today. And as we watch those expand as dark energy is pushing them apart, that is the, that is the gold standard.
That is the one that is the hardest to explain by any other system. The one that, you know, you may say, okay, great. We figured out how dark energy works.
We figured out how dark matter works. You know, maybe it’s just, we don’t understand gravity. We’ll explain those large structures accelerating away from each other in all directions.
So I just wanted to sort of like, what’s exciting about DESI is how this reinforces this idea that dark energy is increasing using the most important observations that tell us that these things are happening.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And they’re not just looking at the bright galaxies and quasars. They’re also looking at the dark Lyman alpha forest lines. So cold gas will absorb the continuum light from background galaxies as it passes through in the Lyman alpha transition.
This is the one to two transition in the hydrogen atom. And so what you have is wherever there is a blob of cold material between us and a distant quasar or light source, basically, that light from the distant source will end up with a forest of lines created at the red shifts of each of these clouds. So this Lyman alpha forest allows us to map out the locations of more than just the bright emission line galaxies that is what we’re normally looking at.
So with DESI, we’re seeing a mapping of the distribution of mass as both the luminous galaxies and the Lyman alpha forest gas clouds.
Fraser Cain: And so then if dark energy was changing over time, what would that sort of, how would that change manifest itself? Like would it have started stronger in the beginning and then been and then been reducing over time?
Dr. Pamela Gay: So what they’re finding is that that is what it seems to be hinting at. And this is like a three to four sigma result. This is not the gold standard six sigma we dream of.
Fraser Cain: To be fair, three sigma is ninety nine point seven percent. Four sigma is ninety nine point nine five percent. And those are pretty good.
Dr. Pamela Gay: The issue is that there’s multiple solutions that fit equally well at that level. So their results, if you only look at the galaxies, are completely fit by the lambda cold dark matter models where we assume a set amount of dark energy. We assume dark matter has a certain temperature distribution.
Let the universe go. That still works. But when you start to combine what they’re seeing with the supernova results, what they’re seeing with other cosmological results, everything together seems to maybe we’re waiting for more data releases, fit better with a dropping over time amount of dark energy.
Fraser Cain: Wow. So like big rip averted?
Dr. Pamela Gay: Maybe, we don’t know. I mean, that’s the crazy thing is, is we’re at a point in time where like the thing we we could use most to get rid of the Hubble tension is something that that births dark energy like Athena from Zeus’s skull sometime after the formation of the cosmic background and then allows it to taper off over time. So if you have dark energy springing into existence and then petering out, that will get us a universe that may avoid a big rip and may also avoid the Hubble tension.
And theorists are grasping at straws. When I had my this set of research papers could lead to a Nobel Prize, false reading of the literature because I cherry picked what I was reading. I tweeted, and as you do, and another researcher was, well, no, I actually, yes, anything that can explain dark energy and come into existence at roughly the one billion year point in the universe, everyone’s going to jump on that.
Anything that suddenly starts to exist about that point is going to get blamed for being dark energy.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. And I think like this is going to sound super weird, but having a constant amount of dark energy is a perfectly understandable outcome you could have for the universe that we know that there are quantum fluctuations that are going on across the universe, that the very nature of space time itself is this bubbling, roiling mass of quantum fluctuations. And so if you have a cubic meter of space, then you’re going to have all of, you know, you think of this, this idea of like virtual particles popping in and out of existence, that this is what space time does.
And then you could then say, well, and that makes sense then that, that these, this roiling quantum fluctuations is an outward force that pushes. We know that it can cause the Casimir effect. So we know that there’s, that this force can exist.
And so you’d be like, yeah, that, you know, that, that makes sense. And yet. But for it to be very, for it to have appeared at a random time and for it to be declining over time, that is hard to explain.
And the theorists, as you say, have got their, their work cut out for them now.
Dr. Pamela Gay: And, and this is where, like you were saying, we’re only on the second data release for the, the DESI team. Roman hasn’t launched yet. Euclid’s just starting to return data.
Fraser Cain: Ruben doesn’t show up till the end of the year.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Yeah. SpaceX just launched.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: So there, there are five, six powerful missions and ground-based observatories that are going to be able to come together and give us the most definitive answer to this question. But we are seeing the early glimpse. We’re seeing the preview.
We’re seeing some of the cameos. And we’re excited already about this show, but we got to just wait for all of those data to finally come in. And we are, but I feel like five years from now, we will have a real, like we will look back on, on past us’s and go, you simple children.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Well, I just love the fact that, that since the Nobel prize came out, while we were already recording this show, we’ve gone from dark energy is constant with time to, and, and that, that change is fabulous. And, and when you gave us the title for, for this week’s show, dark energy changing with time, it was just like, over time, our understanding has changed and over time it may be changing. And this is all just excellent.
And I love every moment of it.
Fraser Cain: And like, again, to the people who think that scientists are trying, are living in some kind of dogmatic hegemony where they just chant from the scriptures, the accepted truths that have been handed down for generations. Like, no, they love it. They love the change.
They love to see new evidence and they love to change their minds and, and consider the possibilities as new evidence comes in. But they also place a high bar for where things must stand to be convincing. And, and now.
Dr. Pamela Gay: We do find hills to die on. Sanditian Devocalors each had a hill that they did literally die upon.
Fraser Cain: Right, right. But most don’t. And I think most love the, the greatest delight is to be proven wrong.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Yeah.
Fraser Cain: Thank you, Pamela.
Dr. Pamela Gay: Thank you, Fraser. And thank you so much to all our patrons out there. This week, I would like to thank Keith Murray, Thomas Gazzetta, Steve Rootley, Maxim Lovett, Bebop Apocalypse, Dr. Woe, Danny McGlitchie, Jean-Baptiste Lemontier, Frodo Slavo, who’s given up on trying to teach me how to pronounce his name. I’m so sorry. Just Me and the Cat, Van Ruckman, TC Starboy, Michael Prichata, Burigowin Boreantrolevsval, Ed David, Buzz Parsek, Joe Holstein, Kenneth Ryan, WandererM101, Felix Goot, Dr. Jeff Collins, Greg Davis, MHW1961, Supersymmetrical, Bart Flaherty, Matthew Horstman, J. Alex Anderson, Kimberly Reich, James Roger, Scott Bieber, Daniel Loosley, Greg Vylde, Mark Steven Raznick, Janelle, Michelle Cullen, The Air Major, The Big Squish Squash, Justin Proctor, Don Mundus, Mark Phillips, Larry Dotz, Stephen Miller, Paul Esposito, Ron Thorson, and Daniel Donaldson. Thank you all so very much. Thanks, everyone.
And we will see you next week. Bye. AstronomyCast is a joint product of Universe Today and the Planetary Science Institute.
AstronomyCast is released under a Creative Commons attribution license. So love it, share it and remix it. But please credit it to our hosts, Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our website, AstronomyCast.com. This episode was brought to you thanks to our generous patrons on Patreon. If you want to help keep this show going, please consider joining our community at Patreon.com slash AstronomyCast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up.
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