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Meet the SpaceX Crew-10 astronauts launching to the ISS on March 12
Dozens of dinosaur footprints found in rock at Australian school
Dozens of dinosaur footprints found in rock at Australian school
Kansas Tuberculosis Outbreak Emphasizes the Importance of Public Health Infrastructure
On COVID’s fifth anniversary, the U.S. is facing an outbreak of tuberculosis in Kansas that makes strong public health systems as important as ever.
Astronomers crack the case of a mysterious deep space radio signal that repeats every 2 hours
Scientists discover smallest galaxy ever seen: 'It's like having a perfectly functional human being that's the size of a grain of rice'
NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning
NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx lifted off at 8:10 p.m. PDT on March 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Riding with SPHEREx aboard the Falcon 9 were four small satellites that make up the agency’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study how the Sun’s outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.
“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending both SPHEREx and PUNCH up on a single rocket doubles the opportunities to do incredible science in space,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Congratulations to both mission teams as they explore the cosmos from far-out galaxies to our neighborhood star. I am excited to see the data returned in the years to come.”
Ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages SPHEREx, established communications with the space observatory at 9:31 p.m. PDT. The observatory will begin its two-year prime mission after a roughly one-month checkout period, during which engineers and scientists will make sure the spacecraft is working properly.
“The fact our amazing SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their remarkable commitment to deepening humanity’s understanding of our universe,” said Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL. “We now eagerly await the scientific breakthroughs from SPHEREx’s all-sky survey — including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside.”
The PUNCH satellites successfully separated about 53 minutes after launch, and ground controllers have established communication with all four PUNCH spacecraft. Now, PUNCH begins a 90-day commissioning period where the four satellites will enter the correct orbital formation, and the instruments will be calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before the scientists start to analyze images of the solar wind.
The two missions are designed to operate in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit over the day-night line (also known as the terminator) so the Sun always remains in the same position relative to the spacecraft. This is essential for SPHEREx to keep its telescope shielded from the Sun’s light and heat (both would inhibit its observations) and for PUNCH to have a clear view in all directions around the Sun.
To achieve its wide-ranging science goals, SPHEREx will create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months, providing a wide perspective to complement the work of space telescopes that observe smaller sections of the sky in more detail, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.
The mission will use a technique called spectroscopy to measure the distance to 450 million galaxies in the nearby universe. Their large-scale distribution was subtly influenced by an event that took place almost 14 billion years ago known as inflation, which caused the universe to expand in size a trillion-trillionfold in a fraction of a second after the big bang. The mission also will measure the total collective glow of all the galaxies in the universe, providing new insights about how galaxies have formed and evolved over cosmic time.
Spectroscopy also can reveal the composition of cosmic objects, and SPHEREx will survey our home galaxy for hidden reservoirs of frozen water ice and other molecules, like carbon dioxide, that are essential to life as we know it.
“Questions like ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘Are we alone?’ have been asked by humans for all of history,” said James Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think it’s incredible that we are alive at a time when we have the scientific tools to actually start to answer them.”
NASA’s PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.
“The space between planets is not an empty void. It’s full of turbulent solar wind that washes over Earth,” said Craig DeForest, the mission’s principal investigator, at the Southwest Research Institute. “The PUNCH mission is designed to answer basic questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds, and how they give rise to dangerous space weather events right here on Earth.”
More About SPHEREx, PUNCH
The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) leads the PUNCH mission and built the four spacecraft and Wide Field Imager instruments at its headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The Narrow Field Imager instrument was built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. The mission is operated from SwRI’s offices in Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, provided the launch service for SPHEREx and PUNCH.
For more about NASA’s science missions, visit:
-end-
Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov
Calla Cofield – SPHEREx
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier – PUNCH
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
SpaceX rocket launches NASA SPHEREx space telescope and PUNCH solar probes (video)
Sols 4475-4476: Even the Best-Laid Plans
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Sols 4475-4476: Even the Best-Laid Plans NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of “Gould Mesa,” named for a hill near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, using its Right Navigation Camera on March 6, 2025 — sol 4472, or Martian day 4,472 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 01:37:17 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, March 7, 2025
In Curiosity’s last plan, the team decided to drive toward a very interesting nodular rock. The rover team hoped to do a detailed study of its surface texture over the weekend. However, Curiosity did not receive its expected Friday morning downlink of images taken after its drive. The MSL team did receive a tiny bit of data confirming that Curiosity’s drive finished as expected. Unfortunately, without images to determine exactly where Curiosity was located relative to its intended destination, the team was unable to do any instrument pointing at nearby objects, known as “targeted” observations. However, the rover team showed its resilience by filling the weekend plan with a full slate of fascinating remote observations of the terrain and sky around Curiosity’s current perch, high in the canyons of Mount Sharp. Our science and instrument teams always keep a list of backup observations close at hand — frequently those taking too much time to fit in a typical sol plan — in case they get an unexpected opportunity to use them!
On sol 4475, Curiosity will start its first science block midday with two back-to-back dust-devil surveys with Navcam. These searches for Martian whirlwinds will be followed by a measurement of atmospheric dust with Mastcam. Mastcam will then do its first large panorama image of the plan, an 11×3 mosaic starboard of the rover to document bedrock and regolith in an area with a dark band of material seen from orbit. This long observation will be followed by an AEGIS activity, using Navcam to find targets for ChemCam’s laser spectrograph. Curiosity will then repeat its post-drive imaging at high quality, hopefully to be received at JPL before Monday’s planning day. In the evening, APXS will do atmospheric composition studies for several hours.
The next day will be a “soliday,” without any observations. Early in the morning of sol 4476, Mastcam will take its second large panorama, which will be a fantastic 37×4 mosaic of sunrise on the slopes of Gould Mesa (see image). In the afternoon, there will be a Mastcam dust measurement, ChemCam calibration observation, ChemCam passive sky, and two more dust-devil surveys. The next morning, there will be a set of Navcam cloud movies, a dust measurement, and sky phase function observations to support the Mars aphelion cloud-belt campaign. On sol 4477, we will use the post-drive imaging taken over the weekend to plan contact science, then drive away from this location on sol 4478, continuing Curiosity’s journey toward the mysterious boxwork features to the west.
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Is Europa Alive? A Laser Could Detect Biosignatures from Space
Of all the moons in the Solar System, Europa is perhaps one of the most fascinating. With a thick ice shell surrounding a subsurface ocean, astrobiologists hope maybe there is life down there! Finding a way through the ice to explore what’s below is one of the biggest challenges. It’s possible however that the vital chemicals from life could find their way to the surface and through out into space. A new paper proposes an ultraviolet laser could be used to cause amino acids to fluoresce giving away their presence.
Four Mini-Earths Found at Barnard's Star!
The closest single star to our own Solar System is Barnard’s Star. It’s 6 light years away and astronomers have just found four new mini-Earth planets in orbit around this red dwarf star. The discovery was made with the MAROON-X instrument on the Gemini North telescope which makes use of the radial velocity method to detect exoplanets. One planet was found in August 2024, the other three were only just added.
NASA Continues BioNutrients Space-Fermented Food Research
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Commander Suni Williams displays a set of BioNutrients production packs during an experiment aboard the International Space Station. The experiment uses engineered yeast to produce nutrients and vitamins to support future astronaut health.NASA
NASA’s BioNutrients series of experiments is testing ways to use microorganisms to make nutrients that will be needed for human health during future long-duration deep space exploration missions. Some vital nutrients lack the shelf-life needed to span multi-year human missions, such as a mission to Mars, and may need to be produced in space to support astronaut health. To meet this need, the BioNutrients project uses a biomanufacturing approach similar to making familiar fermented foods, such as yogurt. But these foods also will include specific types and amounts of nutrients that crew will be able to consume in the future.
The first experiment in the series, BioNutrients-1, set out to assess the five-year stability and performance of a hand-held system – called a production pack – that uses an engineered microorganism, yeast, to manufacture fresh vitamins on-demand and in space. The BioNutrients-1 experiments began after multiple sets of production packs launched to the station in 2019. This collection included spare production packs as backups to be used in case an experiment needs to be re-run during the five-year study. The planned experiments concluded in January 2024 spare production packs still remaining aboard the orbiting lab and in the BioNutrients lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, where the ground team runs experiments in parallel to the crew operations.
Leaders at NASA’s International Space Station and Game Changing Development programs worked to coordinate the crew time needed to perform an additional BioNutrients-2 experiment using the spare packs. This extended the study’s timeline to almost six years in orbit, allowing valuable crew observations and data from the additional experiment run to be applied to a follow-on experiment, BioNutrients-3, which completed its analog astronaut experiment in April 2024, and is planned to launch to the station this year. Astronauts on the space station will freeze the sample and eventually it will be returned to Earth for analysis to see how much yeast grew and how much nutrient the experiment produced. This will help us understand how the shelf stability of the packets.
Ames Research Center
Bionutrients
Synthetic Biology
International Space Station
Two Protostars Work Together to Create an Hourglass Shape
Young stars grow by gobbling up nearby gas and dust. Over time, they can become extremely massive. The most massive stars we know of have up to 200 solar masses. But the flow of matter isn't a one-way street. Instead, young protostars eject some of the matter back into space with powerful jets.
Human System Risk Board
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Risks Concept
Risk is inherent in human spaceflight. However, specific risks can and should be understood, managed, and mitigated to reduce threats posed to astronauts. Risk management in the context of human spaceflight can be viewed as a trade-based system. The relevant evidence in life sciences, medicine, and engineering is tracked and evaluated to identify ways to minimize overall risk to the astronauts and to ensure mission success. The Human System Risk Board (HSRB) manages the process by which scientific evidence is utilized to establish and reassess the postures of the various risks to the Human System during all of the various types of existing or anticipated crewed missions. The HSRB operates as part of the Health and Medical Technical Authority of the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer of NASA via the JSC Chief Medical Officer.
The HSRB approaches to human system risks is analogous to the approach the engineering profession takes with its Failure Mode and Effects Analysis in that a process is utilized to identify and address potential problems, or failures to reduce their likelihood and severity. In the context of risks to the human system, the HSRB considers eight missions which different in their destinations and durations (known as Design Reference Missions [DRM]) to further refine the context of the risks. With each DRM a likelihood and consequence are assigned to each risk which is adjusted scientific evidence is accumulated and understanding of the risk is enhanced, and mitigations become available or are advanced.
Human System RisksThis framework enables the principles of Continuous Risk Management and Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) to be applied in an ongoing fashion to the challenges posed by Human System Risks. Using this framework consistently across the 29 risks allows management to see where risks need additional research or technology development to be mitigated or monitored and for the identification of new risks and concerns. Further information on the implementation of the risk management process can be found in the following documents:
- Human System Risk Management Plan – JSC-66705
- NASA Health and Medical Technical Authority (HMTA) Implementation – NPR 7120.11A
- NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements – NPR 7120.5
The HSRB Risk Management Office governs the execution of the Human System Risk management process in support of the HSRB. It is led by the HSRB Chair, who is also referred to as the Risk Manager.
Risk Custodian TeamsAlong with the Human System Risk Manager, a team of risk custodians (a researcher, an operational researcher or physician, and an epidemiologist, who each have specific expertise) works together to understand and synthesize scientific and operational evidence in the context of spaceflight, identify and evaluate metrics for each risk in order to communicate the risk posture to the agency.
Directed Acyclic Graphs SummaryThe HSRB uses Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG), a type of causal diagramming, as visual tools to create a shared understanding of the risks, improve communication among those stakeholders, and enable the creation of a composite risk network that is vetted by members of the NASA community and configuration managed (Antonsen et al., NASA/TM– 20220006812). The knowledge captured is the Human Health and Performance community’s knowledge about the causal flow of a human system risk, and the relationships that exist between the contributing factors to that risk.
DAGs are:
- Intended to improve communication between:
- Managers and subject matter experts who need to discuss human system risks
- Subject matter experts in different disciplines where human system risks interact with one another in a potentially cumulative fashion
- Visual representations of known or suspected relationships
- Directed – the relationship flows in one direction between any two nodes
- Acyclic – cycles in the graph are not allowed
At NASA, the Human System Risks have historically been conceptualized as deriving from five Hazards present in the spaceflight environment. These are: altered gravity, isolation and confinement, radiation, a hostile closed environment, and distance from Earth. These Hazards are aspects of the spaceflight environment that are encountered when someone is launched into space and therefore are the starting point for causal diagramming of spaceflight-related risk issues for the HSRB.
These Hazards are often interpreted in relation to physiologic changes that occur in humans as a result of the exposure; however, interaction between human crew (behavioral health and performance), which may be degraded due to the spaceflight environment – and the vehicle and mission systems that the crew must operate – can also be influenced by these Hazards.
Each Human System Risk DAG is intended to show the causal flow of risk from Hazards to Mission Level Outcomes. As such, the structure of each DAG starts with at least one Hazard and ends with at least one of the pre-defined Mission Level Outcomes. In between are the nodes and edges of the causal flow diagrams that are relevant to the Risk under consideration. These are called ‘contributing factors’ in the HSRB terminology, and include countermeasures, medical conditions, and other Human System Risks. A graph data structure is composed of a set of vertices (nodes), and a set of edges (links). Each edge represents a relationship between two nodes. There can be two types of relationships between nodes: directed and undirected. For example, if an edge exists between two nodes A and B and the edge is undirected, it is represented as A–B, (no arrow). If the edge were directed, for example from A to B, then this is represented with an arrow (A->B). Each directed arrow connecting one node to another on a DAG indicates a claim of causality. A directed graph can potentially contain a cycle, meaning that, from a specific node, there exists a path that would eventually return to that node. A directed graph that has no cycles is known as acyclic. Thus, a graph with directed links and no cycles is a DAG. DAGs are a type of network diagram that represent causality in a visual format.
DAGs are updated with the regular Human System Risk updates generally every 1-2 years. Approved DAGs can be found in the NASA/TP 20220015709 below or broken down under each Human System Risk.
Documents- Directed Acyclic Graph Guidance Documentation – NASA/TM 20220006812
- Directed Acyclic Graphs: A Tool for Understanding the NASA Human Spaceflight System Risks – NASA/TP 20220015709
system risk in spaceflight
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (3.09 MB)
npj Microgravity –Levels of evidence for human system risk
evaluation
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (2.47 MB)
npj Microgravity –Updates to the NASA human system risk management process
for space exploration
Apr 22, 2024
PDF (2.24 MB)
Points of ContactMary Van Baalen
Dan Buckland
Bob Scully
Kim Lowe
Humans In Space
Missions
International Space Station
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Risk to Vehicle Crew Egress Capability and Task Performance as Applied to Earth and Extraterrestrial Landings
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley is helped out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship after he and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. The Demo-2 test flight for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program was the first to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth onboard a commercially built and operated spacecraft. Behnken and Hurley returned after spending 64 days in space. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)NASA
New spacecraft that will transport crews to the Lunar and Martian surfaces and return them to Earth may have diverse landing modalities which will function in different landing environments. Additionally, the crew may be deconditioned on landing, impacting their ability to independently egress the vehicles, perform post-landing tasks in a timely manner, and perform surface EVAs post-landing -including those required for emergencies.
Boeing and NASA teams work around Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after it landed at White Sands Missile Range’s Space Harbor, Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in New Mexico. Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. OFT-2 serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Directed Acyclic Graph Files
+ DAG File Information (HSRB Home Page)
+ Crew Egress Risk DAG and Narrative (PDF)
+ Crew Egress Risk DAG Code (TXT)
Human System Risks Share Details Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorRobert E. LewisLocationJohnson Space Center Related Terms Explore More 1 min read Risk of Toxic Substance Exposure Article 19 hours ago 1 min read Risk of Urinary Retention Article 19 hours ago 1 min read Risk to Crew Health Due to Electrical Shock (Electrical Shock Risk) Article 19 hours ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASAHumans In Space
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