NASA System Predicts Small Asteroid to Pass Close by Earth This Week

 

Asteroid Watch.

Jan 25, 2023

Asteroid 2023 BU is about the size of a box truck and is predicted to make one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded.

Image above: This orbital diagram from CNEOS’s close approach viewer shows 2023 BU’s trajectory – in red – during its close approach with Earth on Jan. 26, 2023. The asteroid will pass about 10 times closer to Earth than the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, shown in green line. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

On Thursday, Jan. 26, a small near-Earth asteroid will have a very close encounter with our planet. Designated 2023 BU, the asteroid will zoom over the southern tip of South America at about 4:27 p.m. PST (7:27 p.m. EST) only 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) above the planet’s surface and well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites.

There is no risk of the asteroid impacting Earth. But even if it did, this small asteroid – estimated to be 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) across – would turn into a fireball and largely disintegrate harmlessly in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger debris potentially falling as small meteorites.

Image above: This view from NASA’s Scout system shows the deflection of asteroid 2023 BU’s trajectory – in red – caused by Earth’s gravity. The orbit of geosynchronous satellites is shown in green, and the orbit of the Moon is depicted by the gray oval. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The asteroid was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, discoverer of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, from his MARGO observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea, on Saturday, Jan. 21. Additional observations were reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) – the internationally recognized clearinghouse for the position measurements of small celestial bodies – and the data was then automatically posted to the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page. After sufficient observations were collected, the MPC announced the discovery. Within three days, a number of observatories around the world had made dozens of observations, helping astronomers better refine 2023 BU’s orbit.

NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system, which is maintained by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, analyzed the data from the MPC’s confirmation page and quickly predicted the near miss. CNEOS calculates every known near-Earth asteroid orbit to provide assessments of potential impact hazards in support of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).

“Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at JPL who developed Scout. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

Image above: Screen capture of Eyes on Asteroids uses science data to help visualize asteroid and comet orbits around the Sun. Zoom in to travel along with your favorite spacecraft as they explore these fascinating near-Earth objects. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

While any asteroid in Earth’s proximity will experience a change in trajectory due to our planet’s gravity, 2023 BU will come so close that its path around the Sun is expected to be significantly altered. Before encountering Earth, the asteroid’s orbit around the Sun was roughly circular, approximating Earth’s orbit, taking 359 days to complete its orbit about the Sun. After its encounter, the asteroid’s orbit will be more elongated, moving it out to about halfway between Earth’s and Mars’ orbits at its farthest point from the Sun. The asteroid will then complete one orbit every 425 days.

More information about CNEOS, asteroids, and near-Earth objects can be found at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroid-watch

Related links:

Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS): https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/

Minor Planet Center (MPC): https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/

Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO): https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview

Eyes on Asteroids: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/asteroids%E2%80%9D

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/Karen Fox/Josh Handal/Alana Johnson/JPL/Ian J. O’Neill.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

New photos from China's lunar rover released with New Year blessings

 

CLEP - China Lunar Exploration Program logo.

Jan 25, 2023

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Saturday released a group of new photos from the country's lunar rover Yutu-2, together with its good wishes for all Chinese people, ahead of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit.

The photos showed the wheel track left by the rover, some rocks and a small impact crater on the lunar surface.

An image taken by China's Yutu-2 rover on the Moon. Image Credit: CNSA

Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, is known as the pet of Lunar Goddess Chang'e in the Chinese mythology. The rabbit's common association with Earth's only natural satellite led China to name its first moon rover "Yutu."

In 2019, China sent another rabbit visitor to the moon. The Yutu-2 rover and Chang'e-4 lander, both part of the Chang'e-4 probe, soft-landed on the dark side of the moon -- a first for humanity.

The Yutu-2 rover and Chang'e-4 lander woke up from their dormant mode on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, respectively, ushering in their 51st lunar day of work.

China's lunar rover beams back new images from far side of moon before Chinese New Year

A lunar day is equal to 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length. The lunar probe switches to the dormant mode during the lunar night due to the lack of solar power.

So far, Yutu-2 has worked for more than four years, traveled nearly 1,500 meters in total, and released more than 940.1 gigabytes (GB) of scientific data.

For more information about China National Space Administration (CNSA), visit: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: CNSA/Xinhua/CGTN/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Best regards, happy new year under the sign of the rabbit, Orbiter.ch

What time is it on the Moon?

 

Earth Moon animation.

Jan 25, 2023

Satellite navigation systems for lunar settlements will require local atomic clocks. Scientists are working out what time they will keep.

Image above: Scientists and space agencies have not yet agreed how to define lunar time. Image Credits: NASA Goddard.

The coming decade will see a resurgence in lunar exploration — including dozens of missions and plans to establish permanent bases on the Moon. The endeavours pose myriad challenges. Among them is a subtle, but fundamental, question that metrologists worldwide are working to answer: what time is it on the Moon?

“We’re just starting to lay this out,” says Cheryl Gramling, an aerospace engineer who leads the position, navigation and timing team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The Moon doesn’t currently have an independent time. Each lunar mission uses its own timescale that is linked, through its handlers on Earth, to coordinated universal time, or utc — the standard against which the planet’s clocks are set. But this method is relatively imprecise and spacecraft exploring the Moon don’t synchronize the time with each other. The approach works when the Moon hosts a handful of independent missions, but it will be a problem when there are multiple craft working together. Space agencies will also want to track them using satellite navigation, which relies on precise timing signals.

It’s not obvious what form a universal lunar time would take. Clocks on Earth and the Moon naturally tick at different speeds, because of the differing gravitational fields of the two bodies. Official lunar time could be based on a clock system designed to synchronize with utc, or it could be independent of Earth time.

Representatives of space agencies and academic organizations worldwide met in November 2022 to start drafting recommendations on how to define lunar time at the European Space Research and Technology Centre of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Decisions must be made soon, says Patrizia Tavella, who leads the time department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres, France. If an official lunar time is not established, space agencies and private companies will come up with their own solutions, she says. “This is why we want to raise an alert now, saying let’s work together to take a common decision.”

Tracking satellites

The most pressing need for lunar time comes from plans to create a dedicated global satellite navigation system (GNSS) for the Moon, similar to how GPS and other satellite navigation networks enable precise location tracking on Earth. Space agencies plan to install this lunar GNSS from around 2030. ESA approved a lunar satellite navigation project called Moonlight at its ministerial council meeting on 22 and 23 November 2022 in Paris, and NASA established a similar project, called Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems, last January.

Until now, Moon missions have pinpointed their locations using radio signals sent to large antennas on Earth at scheduled times. But with dozens of missions planned, “there’s just not enough resources to cover everybody”, says Joel Parker, an engineer who works on lunar navigation at the Goddard Center.

Image Credit: NASA

As a first step, from 2024, ESA and NASA will trial deriving positions on the Moon using faint satellite navigation signals from Earth-based craft. Next, the lunar GNSS projects plan to place dedicated satellites around the Moon, each containing their own atomic clock. A receiver, for example on the Moon’s surface, will then triangulate its position using the time it takes for satellite signals to reach it. ESA has planned an initial constellation of four spacecraft that would cover navigation at the lunar south pole, which harbours much of the Moon’s water and is an important target for exploration, says Jörg Hahn, an engineer working on ESA’s Moonlight project.

Moon missions will also need an official lunar time to cooperate and communicate, says Hahn. “All this has to trace to one kind of a time reference, otherwise you have chaos and things do not work together.”

Another open question, says Hahn, is whether astronauts would use universal lunar time everywhere on the Moon. Although lunar time would remain the official timescale, its users might, as on Earth, want to offset it in time zones that link to the Sun’s position in the sky. This is less a question for metrologists and more one of convention. “When somebody really lives there on the Moon, I think it makes sense,” he says.

Characterizing time

Defining lunar time is not simple. Although the definition of the second is the same everywhere, the special theory of relativity dictates that clocks tick slower in stronger gravitational fields. The Moon’s gravitational pull is weaker than Earth’s, meaning that, to an observer on Earth, a lunar clock would run faster than an Earth one. Gramling estimates that a lunar clock would gain about 56 microseconds over 24 hours. Compared with one on Earth, a clock’s speed would also subtly change depending on its position on the lunar surface, because of the Moon’s rotation, says Tavella. “This is a paradise for experts in relativity, because you have to take into account so many things,” she adds.

Defining a lunar standard, with which all clocks are compared, will involve installing at least three master clocks that tick at the Moon’s natural pace, and whose output is combined by an algorithm to generate a more accurate ‘virtual’ timepiece.

What happens then depends on which option metrologists choose. They might decide to base lunar time on utc. In that case, this virtual lunar time would be synchronized regularly with terrestrial utc. Between the check-ins, the lunar master clocks would keep marking time until the next synchronization. This has the advantage of being simple for users back on Earth to interact with.

Image Credit: NASA

The alternative would be to use the synthesized output of the lunar atomic clocks as the Moon’s own independent, continuous time, and to track its relationship to utc. That way, even if the connection with Earth is lost, clocks on the Moon will still agree with each other and allow safe navigation and communications, says Gramling. Establishing an independent time is a model that will also work for the more-distant planets that space agencies are ultimately targeting, such as Mars. Transmitting utc there would be more complicated than to the Moon, she adds.

In this scenario, days on the Moon could even be defined differently from those on Earth, to account for the time from solar noon to solar noon taking an average of 29.5 Earth days. Earth days will always matter to astronauts, given the human need for sleep on a roughly 24-hour cycle. But the definition is something metrologists will need to agree on.

Metrologists will also need to decide where on the Moon to place the master clocks. As on Earth, the devices’ altitude will affect ticking speed. The clocks could be in lunar orbit or on the surface, says Hahn. “This is what we are discussing right now with our NASA colleagues.”

Space agencies are also considering other necessary standards — such as which maps of the lunar terrain and coordinate systems to use for navigation — through the Interagency Operations Advisory Group, a council of national space agencies and the United Nations International Committee on GNSS. To make various countries’ systems interoperable, reference systems will have to be agreed internationally, says Gramling.

With ESA’s help, NASA is developing a framework called LunaNet, for which it hopes to get international buy-in. LunaNet consists of a set of rules that would enable all lunar satellite navigation, communication and computing systems to form a single network similar to the Internet, regardless of which nation installs them. Setting lunar time is part of a much bigger picture.

“The idea is to produce a Solar System internet,” says Gramling. “And the first part would be at the Moon.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00185-z

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: Nature/Elizabeth Gibney.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s Lucy Team Announces New Asteroid Target

 

NASA - LUCY Mission patch.

Jan 25, 2023

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On Nov. 1, 2023, Lucy will get a close-up view of a small main-belt asteroid to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft’s innovative asteroid-tracking navigation system.

The Lucy mission is already breaking records by planning to visit nine asteroids during its 12-year tour of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter. Originally, Lucy was not scheduled to get a close-up view of any asteroids until 2025, when it will fly by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. However, the Lucy team identified a small, as-yet unnamed asteroid in the inner main belt, designated (152830) 1999 VD57, as a potential new and useful target for the Lucy spacecraft.

Lucy (Asteroid Mission)

“There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt,” said Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator of the Nice Observatory in France, who identified asteroid 1999 VD57 as an object of special interest for Lucy. “I selected 500,000 asteroids with well-defined orbits to see if Lucy might be traveling close enough to get a good look at any of them, even from a distance. This asteroid really stood out. Lucy’s trajectory as originally designed will take it within 40,000 miles of the asteroid, at least three times closer than the next closest asteroid.”

The Lucy team realized that, by adding a small maneuver, the spacecraft would be able to get an even closer look at this asteroid. So, on Jan. 24, the team officially added it to Lucy’s tour as an engineering test of the spacecraft’s pioneering terminal tracking system. This new system solves a long-standing problem for flyby missions: during a spacecraft’s approach to an asteroid, it is quite difficult to determine exactly how far the spacecraft is from the asteroid, and exactly which way to point the cameras.

Image above: As the NASA Lucy spacecraft travels through the inner edge of the main asteroid belt in the Fall of 2023, the spacecraft will fly by the small, as-of-yet unnamed, asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57. This graphic shows a top-down view of the Solar System indicating the spacecraft's trajectory shortly before the November 1 encounter. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

“In the past, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking a lot of images of the region where the asteroid might be, meaning low efficiency and lots of images of blank space,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Colorado office. “Lucy will be the first flyby mission to employ this innovative and complex system to automatically track the asteroid during the encounter. This novel system will allow the team to take many more images of the target.”

It turns out that 1999 VD57 provides an excellent opportunity to validate this never-before-flown procedure. The geometry of this encounter—particularly the angle that the spacecraft approaches the asteroid relative to the Sun—is very similar to the mission’s planned Trojan asteroid encounters. This allows the team to carry out a dress rehearsal under similar conditions well in advance of the spacecraft’s main scientific targets.

This asteroid was not identified as a target earlier because it is extremely small. In fact, 1999 VD57, estimated to be a mere 0.4 miles (700 m) in size, will be the smallest main belt asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft. It is much more similar in size to the near-Earth asteroids visited by recent NASA missions OSIRIS-REx and DART than to previously visited main belt asteroids.

The Lucy team will carry out a series of maneuvers starting in early May 2023 to place the spacecraft on a trajectory that will pass approximately 280 miles (450 km) from this small asteroid.

Lucy’s principal investigator is based out of the Boulder, Colorado branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about NASA’s Lucy mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/lucy

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Jessica Merzdorf/GSFC/Nancy Neal Jones/Southwest Research Institute/By Katherine Kretke.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Has Earth’s inner core stopped its strange spin?

 

Earth Science logo.

Jan 25, 2023

Earthquake data hint that the inner core stopped rotating faster than the rest of the planet in 2009, but not all researchers agree.

Image above: Earth’s inner core is made mostly of solid iron, and can rotate separately from the outer parts of the planet. Image Credits: Johan Swanepoel/SPL.

Thousands of kilometres beneath your feet, Earth’s interior might be doing something very weird. Many scientists think that the inner core spins faster than the rest of the planet — but sometime in the past decade, according to a study, it apparently stopped doing so.

“We were quite surprised,” say Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song, seismologists at Peking University in Beijing who reported the findings today in Nature Geoscience (1).

The results could help to shine light on the many mysteries of the deep Earth, including what part the inner core plays in maintaining the planet’s magnetic field and in affecting the speed of the whole planet’s rotation — and thus the length of a day. But they are just the latest instalment in a long-running effort to explain the inner core’s unusual rotation, and might not be the final word on the matter.

“I keep thinking we’re on the verge of figuring this out,” says John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “But I’m not sure.”

Mysteries of the deep

Researchers discovered the inner core in 1936, after studying how seismic waves from earthquakes travel through the planet. Changes in the speed of the waves revealed that the planet’s core, which is about 7,000 kilometres wide, consists of a solid centre, made mostly of iron, inside a shell of liquid iron and other elements. As iron from the outer core crystallizes on the surface of the inner core, it changes the density of the outer liquid, driving churning motions that maintain Earth’s magnetic field.

Image above: Researchers have learnt about the inner core’s rotation by studying earthquakes that originated in the same region, such as the Kuril Islands (shown here), over decades. Image Credit: Getty.

The liquid outer core essentially decouples the 2,400-kilometre-wide inner core from the rest of the planet, so the inner core can spin at its own pace. In 1996, Song and another researcher reported (2) studying earthquakes that originated in the same region over three decades, and whose energy was detected by the same monitoring station thousands of kilometres away. Since the 1960s, the scientists said, the travel time of seismic waves emanating from those earthquakes had changed, indicating that the inner core rotates faster than the planet’s mantle, the layer just beyond the outer core.

Later studies refined estimates of the rate of that ‘super-rotation’, to conclude that the inner core rotates faster than the mantle by about one-tenth of a degree per year. But not everyone agrees. Other work has suggested that super-rotation happens mostly in distinct periods, such as in the early 2000s, rather than being a continuous, steady phenomenon (3). Some scientists even argue that super-rotation does not exist, and that the differences in earthquake travel times are instead caused by physical changes on the surface of the inner core (4).

Last June, Vidale and Wei Wang, an Earth scientist also at the University of Southern California, threw another spanner into the works. Using data on seismic waves generated by US nuclear test blasts in 1969 and 1971, they reported that between those years, Earth’s inner core had ‘subrotated’, or rotated more slowly than the mantle (5). Only after 1971, they say, did it speed up and begin to super-rotate.

A rotational shift

Now, Yang and Song say that the inner core has halted its spin relative to the mantle. They studied earthquakes mostly from between 1995 and 2021, and found that the inner core’s super-rotation had stopped around 2009. They observed the change at various points around the globe, which the researchers say confirms it is a true planet-wide phenomenon related to core rotation, and not just a local change on the inner core’s surface.

The data hint that the inner core might even be in the process of shifting back towards subrotation. If so, something is probably happening to the magnetic and gravitational forces that drive the inner core’s rotation. Such changes might link the inner core to broader geophysical phenomena such as increases or decreases in the length of a day on Earth.

Still, many questions remain, such as how to reconcile the slow pace of the changes that Yang and Song report with some of the faster changes reported by others. The only way out of the morass is to wait for more earthquakes to happen. A “long history of continuous recording of seismic data is critical for monitoring the motion of the heart of the planet”, say Yang and Song.

“We just have to wait,” Vidale adds.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00167-1

References:

1. Yang, Y. & Song, X. Nature Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01112-z (2023).

2. Song, X. & Richards, P. G. Nature 382, 221–224 (1996).
https://doi.org/10.1038%2F382221a0

3. Pang, G. & Koper, K. D. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 584, 117504 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.epsl.2022.117504

4. Yao, J., Tian, D., Sun, L. & Wen, L. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth 124, 6720–6736 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1029%2F2019JB017532

5. Wang, W. & Vidale, J. E. Sci. Adv. 8, eabm9916 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fsciadv.abm9916

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: Nature/Alexandra Witze.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep Space Missions

 

NASA logo.

Jan 25, 2023

As NASA takes its first steps toward establishing a long-term presence on the Moon’s surface, a team of propulsion development engineers at NASA have developed and tested NASA’s first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE, an advanced rocket engine design that could significantly change how future propulsion systems are built.

Image above: Rotating detonation rocket engine, or RDRE hot fire test at Marshall Space Flight Center. Image Credit: NASA.

The RDRE differs from a traditional rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation. This design produces more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems and has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary vehicles to deep space destinations, such as the Moon and Mars.  

Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and primary collaborator IN Space LLC, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, are confirming data from RDRE hot fire tests conducted in 2022 at Marshall’s East Test Area. The engine was fired over a dozen times, totaling nearly 10 minutes in duration.

Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine Test at Marshall Space Flight Center

The RDRE achieved its primary test objective by demonstrating that its hardware – made from novel additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, designs and processes – could operate for long durations while withstanding the extreme heat and pressure environments generated by detonations. While operating at full throttle, the RDRE produced over 4,000 pounds of thrust for nearly a minute at an average chamber pressure of 622 pounds per square inch, the highest pressure rating for this design on record.

The RDRE incorporates the NASA-developed copper-alloy GRCop-42 with the powder bed fusion additive manufacturing process, allowing the engine to operate under extreme conditions for longer durations without overheating.

Additional milestones achieved during the test include the successful performance of both deep throttling and internal ignition. This successful demonstration brings the technology closer to being used with future flight vehicles, enabling NASA and commercial space to move more payload and mass to deep space destinations, an essential component to making space exploration more sustainable. Because of NASA’s recent success with the RDRE, follow-on work is being conducted by NASA engineers to develop a fully reusable 10,000-pound class RDRE to identify performance benefits over traditional liquid rocket engines.

Image Credit: NASA

RDRE is managed and funded by the Game Changing Development Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Beth Ridgeway.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Experiments to Unlock How Human Bodies React to Long Space Journeys

 

 

 

ISS - Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research (CIPHER).

Jan 25, 2023

Through Artemis, NASA astronauts are returning to the Moon in preparation for one day going to Mars. To better prepare astronauts for these long journeys, scientists need to know: How do extended durations in space change the human body?

Image above: Astronauts headed to the International Space Station can now sign up for a broad suite of experiments that will help scientists pinpoint how the human body reacts to long-duration missions in space. The research will help NASA prepare astronauts for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Image Credit: NASA.

Astronauts flying to the International Space Station can now volunteer for a suite of experiments that aim to help scientists learn more. Together, these experiments are called the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research, or CIPHER.

“CIPHER is the first study to integrate multiple physiological and psychological measures, giving us a chance to assess the whole human response to time spent in space,” CIPHER project scientist Cherie Oubre explains. “As more astronauts head to space through Artemis and other programs, we hope to learn more about how the various systems of the body, such as the heart, muscles, bones, and eyes, adapt to long-term spaceflight.”

Image above: Astronauts who volunteer for CIPHER will wear a specialized shirt like the one seen here on Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques. This shirt measures heart rate and respiration and is worn periodically before, during, and after missions for two days at a time. Image Credit: NASA.

Through CIPHER, astronauts participate in an integrated set of 14 studies sponsored by NASA and international partner agencies. To get meaningful results, CIPHER scientists will study up to 30 astronauts, evenly divided over three mission-length categories:

- Short (less than 3.5 months in space)
- Standard (between 3.5 and eight months in space)
- Extended (more than eight months in space)

These research studies will monitor the health of astronauts before, during, and after their missions, and together address the following themes.

Bone and Joint Health

Studies show that astronauts lose bone density and muscle quality faster in space than on Earth. Calcium lost from bone ends up in their blood and urine. This loss of bone density may affect how skeletal systems support muscles and organs in space and soon after landing back on Earth.

Astronauts will:

- Undergo scans to measure bone density, skeletal health, and muscle quality surrounding bones and joints; and
- Collect blood and urine periodically before, during, and after their missions.

Scientists will:

- Examine whether the rate of bone and muscle loss stays constant, slows down, or even stops beyond six-month missions; and
- Determine what sort of health risks, if any, these pose.

Brain and Behavior

Fluids in the brain shift due to low gravity in space, and long-duration spaceflight may slightly alter brain structure. These changes could affect how the brain processes spatial information and, in turn, affect crew performance.

Astronauts will:

- Complete cognitive tests,
- Perform spatial cognition tasks using virtual reality,
- Use a computer to measure proficiency in controlling a robotic arm, and
- Undergo MRI scans while doing cognitive tests.

Scientists will:

- Examine how brain activity before missions differs from brain activity after missions,
- Pinpoint patterns dependent on mission duration, and
- Assess how changes in performance of cognitive, spatial cognition, and operational tasks relate to changes in brain structure and function.

Cardiovascular

Long-duration spaceflight may lead to stiffer arteries and increase the risk of heart disease. Scientists want to know how these changes play out during and after extended missions.

Astronauts will:

- Complete CT, MRI, and ultrasound imaging of the heart, surrounding organs and muscles, and blood vessels,
- Wear a shirt that measures heart rate and respiration across two days, and
- Take periodic blood pressure measurements.

Scientists will:

- Tease out patterns within and across mission durations to provide clear, objective indicators of cardiovascular health, and
- Examine whether the low-gravity affects organs, muscles, and vessels near the heart.

Exercise

Image above: To test how quickly they adapt to a new gravity, astronauts who participate in CIPHER will make their way through an obstacle course while wearing a spacesuit soon after they land back on Earth. In the picture above, a volunteer is conducting a trial run through this course, moving objects through a boulder field while his suit is connected to NASA's Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS). Read more about this obstacle course. Image Credit: NASA.

Exercise is a well-known strategy to counter bone and muscle loss in space. Researchers want to understand whether exercise is an effective strategy for maintaining astronaut health in long-duration spaceflight.

Astronauts will:

- Test muscle strength and endurance throughout their missions using the station’s exercise equipment,
- Track their nutrition and sleep habits, and
- Navigate through an obstacle course after they land back on Earth, while at times wearing spacesuits connected to NASA’s Active Response Gravity Offload System, or ARGOS, to simulate Martian gravity.

Scientists will:

- Evaluate crews’ abilities to carry out specific exercises over time, and
- Evaluate how soon and how well crews can perform critical tasks in different gravities.

Sensorimotor

Many astronauts experience dizziness and disorientation when they arrive at the station and when they return to Earth. However, on future missions to Mars, ground support won’t be readily available to assist astronauts when they land on the Red Planet’s surface. Understanding factors that may influence how long these symptoms last will be important to mission success.

Astronauts will:

- Record their eye, head, and body movements using specialized techniques, and
- Fill out surveys on how they perceive motion.

Scientists will:

- See whether mission duration influences how long it takes to adapt to a different gravity level, and
- Investigate the reasons behind changes in balance and the ability to adapt to different gravities.

Vision

Because low-gravity conditions shift the body’s fluids toward the head, spaceflight can alter the structure and function of the eyes and the brain. This, in turn, may influence how astronauts process visual information on long missions, which could affect their performance.

Astronauts will:

- Participate in MRI and eye imaging scans,
- Perform vision tests, and
- Assess eye pressure and how the retina responds to light.

Scientists will:

- Evaluate eye changes for each mission duration, and
- See how the structure of astronauts’ brains change after their missions, and how such changes affect vision.

Biomarkers

Samples of astronaut’s blood and urine can provide insights into crew health. For instance, stress hormones reveal how the immune system reacts to spaceflight. Scientists want to know whether any changes to the human body induced by long-duration space travel come with indicators that can also be detected in blood and urine.

Astronauts will:

- Provide blood and urine samples before, during, and after spaceflight, and
- Complete questionnaires regarding health and exercise habits.

Scientists will:

- Examine blood and urine for potential indicators of changes to cartilage health, inflammation and immune function, kidney health, brain structure and function, spatial cognition, performance of operational tasks, risk of cardiovascular disease, and more; and
- Investigate the interplay between mission length, DNA damage responses, and post-mission recovery of telomeres – the caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten as we age but may lengthen in space before rebalancing themselves back on Earth.

CIPHER also includes a long-running study called Spaceflight Standard Measures, which collects a core set of information on as many crew members as possible. This core set includes metrics about the crew member’s sleep, cognition, biomarkers, immune function, microbiome, and more.

In addition to answering research questions central to each study, CIPHER takes an integrated approach – data across the CIPHER investigations will be evaluated to identify patterns and gain a deeper understanding of how the human body reacts to long durations in space. For instance: Do changes to the various systems of the body plateau across the board after specific amounts of time spent in space? Do changes in one system herald changes in another?

“CIPHER is an all-encompassing, total-body approach to learning how humans adapt to spaceflight,” says Oubre. “Insights gained through CIPHER may well be key to enabling humans to remain healthy while exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

NASA is leading a return to the Moon for long-term exploration. Through the Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. Lessons learned on and around the Moon will prepare NASA for the next giant leap: sending astronauts to Mars.

Learn more about Artemis at: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

NASA's Human Research Program pursues methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, and the International Space Station, this team scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research drives NASA’s quest to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready as space travel expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Learn more about the Human Research Program at: https://www.nasa.gov/hrp

Related links:

Lose bone density: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/astronauts-spines-under-scrutiny

Well-known strategy: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=945

Obstacle course: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-tests-evaluate-mission-readiness-of-astronauts-upon-landing/

Function of the eyes and the brain: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/what-is-spaceflight-associated-neuro-ocular-syndrome

Stress hormones: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/scientists-probe-how-long-term-spaceflight-alters-immunity/

Spaceflight Standard Measures: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spaceflight-standard-measures-characterizing-how-humans-adapt-in-space

Humans in Space: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/humans-in-space

Moon to Mars: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Kelli Mars/Human Research Program Strategic Communications/Jennifer L. Turner/Nathan A. Cranford.

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