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2024 in Review: Highlights from NASA in Silicon Valley

2024 in Review: Highlights from NASA in Silicon Valley

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

2024 intro: As NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley enters its 85^th year since its founding, join us as we take a look back at some of our highlights of science, engineering, research, and innovation from 2024.

Ames Arc Jets Play Key Role in Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield Findings

A block of Avcoat undergoes testing inside an arc jet test chamber at NASA Ames. The test article, configured with both permeable (upper) and non-permeable (lower) Avcoat sections for comparison, helped to confirm understanding of the root cause of the loss of charred Avcoat material that engineers saw on the Orion spacecraft after the Artemis I test flight beyond the Moon.

NASA

Researchers at Ames were part of the team tasked to better understand and identify the root cause of the unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA Ames.

Starling Swarm Completes Primary Mission

The four CubeSat spacecraft that make up the Starling swarm have demonstrated success in autonomous operations, completing all key mission objectives.

NASA

After ten months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission’s key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations in low Earth orbit, including distributing and sharing important information and autonomous decision making.

Another Step Forward for BioNutrients

Three people wearing lab coats are working with hardware in a lab.

Research scientists Sandra Vu, left, Natalie Ball, center, and Hiromi Kagawa, right, process BioNutrients production packs.

NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete

NASA’s BioNutrients entered its fifth year in its mission to investigate how microorganisms can produce on-demand nutrients for astronauts during long-duration space missions. Keeping astronauts healthy is critical and as the project comes to a close, researchers have processed production packs on Earth on the same day astronauts processed production packs in space on the International Space Station to demonstrate that NASA can produce nutrients after at least five years in space, providing confidence it will be capable of supporting crewed missions to Mars.

Hyperwall Upgrade Helps Scientists Interpret Big Data

Four individuals stand in front of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility hyperwall, a wall of LCD screens displaying an image of stars and galaxies.

The newly upgraded hyperwall visualization system provides four times the resolution of the previous system.

NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete

Ames upgraded its powerful hyperwall system, a 300-square foot wall of LCD screens with over a billion pixels to display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall is just one way researchers can utilize NASA’s high-end computing technology to better understand their data and advance the agency’s missions and research.

Ames Contributions to NASA Artificial Intelligence Efforts

NASA public affairs officer Melissa Howell moderates as chief scientist Kate Calvin speaks alongside chief technologist AC Charania, chief artificial intelligence officer David Salvagnini, and chief information officer Jeff Seaton at the agency’s first artificial intelligence town hall.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

Ames contributes to the agency’s artificial intelligence work through ongoing research and development, agencywide collaboration, and communications efforts. This year, NASA announced David Salvagnini as its inaugural chief artificial intelligence officer and held the first agencywide town hall on artificial intelligence sharing how the agency is safely using and developing artificial intelligence to advance missions and research.

Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Successfully Launches, Deploys Sail

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System seeks to advance future space exploration and expand our understanding of our Sun and Solar System.

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System successfully launched from Māhia, New Zealand, in April, and successfully deployed its sail in August to begin mission operations. The small satellite represents a new future in solar sailing, using lightweight composite booms to support a reflective polymer sail that uses the pressure of sunlight as propulsion.

Understanding Our Planet

Shot from the sea floor looking up, a man in snorkeling equipment and a teal shirt is silhouetted against the blue water and the bright light of the sun, visible at the ocean's surface. In the bottom-center of the frame is a lumpy mass of brown-orange coral.

Samuel Suleiman, an instructor on NASA’s OCEANOS student training program, gathers loose corals to place around an endangered coral species to help attract fish and other wildlife, giving the endangered coral a better chance of survival.

NASA/Milan Loiacono

In 2024, Ames researchers studied Earth’s oceans and waterways from multiple angles – from supporting NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, mission to bringing students in Puerto Rico experiences in oceanography and the preservation of coral reefs. Working with multiple partners, our scientists and engineers helped inform ecosystem management by joining satellite measurements of Earth with animal tracking data. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, a NASA team continued testing a specialized instrument package to stay in-the-know about changes in river flow rates.

Revealing the Mysteries of Asteroids in Our Solar System

NASA

Ames researchers used a series of supercomputer simulations to reveal a potential new explanation for how the moons of Mars may have formed: The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid.

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, another Ames scientist helped reveal the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt.

Ames Helps Emerging Space Companies ‘Take the Heat’

A heat shield made by NASA is visible on the blunt, upward-facing side of a space capsule after its landing in the Utah desert.

Varda Space Industries/John Kraus

A heat shield material invented and made at Ames helped to safely return a spacecraft containing the first product processed on an autonomous, free-flying, in-space manufacturing platform. February’s re-entry of the spacecraft from Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, in partnership with Rocket Lab USA of Long Beach, California, marked the first time a NASA-manufactured thermal protection material, called C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), ever returned from space.

Team Continues to Move Forward with Mission to Learn More about Our Star

This illustration lays a depiction of the sun’s magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 12, 2016.

NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL

HelioSwarm’s swarm of nine spacecraft will provide deeper insights into our universe and offer critical information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals such as GPS. The mission team continues to work toward launching in 2029.

CAPSTONE Continues to Chart a New Path Around the Moon

The capstone spacecraft with solar panels open on either side is lit on one side by the sun which is peeking out in the background from behind the darkened Earth.

CAPSTONE revealed in lunar Sunrise: CAPSTONE will fly in cislunar space – the orbital space near and around the Moon. The mission will demonstrate an innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation solution at the Moon from a near rectilinear halo orbit slated for Artemis’ Gateway.

Credits: Illustration by NASA/Daniel Rutter

The microwave sized CubeSat, CAPSTONE, continues to fly in a cis-lunar near rectilinear halo orbit after launching in 2022. Flying in this unique orbit continues to pave the way for future spacecraft and Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, as the team continues to collect data.

NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality

ACD16-0170-016. UTM Technical Capabilities Level 2 (TLC2) Test at Reno-Stead Airport.

A drone is shown flying during a test of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) technical capability Level 2 (TCL2) at Reno-Stead Airport, Nevada in 2016. During the test, five drones simultaneously crossed paths, separated by different altitudes. Two drones flew beyond visual line of sight and three flew within line-of-sight of their operators. More UTM research followed, and it continues today.

Dominic Hart

NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area.

NASA Technologies Streamline Air Traffic Management Systems

A computer display of a map shows several lines which represent possible air traffic routes for an airplane to follow.

This image shows an aviation version of a smartphone navigation app that makes suggestions for an aircraft to fly an alternate, more efficient route. The new trajectories are based on information available from NASA’s Digital Information Platform and processed by the Collaborative Departure Digital Rerouting tool.

NASA

Managing our busy airspace is a complex and important issue, ensuring reliable and efficient movement of commercial and public air traffic as well as autonomous vehicles. NASA, in partnership with AeroVironment and Aerostar, demonstrated a first-of-its-kind air traffic management concept that could pave the way for aircraft to safely operate at higher altitudes. The agency also saw continued fuel savings and reduction in commercial flight delays at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, thanks to a NASA-developed tool that allows flight coordinators to identify more efficient, alternative takeoff routes.

Small Spacecraft Gathers Big Solar Storm Data from Deep Space

Illustration of the BioSentinel spacecraft with its four solar arrays deployed, facing the Sun. The Milky Way is seen in the background.

Illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft as it enters a heliocentric orbit.

NASA/Daniel Rutter

BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting our Sun. After launching aboard NASA’s Artemis I more than two years ago, BioSentinel continues to collect valuable information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense. In May 2024, the satellite was exposed to a coronal mass ejection without the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and gathered measurements of hazardous solar particles in deep space during a solar storm.

NASA, FAA Partner to Develop New Wildland Fire Technologies

Illustrated graphic of remotely piloted aircraft for wildfire operations, including suppression, monitoring and communications.

Artist’s rendering of remotely piloted aircraft providing fire suppression, monitoring and communications capabilities during a wildland fire.

NASA

NASA researchers continued to develop and test airspace management technologies to enable remotely-piloted aircraft to fight and monitor wildland fires 24 hours a day.

The Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project seeks to use drones and advanced aviation technologies to improve wildland fire coordination and operations.

NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate

A high-altitude balloon is photographed from below as it ascends into a blue sky. The white balloon is partially inflated and the cell transmitter and other equipment is visible.

The Aerostar Thunderhead balloon carries the STRATO payload into the sky to reach the stratosphere for flight testing. The balloon appears deflated because it will expand as it rises to higher altitudes where pressures are lower.

Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting/Austin Buttlar

The Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology is a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland fires. Providing cellular communication from above can improve firefighter safety and firefighting efficiency.

A Fully Reimagined Visitor Center

A wide shot of the new NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center. At left, an exhibit description "Tech Tools" with a description of engineering work at Ames. At center and right, several historic pieces of Ames equipment are on display.

The NASA Ames Visitor Center includes exhibits and activities, sharing the work of NASA in Silicon Valley with the public.

NASA/Don Richey

The NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California includes a fully reimagined 360-degree experience, featuring new exhibits, models, and more. An interactive exhibit puts visitors in the shoes of a NASA Ames scientist, designing and testing rovers, planes, and robots for space exploration.

Ames Collaborations in the Community

Former NASA astronauts Yvonne Cagle and Kenneth Cockrell pose with Eli Toribio and Rhydian Daniels at the University of California, San Francisco Bakar Cancer Hospital. Patients gathered to meet the astronauts and learn more about human spaceflight and NASA’s cancer research efforts

NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete

NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4. During the visit with patients, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space.

Ames and the University of California, Berkeley, expanded their partnership, organizing workshops to exchange on their areas of technical expertise, including in Advanced Air Mobility, and to develop ideas for the Berkeley Space Center, an innovation hub proposed for development at Ames’ NASA Research Park. Under a new agreement, NASA also will host supercomputing resources for UC Berkeley, supporting the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.