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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS2022

PACE: How One NASA Mission Aligns With the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (Ocean Shot #1)

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE; https://pace.gsfc.nasa.gov) mission, scheduled for launch in January 2024, will extend the continuous high-quality ocean color, atmospheric aerosol, and cloud data records begun by NASA in the late 1990s, building on the heritage of the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) (Figure 1). PACE’s global hyperspectral imaging radiometer design concept will enable new discoveries in Earth’s living ocean (Figure 2), such as the diversity of organisms fueling marine food webs and how aquatic ecosystems respond to environmental change. Its instrument payload (Figure 3) will also observe Earth’s atmosphere to study clouds, airborne aerosol particles, and the interactions between the two. Looking at the ocean, clouds, and aerosols together will improve our knowledge of the roles each plays in our evolving planet. Other applications of PACE science data records—from identifying the frequency, extent, and duration of aquatic harmful algal blooms to improving our understanding of air quality—will result in direct economic, recreational, and societal benefits. Ultimately, by extending and expanding NASA’s long record of global Earth satellite observations, the PACE mission will monitor our home planet in new and advanced ways in the coming decade.

Ocean color↗
NASA NTRS2022

Ongoing Progress Toward NASA's Surface Biology and Geology Mission

Pursuant to recommendations by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine's Earth Science Decadal Survey, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced the development of an Earth System Observatory (ESO), a series of missions designed to observe processes across the Earth's interior, surface and atmosphere. A key component of this system is the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) investigation. SBG will measure the composition and properties of Earth's land, inland waters, and coastal oceans. The notional architecture consists of multiple spacecraft slated for launch in the 2027–2028 timeframe (Figure 1). Target science questions and geophysical variables span diverse disciplines including terrestrial and aquatic ecology, geology, vulcanology, hydrology and cryospheric sciences (Figure 2). Beyond simply measuring geophysical variables for each discipline, SBG will provide information about the links between the different domains, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the Earth as a connected system. SBG measurements will also benefit a wide range of societal applications including agriculture, terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, natural hazards, public health, and management of water and other natural resources. SBG will also coordinate measurements, data products, and analyses with other ESO elements to deliver an integrated Earth System perspective of Earth and its changing climate.

David R. Thompson↗
NASA NTRS2018

Pre-Aerosol, Clouds, and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Mission Science Definition Team Report: PACE Technical Report Series - Volume 2

We live in an era in which increasing climate variability is having measurable impact on marine ecosystems within our own lifespans. At the same time, an ever-growing human population requires increased access to and use of marine resources. To understand and be better prepared to respond to these challenges, we must expand our capabilities to investigate and monitor ecological and bio geo chemical processes in the oceans. In response to this imperative, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conceived the Pre-Aerosol, Clouds, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission to provide new information for understanding the living ocean and for improving forecasts of Earth System variability. The PACE mission will achieve these objectives by making global ocean color measurements that are essential for understanding the carbon cycle and its inter-relationship with climate change, and by expanding our understanding about ocean ecology and biogeochemistry. PACE measurements will also extend ocean climate data records collected since the 1990s to document changes in the function of aquatic ecosystems as they respond to human activities and natural processes over short and long periods of time. These measurements are pivotal for differentiating natural variability from anthropogenic climate change effects and for understanding the interactions between these processes and various human uses of the ocean. PACE ocean science goals and measurement capabilities greatly exceed those of our heritage ocean color sensors, and are needed to address the many outstanding science questions developed by the oceanographic community over the past 40 years.

Cetinic, Ivona↗
NASA NTRS2006

Promoting Lifelong Ocean Education: Shaping Tomorrow's Earth Stewards and the Science and Technology Workforce

The coming ocean observing systems provide an unprecedented opportunity to change both the public perception of our oceans, and to inspire, captivate and motivate our children, our young adults and even our fellow adults to pursue careers allied with the oceans and to become stewards of our Planet's last unexplored environment. Education plans for the operational component, the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), and for the research component, Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION), are designed to take advantage of this opportunity. In both cases, community recommendations were developed within the context of the following assumptions: 1. Utilize research on how people learn, especially the four-pronged model of simultaneous learner-centered, knowledge-center, assessment-centered and community-centered learning 2. Strive for maximum impact on national needs in science and technology learning 3. Build on the best of what is already in place 4. Pay special attention to quality, sustainability, and scalability of efforts 5. Use partnerships across federal, state and local government, academia, and industry. Community recommendations for 100s and ORION education have much in common and offer the opportunity to create a coherent education effort allied with ocean observing systems. Both efforts focus on developing the science and technology workforce of the future, and the science and technology literacy of the public within the context of the Earth system and the role of the oceans and Great Lakes in that system. Both also recognize that an organized education infrastructure that supports sustainability and scalability of education efforts is required if ocean observing education efforts are to achieve a small but measurable improvement in either of these areas. Efforts have begun to develop the education infrastructure by beginning to form a community of educators from existing ocean and aquatic education networks and by exploring needs and issues associated with using ocean observing information assets in education. Likewise efforts are underway to address workforce issues by a systematic analysis of current and future workforce and educational needs. These activities will be described as will upcoming opportunities for the community to participate in these efforts.

Meeson, Blanche↗
NASA NTRS2015

Coordinated Field Campaigns in Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico

NASA's GEOstationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission concept recommended by the U.S. National Research Council (2007) focuses on measurements of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols and aquatic coastal ecology and biogeochemistry from geostationary orbit (35,786 km altitude). Two GEO-CAPE-sponsored multi-investigator ship-based field campaigns were conducted to coincide with the NASA Earth Venture Suborbital project DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality) field campaigns: (1) Chesapeake Bay in July 2011 and (2) northwestern Gulf of Mexico in September 2013. Goal: to evaluate whether GEO-CAPE coastal mission measurement and instrument requirements are optimized to address science objectives while minimizing ocean color satellite sensor complexity, size and cost - critical mission risk reduction activities. NASA continues to support science studies related to the analysis of data collected as part of these coordinated field campaigns and smaller efforts.

GoMex↗
NASA NTRS2022

The Future: Nasa’s Surface Biology and Geology Mission and the Dark (Aquatic) Side

With the release of NASA’s Earth System Observatory (ESO) measurement targets that includes studying the Earth’s Surface Biology and Geology (SBG), a global visible to shortwave infrared imaging spectrometer and a multispectral thermal infrared imager have been planned to launch in the late 2020s. This mission will enable unprecedented interdisciplinary science and applications relevant to studying the biology and geology of the Earth's surface. Measurement targets are directly aligned for studying coastal and inland waters ecosystems and water quality, including coralreef ecosystems, snow and ice, mineralogy, volcanology, biology, ecology, biodiversity, and components of radiative forcing from the surface such as greenhouse gas emissions. The observations not only have scientific value in studying feedbacks and interactions of surface processes (e.g., harmful algal blooms, domoic acid, oil spills, and other hazardous events), but also societal benefit – with the capacity to support real-world decision-making such as response to theseevents and inland water conservation, protection of drinking water quality for public and environmental health, and habitat conservation. The work presented here outlines the conducted mission and architecture study and the initiation of science performance trades (signal sensitivity; spectral, spatial, and temporal resolution; and atmospheric effects) informing the design of the SBG segment of the ESO providing the most value to myriad science and applications as possible. Science and applications synergies and algorithms with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and the Geostationary Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer (GLIMR) is opportunistic for advancing aquatics research and applications.

THE FUTURE↗
NASA NTRS2014

On-Orbit Radiometric Characterization of OLI (Landsat 8) for Applications in Aquatic Remote Sensing

Landsat-8 carries two separate sensors, namely the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Radiometer Suite (TIRS), that image the earth surface throughout the visible and thermal portions of the spectrum. Compared to Landsat heritage sensors, the OLI has enhanced features, which include its 12-bit radiometric resolution and the addition of a band centered at 443 nm. The dramatically improved data quality/quantity expands existing applications of Landsat imagery in aquatic sciences from the retrieval of bio-geochemical properties, such as near-surface concentrations of chlorophyll-a (CHL) and total suspended solids (TSS), to benthic mapping. This study offers analysis of OLI's absolute radiometric performance over bodies ofwater using benchmark observations, namely the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) ocean color observations and marine in situ radiometric measurements. Sensor-to-sensor comparisons are performed to derive gain factors (g1) from near-concurrent observations in TOA radiance and reflectance domains. The gains in the radiance domain were further validated/adjusted by determining a second set of gains (g2) via analysis of OLI-derived water-leaving radiance, i.e., L(sub w) (gamma), against in situ measurements made either at the Ocean Color AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONETOC) sites or during field campaigns. The analyses yield the OLI calibration uncertainties that need to be accounted forwhen studying aquatic environments. Itwas found that, for the visible and near-infrared channels, the OLI radiometric responses, on average, are well in agreement (b 2 % discrepancies) with the TOA radiances estimated by ocean color satellites or those predicted by models based onmeasurements of aquatic and atmospheric properties. However, the TOA radiance at the new 443-nm band is found to be, on average, 3.4 % larger than the reference observations. The inter-sensor comparisons in the reflectance domain, however, indicated slightly different results with the OLI responses being low in the blue bands. To enhance the retrieval accuracy of aquatic-science products from OLI datasets, sets of temporally averaged gains (radiance and reflectance) are derived and recommended for use prior to the retrieval of in-water products.

Remote Sensing↗