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Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow Up to be Engineers – Internships & Other Opportunities

Internships, clubs, and camps can provide a great way to prepare for a career in engineering. In this second webinar of a three-part series, NASA engineers and education experts share their experiences, offer tips, and take viewer questions. Speakers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Vandi Verma, chief engineer, robotic operations for the Mars 2020 mission Jessica Gonzales, software systems engineer Ota Lutz, elementary and secondary education lead Leslie Lowes, STEM informal education specialist

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter makes progress towards its first test flight, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has begun preparing to test the MOXIE technology demonstration that converts Martian air into oxygen, and investigating some nearby rocks with its science instruments. This video provides a mission update from Ingenuity Chief Engineer Bob Balaram, and Perseverance Project Scientist Ken Farley.

How does a great idea take off? Three women engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory offer tips, share their career stories, and take viewer questions in this third webinar of a three-part series. Speakers from JPL: MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager Jessica Samuels, surface systems manager for the Mars 2020 mission Priyanka Sharma, systems engineer for NISAR and president of JPL’s Advisory Council for Women

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter takes off and lands in this video captured on April 25, 2021, by Mastcam-Z, an imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. As expected, the helicopter flew out of its field of vision while completing a flight plan that took it 164 feet (50 meters) downrange of the landing spot. Keep watching, the helicopter will return to stick the landing. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been on the surface of Mars since February of 2021, joining NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been studying the Red Planet since 2012. Perseverance is now beginning to ramp up its science mission on Mars while preparing to collect samples that will be returned to Earth on a future mission. Curiosity is ready to explore some new Martian terrain. This video provides a mission update from Perseverance Surface Mission Manager Jessica Samuels and Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Fraeman.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter completed its fifth flight with a one-way journey from Wright Brothers Field to a new airfield 423 feet (129 meters) to the south on May 7, 2021. Ingenuity climbed to a new altitude record of 33 feet (10 meters). The flight is part of the rotorcraft’s transition to its new operations demonstration phase. This phase will focus on investigating how a rotorcraft can be used, and demonstrate products that only a rotorcraft can provide from its aerial vantage point. Ingenuity became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021, from Wright Brothers Field in Jezero Crater, Mars.

Since landing on the Red Planet, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has been hard at work analyzing rocks and soil on the floor of Jezero Crater with the SuperCam instrument. SuperCam features a rock-vaporizing laser, camera, and microphone that can gather data from a distance. This video provides an instrument update by Hemani Kalucha, one of the SuperCam operations team members from Caltech. The laser pits shown are about .009 inches (250 microns) in diameter and spaced 1/8 inch (3 millimeters) apart. Sounds of an Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flight captured by the SuperCam microphone can be heard in the video NASA’s Perseverance Rover Hears Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in Flight.

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a historic group selfie with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on April 6, 2021. But how was the selfie taken? Vandi Verma, Perseverance’s chief engineer for robotic operations at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California breaks down the process in this video. Video taken by Perseverance’s navigation cameras shows the rover’s robotic arm twisting and maneuvering to take the 62 images that compose the image. The rover's entry, descent, and landing microphone captured the sound of the arm’s motors whirring during the process. Selfies allow engineers to check wear and tear on the rover over time.

Curiosity’s Deputy Project Scientist, Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, gives viewers a descriptive tour of Curiosity's location. The panorama was captured by the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on July 3, 2021, the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. Curiosity landed nine years ago on August 5, 2012, with a mission to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the ancient past, when long-lived lakes and groundwater existed within Gale Crater.

Perseverance Project Scientist Ken Farley points out highlights in this Martian panorama from the rover's Mastcam-Z instrument, including mountains that make up the crater rim, remnants of an ancient river delta that could preserve signs of ancient life, volcanic rocks, and boulders likely carried into the crater by the river in the distant past. The enhanced-color panorama was created from images taken on Nov. 28, 2021. The color enhancement exaggerates small changes in color from place to place in the scene. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. The sky on Mars would not actually look blue to a human explorer on the Red Planet, but pinkish. Perseverance touched down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. For more information on this panorama is available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25022. For more information on the Perseverance rover, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance.

Teams across multiple NASA centers and the European Space Agency are working together to prepare a set of missions that would return the samples being collected by the Mars Perseverance rover safely back to Earth. From landing on the Red Planet and collecting the samples to launching them off the surface of Mars for their potential return to Earth, groundbreaking technologies and methods are being developed and tested. This video features some of that prototype testing underway for the proposed Sample Retrieval Lander, Mars Ascent Vehicle launch systems, and the Earth Entry System. A variety of testing is taking place at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

What has NASA's Perseverance rover accomplished since landing on the surface of Mars in February 2021? Surface Operations Mission Manager Jessica Samuels reflects on a year filled with groundbreaking discoveries at Jezero Crater and counts up the rover's achievements: More than 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) driven A new record for the longest drive in a Martian day Six samples and counting of Martian rock and atmosphere that could eventually be brought to Earth for further study More than 50 gigabytes of science data More than 100,000 images returned, including two "selfies" 18 flights by NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which hitched a ride and coordinates flights with the Perseverance rover Samuels also explains the next phase of Perseverance’s mission: to explore the delta that formed in Jezero billions of years ago from sediment that an ancient river carried to the shores of the lake that once existed in the crater. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet's geology and past climate and paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. Perseverance is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). For more information on the Perseverance rover, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance.

A large dust storm on Mars, nearly twice the size of the United States, covered the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet in early January 2022, leading to some of NASA’s explorers on the surface hitting pause on their normal activities. NASA’s Insight lander put itself in a "safe mode" to conserve battery power after dust prevented sunlight from reaching the solar panels. NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter also had to postpone flights until conditions improved. A fleet of NASA orbiters monitor Martian dust storms like this one and serve as lifelines to Earth by relaying data from the rovers and lander on the ground back to the team. This includes the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, and Odyssey. Odyssey, while facing its technical issue, was able to recover quickly enough to come to InSight's aid during the dust storm. For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov.

NASA wants to celebrate students who’ve persevered. From overcoming unexpected challenges and hurdles in getting the Perseverance rover to Mars, and executing operations on the surface, the rover team already knows quite a bit about what it means to persevere.

NASA’s rovers are putting their gears in drive on Mars, making discoveries along the way. NASA's Curiosity rover captured some interesting images on Mount Sharp while heading toward an area called Greenheugh Pediment. Over in Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter are both gearing up for a new destination. Perseverance is wrapping up its first science campaign on the floor of Jezero Crater and, with the help of sophisticated self-driving abilities, will head toward the remnants of a fan-shaped deposit of river sediments known as a delta to collect more samples. Ingenuity is planning updates to its software to improve operational safety. You can make your own discoveries by visiting the raw image pages for the Curiosity rover and Perseverance rover, which feature unprocessed images coming straight down from the rovers. For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is using its self-driving capabilities as it treks across Jezero Crater seeking signs of ancient life and gathering rock and soil samples for planned return to Earth. With the help of special 3D glasses, rover drivers on Earth plan routes with specific stops, but increasingly allow the rover to "take the wheel" and choose how it gets to those stops. Perseverance's auto-navigation system, known as AutoNav, makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth. Now the rover can drive through these more complex terrains, which helps Perseverance achieve its science goals and break driving records. The rover is traversing from an area near its landing site, "Octavia E. Butler Landing," to an area where an ancient river flowed into a body of water and deposited sediments (known as a delta).

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest-frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface.

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, explains the planned joint NASA/ESA effort to bring to Earth samples being collected on Mars by NASA's Perseverance rover. For more information, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/msr TRANSCRIPT Hey, I'm Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of Science at NASA. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be here today with you to talk about one of the more exciting and challenging scientific missions for NASA. The first steps of the Mars 2020 campaign were accomplished with the landing of our Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Then, our rover began collecting samples from the surface of Mars. This effort will continue over the next few years as we take advantage of Perseverance’s ability to capture and contain up to 40 samples. This effort is laying the groundwork for one of our most ambitious campaigns yet – the Mars Sample Return. An international collaboration with the European Space Agency, this proposed mission is being designed to transport up to 30 of those valuable samples from the Red Planet back to Earth for future analysis. By returning Martian samples to Earth, we can apply the full breadth of terrestrial science laboratories’ capabilities and research. We also believe this to be the next logical step in our quest to eventually land humans on the surface of Mars. Moreover, the samples collected by Perseverance during its exploration of an ancient river delta are thought to be the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for life. There's so much to focus on for something this complex. One key area is, of course, safety. A major focus of this effort is the safety of our home planet. Planetary protection is the discipline of protecting solar system bodies such as planets and moons from possible contamination by Earth life, while protecting Earth's biosphere from any potential adverse effects that could result from bringing material collected from these bodies back to our planet. The NASA/ESA team is working closely with each agency's planetary protection leadership to ensure that every spacecraft sent to the Red Planet has been cleaned to prevent Earth organisms from compromising scientific investigations, and to implement numerous steps designed to protect Earth and provide safety assurance by preventing any uncontained or unsterilized Mars material from being delivered to Earth. NASA takes these efforts seriously, and we have put work into assessing the risk. The question of whether samples from Mars could present a hazard to Earth’s biosphere has been studied by several different panels of scientific experts from the United States and elsewhere over the past several decades. Reports from these panels have found an extremely low likelihood that samples collected from areas on Mars like those being explored by Perseverance could possibly contain a biological hazard to our biosphere. With that, I just want to tell you how excited I am to be part of this history-making mission – truly international breakthrough mission – addressing one of the most exciting questions that has been boggling human minds for millennia, and that is: “Is there life elsewhere?” This mission will give us a partial answer to that relative to Mars. Thank you.

power to easily get through the first two years. Elizabeth Barrett But there's a lot of dust in Mars's atmosphere, and that's falling down on top of our solar arrays and slowly blocking the sun. Bruce Banerdt As the panels are getting dustier. We started wracking our brains of whether there's anything we can do to try to clean off those panels ourselves. Kathya Garcia When the idea of using dirt to clean the solar arrays was first proposed, it seemed counterintuitive. Elizabeth Barrett We were actually able to use the arm and the scoop to scoop up some soil from the ground and dump it over the lander, having some of that heavier sand blow onto the arrays and knock some of the dust off. So we essentially used it as an array cleaning tool. Kathya Garcia Cleaning with dirt actually worked! Bruce Banerdt It allowed us to actually keep the instruments going during the low power season where the Mars is farthest from the sun during the winter. Unfortunately, later in the summer, we think that the power is going to be dropping so quickly due to the atmosphere getting dustier due to the alignment of Mars and the sun. Kathya Garcia We're going to be at a point where we can no longer have all of our instruments on, which means we'll be turning off the seismometer and other instruments on board.The last day is going to be bittersweet. Obviously, we're preparing for it. Elizabeth Barrett We know it's coming. But that first moment where we don't hear from the lander when we expect to, that's going to be tough. Mark Panning It's left a permanent mark on me and I literally tattooed InSight onto my arm. I'll never let it go. Bruce Banerdt We've really rewritten sort of the chapter of the encyclopedia on the interior of Mars. That was our last big hole in our understanding of the planet. There's a lot of data that people are going to be looking at for decades to come. Elizabeth Barrett We accomplished so many of our science goals, and we're going to have something to look back on and be proud.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari explains how images from the orbiter's HiRISE camera help scientists better understand Martian winds. With the help of 80,000 citizen scientists sorting through the orbiter’s images, hundreds of thousands of wind “fans” were identified on the surface of Mars. Scientists use wind to understand the climate of Mars today and in the past. These wind data can also help them study why some dust storms grow to become global and others don’t. Studying wind and dust will help future spacecraft and human missions. For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov. Transcript: MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari: Winds on Mars can both help and hurt spacecraft. So we're getting really creative in how to study winds on the surface of Mars over a large region. Raquel Villanueva: We're here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Space Flight Operations Facility, also known as the Dark Room. This is where engineers send commands and receive data from JPL missions, including NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Now, detailed images from the orbiter are helping scientists better understand Martian winds. Leslie Tamppari is MRO's deputy project scientist. Leslie, what are we seeing in these images? Leslie Tamppari: So what you can see there are dark patches on the surface of the ice near the south polar region, and they're created by gas jets that come from under that ice, up through cracks and deliver that dust out onto the ice. And the wind will carry that dust and lay it on the surface forming these bands. And what we can do with this information is we can look at the directions and the sizes and we can try to understand what the wind field is doing. And I understand that volunteers played a large role in this research. Yes, they did. We have taken about 75,000 images over all of Mars with our MRO HiRISE camera. We used citizen scientists, 80,000 volunteers to map these fans and map their directions and sizes. Raquel Villanueva: Why is it important to study wind direction on Mars? Leslie Tamppari: Some of our landers and rovers have had wind measurements, but only in a few locations at a few different times. But winds are very important for understanding today's climate on Mars, but also for trying to understand how the climate was different in the past. We also have huge dust storms that occur on Mars sometimes, but we don't understand why some storms become global and some don't. So we're trying to understand the wind field to try to put all these pieces together, to understand Mars better. And how does that information help protect NASA's spacecraft? Right. It's very important for not only the spacecraft, but probably future human exploration as well, because dust, it can be dangerous to hardware. For example, on the Perseverance rover, we are fortunate enough to have a wind sensor and we're measuring dust devils and a couple of these dust devils and wind events were so large they picked up not only dust but bigger particles, sand sized particles. And in fact, some of the wind sensors were damaged on the Perseverance rover. In other locations, we have seen hardly any dust devils. For example, the InSight lander has solar panels. The solar panels are completely covered with dust, and the power is waning. And we'd really like to see some dust devils coming by so that they could clean up those solar panels and provide InSight with some more power. So learning about the winds and the different environments and how they change across Mars will really help us plan not only for the conditions for today's spacecraft there, but also plan better for the future. Raquel Vilanueva: Thank you, Leslie. To get the latest updates, follow at NASA, JPL and at NASA's Mars on social media. Or take a deeper dive on the mission websites at mars.nasa.gov.

In this Mars Report, Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Fraeman provides an update on the rover’s capabilities a decade after landing in Gale Crater. Now, Curiosity is heading to an area that may help answer how long ancient life could have persisted on the Red Planet as Mars went through significant changes in the climate. Read more about where Curiosity is currently exploring. Download a poster celebrating Curiosity’s 10 years on Mars here. Some of the images in the video include color enhancement that exaggerate small changes in color from place to place in the Martian scene. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. For instance, the sky on Mars would not actually look blue to a human explorer on the Red Planet, but pinkish. For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov.

Engineers successfully completed a series of Mars Sample Return (MSR) Earth Entry System (EES) drop tests at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). A Manufacturing Demonstration Unit (MDU) of one potential design for the EES aeroshell was outfitted with sensors and dropped from a helicopter. The MSR program being planned by NASA and the European Space Agency proposes to return samples collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover and land them at UTTR inside the EES aeroshell. The drop test series was a follow up to tests conducted last year at UTTR with a .75-meter, less detailed, EES test article. In comparison, the MDU is a full-scale vehicle, 1.25 meters across, with a structure fabricated of materials similar to those that would be used for the EES in the actual mission. During the tests, the MDU was dropped from an altitude of 1,200 feet to provide time to reach the intended landing speed. "The MDU was very stable during descent - it didn't wobble around a lot, and it landed successfully, in the sense that there was no structural damage and it survived impact as expected," said Jim Corliss, MSR EES chief engineer. It's important for the aeroshell to land in a particular orientation, Corliss added, and the drop test indicated the full-scale MDU was stable during final descent, landing right on its nose as engineers intended. This test, along with another series of tests planned for later this year, will help researchers verify predictions of the EES landing performance and complete the characterization of the potential landing area at UTTR.

Since landing in February 2021, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has sent back about 180,000 images of the Red Planet. After each communication downlink, images go directly to the Perseverance Raw Image page: go.nasa.gov/perseverance-raw-images. Members of the public can vote on their favorite images, and each week a new "Image of the Week" is selected. This video features the first 41 images of the week, giving a glimpse of Perseverance’s journeys throughout 2021. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.