Student teams competed in the 2025 Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Dec. 5. The event pits middle and high school teams against each other as they try to get handmade devices to accomplish a task.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The 2025 Invention Challenge at JPL called on teams to build devices capable of moving about 2 gallons (8 liters) of water from a holding reservoir into a bucket about 16 feet (5 meters) away within 60 seconds.
Teams at JPL’s 2025 Invention Challenge built their devices with plywood, PVC pipe, duct tape, and even soda cans.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Now in its 26th year, the event brings teams of middle and high school students to the lab to compete with home-built contraptions.
Teenagers wielding power tools and plywood demonstrated their engineering prowess at the annual Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Friday. Also in evidence: lots of small motors, 3D-printed gears, PVC pipe, and duct tape.
First held at JPL in 1998, the event pits middle and high school teams against each other as they try to get handmade devices to accomplish a task that changes annually. For this year’s challenge, dubbed the “Bucket Brigade Contest,” teams needed to create devices capable of moving about 2 gallons (8 liters) of water from a holding reservoir into a bucket about 16 feet (5 meters) away in 60 seconds while satisfying a long list of rules.
Arcadia High School’s Team Still Water won first place among student teams in the 2025 Invention Challenge at JPL.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
In all, 18 teams of students from middle and high schools across Los Angeles and Orange counties competed. First place went to Arcadia High School’s Team Still Water, which completed the task in just 6.45 seconds. Mission Viejo High’s Team Senior Citizens was close behind, finishing in 6.71 seconds. The Samo Seals of Santa Monica High came in third, at 9.18 seconds.
Five teams from outside the area — four from schools in Colorado and Massachusetts and one involving professional engineers — were invited to compete as well. Of those, the team led by retired JPL engineer Alan DeVault’s Team “Trial and Error Engineering” came in first (a repeat from last year). And “Team 6” from Pioneer Charter School of Science in the Boston area took second place (also a repeat performance from 2024). No team qualified for third place.
Some of the devices in the 2025 Invention Challenge at NASA JPL made a big splash.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Judges named Team Clankers from Mission Viejo High most artistic, Team 6 from Pioneer Charter School of Science most unusual, and Team Winning Engineering Team (WET) from Temple City High most creative.
The event was supported by dozens of volunteers from JPL staff. JPL Fire Chief Dave Dollarhide, familiar with a bucket brigade, was a guest judge.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s broadcast of the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse has won an Emmy Award for Excellence in Production Technology.
At the 76th Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards on Dec. 4, in New York City, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the win. Walt Lindblom and Sami Aziz accepted the award on behalf of the agency. For the broadcast, Lindblom served as the coordinating producer and Aziz served as the executive producer.
“By broadcasting the total solar eclipse, this team brought joy and wonder for our Sun, Moon, and Earth to viewers across America and the world,” said Will Boyington, associate administrator for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Congratulations to the production team, whose efforts demonstrate the hard work and dedication to the sharing the marvel that makes our solar system something we strive to understand.”
NASA’s live broadcast coverage of the 2024 total solar eclipse was the most complex live project ever produced by the agency. In total, NASA’s eclipse broadcasts garnered almost 40 million live and replay views across its own distribution channels, including on NASA+, the agency’s free streaming service. Externally, the agency’s main broadcast was picked up in 2,208 hits on 568 channels in 25 countries.
“Our unique place in the solar system allows us on Earth to witness one of the most spectacular science shows nature has to offer. NASA’s production team captured the action every step of the way across the path of totality, including the rare glimpse of the Sun’s corona,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters. “Congratulations to the NASA team for successfully showing the 2024 total solar eclipse through the eyes of NASA for the whole world to experience together.”
The broadcast spanned three hours, showcasing the eclipse across seven American states and two countries. From cities, parks, and stadiums, 11 hosts and correspondents provided on air commentary, interviews, and live coverage. Viewers tuned in from all over the world, including at watch parties in nine locations, from the Austin Public Library to New York’s Times Square. An interactive “Eclipse Board” provided real time data analysis as the Moon’s shadow crossed North America.
Live feeds from astronauts aboard the International Space Station and NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft were brought in to provide rare and unique perspectives of the solar event. To make this possible, NASA deployed and enabled 67 cameras, 6 NASA Wide Area Network control rooms, 38 encoders, and 35 decoders. The team coordinated 20 live telescope feeds which represented 12 locations across the path of totality.
NASA’s eclipse broadcast won another Emmy award earlier this year at the 46th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards for Outstanding Live News Special. Additionally, the show received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Show Open or Title Sequence – News. NASA’s eclipse communication and broadcast efforts also won two Webby Awards and two Webby People’s Voice Awards.
Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitor a research drone in this September 2025 photo. This flight occurred in Dumont Dunes, an area of the Mojave Desert, as part of a larger test campaign to develop navigation software that would guide future rotorcraft on Mars. The work was among 25 projects funded by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program this past year to push the limits of future technologies.
Whether it’s new navigation software, slope-scaling robotic scouts, or long-distance gliders, the technology being developed by the Mars Exploration Program envisions a future where robots can explore all on their own — or even help astronauts do their work.
Tropical cyclones almost never form over the Strait of Malacca. The narrow waterway separating Peninsular Malaysia from the Indonesian island of Sumatra sits so close to the equator that the Coriolis effect is usually too weak to allow storms to rotate enough to organize into cyclones. But on November 25, 2025, meteorologists watched as a tropical depression intensified into Cyclone Senyar—just the second documented case of a tropical cyclone forming in the strait.
Hemmed in by land on both sides, Senyar made landfall in Sumatra later that day as it made a U-turn and headed east toward Malaysia. As the slow-moving storm passed over Sumatra’s mountainous terrain, it dropped nearly 400 millimeters (16 inches) of rain in many areas, according to satellite-based estimates from NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. (Due to the averaging of the satellite data, local rainfall amounts may differ when measured from the ground.)
The torrent caused extensive flash floods and landslides in Sumatra’s rugged terrain. Streams and rivers rapidly overflowed with sediment-laden, debris-filled waters that swept through villages, cities, and towns. News reports suggest that the damage was worsened by an earthquake that struck on November 27 and the abundance of loose piles of timber in the region that became destructive battering rams in high water. As of December 4, Indonesian authorities reported several hundred deaths and more than 700,000 displaced people.
The OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 captured this image of flooding in Aceh and North Sumatra provinces on November 30, 2025. Muddy sediment-filled water appears to have swamped much of Lhoksukon, a town of 40,000 people, and several surrounding villages.
Other tropical cyclones and monsoon rains hitting Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam at roughly the same time have also caused extensive destruction in the broader region. According to one estimate from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, flooding has affected more than 10.8 million people in the region and displaced more than 1.2 million.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
References & Resources
BNPB (2025) News Index. Accessed December 4, 2025.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy named NGC 1792.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a stormy and highly active spiral galaxy named NGC 1792. Located over 50 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Columba (the Dove), the bright glow of the galaxy’s center is offset by the flocculent and sparkling spiral arms swirling around it.
NGC 1792 is just as fascinating to astronomers as its chaotic look might imply. Classified as a starburst galaxy, it is a powerhouse of star formation, with spiral arms rich in star-forming regions. In fact, it is surprisingly luminous for its mass. The galaxy is close to a larger neighbor, NGC 1808, and astronomers think the strong gravitational interaction between the two stirred up the reserves of gas in this galaxy. The result is a torrent of star formation, concentrated on the side closest to its neighbor, where gravity has a stronger effect. NGC 1792 is a perfect target for astronomers seeking to understand the complex interactions between gas, star clusters, and supernovae in galaxies.
Hubble studied this galaxy before. This new image includes additional data collected throughout 2025, providing a deeper view of the tumultuous activity taking place in the galaxy. Blossoming red lights in the galaxy’s arms mark Hydrogen-alpha (H-alpha) emission from dense clouds of hydrogen molecules. The newly forming stars within these clouds shine powerfully with ultraviolet radiation. This intense radiation ionizes the hydrogen gas, stripping away electrons which causes the gas to emit H-alpha light. H-alpha is a very particular red wavelength of light and a tell-tale sign of new stars.
NASA Selects 2 Instruments for Artemis IV Lunar Surface Science
NASA has selected two science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during the Artemis IV mission to the lunar south polar region. The instruments will improve our knowledge of the lunar environment to support NASA’s further exploration of the Moon and beyond to Mars.
A visualization of the Moon’s South Pole region created with data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been surveying the Moon with seven instruments since 2009.
“The Apollo Era taught us that the further humanity is from Earth, the more dependent we are on science to protect and sustain human life on other planets,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By deploying these two science instruments on the lunar surface, our proving ground, NASA is leading the world in the creation of humanity’s interplanetary survival guide to ensure the health and safety of our spacecraft and human explorers as we begin our epic journey back to the Moon and onward to Mars.”
After his voyage to the Moon’s surface during Apollo 17, astronaut Gene Cernan acknowledged the challenge that lunar dust presents to long-term lunar exploration. Moon dust sticks to everything it touches and is very abrasive. The knowledge gained from the DUSTER (DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR) investigation will help mitigate hazards to human health and exploration. Consisting of a set of instruments mounted on a small autonomous rover, DUSTER will characterize dust and plasma around the landing site. These measurements will advance understanding of the Moon’s natural dust and plasma environment and how that environment responds to the human presence, including any disturbance during crew exploration activities and lander liftoff. The DUSTER instrument suite is led by Xu Wang of the University of Colorado Boulder. The contract is for $24.8 million over a period of three years.
A model of the DUSTER instrument suite consisting of the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer (EDA)—which will measure the charge, velocity, size, and flux of dust particles lofted from the lunar surface—and Relaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE (RESOLVE)—which will characterize the average electron density above the lunar surface using plasma sounding. Both instruments will be housed on a Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, which will be supplied by Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado, that develops and operates robotic systems for space exploration.
LASP/CU Boulder/Lunar Outpost
Data from the SPSS (South Pole Seismic Station) will enable scientists to characterize the lunar interior structure to better understand the geologic processes that affect planetary bodies. The seismometer will help determine the current rate at which the Moon is struck by meteorite impacts, monitor the real-time seismic environment and how it can affect operations for astronauts, and determine properties of the Moon’s deep interior. The crew will additionally perform an active-source experiment using a “thumper” that creates seismic energy to survey the shallow structure around the landing site. The SPSS instrument is led by Mark Panning of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The award is for $25 million over a period of three years.
An artist’s concept of SPSS (South Pole Seismic Station) to be deployed by astronauts on the lunar surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
“These two scientific investigations will be emplaced by human explorers on the Moon to achieve science goals that have been identified as strategically important by both NASA and the larger scientific community”, said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “We are excited to integrate these instrument teams into the Artemis IV Science Team.”
The two payloads were selected for further development to fly on Artemis IV; however, final manifesting decisions about the mission will be determined at a later date.
Through Artemis, NASA will address high priority science questions, focusing on those that are best accomplished by on-site human explorers on and around the Moon and by using the unique attributes of the lunar environment, aided by robotic surface and orbiting systems. The Artemis missions will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Over the course of several hours, technicians meticulously connected the inner and outer segments of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya
Two technicians look up at NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after its inner and outer segments were connected at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on Nov. 25, 2025. This marked the end of Roman’s construction. After final testing, the telescope will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman — named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer — is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026.
The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is seen as it lands on April 20, 2025 (April 19 Eastern time) in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, with the Expedition 71/72 crew aboard.
NASA/Bill Ingalls
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, is preparing to depart the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft and return to Earth.
Kim, Ryzhikov, and Zubritsky will undock from the station’s Prichal module at 8:41 p.m. EST on Monday, Dec. 8, headed for a parachute-assisted landing at 12:04 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 9 (10:04 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan), on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan.
Watch NASA’s live coverage of the crew’s return on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.
The space station change of command ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, on NASA+ and the agency’s YouTube channel. Rzyhikov will hand over station command to NASA astronaut Mike Fincke for Expedition 74, which begins at the time of Soyuz MS-27 undocking.
Kim and his crewmates are completing a 245-day mission aboard the station. At the conclusion of their mission, they will have orbited Earth 3,920 times and traveled nearly 104 million miles. This was the first flight for Kim and Zubritsky to the orbiting laboratory, while Ryzhikov is ending his third trip to space.
After landing, the three crew members will fly by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where recovery teams are based. Kim will board a NASA aircraft and return to Houston, while Ryzhikov and Zubritsky will depart for their training base in Star City, Russia.
NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Sunday, Dec. 7:
10:30 a.m. – Expedition 73/74 change of command ceremony begins on NASA+Amazon Prime, and YouTube.
For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies concentrate on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA is focusing its resources on deep space missions to the Moon as part of the Artemis campaign in preparation for future human missions to Mars.
Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:
NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On Nov. 25, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully assembled following the integration of its two major segments on Nov. 25 at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The mission is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026.
Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya
“Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered—piece by piece, test by test—an observatory that will expand our understanding of the universe. As Roman moves into its final stage of testing following integration, we are focused on executing with precision and preparing for a successful launch on behalf of the global scientific community.”
After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will send the observatory to its final destination a million miles from Earth.
“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey vast swaths of sky during its five-year primary mission. During that time, scientists expect it to see an incredible number of new objects, including stars, galaxies, black holes and planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. This infographic previews some of the discoveries scientists anticipate from Roman’s data deluge.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Observing from space will make Roman very sensitive to infrared light — light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see — from far across the cosmos. Pairing its crisp infrared vision with a sweeping view of space will allow astronomers to explore myriad cosmic topics, from dark matter and dark energy to distant worlds and solitary black holes, and conduct research that would take hundreds of years using other telescopes.
“Within our lifetimes, a great mystery has arisen about the cosmos: why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. There is something fundamental about space and time we don’t yet understand, and Roman was built to discover what it is,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With Roman now standing as a complete observatory, which keeps the mission on track for a potentially early launch, we are a major step closer to understanding the universe as never before. I couldn’t be prouder of the teams that have gotten us to this point.”
The coronagraph will demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from distant stars and make it easier for scientists to see the faint light from planets in orbit around them. The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
“The question of ‘Are we alone?’ is a big one, and it’s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it,” said Feng Zhao, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman.”
The coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for three months spread across the mission’s first year-and-a-half of operations, after which the mission may conduct additional observations based on scientific community input.
The Wide Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel camera that will unveil the cosmos all the way from our solar system to near the edge of the observable universe. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon. The mission will gather data hundreds of times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, adding up to 20,000 terabytes (20 petabytes) over the course of its five-year primary mission.
“The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,” said Dominic Benford, Roman’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
Over the course of several hours, technicians meticulously connected the inner and outer segments of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, as shown in this time-lapse. Next, Roman will undergo final testing prior to moving to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026.
Credit: NASA/Sophia Roberts
Survey trifecta
Using the Wide Field Instrument, Roman will conduct three core surveys which will account for 75% of the primary mission. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will combine the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of space and time. Astronomers will trace the evolution of the universe to probe dark matter — invisible matter detectable only by how its gravity affects things we can see — and trace the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters over time.
The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will probe our dynamic universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly. Stitching these observations together to create movies will allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years. That will help astronomers study dark energy — the mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the universe’s expansion — and could even uncover entirely new phenomena that we don’t yet know to look for.
Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals — gravitational boosts of a background star’s light caused by the gravity of an intervening object. While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including worlds like every planet in our solar system except Mercury. Microlensing will also reveal rogue planets—worlds that roam the galaxy untethered to a star — and isolated black holes. The same dataset will reveal 100,000 worlds that transit, or pass in front of, their host stars.
The remaining 25% of Roman’s five-year primary mission will be dedicated to other observations that will be determined with input from the broader scientific community. The first such program, called the Galactic Plane Survey, has already been selected.
Because Roman’s observations will enable such a wide range of science, the mission will have a General Investigator Program designed to support astronomers to reveal scientific discoveries using Roman data. As part of NASA’s commitment to Gold Standard Science, NASA will make all of Roman’s data publicly available with no exclusive use period. This ensures multiple scientists and teams can use data at the same time, which is important since every Roman observation will address a wealth of science cases.
NASA’s freshly assembled Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will revolutionize our understanding of the universe with its deep, crisp, sweeping infrared views of space. The mission will transform virtually every branch of astronomy and bring us closer to understanding the mysteries of dark energy, dark matter, and how common planets like Earth are throughout our galaxy. Roman is on track for launch by May 2027, with teams working toward a launch as early as fall 2026. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Roman’s namesake — Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer — made it her personal mission to make cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.
“The mission will acquire enormous quantities of astronomical imagery that will permit scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come, honoring Dr. Roman’s legacy in promoting scientific tools for the broader community,” said Jackie Townsend, Roman’s deputy project manager at NASA Goddard. “I like to think Dr. Roman would be extremely proud of her namesake telescope and thrilled to see what mysteries it will uncover in the coming years.”
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland used the Glenn Icing Computational Environment (GlennICE) software to create 3D computational models of this advanced air mobility rotor and study propeller icing issues. The physical model of this rotor was installed and tested in the Icing Research Tunnel in 2023 as part of an icing evaluation study, which also sought to validate the computational models.
Credit: NASA/Jordan Cochran
When flying in certain weather conditions, tiny freezing water droplets floating in the air can pose a risk to aircraft. If not taken into consideration, these water droplets can accumulate on an aircraft as ice and pose a safety risk.
But NASA software tools such as Glenn Icing Computational Environment (GlennICE) are working to keep passengers and pilots safe.
NASA developed GlennICE, a new NASA software code, to transform the way we explore, understand, and prevent ice buildup on aircraft wings and engines, as well as control surfaces like rudders and elevators.
Owing to decades of world-class NASA research, engineers nationwide can now use GlennICE to design aircraft in such a way that ice buildup will either occur rarely or pose very little risk.
Named for NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, GlennICE is part of NASA’s work to provide the aviation industry with computational tools, including design software, to improve aircraft safety and enable innovation. For icing research and modeling, NASA computer codes have become the industry standard over the past several decades. And GlennICE builds on this work, performing highly advanced digital modeling of water and ice particles in just about any atmospheric condition you can imagine.
With updated capabilities and a streamlined user experience, GlennICE will enable users to advance the state of the art – particularly researchers working on complex, unusual future aircraft designs.
“The legacy codes are well formulated to handle simulations of traditional tube-and-wing shaped aircraft,” said Christopher Porter, lead for GlennICE’s development. “But now, we have new vehicles with new designs that present icing research challenges. This requires a more advanced tool, and that’s where GlennICE comes in.”
So far, dozens of industry partners as well as other government agencies have started using GlennICE, which is available on NASA’s software catalog.
Timelapse video of an ice accretion on the 65% common research model.
Credit: NASA/Jordan Cochran
Ice buildup: not cool
Though based on legacy NASA codes such as LEWICE 3D, GlennICE is a whole different ballgame. The new toolkit can be tailored to unique situations and is compatible with other software tools. In other words, it is more configurable, and much less time consuming for researchers to set up and use.
This streamlined process, along with its more-advanced ability to model icing, allows GlennICE to easily tackle 21st-century concepts such as supersonic planes, advanced air mobility drones and other aircraft, unconventionally shaped wings, open-rotor turbofan designs, or new configurations for conventional aircraft such as radar domes.
But how does this simulation process work?
“Imagine an aircraft flying through a cloud,” Porter said. “Some of those water and ice droplets hit the aircraft and some of them don’t. GlennICE simulates these droplets and exactly where they will end up, both on the aircraft and not.”
When these water droplets hit the aircraft, they attach, freeze, and start to gather even more droplets that do the same. The software simulates exactly where this will occur, and what shape the ice will take over time.
“We’re not just dealing with the airplane, but the physics of the air and water as well,” Porter said.
Because it’s designed for simulating droplets, researchers have expressed interest in using GlennICE to simulate other conditions involving sand and ash. These substances, when ingested by aircraft engines, can pose separate risks that aeronautical engineers work to prevent.
Glenn Icing Computational Environment (GlennICE) simulated ice accretions (blue) on the High Lift Common Research Model (gray).
Credit: NASA/Thomas Ozoroski
World-class research
Icing research is fundamental to aviation safety, and NASA fulfils a key role in ensuring pilots and passengers fly more safely and ice-free. The agency’s wind tunnels, for instance, have world-class icing research capabilities not commonly found in aeronautics research.
Paired with wind tunnel testing, GlennICE offers a holistic set of capabilities to researchers. While wind tunnels can verify and validate data with real-world models and conditions, tools like GlennICE can fill gaps in research not easily achieved with wind tunnels.
“Some environments we need to test in are impractical with wind tunnels because of the tunnel size required and complex physics involved,” Porter said. “But with GlennICE, we can do these tests digitally. For example, we can model all the icing conditions noted in new regulations.”
The GlennICE development falls under NASA’s Transformative Aeronautics Concept and Advanced Air Vehicles programs. Those programs supported GlennICE to further NASA’s work on computational tool development for aerospace design. More about the history of icing research at NASA is available on the agency’s website.
