Teams led by SwRI also successfully executed two ground-breaking experiments — by land and air — collecting unique solar data from the total eclipse that cast a shadow from Texas to Maine on April 8, 2024. The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) 2024 experiment engaged more than 200 community participants in a broad, approachable and inclusive effort to make a continuous 60-minute, high-resolution movie of this exciting event. A nearly simultaneous investigation used unique equipment installed in NASA’s WB-57F research aircraft to chase the eclipse shadow, making observations possible only when "chasing" the eclipse shadow by air.

SwRI also delivered the Solar Wind Plasma Sensor (SWiPS) and the magnetometer (MAG), which have been integrated into a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite dedicated to tracking space weather. SWiPS will measure the properties of ions originating from the Sun, including the very fast ions associated with coronal mass ejections that interact with Earth’s magnetic environment.

SwRI scientists are also leading three missions to explore the full range of objects in our solar system, from planets to dwarf planets, asteroids and comets. The Juno mission continues its extended mission to understand Jupiter and its moons, while New Horizons proceeds through the Kuiper Belt, exploring the outer reaches of our solar system. The Lucy mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids is preparing for its next main belt asteroid encounter in 2025, following the successful flyby of Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam. Lucy plans to explore nine additional asteroids over its 12-year journey.

In October, two SwRI instruments, MASPEX and Europa-UVS, launched aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. The spacecraft is designed to conduct a detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa, investigating whether its subsurface ocean has conditions suitable for life.

In 2024, NASA selected SwRI to lead the development of a lunar lander/rover instrument suite — Dating an Irregular Mare Patch with a Lunar Explorer, or DIMPLE — designed to understand if the Moon has been volcanically active in the geologically recent past. DIMPLE will use radioisotope-based dating, a rover and cameras to determine the age and composition of an anomalously young-looking patch of basalt named Ina. The payload includes the first-ever purpose-built rock dating instrument for use in space, developed by SwRI.

Two additional SwRI instruments are preparing for lunar launch in 2025. The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) has been integrated into a lander to measure the electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface. The Institute’s Magnetic Anomaly Plasma Spectrometer for NASA’s Lunar Vertex mission will study how the solar wind interacts with the Moon’s surface materials in anomalous regions of magnetic rocks.

In 2024, several scientists were awarded observation time on NASA’s premier James Webb Space Telescope. One team discovered hydrothermal activity on the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt. Another found evidence of hydration on the metallic asteroid Psyche in the main belt. A third detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide for the first time on the frozen surface of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. Experiments conducted in SwRI laboratories demonstrated that these compounds could form under conditions analogous to those at Charon.

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Courtesy J. Dworkin/GSFC

An SwRI scientist (left) serves on the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team, which categorized specimens from asteroid Bennu in a clean room at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

SwRI is studying samples returned from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, using laboratory infrared measurements of Bennu materials to confirm measurements made by the spacecraft’s thermal emission spectrometer on orbit. While the samples have confirmed many predictions about their composition, unexpected minerals, such as hydrated phosphates, have also been identified. Teams have also found abundant organic compounds present, providing an opportunity to study the building blocks essential for life, uncontaminated by Earth’s environment.

SwRI is developing QuickSounder, the first in a new generation of NOAA low-Earth-orbit environmental satellites. In early 2024, NASA and NOAA selected SwRI to design and build QuickSounder and operate it for three years to study physical properties of the Earth that affect weather patterns.

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The PaSTA mechanism is designed to act as a structural backbone for refueling and life-extension spacecraft.

For the U.S. Space Force, SwRI is building a small demonstration spacecraft designed to refuel compatible vehicles in geostationary orbit. When the host spacecraft is ready, SwRI will integrate the payload and perform system-level environmental testing to prepare the vehicle for launch. The planned launch date for the integrated spacecraft is June 2026.

Using internal funding, SwRI is developing the Parallelogram Synchronized Truss Assembly (PaSTA), a mechanism designed for on-orbit service and refueling spacecraft. Tight pointing and positioning control require these spacecraft to be rigid during maneuvers. PaSTA will serve as a structural backbone to the deployed solar panels, stiffening the structure for better spacecraft control.

This year, SwRI produced a design concept for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop technology to detect wildfires from space before they spread. The resulting concept is based on our Pleaides instrument, developed using SwRI internal funding, hosted on eight small satellites to continuously search for signs of wildfires in the U.S.

To evaluate how to improve processing capabilities for space technology, we evaluated an advanced RISC machine (ARM) processor configuration to assess its suitability for current and future spaceflight missions. The ARM processor demonstrated significant advantages in performance and power consumption, making it a strong candidate for spaceflight applications requiring enhanced or flexible computing capabilities.

SwRI prioritizes advancing spaceflight safety as commercial space travel increases and the industry prepares for longer journeys. In 2024, Institute scientists performed structural vibration testing of propellant-filled cryogenic tanks in preparation for the delivery of NASA payloads to the Moon’s south pole. These tests confirmed tank durability during and after vibration tests simulating rocket launch.

Additionally, Institute researchers are performing full-scale static and fatigue laboratory testing to validate the analytical and computational design of the next generation of commercial launch vehicles. This structural testing is essential to protect passengers’ lives and increase consumer accessibility to suborbital flights.

SwRI successfully flew three reduced-gravity payloads in 2024, advancing our understanding of bubble dynamics and heat transfer in fluids, essential for life support and propellant management in space and on the Moon. Additional experiments evaluated a lunar surface sensor and how impact cratering affected the evolution of asteroid Bennu’s cobble-strewn surface.

And in collaboration with NASA’s Marshall Space Center, SwRI is developing a series of inspection protocols designed to ensure the safety and structural integrity of future space and lunar habitats. These nondestructive inspection techniques are critical to constructing space habitats.