Aerotime reports, “UK-based electric vehicle takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Vertical Aerospace has become only the second company in the world to perform a piloted thrustborne flight test in a full-scale vectored thrust aircraft. The full-scale eVTOL aircraft, known as VX4, took off on January 7, 2024, with pilot Simon Davies at the controls, at the Vertical Aerospace test center at Cotswold Airport (GBA).”
Full Story (Aerotime)
Tag: January 2025
NASA Underscores Role of Moon as Testbed for Future Human Mars Missions
Space News reports, “NASA engineers working on the agency’s architecture for human Mars missions said during a panel at the AIAA SciTech Forum … that they were skeptical crewed missions to Mars of any kind … could be successful without first demonstrating technologies on the moon.”
Full Story (Space News)
USAF Science & Technology Chief: New Urgency to Embrace Digital Transformation to Strengthen the Force’s Resiliency and Ability to Compete Against Near-Peer Rivals
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
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ORLANDO, Fla. – The ability to field critical capabilities in the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has never been more urgent, a senior Air Force official told AIAA SciTech Forum attendees.
“We are in competition with near-competitive nations and China in particular is now on par to deliver new capabilities in seven years or less,” said Kristen Baldwin, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force.
She noted that in comparison, USAF programs take an average of 16 years to deliver new capability. “We see digital transformation as a true disruptive business practice that we can bring to bear. We have to invest now – we have to invest in new capabilities.”
Baldwin, speaking via Zoom on the second day of the forum, oversees a $5 billion budget across multiple research sites worldwide, focusing on digital engineering, cyber resiliency, and the service’s science and technology portfolio.
She described the Air Force’s digital materiel management approach, which includes six key initiatives to enhance data security, training, and IT infrastructure. Baldwin also outlined the integration of digital strategies across the Air Force and Space Force, including putting the government’s Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) and other government reference architectures as requirements in contracts. MOSA is the cornerstone of new and legacy platforms and weapons.
Baldwin also mentioned the five pillars of the Air Force’s engineering strategy that has been embraced by U.S. allies, particularly in the UK and Australia. Her team’s Digital Materiel Management (DMM) approach has led to both schedule acceleration and technology improvements.
She stressed the need for continuous engagement with industry partners and international collaborations to drive digital transformation forward. The USAF has created two digital consortia – the Industry Association Consortium (IAC) and the Digital Acceleration Consortium (DAC). The IAC provides an open collaborative opportunity for the defense industrial base to help identify barriers and develop solutions associated with the rapid, full-scale adoption of DMM. The DAC recommends solutions modernizing IT infrastructure, compatible Integrated Digital Environments, secure access to data, and common data standards, policy, and contracting language.
During the Q&A, Baldwin agreed that as government goes more digital, it will be more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
“We have to implement that cyber resilience to really manage our data. We can’t rely on just network and perimeter defense. We’ve got to be able to implement and manage that security of our data, so these environments we’re building and the way we classify that data is a key foundational element of our digital transformation approach. We have to be agile in the way we can maneuver to respond to cyber threats. We have to be continuously aware and adapt,” she said.
The final question ended on a fun note: What did Baldwin consider the most feasible technological innovation from the Star Wars universe that could be developed within the next 50 years, and what challenges would engineers and scientists face in making it a reality?
“I love the idea of robotics and image holograms. The advancement of robotics as well as holograms can really help to transform the way that we support our forces. When we think of this urgency in national security, we’re going to find ourselves in situations where we are not going to have the ability to wait for delivery of future capability. We’ll have to reset and regroup in place.”
Responding to Baldwin’s presentation, Terry Hill, digital engineering program manager for NASA in Washington, D.C., said, “It’s good to hear the Air Force’s plan. Their approach to MOSA and their commitment to moving to a digital ecosystem is refreshing because that’s where NASA is wanting to go and we’re trying to work across agencies to best leverage all our different investments.”
Hill added that the Air Force’s emphasis on cybersecurity also benefits civil agencies like NASA. “Focusing on different areas and sharing solutions is definitely the way forward,” he said.
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NASA Calls for Continuous American ‘Heartbeat’ in LEO
New Strategy for Sustaining U.S. Presence in Low Earth Orbit Announced
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla. – When NASA retires the International Space Station by the end of 2031, the space agency intends for the United States to not just have capability in microgravity, but to have a continuous “heartbeat” in low Earth orbit, emphasized NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free as he unveiled NASA’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Microgravity Strategy during the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando.
The announcement follows last month’s release of NASA’s publication of its final LEO goals and objectives, which inform its long-term strategy to advance microgravity science, technology, and exploration. The framework aims to sustain human presence in orbit, drive economic growth, and strengthen international partnerships.
“A continuous heartbeat is what we have had today [with the ISS] for 24 years – a true, unbroken, continuous presence, where there’s always a person living and working in space,” said Free. “It’s written in US policy. It affects our national posture. Truthfully, if we don’t have continuous heartbeat, we risk not being the partner of choice for our international partners. We risk ceding low Earth orbit to others.”
Speaking to a global gathering of 6,000+ engineers and other technical aerospace leaders from commercial firms, government and academia, Free outlined NASA’s strategy for ensuring this continued presence, even as the agency prepares to support the transition of LEO.
Free, an Ohio native who began his NASA career in 1990 as a propulsion engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center, was inducted as a new AIAA Associate Fellow this year. He discussed the role of the ISS as a “beacon of what humanity can do when we work together.”
“For over 24 years, the ISS has allowed us to partner and continuously live and work off the planet,” said Free. “Its value goes beyond symbolism. It has been a cornerstone of our human space flight program…laying the foundation for everything we’re building toward today.”
To date, the ISS has hosted nearly 4,000 research and educational investigations from over 100 countries.
He cited examples of research on the ISS that has driven better understanding of how the human body reacts to being in space for long time periods as well as biopharma breakthroughs such as protein crystal growth that has improved the formulation of cancer drugs. One investigation with Merck has resulted in better ways to deliver cancer drugs using an injection instead of an IV.
NASA’s LEO strategy remains integral to its broader ambitions for deep space exploration. The microgravity environment in LEO offers a cost-effective, easily accessible proving ground for technologies and research necessary for human missions to explore the solar system.
As part of its LEO sustainment strategy, NASA will award contracts through the agency’s in-space production applications to support commercial development of new and promising technologies for in space manufacturing of advanced materials and products for use on Earth, as well as semiconductor materials and optical fiber production. According to Free, a key need from industry partners is better environmental control and life support systems on spacecraft or habitats.
“With most of the journey to Moon and Mars occurring in microgravity, the objectives give the opportunity to continue vital human research, test future exploration systems, and retain the critical skills needed to operate in the microgravity environment,” stated NASA publicly in late December.
NASA needs the United States to continually operate in LEO as it launches long-duration trips as a warm-up to Mars, and to ensure there are affordable and frequent commercial transport options to support the traffic to and from low Earth orbit. The agency plans to issue a second RFP this June for its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program, designed to support the development of commercially owned and operated LEO destinations from which NASA, along with other customers, can purchase services and stimulate the growth of commercial activities in LEO.
“Our primary need is to mitigate risk for future trips to Mars with long duration flights in LEO of six months to a year. With the time we have left on ISS, we won’t have a statistically significant population of six-to-12-month missions to properly understand the risks of going to and returning from Mars,” he told AIAA SciTech Forum attendees.
The final framework includes 13 goals and 44 objectives across seven key areas: commercial low Earth orbit infrastructure, operations, science, research and technology development for exploration, international cooperation, workforce development and STEM engagement, and, public engagement.
Free said a key component of developing the strategy was weighing input from industry partners, whose feedback has served as “a cornerstone of the strategy.” NASA received 1,800 pieces of input during two workshops hosted in the UK and in Washington, D.C. last year.
“The comments we got were incredibly helpful,” said Free, who indicated the feedback validated the strategy. One piece of input from European space partners was the desire for faster scientific return, and as a result, “we added a new goal and objective around rapid LEO science to help us increase the pace of research.”
The input also led to a new objective for public engagement focused on collaborating NASA’s communication efforts to reach new audiences.
The new LEO strategy supports the United States’ national posture, or global standing as a leader in space.
During the Q&A, Free touched on a variety of topics, including NASA’s commitment to going to the moon, the agency’s digital engineering approach, the most exciting impact of AI on NASA’s work, and advice to AIAA’s technical committees and the new generation of aerospace workers.
He said AIAA remains an invaluable partner to NASA and its technical committee a valuable source of free-flowing discussions and ideas. He urged AIAA members to give feedback on the second draft RFP when it comes out.
“We need the feedback so the Commercial LEO Destinations program can be better,” he said.
Free also reiterated how important it is for the United States to continue to lead in space.
“If you try and think about a world where we do not lead in space – I have not experienced that in my lifetime, and I don’t want to,” he concluded.
Following the presentation, Karen Barker, an AIAA member since 1993, called NASA’s strategy for a sustained presence in LEO “very encouraging.”
“He explained why LEO is so important for us – a pillar on which to build to go other places. It’s extremely important that we keep our heartbeat in LEO,” she said, adding that she was pleased how open NASA is to getting feedback from industry, both on the LEO strategy and the upcoming RFP.
“It’s so important for us as a community to do that,” said Barker, CEO of Alabama-based BRAHE Corporation, a consulting firm that serves defense and aerospace clients.
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# # #
Read NASA’s vision for the next generation of human presence in low Earth orbit and how the agency envisions achieving this future.
AFRL Digital Transformation Champion Urges People to Embrace, Not Fear AI
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla. – If Alexis Bonnell had her way, every person would embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) fearlessly as a tool that gives them back “minutes for their mission” and enables them to “tackle the toil” of mundane work tasks.
The charismatic former Googler, now serving as chief information officer and director of Digital Capabilities Directorate for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), believes technology fails when it fails to serve people.
While AI and generative AI promise to bring new efficiencies to all industries and in many instances, reinvent how work is done, it also is a transformative force that many people fear will take away their livelihoods. According to Bonnell, the way the work world packages and frames AI makes it difficult for people to accept the tool.
The visionary behind AFRL’s digital transformation doesn’t talk or act like a typical government executive. Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum, she stood out among the room of business-dress-attired engineers and managers, wearing a red top, dark jeans and star-studded knee-high boots. She donned multiple black rubber wristbands with her favorite AI catch phrases that she gave away as keepsakes to inquisitive attendees following her talk.
Bonnell’s presentation included advice on bringing about necessary cultural change in how workers and managers view AI, using insights of what she’s learned from her team’s rollout of NIPRGPT, AFRL’s AI Research Platform to explore the power of Generative AI technology. Launched in June, NIPRGPT’s base of volunteer users grew to about 80,000 in four months, reported InsideDefense. Interest in access to AI tools across the Department of Defense shows no signs of slowing.
In a June 2024 news release announcing the tool, Bonnell noted that “changing how we interact with unstructured knowledge is not instant perfection; we each must learn to use the tools, query, and get the best results. NIPRGPT will allow Airmen and Guardians to explore and build skills and familiarity as more powerful tools become available.”
To the AIAA SciTech Forum’s technical audience, she cautioned that some of her insights may be wrong in six months and “that’s okay…. We’re in an era where we may not have the time for the right answer, so we have to become comfortable with ‘right for now,’ be willing to learn and pivot,” she said. She added that when she thinks about generative AI, she doesn’t think about it as a source of answers, but “as a source of options.”
In answering why the world is clamoring to AI tools now, Bonnell said it’s important to realize that “we now live in a fundamentally different age” – one where people in leadership roles must make decisions and adapt quickly and pivot as conditions change. Consider that 90% of the world’s data was created in the last three years, with 94% of it what Bonnell called unstructured “deluges.”
A sign of the changing times is also evident in battlefield decision-making trends. In the war between Russia and Ukraine, Bonnell said the time frame for Russia countering Ukraine’s software has shrunk, in some cases, to only two weeks. That kind of speed requires new information tools and the ability to make decisions fast. As a result, “we have to think about our technology differently than we did before.”
Bonnell dislikes the mixed messages people have historically received about AI: “We tell people we trust you with a weapon, with a $100M budget, with a security clearance and lots of sensitive information, but we don’t trust you with ChatGPT. What are we actually telling people?” she questioned. “It’s important that we make people feel like they are enough, that they’ve got this, that they are capable, and that we trust them to use tools in the right way. Our future as humans is constant adaptation, the only group that benefits when we are afraid of our own technology is the adversary.”
The technologist noted that the world is not communicating the value of AI in the right way; instead, the first thing people hear is that it’s really complicated, technical, and hard. “That kind of tells someone, ‘You’re not smart enough.’”
She urged a change in the AI narrative and a recognition that as public servants and military personnel, they are showing up to their jobs to be intentional and responsible.
The AFRL leader emphasized the main job of AI in its first phase of human adoption is to simplify and shave off time of mundane work, so people can gain back “minutes for their mission.” That’s exactly what the coders and developers on the AI Research Platform have realized: they report that they have gotten between 25–85% in productivity return using AI tools, Bonnell said.
Bonnell noted that AI and genAI are fundamentally different than other technologies because of the level of intimacy of knowledge that the tools deliver.
“Users get to collect information and the data that they think is relevant and then they use the tool to have a curiosity-based relationship with that data.”
Bonnell has observed at AFRL that her team is leveraging genAI to create a “knowledge universe” around themselves without needing to ask her for information, a discovery that has prompted her to rethink her role as a leader. She challenged other people in CIO roles to be similarly introspective: “For those of in roles like CIOs, it’s a question of how are we going to show up? Are we going to be a gatekeeper or are we going to be a facilitator? There’s a lot of interesting things this is putting into motion.”
In her case, Bonnell is looking at how she can get out of the way of this curiosity journey. “How do I foster the ability for someone to need me less and be able to have a dynamic relationship with knowledge?”
After the presentation, several attendees expressed their appreciation for Bonnell’s take on the state of AI attitudes, workplace culture, and the need to lead differently.
“I like how she talked about coming from the direction ‘see what we can do here’ instead of from a caution perspective of ‘I don’t know if we can do that’ to an attitude of ‘let’s figure out how we can make this work,’” said Christine Edwards, a fellow of AI and Autonomy at Lockheed Martin, whose work includes providing cognitive assistance for firefighters and looking at how to use AI to improve spacecraft operations.
Edwards also enjoyed Bonnell’s insights about trust and AI. “She said it’s less about whether I trust this new technology and more about ‘do I have the confidence that it’s going to have the performance I need for this particular part of my mission?’ I really like that perspective shift.”
John Reed, chief rocket scientist at United Launch Alliance, said he appreciated that Bonnell provided tools for mitigating some of the fear the workforce has about AI. “That’s helpful to think through the stages and the fact that there are going to be people who are concerned, ‘Is this going to eat my job?’ It’s really an augmentation technology just like machine learning. It’s best employed when it’s done to augment the algorithms we’re doing today to make it more effective,” he explained.
The talk also resonated deeply with Marshall Lee, senior director of business development at Studio SE Ltd., a consulting firm focused on model-based systems engineering (MBSE) training and coaching.
“Us engineers are all about the tool, the technology, the formula, the detail. She’s really addressing the changes in brain chemistry and emotion [necessary] for the adoption of the technology,” said Lee. “She’s actually saying you have to change the psychology of the person first before they are going to adopt the new technology. It’s all about that emotion and behavior change and understanding people, starting with where they are.”
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Aerospace America: Advanced Air Mobility Founders Show Trust in their Technology
ORLANDO, Fla. – Aerospace America reports, “The ultimate vote of confidence in the design of an electrified aircraft could be when the founder climbs aboard the craft and goes airborne. The leaders of developers of two such aircraft gave personal testimonials here about doing just that.”
Full Story (Aerospace America)
Kratos to Develop Hypersonic Testing Capabilities for Pentagon
Space News reports, “Defense contractor Kratos Defense & Security Solutions won a $1.45 billion contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop testing capabilities for hypersonic weapons, marking one of the Pentagon’s largest-ever investments in hypersonic testing infrastructure. The five-year contract, announced Jan. 6, will support the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program, which aims to accelerate the development of weapons that travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.”
Full Story (Space News)
SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches on First Dedicated Starlink Mission of 2025
Spaceflight Now reports, “SpaceX completed its first Starlink mission of the year on the first Monday of 2025. Onboard the Starlink 6-71 mission were 24 V2 Mini satellites headed to low Earth orbit. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 3:43 p.m. EST (2043 UTC), which was the end of the available three-hour window.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Video
SpaceX Falcon 9 launches 24 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral at 3:43 p.m. EST, January 6. (Launch at 01:01:06 mark)
(Spaceflight Now; YouTube)
Hypersonics Chief Details Journey of Building the World’s Most Speed-Defying Aircraft
2025 Durand Lecturer Delves into the History and Future Prospects of Supersonic Systems
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla.– Kevin Bowcutt has spent over four decades advancing the field of hypersonic flight, notable for achieving speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, or faster than Mach 5.
As this year’s recipient of the AIAA Durand Lectureship for Public Service, Bowcutt, who serves as principal senior technical fellow and chief scientist of Hypersonics at The Boeing Company, shared how far hypersonic flight capabilities have come from its origins after World War II at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando.
The age of hypersonics began almost 76 years ago. In 1949, the U.S. Army took a captured German V2 rocket and added a WAC Corporal second stage to the top before launching it into the atmosphere from White Sands Proving Grounds. The experimental rocket achieved Mach 7 or 8, depending on the atmospheric temperature at the point of entry, noted Bowcutt.
Over the next 50 years, hypersonics was relegated to the domain of rocket-propelled systems, with both NASA’s Apollo space capsule and later the Space Shuttle achieving hypersonic speeds, with the capsule reaching Mach 37, or almost 25,000 miles per hour, on its return from the moon.
Bowcutt interspersed personal anecdotes of his own journey in the field while highlighting the development challenges of hypersonic systems. He emerged on the scene in 1984 as a doctoral student at the University of Maryland. Under the tutelage of John Anderson Jr., a leading authority on hypersonics and the former professor emeritus in the university’s Department of Aerospace Engineering, Bowcutt began his first foray into advancing the field of hypersonics. His task: to take rudimentary forms of parametric geometry generation, computational fluid dynamics, and mathematical optimization to find complex curved aircraft shapes that rode on their own shock waves and performed better than the state of the art.
“It worked. I found shapes that performed quite a bit better,” he shared.
In February 1986, following the Challenger disaster, President Reagan announced the X-30 National Aero-Space Plane program. Bowcutt spent seven years on the effort, helping design a horizontal takeoff and landing aircraft that could fly all the way into orbit.
“It was exciting. The thought of doing this as a 25-year-old at the time was just thrilling,” he recalled. “We discovered a lot of things. One of them was a single stage orbit is not possible. It wasn’t then and it still isn’t today. We learned how to design air-breathing hypersonic vehicles. What we learned about scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) engines in this program eventually flew on X-43A by NASA,” he recalled.
Today, that same enthusiasm is evident in Bowcutt, who has been named an AIAA Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
“I know from my 40 years of experience that hypersonic vehicle design is really fun and interesting because it’s really hard and very challenging,” he explained.
“One of the things we want to do is get from point A to point B in the world faster than we currently can at about Mach 0.8,” he added.
Bowcutt detailed the multitude of challenges of hypersonic aircraft design, including the balancing act of navigating extreme aerodynamic heating and temperature spikes, which results in the introduction of different materials, notably high-temperature metals and ceramics. But those materials are not necessarily easy to build or affordable to buy, he noted.
The hypersonics pioneer also described both the advantages and challenges of different hypersonic systems, explaining the effects of temperature, propellant type, and size of an engine that could affect drag and other performance issues on the aircraft. Often solving one challenge created another.
“It’s challenging to integrate a relatively larger engine on an airframe,” said Bowcutt to illustrate one common difficulty with these systems. “These vehicles must be highly integrated to make the whole system work together – every component, every discipline, the aerodynamics, propulsion, thermal protection, the structures – are all interrelated and interact with each other. You’re operating on relatively small margins.”
A positive development, he noted, was the emergence of multidisciplinary design optimization, developed over the last 25 to 30 years, which he credits with helping hypersonic system designers optimize their designs through modeling tools to help solve integration challenges faster.
The idea of air-breathing hypersonic flight – where the plane gleans oxygen for combustion from the air, just as conventional jets do – began in 1958 when a NACA researcher came up with this idea, “Could we burn fuel in a supersonic air stream?”
Bowcutt said it took five decades to prove the technology. Not carrying oxygen on board for fueling the engine significantly reduced the vehicle’s size and weight. In 2004, NASA flew the X-43A with Boeing support, and proved the aircraft could generate positive net thrust with a scramjet propulsion system. It set several airspeed records for jet aircraft. At the time, it was the fastest jet-powered aircraft on record at approximately Mach 9.6.
In the 2010–2013 timeframe, the Boeing X-51 Waverider, an uncrewed research scramjet experimental aircraft for hypersonic flight, was successfully flown by the Air Force with participation of DARPA, proving that air-breathing hypersonics could be practical.
“For good or bad, we now have air-breathing cruise missiles that fly at hypersonic speed,” said Bowcutt, adding that the industry now seeks to achieve hypersonic reusable flight in the form of point-to-point travel and access to space using aircraft flight approaches.
During the Q&A, Bowcutt was asked if he thought passenger hypersonic aircraft was feasible.
He indicated yes, noting that Boeing in 2018 began work on designs for an aircraft that could fly people globally at hypersonic speeds.
“I had the opportunity to explore the design, looking at the future possibility. We innovated a number of things that suggested to us that it was at least technically feasible. It’s another thing to look at the market and the economics,” Bowcutt said.
Environmental concerns, he added, could be the biggest hurdle, one example being concerns about airport noise since supersonic aircraft engines use small fans, which result in higher jet noise.
Also, engine emissions are another issue. “When you fly at 40,000 feet, using sustainable fuels allow carbon dioxide to be recycled in the bio-environment. If you fly at 100,000 feet, CO2 doesn’t cycle very quickly. Not only that, water is a greenhouse gas as well as CO2 and water and nitric oxide both destroy atmospheric ozone. So, there’s some interesting challenges we still have to conquer.”
A final question to Bowcutt was what has he learned from the successes and failures he has experienced in his career.
“I tend to not be risk averse. I tend to like to push the boundary,” he responded. “When you’re pushing the edge of the envelope, you just have to know that not everything is going to go perfect. But the thing I find thrilling is what you learn from it. That’s what makes life exciting – to continue to learn, to grow, to understand the world around us, and how to manage and tackle it.”
Following the talk, Dilip Srinivas Sundaram, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, called Bowcutt’s presentation “very interesting. …I don’t think prior to this lecture I had a good understanding of the complexity of hypersonics flight. This talk gave me a sense of how difficult it is. It may take another 40 years to realize hypersonic flight.”
“I think Dr. Bowcutt gave a very comprehensive story of hypersonics from where it began and even new details that a common person might not know like the U.S. taking an old missile, which started the journey of the U.S. into hypersonics,” added Alex Cintron, a member of the AIAA High Speed Air Breathing Propulsion Technical Committee who is pursuing a master’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“One of my goals is to go into hypersonics,” he added, after getting a photo with Bowcutt on stage.
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Tackling the Big Questions
‘We must continue to do the really hard things,’ said JPL’s Director in the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum’s opening plenary session
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla.– The 10th and only female director of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) opened the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum Monday, highlighting the hard questions that JPL answers in its unique role as a federally funded R&D center operated by CalTech for NASA.
Laurie Leshin, who has been at the helm of JPL since 2022, shared how JPL’s work focuses on answering three fundamental questions: “What is our destiny on Earth?”, “Are we alone?”, and “How do we lead the future?”
She implored the audience to continue striving for knowledge. “If I have one message for you in this time of change in our country, it is we must continue to do the really hard things,” she said. “Our job as a nation in order to lead is not to do what’s easy…or what you can predict exactly how it’s going to go…Our job is to do the things that are ridiculously hard.”
Understanding Earth
Leshin pointed out that while JPL is most known for its work in space exploration, it also brings decades of history contributing to understanding Earth using cutting-edge space-based radars capable of measuring pollution, ocean rise, and urban heat, among other items critical to understanding climate change and predicting natural disasters. One important focus is identifying super emitters of methane, an odorless gas invisible to the naked eye that is responsible for 30–40% of global warming (due to its structure, methane traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 80 times more harmful than CO2 for 20 years after its release). Runaway methane leaks in pipelines cost oil and gas companies $1 billion a year, she noted. Methane is now visible from orbit thanks to the EMIT tool attached to the International Space Station.
JPL also is finding and mapping heat islands in big cities such as Los Angeles and Houston, where concrete jungles are adding to the heat issue. Insights from the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, or ECOSTRESS mission, is helping cities find hot spots. It has led one neighborhood in Los Angeles to use a reflective coating on streets to lower one street’s temperatures by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to a noticeably cooler environment for residents.
Leshin said JPL researchers are working with global partners to map Earth’s water to better understand how rivers and lakes respond to flooding. In a first-ever collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), JPL will launch the NISAR Earth-observation radar this spring that will help view changes to the Earth’s surface so people can prepare for volcanoes, earthquakes, and landslides. According to Leshin, it will provide “unprecedented eyes on Earth.”
Finding Proof of Life Beyond Earth
In exploring the question of “Are we alone?” Leshin observed, “In some ways I like to say we are in a space race with ourselves in trying to answer this question.”
There’s a race to find evidence of life beyond Earth, and the big questions is where will the evidence come from — Mars, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or an exoplanet?
JPL is tackling this quest across all those avenues and has made significant inroads over the last few decades studying the surface of Mars. Missions have gone from larger ground-based rovers to a new way of exploring the Red Planet from the air.
“Today we are there with Perseverance,” said Leshin, noting that the rover recently collected “incredible samples” from a rock that points to ancient life on Mars. The rover’s instruments detected organic compounds within the rock, which are essential to all known life. These rocks and other samples are housed in tubes inside Perseverance, but how and when they will find their way back to Earth for study is a big question. “Landing on Mars is really stupid hard,” she added.
Rethinking Mars’ Sample Return
JPL has spent significant time rethinking how it does Mars sample return. NASA is discussing the path forward with media on Tuesday, 7 January. A 2023 assessment indicated that returning Mars samples would take until 2040 at a price tag of $11 billion. JPL’s concept would cut the cost in half and the timeline to a decade. Leshin said the approach will include heavy industry collaboration to get these rocks back. NASA’s proposal will use the stacking technology that has successfully landed the last two rovers on Mars to get a big lander with a rocket on board down to the surface of Mars, load it with the sample tubes and returning it to Earth safely. She also indicated that she’s very open to leveraging SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to get the lander to the Red Planet, which wouldn’t occur for another decade at the earliest, she stated, adding that partners such as the European Space Agency will play a key role in getting the samples home.
Another exciting avenue for investigating evidence of life beyond Earth is through ocean worlds. Two months ago, JPL launched the Europa Clipper probe to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. “It’s doing great. It’s flying beautifully,” said Leshin, noting that it will fly by Mars on 1 March, and will come back to Earth before it heads to Jupiter, where it is expected to arrive in 2030.
“We think there are two Earth oceans worth of liquid water on Europa,” she added, explaining that the ingredients for life will likely be present beneath those oceans.
“One of the challenges with deep space exploration is you have to be patient,” said Leshin, who described the Europa effort as “a generational quest.” She noted the wait is worth it because “the science will be incredible.”
JPL also sees promise in exoplanets – deploying transit spectroscopy as one of the lab’s tools to discover distant planets that are so far away that they can only be detected through the brightness of an individual star. To date, NASA has found over 5,500 exoplanets.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October 2026, will provide an even wider of view of these planets and other galaxies.
JPL also is investing in autonomous capabilities and the next generation of robotics. One such innovation is EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), a 14-foot snake-like robot. JPL is already testing a prototype, which is winding down frozen crevasses on Earth. “It’s got to be smart enough to make its own decisions,” she noted, adding that the JPL team had to innovate around the form factor as well as the avionics and how it works and “thinks.”
Leading the Future
In closing, Leshin said the work of JPL is focused on driving humanity forward through the forefront of technology. “We’re incredibly proud of the work we do. And we can answer the biggest, hardest questions if we dare mighty things together.”
Reaction to Leshin’s lecture was well received by attendees.
“It was a nice flyover of the work they do at JPL,” said Egbert Hood, an aerospace engineer at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas. “It was interesting to hear of all the missions they have ongoing – and some for them had nothing to do with landing on a moon or planet, it was just exploration of space. It was good to get a new awareness of JPL.”
Amanda Simpson, CEO, Third Segment, expressed excitement for Leshin’s message. “We have to do the hard things! It brought to mind President Kennedy’s moon speech. Space is hard. If we only concentrate on doing the easy things then we’re not actually making any progress. The way we treat going off our planet tells us so much about ourselves. And to do that, we must do the things that are hard. To do that together and to challenge ourselves – those are the keys that are going to make the difference for the future. Inspiring the future is so critical for keeping this industry, this ecosystem in aerospace, moving forward to entice and inspire the future generations.”
CJ Negrete, an undergraduate student at Cal Poly Pomona in Los Angeles, previously interned at JPL, where she worked to increase the technology readiness level of oscillating heat pipe (OHP) technology, commonly used in high-heat density electronics and exoplanet detection. She credited Leshin’s presence as a plenary speaker as one reason she decided to attend the forum, saying that having a woman at the helm of JPL “is brand new and unheard of.”
“Dr. Leshin is leading the pack of what women are more than capable of doing in the industry and we have to come and support her,” she said.
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