Do we have enough fuel to get to our destination? This is probably one of the first questions that comes to mind whenever your family gets ready to embark on a road trip. If the trip is long, you will need to visit gas stations along your route to refuel during your travel.

NASA is grappling with similar issues as it gets ready to embark on a sustainable mission back to the moon and plans future missions to Mars. But while your car's fuel is gasoline, which can be safely and indefinitely stored as a liquid in the car's gas tank, spacecraft fuels are volatile cryogenic liquid propellants that must be maintained at extremely low temperatures and guarded from environmental heat leaks into the spacecraft's propellant tank.

And while there is already an established network of commercial gas stations in place to make refueling your car a cinch, there are no cryogenic refueling stations or depots at the moon or on the way to Mars.

Operational modal analysis (OMA) techniques have been used to identify the modal characteristics of the Artemis I launch vehicle during the Dynamic Rollout Test (DRT) and Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) configuration prior to launch. Forces induced during rollout and on the launch pad are not directly measurable, thus necessitating a unique approach.

NASA is developing the SLS to support lunar and deep space exploration. SLS is integrated inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on the mobile launcher (ML), which supports the integrated SLS launch vehicle during transport to the pad through lift-off. The ML also provides the fuel, power, and data umbilicals running to the SLS and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), as well as crew access to the MPCV crew module.

The ML weighs ~10.6 million pounds and is over 380 feet tall. In the spring of 2022, the SLS was transported on the ML from the VAB to Launch Pad 39B (Figure 1) using the NASA crawler transporter (CT) to make this 4.2 mile trek, which takes ~8 hours.

On a sunny February day at Dallas' Frontiers of Flight Museum, a cluster of students lifted telescope equipment out of a bulky briefcase. A sticker on the case read: "stand back—we're going to science!"

Using a compass and a spool of green thread for alignment, the students fastened their telescope on top of a tripod with the sun framed in view.

On April 8, they'll set up the telescope again, this time on a riverbank 140 miles south of Dallas. They'll be capturing images of the total solar eclipse, when the moon will appear to completely block the sun, causing a brief period of darkness called totality.

Their work will contribute to a national research project called the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse 2024 experiment, or CATE 2024. Led by the Southwest Research Institute the project will task crews of volunteers with handling 35 telescopes along the U.S. path of totality, with four in North Texas.

Citizen science efforts like this one will take place across the country during the eclipse, and are designed to bring scientific research out of the ivory tower.