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NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, […]

Credit: NASA NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, with two option periods that could extend until 2034. The Aerodyne Company of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Jacobs Technology Company of Tullahoma, Tennessee, are joint venture partners. Work performed under the contract will support NASA’s Flight Operation Directorate including the Orion and Space Launch System Programs, the International Space Station, Commercial Crew Program, and the Artemis campaign. Services include Mission Control Center systems, training systems, mockup environments, and training for astronauts, instructors, and flight controllers. For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov -end- Tiernan Doyle Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov Chelsey Ballarte Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Johnson Space Center Artemis Commercial Crew International Space Station (ISS) ISS Research Johnson Flight Operations Space Launch System (SLS)

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map […]

NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) mission will map the boundaries of the heliosphere, the bubble created by the solar wind that protects our solar system from cosmic radiation. Credit: NASA/Princeton/Patrick McPike NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map the boundaries of our heliosphere, the vast bubble created by the Sun’s wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will explore how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space, as well as chart the range of particles that fill the space between the planets. The IMAP mission also will support near real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles. These energetic particles can produce hazardous space weather that can impact spacecraft and other NASA hardware as the agency explores deeper into space, including at the Moon under the Artemis campaign. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will image the ultraviolet glow of Earth’s exosphere, the outermost region of our planet’s atmosphere. This data will help scientists understand how space weather from the Sun shapes the exosphere and ultimately impacts our planet. The first observation of this glow – called the geocorona – was captured during Apollo 16, when a telescope designed and built by George Carruthers was deployed on the Moon. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at: https://www.nasa.gov/live Participants include: Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, director, Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland David J. McComas, IMAP principal investigator, Princeton University Lara Waldrop, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory principal investigator, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign To participate in the media teleconference, media must RSVP no later than 11 a.m. on Sept. 4 to Sarah Frazier at: sarah.frazier@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. The IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Also launching on this flight will be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), which will monitor solar wind disturbances and detect and track coronal mass ejections before they reach Earth. David McComas, professor, Princeton University, leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 27 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built the spacecraft and will operate the mission. NASA’s IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Program portfolio. The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory mission is led by Lara Waldrop from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mission implementation is led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley, which also designed and built the two ultraviolet imagers. BAE Systems designed and built the Carruthers spacecraft. The Solar Terrestrial Probes Program Office, part of the Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA Goddard, manages the IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the mission. To learn more about IMAP, please visit: https://www.nasa.gov/imap -end- Abbey Interrante / Karen Fox Headquarters, Washington 301-201-0124 / 202-358-1600 abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov Sarah Frazier Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 202-853-7191 sarah.frazier@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Jessica Taveau Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Heliophysics Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (GLIDE) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Heliosphere IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) Kennedy Space Center Launch Services Program Science Mission Directorate Solar Terrestrial Probes Program

Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks […]

6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Scientists believe giant impacts — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, injecting debris from the impact deep into the planet’s mantle. NASA’s InSight lander detected this debris before the mission’s end in 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior. There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early solar system was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection. A cutaway view of Mars in this artist’s concept (not to scale) reveals debris from ancient impacts scattered through the planet’s mantle. On the surface at left, a meteoroid impact sends seismic signals through the interior; at right is NASA’s InSight lander. NASA/JPL-Caltech The finding was reported Thursday, Aug. 28, in a study published by the journal Science. “We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.” InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022. NASA’s InSight took this selfie in 2019 using a camera on its robotic arm. The lander also used its arm to deploy the mission’s seismometer, whose data was used in a 2025 study showing impacts left chunks of debris deep in the planet’s interior. NASA/JPL-Caltech Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data. “We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper. Quake hunting Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts. Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius). Scrambled signals The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered. “When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.” Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle. With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there. Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early solar system, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle. Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early solar system, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets. On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.” And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury. More about InSight JPL managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors. News Media Contacts Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov Karen Fox / Molly Wasser NASA Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov 2025-110 Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Related Terms InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More 4 min read NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability Article 1 week ago 4 min read NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon Article 1 week ago 4 min read US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the […]

From left to right: JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim (seated), Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke conduct training scenarios with their instructors at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, for their upcoming mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the agency’s Learn With NASA YouTube channel. Media interested in covering the event must RSVP by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, to Sara Sloves at: 917-441-1234 or ssloves@thecomputerschool.org. The Computer School will host this event in New York for middle school students. The goal of this event is to extend learning by exposing students to the real-world experiences and engineering challenges of astronauts working and living aboard the International Space Station. For nearly 25 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Astronauts communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network. Research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lay the groundwork for other agency deep space missions. As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars, inspiring the world through discovery in a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. See more information on NASA in-flight calls at: https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation -end- Gerelle Dodson Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov Sandra Jones Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms In-flight Education Downlinks Humans in Space International Space Station (ISS) Johnson Space Center Learning Resources NASA Headquarters

Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) These maps of Prince George’s County, MD, show surface temperatures collected a few hours apart on July 30, 2023 from the Landsat 9 satellite and the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument. The dark blue spots in the right hand image are likely clouds that formed in the afternoon. Credit: Stephanie Schollaert Uz, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local officials in other communities could turn to NASA data to inform decisions that provide residents with relief from summer heat. NASA researchers and their Prince George’s County collaborators reported in Frontiers in Environmental Science that they used the Landsat 8 satellite, jointly operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, and NASA’s Aqua satellite, to gain insight into surface temperature trends across the county over the past few decades. The data also show how temperatures have responded to changing land use and construction. It is information that county planners and environmental experts hope can aid them in their attempts to remediate and prevent heat dangers in the future. The collaboration may also help the county’s first responders anticipate and prepare for heat-related emergencies and injuries. Cooperation with Prince George’s County expands on NASA’s historic role, said Stephanie Schollaert Uz, an applications scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study authors. “Applying government satellite data to county-level problems is new here. We’re trying to make it easier for people outside of NASA to use our data, in part by including how-to guides referenced at the end of our paper,” Schollaert Uz said. In the long run, county officials hope to use NASA satellites to track the negative health impacts that arise from land use and modification. Removal of tree cover and the construction of non-permeable roads, parking lots, and structures that lead to water runoff are among the factors that create heat islands, where temperatures in localized areas soar relative to the surrounding landscape. In addition to the direct dangers of heat for county residents and workers, areas with higher-than-normal temperatures can drive intense local weather events. “There’s potentially a greater incidence of microbursts,” said Mary Abe of Prince George’s County’s sustainability division. “The atmosphere can become supercharged over hot spots,” causing high winds and flood-inducing rains. Prince George’s County planners anticipate relying on NASA satellites to determine where residents and county employees are at greater risk, predict how future construction could impact heat dangers, and develop strategies to moderate heat in areas currently experiencing elevated summer temperatures. Efforts might include protecting existing trees and planting new ones. It could include replacing impermeable surfaces (cement, pavement, etc.) with alternatives that let water soak into the ground rather than running off into storm drains. To verify and calibrate the satellite observations crucial for such planning, county experts are considering enlisting residents to act as citizen scientists to collect temperature and weather data on the ground, Abe said. Eventually, the NASA satellite temperature data could also lead to strategies to curb insect-borne diseases, said Evelyn Hoban, associate director for the Prince George’s County division of environmental health and communicable disease. “Once we know where the higher temperatures are, we can check to see if they create mosquito or tick breeding grounds,” said Hoban, who coauthored the study. “We could then focus our outreach and education, and perhaps prevention efforts, on areas of greater heat and risk.” A NASA guide is available to aid other communities who hope to duplicate the Prince George’s County study. The guide provides introductions on a variety of NASA satellite and ground-based weather station data. Instructions for downloading and analyzing the data are illustrated in an accompanying tutorial that uses the Prince George’s County study as an example for other communities to follow on their own. One of the greatest benefits of the collaboration, Abe said, is the boost in credibility that comes from incorporating NASA resources and expertise in the county’s efforts to improve safety and health. “It’s partly the NASA brand. People recognize it and they’re really intrigued by it,” she said. “Working with NASA builds confidence that the decision-making process is based firmly in science.” By James Riordon NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock NASA Headquarters Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor James Riordon Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Earth General Landsat 8 / LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Explore More 3 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Detects ‘Heat Islands’ in Extreme Indian Heat Wave Article 3 years ago 6 min read Landsat Legacy: NASA-USGS Program Observing Earth from Space Turns 50 Article 3 years ago 2 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Sees Las Vegas Streets Turn Up the Heat Article 3 years ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on […]

This graphic features data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant that reveals that the star’s interior violently rearranged itself mere hours before it exploded. The main panel of this graphic is Chandra data that shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (represented in red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). The blue color reveals the highest-energy X-ray emission detected by Chandra in Cas A and an expanding blast wave. The inset reveals regions with wide ranges of relative abundances of silicon and neon. This data, plus computer modeling, reveal new insight into how massive stars like Cas A end their lives. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Meiji Univ./T. Sato et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on the brink of self-destruction. The new Chandra study reveals that just hours before it exploded, the star’s interior violently rearranged itself. This last-minute shuffling of its stellar belly has profound implications for understanding how massive stars explode and how their remains behave afterwards. Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) was one of the first objects the telescope looked at after its launch in 1999, and astronomers have repeatedly returned to observe it. “It seems like each time we closely look at Chandra data of Cas A, we learn something new and exciting,” said Toshiki Sato of Meiji University in Japan who led the study. “Now we’ve taken that invaluable X-ray data, combined it with powerful computer models, and found something extraordinary.” As massive stars age, increasingly heavy elements form in their interiors by nuclear reactions, creating onion-like layers of different elements. Their outer layer is mostly made of hydrogen, followed by layers of helium, carbon and progressively heavier elements – extending all the way down to the center of the star. Once iron starts forming in the core of the star, the game changes. As soon as the iron core grows beyond a certain mass (about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun), it can no longer support its own weight and collapses. The outer part of the star falls onto the collapsing core, and rebounds as a core-collapse supernova. The new research with Chandra data reveals a change that happened deep within the star at the very last moments of its life. After more than a million years, Cas A underwent major changes in its final hours before exploding. “Our research shows that just before the star in Cas A collapsed, part of an inner layer with large amounts of silicon traveled outwards and broke into a neighboring layer with lots of neon,” said co-author Kai Matsunaga of Kyoto University in Japan. “This is a violent event where the barrier between these two layers disappears.” This upheaval not only caused material rich in silicon to travel outwards; it also forced material rich in neon to travel inwards. The team found clear traces of these outward silicon flows and inward neon flows in the remains of Cas A’s supernova remnant. Small regions rich in silicon but poor in neon are located near regions rich in neon and poor in silicon. The survival of these regions not only provides critical evidence for the star’s upheaval, but also shows that complete mixing of the silicon and neon with other elements did not occur immediately before or after the explosion. This lack of mixing is predicted by detailed computer models of massive stars near the ends of their lives. There are several significant implications for this inner turmoil inside of the doomed star. First, it may directly explain the lopsided rather than symmetrical shape of the Cas A remnant in three dimensions. Second, a lopsided explosion and debris field may have given a powerful kick to the remaining core of the star, now a neutron star, explaining the high observed speed of this object. Finally, the strong turbulent flows created by the star’s internal changes may have promoted the development of the supernova blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. “Perhaps the most important effect of this change in the star’s structure is that it may have helped trigger the explosion itself,” said co-author Hiroyuki Uchida, also of Kyoto University. “Such final internal activity of a star may change its fate—whether it will shine as a supernova or not.” These results have been published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal and are available online. To learn more about Chandra, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/chandra Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/chandra https://chandra.si.edu Visual Description This release features a composite image of Cassiopeia A, a donut-shaped supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Included in the image is an inset closeup, which highlights a region with relative abundances of silicon and neon. Over three hundred years ago, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was a star on the brink of self-destruction. In composition it resembled an onion with layers rich in different elements such as hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, sulfur, calcium, and neon, wrapped around an iron core. When that iron core grew beyond a certain mass, the star could no longer support its own weight. The outer layers fell into the collapsing core, then rebounded as a supernova. This explosion created the donut-like shape shown in the composite image. The shape is somewhat irregular, with the thinner quadrant of the donut to the upper left of the off-center hole. In the body of the donut, the remains of the star’s elements create a mottled cloud of colors, marbled with red and blue veins. Here, sulfur is represented by yellow, calcium by green, and iron by purple. The red veins are silicon, and the blue veins, which also line the outer edge of the donut-shape, are the highest energy X-rays detected by Chandra and show the explosion’s blast wave. The inset uses a different color code and highlights a colorful, mottled region at the thinner, upper left quadrant of Cas A. Here, rich pockets of silicon and neon are identified in the red and blue veins, respectively. New evidence from Chandra indicates that in the hours before the star’s collapse, part of a silicon-rich layer traveled outwards, and broke into a neighboring neon-rich layer. This violent breakdown of layers created strong turbulent flows and may have promoted the development of the supernova’s blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. Additionally, upheaval in the interior of the star may have produced a lopsided explosion, resulting in the irregular shape, with an off-center hole (and a thinner bite of donut!) at our upper left. News Media Contact Megan Watzke Chandra X-ray Center Cambridge, Mass. 617-496-7998 mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu Corinne Beckinger Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 256-544-0034 corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Lee Mohon Contact Corinne M. Beckinger corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Location Marshall Space Flight Center Related Terms Chandra X-Ray Observatory General Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Space Flight Center Supernova Remnants Supernovae The Universe Explore More 4 min read NASA Scientists Help Maryland County Plan to Beat Summer Heat Risks Article 4 hours ago 6 min read Meet NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Masterminds Article 1 day ago 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus […]

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center Katie Bisci, photographed here with a model of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus more on the “down and in” of the day-to-day team — helping the financial team, resource utilization across the project, and support service contracts management — while Kris handles more of the “up and out” external work with center management and NASA Headquarters. Kris and I collaborate on many things as well. The two of us have been together on Roman for many years, and we have definitely become one brain in many aspects of the role. The main goal in the job is programmatics: We need to understand and help along the technical parts of the mission, while also supporting cost and schedule control since Roman is a cost-capped mission. I try to make sure that I partner with our engineers to understand the technical part of Roman as much as possible. I find that I can’t do my job well on the programmatic side without working together closely with our engineers to understand the hardware and testing. What drew you to NASA? Did you always intend to work here? I think I always knew I wanted to go into the business and finance side of things, but I thought I’d end up at a big investment bank. I interned at one during college, but it just didn’t feel right for me. After graduating, I worked on corporate events for defense contractors in New York City. Then my husband got a job in Annapolis, Maryland, and I took a leap and applied for a resource analyst job at NASA, where some college friends were working. Looking back, as an oldest daughter it probably should have been obvious that project management would be a good fit! Once I got to NASA, I was really drawn in by the missions and work we do. It was so different from the corporate world. Being able to work on some of the coolest missions with some of the most brilliant minds out there is a gift. Almost 15 years later, I’m still here. How did your career grow from there? After serving as a resource analyst in the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, I moved into the center’s Astrophysics Projects Division, where I began working on Roman in 2012, back when it was just a small study called WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope). I could never have imagined at the time what that small study would turn into. People at NASA often say they “grew up” on the James Webb Space Telescope, and for me I definitely “grew up” on Roman. I became the mission business manager, then financial manager, and now a deputy project manager for resources. I feel lucky that most of my career has been spent on Roman. Adding it up, I’ve been on this project for over a decade. I’ve worked with so many amazing people, not just at NASA Goddard, but across the United States. It’s hard to believe we are so close to launching. What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Becoming part of the management team on Roman, for sure. Working with the leadership team has been incredible. The best part about Roman is the people. It still cracks me up to look at the plethora of people we have in the same room for our weekly senior staff meeting, from the programmatic and finance types like myself, to engineers leading super complicated integration and test programs, Ph.D.s, and some of the most brilliant science minds I will probably ever know. The Roman team is amazing, and those relationships are what keep me excited to come to work every day. Has your work influenced your understanding or appreciation of astronomy? Absolutely. I’ve learned so much just by being around brilliant people like our project scientist Julie McEnery. I even recently gave a talk about Roman at my daughter’s school! Being able to stand up in front of a group of children and talk about what Roman science is going to do is something I never would have been able to do prior to working here. I’ve learned about how the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb, and Roman all build on each other during my time on this project. And it’s really incredible science. I’ve also developed a deep admiration for the engineers who have built Roman. As a business focused person, our engineering team has really helped me understand the different facets of what our engineering team does on Roman. They are so patient with me! It’s really fulfilling to be a small part of something so big. What advice do you have for others who are interested in doing similar work? If you’re in finance, don’t just learn the numbers — learn the work behind them. Understand the mission, the tech, the people. That’s what helps you move from analyst to leader. People can tell when you really get what they’re doing, and that’s how you become a better partner and manager. What’s life like outside NASA? I have three kids — ages 9, 5, and 3 — so life is busy! When I’m not working, I’m usually at their sports games or chauffeuring them around to one event or another. It’s a little bit of a rat race, but this season of life is also really fun. Recently, my family and I have gotten back into traveling now that my kids are a little bit older. We took a spring break trip to Europe, which was fantastic. Spending time with my family and friends is everything. Whether it’s going to the beach, spending time at the pool, or hanging out on the sideline of a lacrosse game, just like at work it’s being with my people that I thrive on. And maybe one day I will have time for more hobbies again! By Ashley Balzer NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Share Details Last Updated Aug 26, 2025 Editor Ashley Balzer Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Goddard Space Flight Center Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope People of Goddard

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from […]

Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home This image was taken when Perseverance topped Soroya ridge. Using the Left Navigation Camera (Navcam), the image was acquired on Aug. 17, 2025 (Sol 1597) at the local mean solar time of 13:54:37. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from orbital images as a target of interest because, as can be seen in the above image, it appears as a much lighter color compared to the surroundings. In previous landscape images from the surface, Mars 2020 scientists have been able to pick out the light-toned Soryoa outcrop, and they noted it forms a ridge-like structure, protruding above the surface. Soroya was easily identifiable from rover images (below) as Perseverance approached since it indeed rises above the surrounding low-lying terrain. The Perseverance rover acquired this image looking at Soroya using the onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). This image was acquired on Aug. 15, 2025 (Sol 1595) at the local mean solar time of 16:34:53. NASA/JPL-Caltech From Parnasset to Soroya, the team planned a series of drives so that Perseverance would arrive at Soroya in a great workspace, and the plan was successful. As shown in the first image, we arrived at an area with flat, exposed bedrock – great for proximity science instruments. The WATSON and SHERLOC ACI cameras plan to acquire many high-resolution images to investigate textures and surface features. For chemistry, SCAM LIBS and ZCAM multispectral activities will give important contextual data for the outcrop while PIXL will acquire a high-resolution chemical map scan of a dust-cleared part of the bedrock. While parked, MEDA will continue monitoring environmental conditions and ZCAM will image the surrounding terrain to inform the next drive location. Take a look at where Perseverance is now – where would you explore next? Want to read more posts from the Perseverance team? Visit Mission Updates Want to learn more about Perseverance’s science instruments? Visit the Science Instruments page Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Blogs Explore More 3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4638-4640: Imaging Extravaganza Atop a Ridge Article 2 days ago 3 min read To See the World in a Grain of Sand: Investigating Megaripples at ‘Kerrlaguna’ Article 6 days ago 2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4636-4637: Up Against a Wall Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Current Mars Investigations Current Mars Investigations The weather and climate of Mars are controlled by the coupled seasonal cycles of CO2, dust, and… All Mars Resources Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,… Rover Basics Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a… Mars Exploration: Science Goals The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are […]

Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida participate in the first joint integrated launch countdown simulation for Artemis I inside Firing Room 1 of the Launch Control Center on July 8, 2021. Seen at the top of the room is Charlie Blackwell-Thompson (right), launch director. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are experts in every individual system and subsystem. The teams have managed every aspect of the test flight and ensure NASA is prepared to send humans beyond our atmosphere and into a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. Mission management team Reviews of mission status and risk assessments are conducted by the mission management team, a group of 15 core members and additional advisors. Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, will serve as the mission management team chair for the test flight. Two days prior to launch, the mission management team will assemble to review mission risks and address any lingering preflight concerns. With more than 20 years of human spaceflight experience, Kshatriya will conduct polls at key decision points, providing direction for the relevant operations team. If circumstances during the flight go beyond established decision criteria or flight rules outlined ahead of the mission, the team will assess the situation based on the information available and decide how to respond. Matt Ramsey, serving as the Artemis II mission manager, will oversee all elements of mission preparedness prior to the mission management team assembly two days before launch and serve as deputy mission management team chair throughout the mission. With more than two decades of experience at NASA, Ramsey managed the SLS (Space Launch System) Engineering Support Center for Artemis I. Launch control team The launch control team coordinates launch operations from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson serves as the agency’s Artemis launch director, responsible for integrating and coordinating launch operations for the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems Programs, including developing and implementing plans for countdown, troubleshooting, and timing. Two days before liftoff, when the countdown for launch begins, Blackwell-Thompson’s team will begin preparations for launch from their console positions in Firing Room 1 in Kennedy’s Launch Control Center. On the day of launch, Blackwell-Thompson and her team will manage countdown progress, propellent loading, and launch commit criteria. The criteria include standards for systems involved in launch, and the team will monitor the rocket until it lifts off from the launchpad. Rick Henfling, flight director, monitors systems in the Flight Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA Flight control team From solid rocket booster ignition until the crew is safely extracted from the Orion capsule following splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their mission, the flight control team oversees operations from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Multiple flight directors will take turns leading the team throughout the 10-day mission to support operations around the clock. Jeff Radigan, bringing more than 20 years of International Space Station experience to Artemis II, will serve as lead flight director for the mission. The work for this role begins well in advance of the mission with building mission timelines; developing flight rules and procedures; leading the flight control team through simulations that prepare them for the flight test; and then helping them carry out the plan. On launch day, the ascent flight control team will be led by Judd Frieling, an Artemis I flight director who also supported more than 20 shuttle missions as a flight controller. Frieling is responsible for overseeing the crew’s ascent to space, including performance of SLS core stage engines, solid rocket boosters, and propulsion systems from the moment of launch until the separation of Orion from the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. As Orion is propelled toward the Moon, guidance of operations will pass to the next flight director. At the opposite end of the mission, Rick Henfling will take the lead for Orion’s return to Earth and splashdown. Orion will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for a parachute-assisted splashdown. Drawing from a background supporting space shuttle ascent, entry, and abort operations and 10 years as a space station flight director, Henfling and the team will monitor weather forecasts for landing, watch over Orion’s systems through the dynamic entry phase, and to ensure the spacecraft is safely shutdown before handing over operations to the recovery team. At any point during the mission, a single voice will speak to the crew in space on behalf of all members of the flight control team: the capsule communicator, or CapCom. The CapCom ensures the crew in space receives clear and concise communication from the teams supporting them on the ground. NASA astronaut Stan Love will serve as the lead CapCom for Artemis II. Love flew aboard STS-122 mission and has acted as CapCom for more than a dozen space station expeditions. He is also part of the astronaut office’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, which played a key role in development of Orion’s displays and controls. Landing, recovery team Retrieval of the crew and Orion crew module will be in the hands of the landing and recovery team, led by Lili Villarreal. The team will depart San Diego on a Department of Defense ship, and head to the vicinity of the landing site several days before splashdown for final preparations alongside the U.S. Navy and DOD. The recovery team is made up of personnel operating from the ship, land, and air to recover both astronauts and the capsule. Decision-making authority during the recovery phase of mission operations belongs to Villarreal, who served as deputy flow director for Artemis I and worked in the operations division for the space station. The success of Artemis II will pave the way for the next phase of the agency’s campaign, landing on the lunar South Pole region on Artemis III. These teams, along with the four crew members and countless NASA engineers, scientists, and personnel, are driving humanity’s exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley, holds up a piece of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD. NASA/Joe Atkinson Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator) aeroshell developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, launched to low Earth orbit along with other experiments aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. This trip will help researchers characterize how the Zylon webbing responds to long-duration exposure to the harsh vacuum of space. The strap material on the HIAD aeroshell serves two purposes – short strap lengths hold together HIAD’s inflatable rings and longer pieces help to distribute the load more evenly across the cone-shaped structure. The HIAD aeroshell technology could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. “We’re researching how HIAD technology could help get humans to Mars. We want to look at the effects of long-term exposure to space – as if the Zylon material is going for a potential six to nine-month mission to Mars,” said Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley. “We want to make sure we know how to protect those structural materials in the long term.” The Zylon straps are visible here during the inflation of LOFTID as part of a November 2022 orbital flight test. LOFTID was a version of the HIAD aeroshell — a technology that could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. NASA Flying Zylon material aboard the Space Force’s X-37B mission will help NASA researchers understand what kind of aging might occur to the webbing on a long space journey before it experiences the extreme environments of atmospheric entry, during which it has to retain strength at high temperatures. Multiple samples are in small canisters on the X-37B. Mosher used two different techniques to put the strap material in the canisters. Some he tightly coiled up, others he stuffed in. “Typically, we pack a HIAD aeroshell kind of like you pack a parachute, so they’re compressed,” he said. “We wanted to see if there was a difference between tightly coiled material and stuff-packed material like you would normally see on a HIAD.” Some of the canisters also include tiny temperature and humidity sensors set to collect readings at regular intervals. When the Space Force returns the samples from the X-37B flight, Mosher will compare them to a set of samples that have remained in canisters here on Earth to look for signs of degradation. The material launched to space aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, seen here earlier this year. Courtesy of the United States Space Force “Getting this chance to have the Zylon material exposed to space for an extended period of time will begin to give us some data on the long-term packing of a HIAD,” Mosher said. Uninflated HIAD aeroshells can be packed into small spaces within a spacecraft. This results in a decelerator that can be much larger than the diameter of its launch vehicle and can therefore land much heavier loads and deliver them to higher elevations on a planet or other celestial body. Rigid aeroshells, the sizes of which are dictated by the diameters of their launch vehicles, typically 4.5 to 5 meters, are capable of landing well-equipped, car-sized rovers on Mars. By contrast, an inflatable HIAD, with an 18-20m diameter, could land the equivalent of a small, fully furnished ranch house with a car in the garage on Mars. NASA’s HIAD aeroshell developments build on the success of the agency’s LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) mission that launched on Nov. 10, 2022, resulting in valuable insights into how this technology performs under the stress of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere after being exposed to space for a short time period. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/tdm/ About the Author Joe Atkinson Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Langley Research Center Space Technology Mission Directorate Technology Demonstration Missions Program Explore More 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago 2 min read NASA Tests Tools to Assess Drone Safety Over Cities Article 6 days ago 4 min read NASA Challenge Winners Cook Up New Industry Developments Article 1 week ago

Official National Aeronautics and Space Administration Website

NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, […]

Credit: NASA NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, with two option periods that could extend until 2034. The Aerodyne Company of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Jacobs Technology Company of Tullahoma, Tennessee, are joint venture partners. Work performed under the contract will support NASA’s Flight Operation Directorate including the Orion and Space Launch System Programs, the International Space Station, Commercial Crew Program, and the Artemis campaign. Services include Mission Control Center systems, training systems, mockup environments, and training for astronauts, instructors, and flight controllers. For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov -end- Tiernan Doyle Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov Chelsey Ballarte Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Johnson Space Center Artemis Commercial Crew International Space Station (ISS) ISS Research Johnson Flight Operations Space Launch System (SLS)

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map […]

NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) mission will map the boundaries of the heliosphere, the bubble created by the solar wind that protects our solar system from cosmic radiation. Credit: NASA/Princeton/Patrick McPike NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map the boundaries of our heliosphere, the vast bubble created by the Sun’s wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will explore how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space, as well as chart the range of particles that fill the space between the planets. The IMAP mission also will support near real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles. These energetic particles can produce hazardous space weather that can impact spacecraft and other NASA hardware as the agency explores deeper into space, including at the Moon under the Artemis campaign. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will image the ultraviolet glow of Earth’s exosphere, the outermost region of our planet’s atmosphere. This data will help scientists understand how space weather from the Sun shapes the exosphere and ultimately impacts our planet. The first observation of this glow – called the geocorona – was captured during Apollo 16, when a telescope designed and built by George Carruthers was deployed on the Moon. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at: https://www.nasa.gov/live Participants include: Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, director, Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland David J. McComas, IMAP principal investigator, Princeton University Lara Waldrop, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory principal investigator, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign To participate in the media teleconference, media must RSVP no later than 11 a.m. on Sept. 4 to Sarah Frazier at: sarah.frazier@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. The IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Also launching on this flight will be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), which will monitor solar wind disturbances and detect and track coronal mass ejections before they reach Earth. David McComas, professor, Princeton University, leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 27 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built the spacecraft and will operate the mission. NASA’s IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Program portfolio. The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory mission is led by Lara Waldrop from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mission implementation is led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley, which also designed and built the two ultraviolet imagers. BAE Systems designed and built the Carruthers spacecraft. The Solar Terrestrial Probes Program Office, part of the Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA Goddard, manages the IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the mission. To learn more about IMAP, please visit: https://www.nasa.gov/imap -end- Abbey Interrante / Karen Fox Headquarters, Washington 301-201-0124 / 202-358-1600 abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov Sarah Frazier Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 202-853-7191 sarah.frazier@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Jessica Taveau Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Heliophysics Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (GLIDE) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Heliosphere IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) Kennedy Space Center Launch Services Program Science Mission Directorate Solar Terrestrial Probes Program

Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks […]

6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Scientists believe giant impacts — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, injecting debris from the impact deep into the planet’s mantle. NASA’s InSight lander detected this debris before the mission’s end in 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior. There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early solar system was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection. A cutaway view of Mars in this artist’s concept (not to scale) reveals debris from ancient impacts scattered through the planet’s mantle. On the surface at left, a meteoroid impact sends seismic signals through the interior; at right is NASA’s InSight lander. NASA/JPL-Caltech The finding was reported Thursday, Aug. 28, in a study published by the journal Science. “We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.” InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022. NASA’s InSight took this selfie in 2019 using a camera on its robotic arm. The lander also used its arm to deploy the mission’s seismometer, whose data was used in a 2025 study showing impacts left chunks of debris deep in the planet’s interior. NASA/JPL-Caltech Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data. “We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper. Quake hunting Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts. Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius). Scrambled signals The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered. “When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.” Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle. With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there. Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early solar system, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle. Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early solar system, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets. On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.” And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury. More about InSight JPL managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors. News Media Contacts Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov Karen Fox / Molly Wasser NASA Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov 2025-110 Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Related Terms InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More 4 min read NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability Article 1 week ago 4 min read NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon Article 1 week ago 4 min read US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the […]

From left to right: JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim (seated), Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke conduct training scenarios with their instructors at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, for their upcoming mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the agency’s Learn With NASA YouTube channel. Media interested in covering the event must RSVP by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, to Sara Sloves at: 917-441-1234 or ssloves@thecomputerschool.org. The Computer School will host this event in New York for middle school students. The goal of this event is to extend learning by exposing students to the real-world experiences and engineering challenges of astronauts working and living aboard the International Space Station. For nearly 25 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Astronauts communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network. Research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lay the groundwork for other agency deep space missions. As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars, inspiring the world through discovery in a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. See more information on NASA in-flight calls at: https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation -end- Gerelle Dodson Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov Sandra Jones Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms In-flight Education Downlinks Humans in Space International Space Station (ISS) Johnson Space Center Learning Resources NASA Headquarters

Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) These maps of Prince George’s County, MD, show surface temperatures collected a few hours apart on July 30, 2023 from the Landsat 9 satellite and the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument. The dark blue spots in the right hand image are likely clouds that formed in the afternoon. Credit: Stephanie Schollaert Uz, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local officials in other communities could turn to NASA data to inform decisions that provide residents with relief from summer heat. NASA researchers and their Prince George’s County collaborators reported in Frontiers in Environmental Science that they used the Landsat 8 satellite, jointly operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, and NASA’s Aqua satellite, to gain insight into surface temperature trends across the county over the past few decades. The data also show how temperatures have responded to changing land use and construction. It is information that county planners and environmental experts hope can aid them in their attempts to remediate and prevent heat dangers in the future. The collaboration may also help the county’s first responders anticipate and prepare for heat-related emergencies and injuries. Cooperation with Prince George’s County expands on NASA’s historic role, said Stephanie Schollaert Uz, an applications scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study authors. “Applying government satellite data to county-level problems is new here. We’re trying to make it easier for people outside of NASA to use our data, in part by including how-to guides referenced at the end of our paper,” Schollaert Uz said. In the long run, county officials hope to use NASA satellites to track the negative health impacts that arise from land use and modification. Removal of tree cover and the construction of non-permeable roads, parking lots, and structures that lead to water runoff are among the factors that create heat islands, where temperatures in localized areas soar relative to the surrounding landscape. In addition to the direct dangers of heat for county residents and workers, areas with higher-than-normal temperatures can drive intense local weather events. “There’s potentially a greater incidence of microbursts,” said Mary Abe of Prince George’s County’s sustainability division. “The atmosphere can become supercharged over hot spots,” causing high winds and flood-inducing rains. Prince George’s County planners anticipate relying on NASA satellites to determine where residents and county employees are at greater risk, predict how future construction could impact heat dangers, and develop strategies to moderate heat in areas currently experiencing elevated summer temperatures. Efforts might include protecting existing trees and planting new ones. It could include replacing impermeable surfaces (cement, pavement, etc.) with alternatives that let water soak into the ground rather than running off into storm drains. To verify and calibrate the satellite observations crucial for such planning, county experts are considering enlisting residents to act as citizen scientists to collect temperature and weather data on the ground, Abe said. Eventually, the NASA satellite temperature data could also lead to strategies to curb insect-borne diseases, said Evelyn Hoban, associate director for the Prince George’s County division of environmental health and communicable disease. “Once we know where the higher temperatures are, we can check to see if they create mosquito or tick breeding grounds,” said Hoban, who coauthored the study. “We could then focus our outreach and education, and perhaps prevention efforts, on areas of greater heat and risk.” A NASA guide is available to aid other communities who hope to duplicate the Prince George’s County study. The guide provides introductions on a variety of NASA satellite and ground-based weather station data. Instructions for downloading and analyzing the data are illustrated in an accompanying tutorial that uses the Prince George’s County study as an example for other communities to follow on their own. One of the greatest benefits of the collaboration, Abe said, is the boost in credibility that comes from incorporating NASA resources and expertise in the county’s efforts to improve safety and health. “It’s partly the NASA brand. People recognize it and they’re really intrigued by it,” she said. “Working with NASA builds confidence that the decision-making process is based firmly in science.” By James Riordon NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock NASA Headquarters Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor James Riordon Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Earth General Landsat 8 / LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Explore More 3 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Detects ‘Heat Islands’ in Extreme Indian Heat Wave Article 3 years ago 6 min read Landsat Legacy: NASA-USGS Program Observing Earth from Space Turns 50 Article 3 years ago 2 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Sees Las Vegas Streets Turn Up the Heat Article 3 years ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on […]

This graphic features data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant that reveals that the star’s interior violently rearranged itself mere hours before it exploded. The main panel of this graphic is Chandra data that shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (represented in red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). The blue color reveals the highest-energy X-ray emission detected by Chandra in Cas A and an expanding blast wave. The inset reveals regions with wide ranges of relative abundances of silicon and neon. This data, plus computer modeling, reveal new insight into how massive stars like Cas A end their lives. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Meiji Univ./T. Sato et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on the brink of self-destruction. The new Chandra study reveals that just hours before it exploded, the star’s interior violently rearranged itself. This last-minute shuffling of its stellar belly has profound implications for understanding how massive stars explode and how their remains behave afterwards. Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) was one of the first objects the telescope looked at after its launch in 1999, and astronomers have repeatedly returned to observe it. “It seems like each time we closely look at Chandra data of Cas A, we learn something new and exciting,” said Toshiki Sato of Meiji University in Japan who led the study. “Now we’ve taken that invaluable X-ray data, combined it with powerful computer models, and found something extraordinary.” As massive stars age, increasingly heavy elements form in their interiors by nuclear reactions, creating onion-like layers of different elements. Their outer layer is mostly made of hydrogen, followed by layers of helium, carbon and progressively heavier elements – extending all the way down to the center of the star. Once iron starts forming in the core of the star, the game changes. As soon as the iron core grows beyond a certain mass (about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun), it can no longer support its own weight and collapses. The outer part of the star falls onto the collapsing core, and rebounds as a core-collapse supernova. The new research with Chandra data reveals a change that happened deep within the star at the very last moments of its life. After more than a million years, Cas A underwent major changes in its final hours before exploding. “Our research shows that just before the star in Cas A collapsed, part of an inner layer with large amounts of silicon traveled outwards and broke into a neighboring layer with lots of neon,” said co-author Kai Matsunaga of Kyoto University in Japan. “This is a violent event where the barrier between these two layers disappears.” This upheaval not only caused material rich in silicon to travel outwards; it also forced material rich in neon to travel inwards. The team found clear traces of these outward silicon flows and inward neon flows in the remains of Cas A’s supernova remnant. Small regions rich in silicon but poor in neon are located near regions rich in neon and poor in silicon. The survival of these regions not only provides critical evidence for the star’s upheaval, but also shows that complete mixing of the silicon and neon with other elements did not occur immediately before or after the explosion. This lack of mixing is predicted by detailed computer models of massive stars near the ends of their lives. There are several significant implications for this inner turmoil inside of the doomed star. First, it may directly explain the lopsided rather than symmetrical shape of the Cas A remnant in three dimensions. Second, a lopsided explosion and debris field may have given a powerful kick to the remaining core of the star, now a neutron star, explaining the high observed speed of this object. Finally, the strong turbulent flows created by the star’s internal changes may have promoted the development of the supernova blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. “Perhaps the most important effect of this change in the star’s structure is that it may have helped trigger the explosion itself,” said co-author Hiroyuki Uchida, also of Kyoto University. “Such final internal activity of a star may change its fate—whether it will shine as a supernova or not.” These results have been published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal and are available online. To learn more about Chandra, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/chandra Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/chandra https://chandra.si.edu Visual Description This release features a composite image of Cassiopeia A, a donut-shaped supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Included in the image is an inset closeup, which highlights a region with relative abundances of silicon and neon. Over three hundred years ago, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was a star on the brink of self-destruction. In composition it resembled an onion with layers rich in different elements such as hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, sulfur, calcium, and neon, wrapped around an iron core. When that iron core grew beyond a certain mass, the star could no longer support its own weight. The outer layers fell into the collapsing core, then rebounded as a supernova. This explosion created the donut-like shape shown in the composite image. The shape is somewhat irregular, with the thinner quadrant of the donut to the upper left of the off-center hole. In the body of the donut, the remains of the star’s elements create a mottled cloud of colors, marbled with red and blue veins. Here, sulfur is represented by yellow, calcium by green, and iron by purple. The red veins are silicon, and the blue veins, which also line the outer edge of the donut-shape, are the highest energy X-rays detected by Chandra and show the explosion’s blast wave. The inset uses a different color code and highlights a colorful, mottled region at the thinner, upper left quadrant of Cas A. Here, rich pockets of silicon and neon are identified in the red and blue veins, respectively. New evidence from Chandra indicates that in the hours before the star’s collapse, part of a silicon-rich layer traveled outwards, and broke into a neighboring neon-rich layer. This violent breakdown of layers created strong turbulent flows and may have promoted the development of the supernova’s blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. Additionally, upheaval in the interior of the star may have produced a lopsided explosion, resulting in the irregular shape, with an off-center hole (and a thinner bite of donut!) at our upper left. News Media Contact Megan Watzke Chandra X-ray Center Cambridge, Mass. 617-496-7998 mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu Corinne Beckinger Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 256-544-0034 corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Lee Mohon Contact Corinne M. Beckinger corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Location Marshall Space Flight Center Related Terms Chandra X-Ray Observatory General Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Space Flight Center Supernova Remnants Supernovae The Universe Explore More 4 min read NASA Scientists Help Maryland County Plan to Beat Summer Heat Risks Article 4 hours ago 6 min read Meet NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Masterminds Article 1 day ago 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus […]

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center Katie Bisci, photographed here with a model of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus more on the “down and in” of the day-to-day team — helping the financial team, resource utilization across the project, and support service contracts management — while Kris handles more of the “up and out” external work with center management and NASA Headquarters. Kris and I collaborate on many things as well. The two of us have been together on Roman for many years, and we have definitely become one brain in many aspects of the role. The main goal in the job is programmatics: We need to understand and help along the technical parts of the mission, while also supporting cost and schedule control since Roman is a cost-capped mission. I try to make sure that I partner with our engineers to understand the technical part of Roman as much as possible. I find that I can’t do my job well on the programmatic side without working together closely with our engineers to understand the hardware and testing. What drew you to NASA? Did you always intend to work here? I think I always knew I wanted to go into the business and finance side of things, but I thought I’d end up at a big investment bank. I interned at one during college, but it just didn’t feel right for me. After graduating, I worked on corporate events for defense contractors in New York City. Then my husband got a job in Annapolis, Maryland, and I took a leap and applied for a resource analyst job at NASA, where some college friends were working. Looking back, as an oldest daughter it probably should have been obvious that project management would be a good fit! Once I got to NASA, I was really drawn in by the missions and work we do. It was so different from the corporate world. Being able to work on some of the coolest missions with some of the most brilliant minds out there is a gift. Almost 15 years later, I’m still here. How did your career grow from there? After serving as a resource analyst in the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, I moved into the center’s Astrophysics Projects Division, where I began working on Roman in 2012, back when it was just a small study called WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope). I could never have imagined at the time what that small study would turn into. People at NASA often say they “grew up” on the James Webb Space Telescope, and for me I definitely “grew up” on Roman. I became the mission business manager, then financial manager, and now a deputy project manager for resources. I feel lucky that most of my career has been spent on Roman. Adding it up, I’ve been on this project for over a decade. I’ve worked with so many amazing people, not just at NASA Goddard, but across the United States. It’s hard to believe we are so close to launching. What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Becoming part of the management team on Roman, for sure. Working with the leadership team has been incredible. The best part about Roman is the people. It still cracks me up to look at the plethora of people we have in the same room for our weekly senior staff meeting, from the programmatic and finance types like myself, to engineers leading super complicated integration and test programs, Ph.D.s, and some of the most brilliant science minds I will probably ever know. The Roman team is amazing, and those relationships are what keep me excited to come to work every day. Has your work influenced your understanding or appreciation of astronomy? Absolutely. I’ve learned so much just by being around brilliant people like our project scientist Julie McEnery. I even recently gave a talk about Roman at my daughter’s school! Being able to stand up in front of a group of children and talk about what Roman science is going to do is something I never would have been able to do prior to working here. I’ve learned about how the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb, and Roman all build on each other during my time on this project. And it’s really incredible science. I’ve also developed a deep admiration for the engineers who have built Roman. As a business focused person, our engineering team has really helped me understand the different facets of what our engineering team does on Roman. They are so patient with me! It’s really fulfilling to be a small part of something so big. What advice do you have for others who are interested in doing similar work? If you’re in finance, don’t just learn the numbers — learn the work behind them. Understand the mission, the tech, the people. That’s what helps you move from analyst to leader. People can tell when you really get what they’re doing, and that’s how you become a better partner and manager. What’s life like outside NASA? I have three kids — ages 9, 5, and 3 — so life is busy! When I’m not working, I’m usually at their sports games or chauffeuring them around to one event or another. It’s a little bit of a rat race, but this season of life is also really fun. Recently, my family and I have gotten back into traveling now that my kids are a little bit older. We took a spring break trip to Europe, which was fantastic. Spending time with my family and friends is everything. Whether it’s going to the beach, spending time at the pool, or hanging out on the sideline of a lacrosse game, just like at work it’s being with my people that I thrive on. And maybe one day I will have time for more hobbies again! By Ashley Balzer NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Share Details Last Updated Aug 26, 2025 Editor Ashley Balzer Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Goddard Space Flight Center Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope People of Goddard

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from […]

Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home This image was taken when Perseverance topped Soroya ridge. Using the Left Navigation Camera (Navcam), the image was acquired on Aug. 17, 2025 (Sol 1597) at the local mean solar time of 13:54:37. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from orbital images as a target of interest because, as can be seen in the above image, it appears as a much lighter color compared to the surroundings. In previous landscape images from the surface, Mars 2020 scientists have been able to pick out the light-toned Soryoa outcrop, and they noted it forms a ridge-like structure, protruding above the surface. Soroya was easily identifiable from rover images (below) as Perseverance approached since it indeed rises above the surrounding low-lying terrain. The Perseverance rover acquired this image looking at Soroya using the onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). This image was acquired on Aug. 15, 2025 (Sol 1595) at the local mean solar time of 16:34:53. NASA/JPL-Caltech From Parnasset to Soroya, the team planned a series of drives so that Perseverance would arrive at Soroya in a great workspace, and the plan was successful. As shown in the first image, we arrived at an area with flat, exposed bedrock – great for proximity science instruments. The WATSON and SHERLOC ACI cameras plan to acquire many high-resolution images to investigate textures and surface features. For chemistry, SCAM LIBS and ZCAM multispectral activities will give important contextual data for the outcrop while PIXL will acquire a high-resolution chemical map scan of a dust-cleared part of the bedrock. While parked, MEDA will continue monitoring environmental conditions and ZCAM will image the surrounding terrain to inform the next drive location. Take a look at where Perseverance is now – where would you explore next? Want to read more posts from the Perseverance team? Visit Mission Updates Want to learn more about Perseverance’s science instruments? Visit the Science Instruments page Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Blogs Explore More 3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4638-4640: Imaging Extravaganza Atop a Ridge Article 2 days ago 3 min read To See the World in a Grain of Sand: Investigating Megaripples at ‘Kerrlaguna’ Article 6 days ago 2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4636-4637: Up Against a Wall Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Current Mars Investigations Current Mars Investigations The weather and climate of Mars are controlled by the coupled seasonal cycles of CO2, dust, and… All Mars Resources Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,… Rover Basics Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a… Mars Exploration: Science Goals The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are […]

Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida participate in the first joint integrated launch countdown simulation for Artemis I inside Firing Room 1 of the Launch Control Center on July 8, 2021. Seen at the top of the room is Charlie Blackwell-Thompson (right), launch director. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are experts in every individual system and subsystem. The teams have managed every aspect of the test flight and ensure NASA is prepared to send humans beyond our atmosphere and into a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. Mission management team Reviews of mission status and risk assessments are conducted by the mission management team, a group of 15 core members and additional advisors. Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, will serve as the mission management team chair for the test flight. Two days prior to launch, the mission management team will assemble to review mission risks and address any lingering preflight concerns. With more than 20 years of human spaceflight experience, Kshatriya will conduct polls at key decision points, providing direction for the relevant operations team. If circumstances during the flight go beyond established decision criteria or flight rules outlined ahead of the mission, the team will assess the situation based on the information available and decide how to respond. Matt Ramsey, serving as the Artemis II mission manager, will oversee all elements of mission preparedness prior to the mission management team assembly two days before launch and serve as deputy mission management team chair throughout the mission. With more than two decades of experience at NASA, Ramsey managed the SLS (Space Launch System) Engineering Support Center for Artemis I. Launch control team The launch control team coordinates launch operations from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson serves as the agency’s Artemis launch director, responsible for integrating and coordinating launch operations for the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems Programs, including developing and implementing plans for countdown, troubleshooting, and timing. Two days before liftoff, when the countdown for launch begins, Blackwell-Thompson’s team will begin preparations for launch from their console positions in Firing Room 1 in Kennedy’s Launch Control Center. On the day of launch, Blackwell-Thompson and her team will manage countdown progress, propellent loading, and launch commit criteria. The criteria include standards for systems involved in launch, and the team will monitor the rocket until it lifts off from the launchpad. Rick Henfling, flight director, monitors systems in the Flight Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA Flight control team From solid rocket booster ignition until the crew is safely extracted from the Orion capsule following splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their mission, the flight control team oversees operations from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Multiple flight directors will take turns leading the team throughout the 10-day mission to support operations around the clock. Jeff Radigan, bringing more than 20 years of International Space Station experience to Artemis II, will serve as lead flight director for the mission. The work for this role begins well in advance of the mission with building mission timelines; developing flight rules and procedures; leading the flight control team through simulations that prepare them for the flight test; and then helping them carry out the plan. On launch day, the ascent flight control team will be led by Judd Frieling, an Artemis I flight director who also supported more than 20 shuttle missions as a flight controller. Frieling is responsible for overseeing the crew’s ascent to space, including performance of SLS core stage engines, solid rocket boosters, and propulsion systems from the moment of launch until the separation of Orion from the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. As Orion is propelled toward the Moon, guidance of operations will pass to the next flight director. At the opposite end of the mission, Rick Henfling will take the lead for Orion’s return to Earth and splashdown. Orion will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for a parachute-assisted splashdown. Drawing from a background supporting space shuttle ascent, entry, and abort operations and 10 years as a space station flight director, Henfling and the team will monitor weather forecasts for landing, watch over Orion’s systems through the dynamic entry phase, and to ensure the spacecraft is safely shutdown before handing over operations to the recovery team. At any point during the mission, a single voice will speak to the crew in space on behalf of all members of the flight control team: the capsule communicator, or CapCom. The CapCom ensures the crew in space receives clear and concise communication from the teams supporting them on the ground. NASA astronaut Stan Love will serve as the lead CapCom for Artemis II. Love flew aboard STS-122 mission and has acted as CapCom for more than a dozen space station expeditions. He is also part of the astronaut office’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, which played a key role in development of Orion’s displays and controls. Landing, recovery team Retrieval of the crew and Orion crew module will be in the hands of the landing and recovery team, led by Lili Villarreal. The team will depart San Diego on a Department of Defense ship, and head to the vicinity of the landing site several days before splashdown for final preparations alongside the U.S. Navy and DOD. The recovery team is made up of personnel operating from the ship, land, and air to recover both astronauts and the capsule. Decision-making authority during the recovery phase of mission operations belongs to Villarreal, who served as deputy flow director for Artemis I and worked in the operations division for the space station. The success of Artemis II will pave the way for the next phase of the agency’s campaign, landing on the lunar South Pole region on Artemis III. These teams, along with the four crew members and countless NASA engineers, scientists, and personnel, are driving humanity’s exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley, holds up a piece of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD. NASA/Joe Atkinson Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator) aeroshell developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, launched to low Earth orbit along with other experiments aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. This trip will help researchers characterize how the Zylon webbing responds to long-duration exposure to the harsh vacuum of space. The strap material on the HIAD aeroshell serves two purposes – short strap lengths hold together HIAD’s inflatable rings and longer pieces help to distribute the load more evenly across the cone-shaped structure. The HIAD aeroshell technology could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. “We’re researching how HIAD technology could help get humans to Mars. We want to look at the effects of long-term exposure to space – as if the Zylon material is going for a potential six to nine-month mission to Mars,” said Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley. “We want to make sure we know how to protect those structural materials in the long term.” The Zylon straps are visible here during the inflation of LOFTID as part of a November 2022 orbital flight test. LOFTID was a version of the HIAD aeroshell — a technology that could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. NASA Flying Zylon material aboard the Space Force’s X-37B mission will help NASA researchers understand what kind of aging might occur to the webbing on a long space journey before it experiences the extreme environments of atmospheric entry, during which it has to retain strength at high temperatures. Multiple samples are in small canisters on the X-37B. Mosher used two different techniques to put the strap material in the canisters. Some he tightly coiled up, others he stuffed in. “Typically, we pack a HIAD aeroshell kind of like you pack a parachute, so they’re compressed,” he said. “We wanted to see if there was a difference between tightly coiled material and stuff-packed material like you would normally see on a HIAD.” Some of the canisters also include tiny temperature and humidity sensors set to collect readings at regular intervals. When the Space Force returns the samples from the X-37B flight, Mosher will compare them to a set of samples that have remained in canisters here on Earth to look for signs of degradation. The material launched to space aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, seen here earlier this year. Courtesy of the United States Space Force “Getting this chance to have the Zylon material exposed to space for an extended period of time will begin to give us some data on the long-term packing of a HIAD,” Mosher said. Uninflated HIAD aeroshells can be packed into small spaces within a spacecraft. This results in a decelerator that can be much larger than the diameter of its launch vehicle and can therefore land much heavier loads and deliver them to higher elevations on a planet or other celestial body. Rigid aeroshells, the sizes of which are dictated by the diameters of their launch vehicles, typically 4.5 to 5 meters, are capable of landing well-equipped, car-sized rovers on Mars. By contrast, an inflatable HIAD, with an 18-20m diameter, could land the equivalent of a small, fully furnished ranch house with a car in the garage on Mars. NASA’s HIAD aeroshell developments build on the success of the agency’s LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) mission that launched on Nov. 10, 2022, resulting in valuable insights into how this technology performs under the stress of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere after being exposed to space for a short time period. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/tdm/ About the Author Joe Atkinson Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Langley Research Center Space Technology Mission Directorate Technology Demonstration Missions Program Explore More 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago 2 min read NASA Tests Tools to Assess Drone Safety Over Cities Article 6 days ago 4 min read NASA Challenge Winners Cook Up New Industry Developments Article 1 week ago

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NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, […]

Credit: NASA NASA has awarded ASCEND Aerospace & Technology of Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Contract for Organizing Spaceflight Mission Operations and Systems (COSMOS), to provide services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The COSMOS is a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract valued at $1.8 billion that begins its five-year base period no earlier than Dec. 1, with two option periods that could extend until 2034. The Aerodyne Company of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Jacobs Technology Company of Tullahoma, Tennessee, are joint venture partners. Work performed under the contract will support NASA’s Flight Operation Directorate including the Orion and Space Launch System Programs, the International Space Station, Commercial Crew Program, and the Artemis campaign. Services include Mission Control Center systems, training systems, mockup environments, and training for astronauts, instructors, and flight controllers. For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov -end- Tiernan Doyle Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov Chelsey Ballarte Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 chelsey.n.ballarte@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Johnson Space Center Artemis Commercial Crew International Space Station (ISS) ISS Research Johnson Flight Operations Space Launch System (SLS)

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map […]

NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) mission will map the boundaries of the heliosphere, the bubble created by the solar wind that protects our solar system from cosmic radiation. Credit: NASA/Princeton/Patrick McPike NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 4, to discuss the agency’s upcoming Sun and space weather missions, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. The two missions are targeting launch on the same rocket no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23. The IMAP mission will map the boundaries of our heliosphere, the vast bubble created by the Sun’s wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will explore how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space, as well as chart the range of particles that fill the space between the planets. The IMAP mission also will support near real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles. These energetic particles can produce hazardous space weather that can impact spacecraft and other NASA hardware as the agency explores deeper into space, including at the Moon under the Artemis campaign. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will image the ultraviolet glow of Earth’s exosphere, the outermost region of our planet’s atmosphere. This data will help scientists understand how space weather from the Sun shapes the exosphere and ultimately impacts our planet. The first observation of this glow – called the geocorona – was captured during Apollo 16, when a telescope designed and built by George Carruthers was deployed on the Moon. Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency’s website at: https://www.nasa.gov/live Participants include: Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, director, Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland David J. McComas, IMAP principal investigator, Princeton University Lara Waldrop, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory principal investigator, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign To participate in the media teleconference, media must RSVP no later than 11 a.m. on Sept. 4 to Sarah Frazier at: sarah.frazier@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. The IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Also launching on this flight will be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), which will monitor solar wind disturbances and detect and track coronal mass ejections before they reach Earth. David McComas, professor, Princeton University, leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 27 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built the spacecraft and will operate the mission. NASA’s IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Program portfolio. The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory mission is led by Lara Waldrop from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Mission implementation is led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley, which also designed and built the two ultraviolet imagers. BAE Systems designed and built the Carruthers spacecraft. The Solar Terrestrial Probes Program Office, part of the Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA Goddard, manages the IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the mission. To learn more about IMAP, please visit: https://www.nasa.gov/imap -end- Abbey Interrante / Karen Fox Headquarters, Washington 301-201-0124 / 202-358-1600 abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov Sarah Frazier Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 202-853-7191 sarah.frazier@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Jessica Taveau Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms Heliophysics Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (GLIDE) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Heliosphere IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) Kennedy Space Center Launch Services Program Science Mission Directorate Solar Terrestrial Probes Program

Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks […]

6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Scientists believe giant impacts — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, injecting debris from the impact deep into the planet’s mantle. NASA’s InSight lander detected this debris before the mission’s end in 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior. There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early solar system was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection. A cutaway view of Mars in this artist’s concept (not to scale) reveals debris from ancient impacts scattered through the planet’s mantle. On the surface at left, a meteoroid impact sends seismic signals through the interior; at right is NASA’s InSight lander. NASA/JPL-Caltech The finding was reported Thursday, Aug. 28, in a study published by the journal Science. “We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.” InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022. NASA’s InSight took this selfie in 2019 using a camera on its robotic arm. The lander also used its arm to deploy the mission’s seismometer, whose data was used in a 2025 study showing impacts left chunks of debris deep in the planet’s interior. NASA/JPL-Caltech Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data. “We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper. Quake hunting Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts. Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius). Scrambled signals The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered. “When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.” Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle. With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there. Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early solar system, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle. Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early solar system, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets. On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.” And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury. More about InSight JPL managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission. A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors. News Media Contacts Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov Karen Fox / Molly Wasser NASA Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov 2025-110 Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Related Terms InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Explore More 4 min read NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability Article 1 week ago 4 min read NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon Article 1 week ago 4 min read US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake Article 3 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the […]

From left to right: JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim (seated), Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke conduct training scenarios with their instructors at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, for their upcoming mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui will connect with students in New York as they answer prerecorded science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) questions aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 5, and will stream live on the agency’s Learn With NASA YouTube channel. Media interested in covering the event must RSVP by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, to Sara Sloves at: 917-441-1234 or ssloves@thecomputerschool.org. The Computer School will host this event in New York for middle school students. The goal of this event is to extend learning by exposing students to the real-world experiences and engineering challenges of astronauts working and living aboard the International Space Station. For nearly 25 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Astronauts communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network. Research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lay the groundwork for other agency deep space missions. As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars, inspiring the world through discovery in a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. See more information on NASA in-flight calls at: https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation -end- Gerelle Dodson Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov Sandra Jones Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Location NASA Headquarters Related Terms In-flight Education Downlinks Humans in Space International Space Station (ISS) Johnson Space Center Learning Resources NASA Headquarters

Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) These maps of Prince George’s County, MD, show surface temperatures collected a few hours apart on July 30, 2023 from the Landsat 9 satellite and the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument. The dark blue spots in the right hand image are likely clouds that formed in the afternoon. Credit: Stephanie Schollaert Uz, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local officials in other communities could turn to NASA data to inform decisions that provide residents with relief from summer heat. NASA researchers and their Prince George’s County collaborators reported in Frontiers in Environmental Science that they used the Landsat 8 satellite, jointly operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, and NASA’s Aqua satellite, to gain insight into surface temperature trends across the county over the past few decades. The data also show how temperatures have responded to changing land use and construction. It is information that county planners and environmental experts hope can aid them in their attempts to remediate and prevent heat dangers in the future. The collaboration may also help the county’s first responders anticipate and prepare for heat-related emergencies and injuries. Cooperation with Prince George’s County expands on NASA’s historic role, said Stephanie Schollaert Uz, an applications scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study authors. “Applying government satellite data to county-level problems is new here. We’re trying to make it easier for people outside of NASA to use our data, in part by including how-to guides referenced at the end of our paper,” Schollaert Uz said. In the long run, county officials hope to use NASA satellites to track the negative health impacts that arise from land use and modification. Removal of tree cover and the construction of non-permeable roads, parking lots, and structures that lead to water runoff are among the factors that create heat islands, where temperatures in localized areas soar relative to the surrounding landscape. In addition to the direct dangers of heat for county residents and workers, areas with higher-than-normal temperatures can drive intense local weather events. “There’s potentially a greater incidence of microbursts,” said Mary Abe of Prince George’s County’s sustainability division. “The atmosphere can become supercharged over hot spots,” causing high winds and flood-inducing rains. Prince George’s County planners anticipate relying on NASA satellites to determine where residents and county employees are at greater risk, predict how future construction could impact heat dangers, and develop strategies to moderate heat in areas currently experiencing elevated summer temperatures. Efforts might include protecting existing trees and planting new ones. It could include replacing impermeable surfaces (cement, pavement, etc.) with alternatives that let water soak into the ground rather than running off into storm drains. To verify and calibrate the satellite observations crucial for such planning, county experts are considering enlisting residents to act as citizen scientists to collect temperature and weather data on the ground, Abe said. Eventually, the NASA satellite temperature data could also lead to strategies to curb insect-borne diseases, said Evelyn Hoban, associate director for the Prince George’s County division of environmental health and communicable disease. “Once we know where the higher temperatures are, we can check to see if they create mosquito or tick breeding grounds,” said Hoban, who coauthored the study. “We could then focus our outreach and education, and perhaps prevention efforts, on areas of greater heat and risk.” A NASA guide is available to aid other communities who hope to duplicate the Prince George’s County study. The guide provides introductions on a variety of NASA satellite and ground-based weather station data. Instructions for downloading and analyzing the data are illustrated in an accompanying tutorial that uses the Prince George’s County study as an example for other communities to follow on their own. One of the greatest benefits of the collaboration, Abe said, is the boost in credibility that comes from incorporating NASA resources and expertise in the county’s efforts to improve safety and health. “It’s partly the NASA brand. People recognize it and they’re really intrigued by it,” she said. “Working with NASA builds confidence that the decision-making process is based firmly in science.” By James Riordon NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock NASA Headquarters Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor James Riordon Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Earth General Landsat 8 / LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Explore More 3 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Detects ‘Heat Islands’ in Extreme Indian Heat Wave Article 3 years ago 6 min read Landsat Legacy: NASA-USGS Program Observing Earth from Space Turns 50 Article 3 years ago 2 min read NASA’s ECOSTRESS Sees Las Vegas Streets Turn Up the Heat Article 3 years ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on […]

This graphic features data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant that reveals that the star’s interior violently rearranged itself mere hours before it exploded. The main panel of this graphic is Chandra data that shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (represented in red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). The blue color reveals the highest-energy X-ray emission detected by Chandra in Cas A and an expanding blast wave. The inset reveals regions with wide ranges of relative abundances of silicon and neon. This data, plus computer modeling, reveal new insight into how massive stars like Cas A end their lives. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Meiji Univ./T. Sato et al.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Today, this shattered star, known as the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, is one of the best-known, well-studied objects in the sky. Over three hundred years ago, however, it was a giant star on the brink of self-destruction. The new Chandra study reveals that just hours before it exploded, the star’s interior violently rearranged itself. This last-minute shuffling of its stellar belly has profound implications for understanding how massive stars explode and how their remains behave afterwards. Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) was one of the first objects the telescope looked at after its launch in 1999, and astronomers have repeatedly returned to observe it. “It seems like each time we closely look at Chandra data of Cas A, we learn something new and exciting,” said Toshiki Sato of Meiji University in Japan who led the study. “Now we’ve taken that invaluable X-ray data, combined it with powerful computer models, and found something extraordinary.” As massive stars age, increasingly heavy elements form in their interiors by nuclear reactions, creating onion-like layers of different elements. Their outer layer is mostly made of hydrogen, followed by layers of helium, carbon and progressively heavier elements – extending all the way down to the center of the star. Once iron starts forming in the core of the star, the game changes. As soon as the iron core grows beyond a certain mass (about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun), it can no longer support its own weight and collapses. The outer part of the star falls onto the collapsing core, and rebounds as a core-collapse supernova. The new research with Chandra data reveals a change that happened deep within the star at the very last moments of its life. After more than a million years, Cas A underwent major changes in its final hours before exploding. “Our research shows that just before the star in Cas A collapsed, part of an inner layer with large amounts of silicon traveled outwards and broke into a neighboring layer with lots of neon,” said co-author Kai Matsunaga of Kyoto University in Japan. “This is a violent event where the barrier between these two layers disappears.” This upheaval not only caused material rich in silicon to travel outwards; it also forced material rich in neon to travel inwards. The team found clear traces of these outward silicon flows and inward neon flows in the remains of Cas A’s supernova remnant. Small regions rich in silicon but poor in neon are located near regions rich in neon and poor in silicon. The survival of these regions not only provides critical evidence for the star’s upheaval, but also shows that complete mixing of the silicon and neon with other elements did not occur immediately before or after the explosion. This lack of mixing is predicted by detailed computer models of massive stars near the ends of their lives. There are several significant implications for this inner turmoil inside of the doomed star. First, it may directly explain the lopsided rather than symmetrical shape of the Cas A remnant in three dimensions. Second, a lopsided explosion and debris field may have given a powerful kick to the remaining core of the star, now a neutron star, explaining the high observed speed of this object. Finally, the strong turbulent flows created by the star’s internal changes may have promoted the development of the supernova blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. “Perhaps the most important effect of this change in the star’s structure is that it may have helped trigger the explosion itself,” said co-author Hiroyuki Uchida, also of Kyoto University. “Such final internal activity of a star may change its fate—whether it will shine as a supernova or not.” These results have been published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal and are available online. To learn more about Chandra, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/chandra Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/chandra https://chandra.si.edu Visual Description This release features a composite image of Cassiopeia A, a donut-shaped supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth. Included in the image is an inset closeup, which highlights a region with relative abundances of silicon and neon. Over three hundred years ago, Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, was a star on the brink of self-destruction. In composition it resembled an onion with layers rich in different elements such as hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, sulfur, calcium, and neon, wrapped around an iron core. When that iron core grew beyond a certain mass, the star could no longer support its own weight. The outer layers fell into the collapsing core, then rebounded as a supernova. This explosion created the donut-like shape shown in the composite image. The shape is somewhat irregular, with the thinner quadrant of the donut to the upper left of the off-center hole. In the body of the donut, the remains of the star’s elements create a mottled cloud of colors, marbled with red and blue veins. Here, sulfur is represented by yellow, calcium by green, and iron by purple. The red veins are silicon, and the blue veins, which also line the outer edge of the donut-shape, are the highest energy X-rays detected by Chandra and show the explosion’s blast wave. The inset uses a different color code and highlights a colorful, mottled region at the thinner, upper left quadrant of Cas A. Here, rich pockets of silicon and neon are identified in the red and blue veins, respectively. New evidence from Chandra indicates that in the hours before the star’s collapse, part of a silicon-rich layer traveled outwards, and broke into a neighboring neon-rich layer. This violent breakdown of layers created strong turbulent flows and may have promoted the development of the supernova’s blast wave, facilitating the star’s explosion. Additionally, upheaval in the interior of the star may have produced a lopsided explosion, resulting in the irregular shape, with an off-center hole (and a thinner bite of donut!) at our upper left. News Media Contact Megan Watzke Chandra X-ray Center Cambridge, Mass. 617-496-7998 mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu Corinne Beckinger Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama 256-544-0034 corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 Editor Lee Mohon Contact Corinne M. Beckinger corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov Location Marshall Space Flight Center Related Terms Chandra X-Ray Observatory General Marshall Astrophysics Marshall Space Flight Center Supernova Remnants Supernovae The Universe Explore More 4 min read NASA Scientists Help Maryland County Plan to Beat Summer Heat Risks Article 4 hours ago 6 min read Meet NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Masterminds Article 1 day ago 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus […]

Deputy Project Manager for Resources – Goddard Space Flight Center Katie Bisci, photographed here with a model of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya How are you helping set the stage for the Roman mission? I’m a deputy project manager for resources on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, sharing the role with Kris Steeley. Together, we oversee the business team, finance, outreach, scheduling, and more. I focus more on the “down and in” of the day-to-day team — helping the financial team, resource utilization across the project, and support service contracts management — while Kris handles more of the “up and out” external work with center management and NASA Headquarters. Kris and I collaborate on many things as well. The two of us have been together on Roman for many years, and we have definitely become one brain in many aspects of the role. The main goal in the job is programmatics: We need to understand and help along the technical parts of the mission, while also supporting cost and schedule control since Roman is a cost-capped mission. I try to make sure that I partner with our engineers to understand the technical part of Roman as much as possible. I find that I can’t do my job well on the programmatic side without working together closely with our engineers to understand the hardware and testing. What drew you to NASA? Did you always intend to work here? I think I always knew I wanted to go into the business and finance side of things, but I thought I’d end up at a big investment bank. I interned at one during college, but it just didn’t feel right for me. After graduating, I worked on corporate events for defense contractors in New York City. Then my husband got a job in Annapolis, Maryland, and I took a leap and applied for a resource analyst job at NASA, where some college friends were working. Looking back, as an oldest daughter it probably should have been obvious that project management would be a good fit! Once I got to NASA, I was really drawn in by the missions and work we do. It was so different from the corporate world. Being able to work on some of the coolest missions with some of the most brilliant minds out there is a gift. Almost 15 years later, I’m still here. How did your career grow from there? After serving as a resource analyst in the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, I moved into the center’s Astrophysics Projects Division, where I began working on Roman in 2012, back when it was just a small study called WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope). I could never have imagined at the time what that small study would turn into. People at NASA often say they “grew up” on the James Webb Space Telescope, and for me I definitely “grew up” on Roman. I became the mission business manager, then financial manager, and now a deputy project manager for resources. I feel lucky that most of my career has been spent on Roman. Adding it up, I’ve been on this project for over a decade. I’ve worked with so many amazing people, not just at NASA Goddard, but across the United States. It’s hard to believe we are so close to launching. What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Becoming part of the management team on Roman, for sure. Working with the leadership team has been incredible. The best part about Roman is the people. It still cracks me up to look at the plethora of people we have in the same room for our weekly senior staff meeting, from the programmatic and finance types like myself, to engineers leading super complicated integration and test programs, Ph.D.s, and some of the most brilliant science minds I will probably ever know. The Roman team is amazing, and those relationships are what keep me excited to come to work every day. Has your work influenced your understanding or appreciation of astronomy? Absolutely. I’ve learned so much just by being around brilliant people like our project scientist Julie McEnery. I even recently gave a talk about Roman at my daughter’s school! Being able to stand up in front of a group of children and talk about what Roman science is going to do is something I never would have been able to do prior to working here. I’ve learned about how the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb, and Roman all build on each other during my time on this project. And it’s really incredible science. I’ve also developed a deep admiration for the engineers who have built Roman. As a business focused person, our engineering team has really helped me understand the different facets of what our engineering team does on Roman. They are so patient with me! It’s really fulfilling to be a small part of something so big. What advice do you have for others who are interested in doing similar work? If you’re in finance, don’t just learn the numbers — learn the work behind them. Understand the mission, the tech, the people. That’s what helps you move from analyst to leader. People can tell when you really get what they’re doing, and that’s how you become a better partner and manager. What’s life like outside NASA? I have three kids — ages 9, 5, and 3 — so life is busy! When I’m not working, I’m usually at their sports games or chauffeuring them around to one event or another. It’s a little bit of a rat race, but this season of life is also really fun. Recently, my family and I have gotten back into traveling now that my kids are a little bit older. We took a spring break trip to Europe, which was fantastic. Spending time with my family and friends is everything. Whether it’s going to the beach, spending time at the pool, or hanging out on the sideline of a lacrosse game, just like at work it’s being with my people that I thrive on. And maybe one day I will have time for more hobbies again! By Ashley Balzer NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Share Details Last Updated Aug 26, 2025 Editor Ashley Balzer Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Goddard Space Flight Center Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope People of Goddard

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from […]

Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home This image was taken when Perseverance topped Soroya ridge. Using the Left Navigation Camera (Navcam), the image was acquired on Aug. 17, 2025 (Sol 1597) at the local mean solar time of 13:54:37. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives brought Perseverance further southeast to an outcrop named Soroya. Soroya was first picked out from orbital images as a target of interest because, as can be seen in the above image, it appears as a much lighter color compared to the surroundings. In previous landscape images from the surface, Mars 2020 scientists have been able to pick out the light-toned Soryoa outcrop, and they noted it forms a ridge-like structure, protruding above the surface. Soroya was easily identifiable from rover images (below) as Perseverance approached since it indeed rises above the surrounding low-lying terrain. The Perseverance rover acquired this image looking at Soroya using the onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). This image was acquired on Aug. 15, 2025 (Sol 1595) at the local mean solar time of 16:34:53. NASA/JPL-Caltech From Parnasset to Soroya, the team planned a series of drives so that Perseverance would arrive at Soroya in a great workspace, and the plan was successful. As shown in the first image, we arrived at an area with flat, exposed bedrock – great for proximity science instruments. The WATSON and SHERLOC ACI cameras plan to acquire many high-resolution images to investigate textures and surface features. For chemistry, SCAM LIBS and ZCAM multispectral activities will give important contextual data for the outcrop while PIXL will acquire a high-resolution chemical map scan of a dust-cleared part of the bedrock. While parked, MEDA will continue monitoring environmental conditions and ZCAM will image the surrounding terrain to inform the next drive location. Take a look at where Perseverance is now – where would you explore next? Want to read more posts from the Perseverance team? Visit Mission Updates Want to learn more about Perseverance’s science instruments? Visit the Science Instruments page Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Blogs Explore More 3 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4638-4640: Imaging Extravaganza Atop a Ridge Article 2 days ago 3 min read To See the World in a Grain of Sand: Investigating Megaripples at ‘Kerrlaguna’ Article 6 days ago 2 min read Curiosity Blog, Sols 4636-4637: Up Against a Wall Article 7 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Current Mars Investigations Current Mars Investigations The weather and climate of Mars are controlled by the coupled seasonal cycles of CO2, dust, and… All Mars Resources Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,… Rover Basics Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a… Mars Exploration: Science Goals The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are […]

Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida participate in the first joint integrated launch countdown simulation for Artemis I inside Firing Room 1 of the Launch Control Center on July 8, 2021. Seen at the top of the room is Charlie Blackwell-Thompson (right), launch director. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky As four astronauts venture around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026, many people will support the journey from here on Earth. Teams directing operations from the ground include the mission management team, launch control team, flight control team, and the landing and recovery team, each with additional support personnel who are experts in every individual system and subsystem. The teams have managed every aspect of the test flight and ensure NASA is prepared to send humans beyond our atmosphere and into a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. Mission management team Reviews of mission status and risk assessments are conducted by the mission management team, a group of 15 core members and additional advisors. Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, will serve as the mission management team chair for the test flight. Two days prior to launch, the mission management team will assemble to review mission risks and address any lingering preflight concerns. With more than 20 years of human spaceflight experience, Kshatriya will conduct polls at key decision points, providing direction for the relevant operations team. If circumstances during the flight go beyond established decision criteria or flight rules outlined ahead of the mission, the team will assess the situation based on the information available and decide how to respond. Matt Ramsey, serving as the Artemis II mission manager, will oversee all elements of mission preparedness prior to the mission management team assembly two days before launch and serve as deputy mission management team chair throughout the mission. With more than two decades of experience at NASA, Ramsey managed the SLS (Space Launch System) Engineering Support Center for Artemis I. Launch control team The launch control team coordinates launch operations from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson serves as the agency’s Artemis launch director, responsible for integrating and coordinating launch operations for the SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems Programs, including developing and implementing plans for countdown, troubleshooting, and timing. Two days before liftoff, when the countdown for launch begins, Blackwell-Thompson’s team will begin preparations for launch from their console positions in Firing Room 1 in Kennedy’s Launch Control Center. On the day of launch, Blackwell-Thompson and her team will manage countdown progress, propellent loading, and launch commit criteria. The criteria include standards for systems involved in launch, and the team will monitor the rocket until it lifts off from the launchpad. Rick Henfling, flight director, monitors systems in the Flight Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA Flight control team From solid rocket booster ignition until the crew is safely extracted from the Orion capsule following splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their mission, the flight control team oversees operations from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Multiple flight directors will take turns leading the team throughout the 10-day mission to support operations around the clock. Jeff Radigan, bringing more than 20 years of International Space Station experience to Artemis II, will serve as lead flight director for the mission. The work for this role begins well in advance of the mission with building mission timelines; developing flight rules and procedures; leading the flight control team through simulations that prepare them for the flight test; and then helping them carry out the plan. On launch day, the ascent flight control team will be led by Judd Frieling, an Artemis I flight director who also supported more than 20 shuttle missions as a flight controller. Frieling is responsible for overseeing the crew’s ascent to space, including performance of SLS core stage engines, solid rocket boosters, and propulsion systems from the moment of launch until the separation of Orion from the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage. As Orion is propelled toward the Moon, guidance of operations will pass to the next flight director. At the opposite end of the mission, Rick Henfling will take the lead for Orion’s return to Earth and splashdown. Orion will reenter Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for a parachute-assisted splashdown. Drawing from a background supporting space shuttle ascent, entry, and abort operations and 10 years as a space station flight director, Henfling and the team will monitor weather forecasts for landing, watch over Orion’s systems through the dynamic entry phase, and to ensure the spacecraft is safely shutdown before handing over operations to the recovery team. At any point during the mission, a single voice will speak to the crew in space on behalf of all members of the flight control team: the capsule communicator, or CapCom. The CapCom ensures the crew in space receives clear and concise communication from the teams supporting them on the ground. NASA astronaut Stan Love will serve as the lead CapCom for Artemis II. Love flew aboard STS-122 mission and has acted as CapCom for more than a dozen space station expeditions. He is also part of the astronaut office’s Rapid Prototyping Lab, which played a key role in development of Orion’s displays and controls. Landing, recovery team Retrieval of the crew and Orion crew module will be in the hands of the landing and recovery team, led by Lili Villarreal. The team will depart San Diego on a Department of Defense ship, and head to the vicinity of the landing site several days before splashdown for final preparations alongside the U.S. Navy and DOD. The recovery team is made up of personnel operating from the ship, land, and air to recover both astronauts and the capsule. Decision-making authority during the recovery phase of mission operations belongs to Villarreal, who served as deputy flow director for Artemis I and worked in the operations division for the space station. The success of Artemis II will pave the way for the next phase of the agency’s campaign, landing on the lunar South Pole region on Artemis III. These teams, along with the four crew members and countless NASA engineers, scientists, and personnel, are driving humanity’s exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable […]

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley, holds up a piece of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD. NASA/Joe Atkinson Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator) aeroshell developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, launched to low Earth orbit along with other experiments aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. This trip will help researchers characterize how the Zylon webbing responds to long-duration exposure to the harsh vacuum of space. The strap material on the HIAD aeroshell serves two purposes – short strap lengths hold together HIAD’s inflatable rings and longer pieces help to distribute the load more evenly across the cone-shaped structure. The HIAD aeroshell technology could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. “We’re researching how HIAD technology could help get humans to Mars. We want to look at the effects of long-term exposure to space – as if the Zylon material is going for a potential six to nine-month mission to Mars,” said Robert Mosher, HIAD materials and processing lead at NASA Langley. “We want to make sure we know how to protect those structural materials in the long term.” The Zylon straps are visible here during the inflation of LOFTID as part of a November 2022 orbital flight test. LOFTID was a version of the HIAD aeroshell — a technology that could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn’s moon, Titan. NASA Flying Zylon material aboard the Space Force’s X-37B mission will help NASA researchers understand what kind of aging might occur to the webbing on a long space journey before it experiences the extreme environments of atmospheric entry, during which it has to retain strength at high temperatures. Multiple samples are in small canisters on the X-37B. Mosher used two different techniques to put the strap material in the canisters. Some he tightly coiled up, others he stuffed in. “Typically, we pack a HIAD aeroshell kind of like you pack a parachute, so they’re compressed,” he said. “We wanted to see if there was a difference between tightly coiled material and stuff-packed material like you would normally see on a HIAD.” Some of the canisters also include tiny temperature and humidity sensors set to collect readings at regular intervals. When the Space Force returns the samples from the X-37B flight, Mosher will compare them to a set of samples that have remained in canisters here on Earth to look for signs of degradation. The material launched to space aboard the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, seen here earlier this year. Courtesy of the United States Space Force “Getting this chance to have the Zylon material exposed to space for an extended period of time will begin to give us some data on the long-term packing of a HIAD,” Mosher said. Uninflated HIAD aeroshells can be packed into small spaces within a spacecraft. This results in a decelerator that can be much larger than the diameter of its launch vehicle and can therefore land much heavier loads and deliver them to higher elevations on a planet or other celestial body. Rigid aeroshells, the sizes of which are dictated by the diameters of their launch vehicles, typically 4.5 to 5 meters, are capable of landing well-equipped, car-sized rovers on Mars. By contrast, an inflatable HIAD, with an 18-20m diameter, could land the equivalent of a small, fully furnished ranch house with a car in the garage on Mars. NASA’s HIAD aeroshell developments build on the success of the agency’s LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) mission that launched on Nov. 10, 2022, resulting in valuable insights into how this technology performs under the stress of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere after being exposed to space for a short time period. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/tdm/ About the Author Joe Atkinson Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center Share Details Last Updated Aug 27, 2025 Related Terms Langley Research Center Space Technology Mission Directorate Technology Demonstration Missions Program Explore More 4 min read Washington State Student Wins 2025 NASA Art Contest Article 3 days ago 2 min read NASA Tests Tools to Assess Drone Safety Over Cities Article 6 days ago 4 min read NASA Challenge Winners Cook Up New Industry Developments Article 1 week ago

New Scientist - Space

In this latest instalment of Future Chronicles, an imagined history of future inventions, Rowan Hooper explores the advances that meant an optical telescope with an effective mirror size of 3000 km could be built on the moon

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Earlier this year, astronomers reported possible evidence of life on another planet – but new observations from JWST suggest the apparent biosignature isn’t there after all

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In his sci-fi novel Lake of Darkness , Adam Roberts set out to write a utopia, a genre predating science fiction that imagines a better or perfect world. "I wanted to investigate the logic of utopia itself. Is utopia possible?" he says. Despite this, he admits that utopia novels are hard: "There can be, by …

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In this passage from near the opening of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are given an insight into how deep-space travel works in Adam Roberts’s universe

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Earth is no longer at risk of a direct collision with the asteroid 2024 YR4, but an impact on the moon in 2032 could send debris hurtling towards our planet that could take out orbiting satellites

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There have never been so many satellites orbiting Earth as there are today, thanks in part to the launch of mega constellations like SpaceX's Starlink internet service - and now we are learning just how the sun's activity can affect them

The chance of a planet forming in the outer reaches of the solar system – a hypothetical Planet Nine – could be as high as 40 per cent, but it would have been a rough start

Results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest that dark energy, a mysterious force in the universe, is changing over time. This would completely re-write our understanding of the cosmos - but now other physicists are challenging this view

The unusual orbit of a possible dwarf planet, known as 2017 OF201, makes it less likely that our solar system contains a hidden ninth “Planet X”

After two decades of debate, research confirms that an odd binary star system has an equally odd planetary companion

China's ambitious Tianwen-2 mission will soon be heading to two extremely different space rocks, and should provide vital data to help us understand the nature of asteroids and comets

The galaxy MoM-z14 dates back to 280 million years after the big bang, and the prevalence of such early galaxies is puzzling astronomers

Are there aliens living on the exoplanet K2-18b? Some astronomers believe they have evidence for molecules on the planet that must have a biological origin, but others disagree

Dark matter is thought to only interact through gravity, which is why it is so difficult to spot, but now evidence is growing for a type of dark matter that can also stick to itself

Most of us can spot the group of stars known as the Plough or the Big Dipper. But there’s more to explore here, says Abigail Beall

Stars that pass close to the solar system could pull planets out of alignment, sending them hurtling into the sun or out into space

In highly politicised times, is living off-world something we should entertain, let alone do? Adriana Marais's futurist dream Out of This World and Into the Next feels tone deaf

Anomalies in the moon’s gravitational field suggest our satellite’s insides are warmer on one side than the other – which means that its interior is asymmetric

Dyson spheres, a type of huge megastructure designed to capture the energy output of a star, would be a sign of an alien civilisation – if we can find one before they disappear

Kepler's Supernova, seen in 1604, is one of the most famous exploding stars ever seen, and now astronomers think it may have been an interloper from another galaxy

Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft that never made it beyond Earth’s orbit on its way to Venus, is due to come crashing down on 9 or 10 May

‘Shocking’ results from a major astronomical study have raised doubts about the standard model of cosmology, forcing scientists to consider new ways of understanding dark energy and gravity

As humanity prepares to return to the moon, scientists also have ideas for huge lunar experiments that could revolutionise astrophysics

Last week astronomers reported hints of biological activity on a distant planet, but a re-analysis of their data suggests the claimed molecules may not be there at all

Unusual signals called quasi periodic eruptions appear to come from black holes, but we don't know what creates them. Now astronomers have seen the most powerful one of these signals ever, and have a new idea about their cause

Whenever there’s even a slight chance that an exoplanet shows signs of biological activity, people understandably get excited – but it’s never been aliens, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, not this time or the next, says Chris Lintott

A network of Earth's best clocks will be synchronised with the most accurate one ever sent into space. But the device has a short shelf life: it will burn up in the atmosphere at the end of the decade as the ISS deorbits

The report of possible biosignatures on the exoplanet K2-18b is exciting, but we are a long way from establishing beyond doubt that there is life on such a distant world

On a faraway planet, the James Webb Space Telescope has picked up signs of molecules that, on Earth, are produced only by living organisms – but researchers say we must interpret the results cautiously

It is rare to find brown dwarf stars orbiting in pairs, and this pair has an even more unusual exoplanet companion

Space agencies from the US, Europe and Japan are all making plans to visit the asteroid Apophis when it makes an extremely close flyby in 2029 to learn how to deflect others like it

The Lyrids and Eta Aquarids meteor showers can both be seen starting in late April, with viewing opportunities in both the northern and southern hemispheres

Pluto isn’t the only dwarf planet in our solar system's outer reaches. Now is an ideal time to look for the egg-shaped Haumea, says Abigail Beall

In this extract from the classic science fiction novel, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet Ringworld’s protagonist Louis Wu, as he travels a future Earth

Amazon is aiming to launch its first operational satellites today to provide speedy internet connections in remote regions, but it will still take some time to catch up with its main competitor, SpaceX's Starlink  

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we now know that a day on Uranus lasts for 28 seconds longer than previously thought – a difference that could be crucial in planning future missions to the gas giant

Space is a favourite setting for many Hollywood films, but just how accurate are their portrayals? Patricia Skelton, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, sheds some light on the scientific rigour of her favourite movies. For example, during an explosive space battle scene in Star Trek, a crew member is tossed out into space …

An eavesdropper hiding inside a black hole could still obtain information about quantum objects on its outside, a finding that reveals how effectively black holes destroy the quantum states near their event horizons

Share & discuss informative content on: * Astrophysics * Cosmology * Space Exploration * Planetary Science * Astrobiology

Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried. In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have. Two examples of potential questions could be; "How do rockets work?", or "How do the phases of the Moon work?" If you see a space related question posted in another subreddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread. Ask away! submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

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Portable, quick setup, carbon-neutral sustainable aviation fuel, recoverable first stage, low cost to LEO. Livestreamed launch Friday Aug 29 05:30 NDT / 04:00 EDT https://www.youtube.com/live/0oxDEKPSbF4 Tundra is a portable orbital launch vehicle, powered by NordSpace’s Hadfield and Garneau engines. Capable of lifting payloads up to 500 kg to low Earth orbit (LEO), this capacity allows for a responsive launch system to be set up anywhere it is required including on land or at sea. Tundra costs approximately $10,000 / kg to LEO, among the lowest in the world. Tundra will be the first ever rocket compatible with carbon neutral e-fuels (sustainable aviation fuels), and is optimized for extremely low acoustic impact and emissions. A full year of operations would result in less fuel usage than a single trans-Atlantic commercial flight. Tundra's first stage is designed for an ocean recovery and refurbishment. NordSpace's StarGate architecture allows for the entire Tundra launch system to fit and be transported in only a few standard sea containers. The incredible portability, storability, and rapid launch capability of Tundra means launching from anywhere on Earth to anywhere in space is truly a possibility. submitted by /u/jabrwock1 [link] [comments]

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NISAR reflector deploys. Largest NASA reflector dish in space. Very cool accomplishment! https://www.wired.com/story/the-largest-satellite-antenna-ever-has-just-unfurled-in-space/ submitted by /u/tthrivi [link] [comments]

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Looks like most of the new space missions carry small cameras similar to dash cams. Are they really useful? https://infinityavionics.com/engineering-cameras/ https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/630f5352b3eb3142490a5cd4/6788f6f5ba1c6f795f3b99ef_dualfiring1v2-ezgif.com-optimize.gif submitted by /u/Throwaway-ausA [link] [comments]

https://preview.redd.it/hwc850mmcilf1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=1abc397f02639b8fa44d79a4ad3b17181a0415aa On November 12, 1833, there was a meteor shower so intense that it was possible to see up to 100,000 meteors crossing the sky every hour. At the time, many thought it was the end of the world. It inspired this woodcut by Adolf Vollmy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonids-1833.jpg submitted by /u/Movie-Kino [link] [comments]

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They say it's all looking green for launch at the moment, including weather which was the issue yesterday. You can watch it live here: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-10 Always exciting to watch it live, you never know in advance if you're getting a nice fireworks show or get to see some cool new milestones reached (which would be quite important for making progress on Artemis). The most important objective today is testing reentry of the Ship, they need to test the heatshield tiles. They also need a successful test of Raptor reflight on orbit, and successful deployment of Starlink simulators to proof that they could send up useful payload. They will not attempt a catch of the booster today. submitted by /u/Tystros [link] [comments]

"Hawking's formulation of the information paradox is based on the assumption that information is objective and globally accessible; if, instead, we adopt the relational, observer-dependent nature of information, the paradox itself turns out to be a wrongly posed question rather than a real violation of unitarity." Vladimir M. Tsenov https://www.academia.edu/143623698/The_Observer Centric_Reformulation_of_the_Black_Hole_Information _Paradox?source=swp_share submitted by /u/Least_Claim_3677 [link] [comments]

I’d like to share this free project that’s developed in spare time by a passionate of astronomy and space. If you visit it please leave a comment in the guestbook. submitted by /u/sm411cck [link] [comments]

One of the biggest counterarguments I have against people who think NASA faked going to the moon is the first mission in 1967.It literally killed three astronauts who were preparing for the first landing.If NASA were going to fake it they could have done so with Apollo 1 and no one would have died.Who would even risk their lives for something fake?It makes no sense for NASA to repeat another mission with such complexity and potential complications at the time.Not to mention the cost of billions of dollars around 4% of the federal budget. submitted by /u/Plastic_Match_8657 [link] [comments]

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I'm in Boston. It's morning 5:30am ish and I was on my back porch ending peace and quiet (city quiet) when I looked up and saw a dot, small but very high up and moving relatively quickly for how high up it looked. Seeing the sun is slowly illuminating the sky I thought maybe it was the ISS lighting up in the sky/space or low earth orbit (whatever it's classified as) but I looked up its location and it's near Australia. The small dot was moving fast and linear but it went from almost directly above my head to way off in the distant horizon in about 2mins maybe faster? Idk can you see many things with the naked eye like that? It was like a dimly lit star (comparison of brightness) but it stuck out over the city in the clear sky. submitted by /u/poop-azz [link] [comments]

Well hopefully this is allowed and I thought you guys may find it somewhat interesting. I know this isn’t the most scientific post. I’m a pilot and this happened about 2 years ago so I can’t remember where we were going but I think it was around west Texas/NM. My copilot and I were in cruise at 45000’ when a green light appeared at the top of our windshield and quickly moved to the bottom in a matter of a second. At first I believed it to be another airplane obviously but I thought that wouldn’t make much sense considering it came at us and not across us from left to right. I also saw no white strobe or red nav light. We had no indications of other aircraft on our TCAS system and after I queried ATC if someone had just passed underneath us, they said they had no other aircraft in our close vicinity. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a military aircraft operating without their transponder on, but I then got to thinking it could be a meteor. I had never seen a “green” meteor before but according to google, they can burn different colors depending on the minerals they contain. The whole situation made me wonder how close some of us get to meteors in the sky whether we see it or not. It would be one hell of a way to go out getting struck by a meteor at 45000’. submitted by /u/Gnome0066 [link] [comments]

It may look tiny in this image featured by ESO's POTW, but the observed disk around the star from North to South is over 600 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The tiny dot to the right is the planet, which has about 5 times the mass of Jupiter. This image is a composite of observations made with the Very Large Telescope (VLT/SPHERE/IRDIS). The star is behind a coronagraph (hence the dark spot in the center) and is surrounded by a disk consisting of multiple rings. The planet, shown in a gap to the right of the star, has cleared the gap in its orbit. While astronomers have long known that planets form in disks around the star and carve out a gap in the disk as they grow, there have been no unambiguously confirmed detections of such system. This discovery, WISPIT 2, represents an important milestone for the study of planet formation and evolution and will likely be a benchmark for years to come. Read more about it here: https://www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/discovery-of-the-first-ring-shaping-embedded-planet-around-a-young-solar-analog-4637 submitted by /u/SpeckleSoup [link] [comments]

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All the latest content from the Space.com team

SpaceX's Starship nailed its 10th-ever test flight on Aug. 26. Footage from the launch pad that day shows just how much power the giant rocket packs.

This sneak peek at 'Skin in the Game' is a battle of wits between galactic heavyweights.

The glacial flood risks that Juneau is now experiencing each summer are becoming a growing problem in communities around the world.

Scientists have retreated to deep beneath the French Alps to broaden the hunt for dark matter particles that could be "WIMPier than WIMPS."

Altair, Vega and Deneb can be seen shining with the Milky Way throughout August.

NASA's Perseverance rover captured a striking new image of massive, wind-carved sand formations known as "megaripples" during its latest exploration stop on the Red Planet.

It will take the most sensitive instruments ever imagined to reveal ripples from the Big Bang, but they could change our understanding of the entire universe.

A new NASA-IBM algorithm called Surya could be a major leap in space weather forecasting.

Here's where to find very dark skies in the U.S. and Canada.

The Milky Way is a spectacular sight in the summer skies but why does it look so much more brilliant than it does in the winter?

NASA has opened a new Orion Mission Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center to analyze in-flight spacecraft data and provide support for Artemis 2 and other future missions to the moon.

The USS Enterprise, a 'Star Trek' spaceship, is created from pumpkins as part of a German contest.

The Butterfly Nebula, which is a planetary nebula resulting from the death of a sun-like star, has been caught creating large dust grains that could form planets.

If you're a student or between 18 and 24 years old, you can get nearly 73% off an annual subscription to Peacock and enjoy a huge selection of fantastic documentaries, movies, sports, and entertainment.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket flew for a record 30th time early Thursday morning (Aug. 28), sending 28 Starlink satellites to orbit from Florida.

Astronomers are amazed to have discovered a baby exoplanet gobbling up matter around an infant star like a planetary Pac-Man.

Academy Award-winning "Star Wars" legend Roger Christian shares how he recreated the vibe of the original 'Alien' film in Hulu's new series 'Alien: Earth.'

Although the existence of the warps is widespread, their origin is still a mystery.

Starship performed very well on its 10th-ever test flight Tuesday (Aug. 27), but SpaceX will soon move on from the shiny silver vehicle —to an even bigger version of it.

China is going full throttle in its quest to land astronauts on the moon by 2030, notching several important milestones over the past few months.

MIT professor, Nobel prize winner, and renowned astrophysicist Rainer Weiss has passed away at the age of 92.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Aug. 27 and made the company's 400th Falcon 9 landing on a droneship at sea.

Scientists have solved how molten "raindrops" in meteorites, called chondrules, were formed — and the discovery reveals key details about Jupiter's origin.

We've rounded up the best Nikon lenses from ultra-wide to telephoto, just what you need to take your photography to the next level.

Scientists have developed a new technique that could help them understand "polka dot" stars using the transits of exoplanets.

The National Science Foundation is already implementing some recommendations after a recent survey found issues with sexual assault and harassment on Antarctic missions.

A happy coincidence and a theory first put forward by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago helped scientists detect faint radiation around a distant supermassive black hole.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) saw the moon pass almost directly in front of the sun and captured it on a coronagraph.

Scientists studying the famous 'Wow! signal' think they've finally pinpointed a possible origin for the baffling radio transmission detected in 1977.

The Starship megarocket checked every significant box during its 10th test flight on Tuesday evening (Aug. 26), according to SpaceX.

SpaceX's Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe lost contact with Earth for nearly a full day recently, but the problem was solved in time for its planned Aug. 31 Venus flyby.

Even if life never took hold on Ceres, the discovery could help broaden the range of environments that could potentially be habitable.

Hulu's hit animated sci-fi show returns Sept. 15 with a 10-episode binge-worthy barrage.

Asteroid Ryugu is proving to be one of the most scientifically valuable time capsules in the solar system.

This quiz will challenge your knowledge of Mars' features, missions, and mysteries.

Stargazers will need a clear view of the western horizon to spot the moon near Spica as the sun sets on Aug. 27.

Scientists have developed a new and improved method to better understand "steam world" exoplanets, a move that could refocus the search for life.

SpaceX shared spectacular photos of its Falcon 9 night launch carrying the U.S. Space Force's X-37B space plane to orbit on Aug. 21, 2025.

The James Webb Space Telescope has joined the study of the interstellar invader 3I/ATLAS, uncovering secrets that could reveal more about the planetary system in which it formed.

The narrowest magnetic loops ever seen in the sun's corona have been imaged by the most powerful solar telescope on Earth.

The chain of lights shows the river's corridor from Minya to New Bani Sewf City to the heart of Cairo.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Luxembourg's National Advanced Optical System spacecraft and several smaller satellites to orbit from California today (Aug. 26).

SpaceX scrubbed the planned 10th test flight of its Starship megarocket for the second day in a row today (Aug. 25), this time because of some uncooperative clouds.

Lucasfilm unveiled a sneak peek at Volume 3 of "Star Wars: Visions" that hints at something new coming from a galaxy far, far away.

The opinion opens a door for future claims by countries seeking reparations for climate-related harm.

Scientists using NASA's Juno spacecraft have discovered a new plasma wave in Jupiter's auroras, offering fresh insight into space weather and magnetism.

Astronomers just ruled out merging black holes as a possible solution to a giant discrepancy plaguing cosmology.

This quiz will test your knowledge of Venus' wild weather, strange geology, and mythological roots.

An image from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory shows a glowing hand stretching across the cosmos with its palm and fingers sculpted from the wreckage of a massive stellar explosion.

Views from the Dragon spacecraft during Fram2, the first polar-orbit human spaceflight mission to explore Earth with the @framonauts. Watch the extended, ~4-hour cut with additional views @SpaceX on X → https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1919172303709184350

The first Starship flight test of 2025 flew with ambitious goals: seeking to repeat our previous success of launching and catching the world’s most powerful launch vehicle while putting a redesigned and upgraded Starship through a rigorous set of flight demonstrations. It served as a reminder that development testing, by definition, can be unpredictable. On its seventh flight test, Starship successfully lifted off from Starbase in Texas at 4:37 p.m. CT on Thursday, January 16. For the second time ever, the Super Heavy booster returned to the launch site and was caught by the tower. But before Starship could reach space, a fire developed in the aft section leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly. As always, success comes from what we learned, and this flight test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.

The sixth flight test of Starship launched from Starbase on November 19, 2024, seeking to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. The Super Heavy booster successfully lifted off at the start of the launch window, with all 33 Raptor engines powering it and Starship off the pad from Starbase. Following a nominal ascent and stage separation, the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin the return to launch site. During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt. The booster then executed a pre-planned divert maneuver, performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship completed another successful ascent, placing it on the expected trajectory. The ship successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn before starting fully orbital missions. With live views and telemetry being relayed by Starlink, the ship successfully made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Data gathered from the multiple thermal protection experiments, as well as the successful flight through subsonic speeds at a more aggressive angle of attack, provides invaluable feedback on flight hardware performing in a flight environment as we aim for eventual ship return and catch. With data and flight learnings as our primary payload, Starship’s sixth flight test once again delivered. Lessons learned will directly make the entire Starship system more reliable as we close in on full and rapid reusability.

SpaceX was founded to increase access to space and help make life multiplanetary. In just this year, we’ve launched 114 successful Falcon missions and counting for our commercial and government customers, deployed ~1,700 @Starlink satellites to provide high-speed internet for millions of people all around the world, and made extraordinary strides developing Starship’s capability to return humanity to the Moon and ultimately send people to Mars. If you want to join the team and help build a more exciting future, check out the latest job openings across the company → https://www.spacex.com/careers

Starship’s fifth flight test lifted off on October 13, 2024, with our most ambitious test objectives yet as we work to demonstrate techniques fundamental to Starship and Super Heavy’s fully and rapidly reusable design. And on our first try, Mechazilla caught the booster. Following a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and coast, the Super Heavy booster performed its landing burn and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch and catch tower at Starbase. Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to the catch attempt, and thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt. Prior to catch, Starship executed another successful hot-staging separation, igniting its six Raptor engines and completing ascent into outer space. It coasted along its planned trajectory to the other side of the planet before executing a controlled reentry, passing through the phases of peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure, before executing a flip, landing burn, and splashdown at its target area in the Indian Ocean. The flight test concluded at splashdown 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds after launch.

On Tuesday, September 10, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched the Polaris Dawn mission to orbit from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Polaris Dawn became the first crew to perform the first-ever spacewalk from Dragon, travel the farthest (1,408 km) within Earth’s orbit since the completion of the Apollo program in 1972, and test Starlink laser-based communications aboard Dragon. Additionally, the crew conducted approximately 36 experiments designed to better life on Earth and on future long-duration spaceflights, shared special moments with mission partners including reading Kisses from Space to patients at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®, and inspired the world with a global music moment before safely returning to Earth on Sunday, September 15.

During its five day mission, Dragon and the Polaris Dawn crew completed 75 orbits around Earth.

A live webcast of the Polaris Dawn EVA will begin about one hour prior to the beginning of the spacewalk on Thursday, September 12, which you can watch on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app. The four-hour window opens at 3:23 a.m. ET. If needed, a backup opportunity is available on Friday, September 13 at the same time.

A live webcast of the Polaris Dawn EVA will begin about one hour prior to the beginning of the spacewalk on Thursday, September 12, which you can watch on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app. The four-hour window opens at 3:23 a.m. ET. If needed, a backup opportunity is available on Friday, September 13 at the same time.

Starship’s fourth flight test launched with ambitious goals, attempting to go farther than any previous test before and begin demonstrating capabilities central to return and reuse of Starship and Super Heavy. The payload for this test was the data. Starship delivered. On June 6, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to deliver maximum excitement. The fourth flight of Starship made major strides to bring us closer to a rapidly reusable future. Its accomplishments will provide data to drive improvements as we continue rapidly developing Starship into a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

At ~700 km above Earth, the EVA suit will support the Polaris Dawn crew in the vacuum of space during the first-ever commercial astronaut spacewalk. Evolved from the Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit, the EVA suit provides greater mobility, a state-of-the-art helmet Heads-Up Display (HUD) and camera, new thermal management textiles, and materials borrowed from Falcon’s interstage and Dragon’s trunk. Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require millions of spacesuits. The development of this suit and the execution of the spacewalk will be important steps toward a scalable design for spacesuits on future long-duration missions as life becomes multiplanetary.

The goal of SpaceX is to build the technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary. This is the first time in the 4-billion-year history of Earth that it’s possible to realize that goal and protect the light of consciousness. At Starbase on Thursday, April 4, SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk provided an update on the company’s plans to send humanity to Mars, the best destination to begin making life multiplanetary. Go to (https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1776669097490776563) for the full talk, which also includes the mechanics and challenges of traveling to Mars, along with what we’re building today to enable sending around a million people and several million tonnes to the Martian surface in the years to come.

On March 14, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 8:25 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to accomplish several major milestones and firsts. Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit, becoming the first Starship to complete its full-duration ascent burn. Starship went on to experience its first ever entry from space, providing valuable data on heating and vehicle control during hypersonic reentry. Live views of entry were made possible by Starlink terminals operating on Starship. This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond.

The world's most powerful launch vehicle is ready for flight. The third flight test aims to build on what we’ve learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond. Follow us on X.com/SpaceX for updates on the upcoming flight test.

On November 18, 2023, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:02 a.m. CT from Starbase on its second integrated flight test. While it didn’t happen in a lab or on a test stand, it was absolutely a test. What we did with this second flight will provide invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship. The test achieved a number of major milestones, helping us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary. The team at Starbase is already working final preparations on the vehicles slated for use in Starship’s third flight test. Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting second flight test of Starship! Follow us on X.com/SpaceX for continued updates on Starship's progress

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman poses for a portrait in a photography studio at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the ramp at sunrise before ground tests at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, on July 18, 2025. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight.

The parachute of the Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy test experiment deploys following an air launch from an Alta X drone on June 4, 2025, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

California's San Francisco Bay Area surrounded by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, and their suburbs, is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Golden State on Aug. 3, 2025.

Viking 1 was launched by a Titan-Centaur rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:22 p.m. EDT on Aug. 20, 1975, to begin a half-billion mile, 11-month journey through space to explore Mars. The 4-ton spacecraft went into orbit around the red planet in mid-1976 and landed on Mars on July 20, 1976.

The Moon's light is refracted by Earth's atmosphere, giving it a spheroid shape in this April 13, 2025, photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited into a sunset 264 miles above the border between Bolivia and Brazil in South America.

NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, walk on the crew access arm of the mobile launcher in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025.

Former NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough is photographed during a spacewalk in January 2017.

Eleven International Space Station crew members gather inside the International Space Station's Unity module for a portrait on Aug. 3, 2025.

An alligator moves through a brackish waterway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The center shares space with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. More than 330 native and migratory bird species, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles call NASA Kennedy and the wildlife refuge home.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a portion of the Tarantula Nebula.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, left, NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft aboard the SpaceX recovery ship SHANNON shortly after having landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov returned after 147 days in space as part of Expedition 73 aboard the International Space Station.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact star cluster in a giant elliptical galaxy.

The Artemis II crew (from left to right) CSA (Canadian Space Agency) Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; Christina Koch, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; and Reid Wiseman, commander, don their Orion Crew Survival System Suits for a multi-day crew module training beginning Thursday, July 31, 2025, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Behind the crew, wearing clean room apparel, are members of the Artemis II closeout crew.

This view of tracks trailing NASA's Curiosity rover was captured July 26, 2025, as the rover simultaneously relayed data to a Mars orbiter.

Second Lady Usha Vance hosted a special Summer Reading Challenge event at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Aug. 4, 2025. She was joined by NASA astronaut Suni Williams to read a space-themed book to children in grades K-8 as part of her initiative to promote literacy.

In this 30 second exposure photograph, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov aboard, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A NASA photographer captured the sunrise on July 31, 2025, ahead of NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 launch attempt. The Crew-11 mission will send NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9.

NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems’ Program Manager Shawn Quinn captured this image of the Hadley–Apennine region of the moon including the Apollo 15 landing site (very near the edge of the shadow of one of the lunar mountains in the area).

An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is being prepared for a drop test by researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 3285B, a member of the Hydra I cluster of galaxies.

The 25th anniversary logo is visible in the cupola of the space station in this July 17, 2025, image. The central astronaut figure is representative of all those who have lived and worked aboard the station during the 25 years of continuous human presence. In the dark sky of space surrounding the astronaut are 15 stars, which symbolize the 15 partner nations that support the orbiting laboratory.

The Bumper V-2 launches from Cape Canaveral in this July 24, 1950, photo.

Expedition 73 Flight Engineer Jonny Kim from NASA and Axiom Mission 4 Commander Peggy Whitson work together inside the International Space Station's Destiny laboratory module setting up research hardware to culture patient-derived cancer cells, model their growth in microgravity, and test a state-of-the-art fluorescence microscope.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft taxis across the runway during a low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, on July 10, 2025. The test marks the start of taxi tests and the last series of ground tests before first flight.

On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings, and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster Abell 209.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 73 Flight Engineer Anne McClain shows off a hamburger-shaped cake to celebrate 200 cumulative days in space for JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi (out of frame) since his first spaceflight as an Expedition 48-49 Flight Engineer in 2016.

The aurora australis arcs above a partly cloudy Indian Ocean in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above in between Australia and Antarctica on June 12, 2025.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dense and dazzling array of blazing stars that form globular cluster ESO 591-12.

This is the most accurate natural color image of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.

Researchers from NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) recently tested a scale model of the X-59 experimental aircraft in a supersonic wind tunnel located in Chofu, Japan, to assess the noise audible underneath the aircraft. The test was an important milestone for NASA’s one-of-a-kind X-59, which is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without causing a loud sonic boom.

To celebrate its third year of revealing stunning scenes of the cosmos in infrared light, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has “clawed” back the thick, dusty layers of a section within the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334).

This illustration shows the parts of a space shuttle orbiter. About the same size and weight as a DC-9 aircraft, the orbiter contains the pressurized crew compartment (which can normally carry up to seven crew members), the cargo bay, and the three main engines mounted on its aft end.

The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1450 light years from Earth.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 73 Flight Engineer Jonny Kim works inside the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft completing cargo operations before it undocked from the International Space Station's Harmony module several hours later.

This close-up view of the United States flag plate on NASA's Perseverance was acquired on June 28, 2025 (the 1,548th day, or sol, of its mission to Mars), by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) imager on the turret at the end of the rover's Mars robotic arm.

Three members of NASA's Lewis Research Center’s (now NASA’s Glenn Research Center) Educational Services Office pose with one of the center’s Spacemobile space science demonstration units on Nov. 1, 1964.

This Hubble image shows the spiral galaxy UGC 11397, which resides in the constellation Lyra (The Lyre).

In 1963, Captain Engle was assigned as one of two Air Force test pilots to fly the X-15 Research Rocket aircraft. In 1965, he flew the X-15 to an altitude of 280,600 feet, and became the youngest pilot ever to qualify as an astronaut. Three of his sixteen flights in the X-15 exceeded the 50-mile (264,000 feet) altitude required for astronaut rating.

The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years. This new composite image contains data of M31 taken by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes in different kinds of light. This image is released in tribute to the groundbreaking legacy of Dr. Vera Rubin, whose observations transformed our understanding of the universe.

NASA astronaut Bob Hines took this picture of the waning crescent moon on May 8, 2022, as the International Space Station flew into an orbital sunrise 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of the United States.

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman inspects her spacesuit’s wrist mirror at the NASA Johnson Space Center photo studio on March 22, 2024.

Arsia Mons, one of the Red Planet’s largest volcanoes, peeks through a blanket of water ice clouds in this image captured by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter on May 2, 2025.

This full-disk image from NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite shows the Americas at the start of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere on June 21, 2012.

More than 500 students with 75 teams from around the world participated in the 31st year of NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) on April 11 and April 12, 2025, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Participating teams represented 35 colleges and universities, 38 high schools, and two middle schools from 20 states, Puerto Rico, and 16 other nations.

A curious cow watches as NASA astronauts Andre Douglas and Kate Rubins perform a simulated moonwalk in the San Francisco Volcanic Field in Northern Arizona on May 14, 2024.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the barred spiral galaxy IC 758.

Attendees line up to enter the theater for a screening of the new NASA+ documentary “Cosmic Dawn: The Untold Story of the James Webb Space Telescope,” Wednesday, June 11, 2025, at the Greenbelt Cinema in Greenbelt, Maryland. Featuring never-before-seen footage, Cosmic Dawn offers an unprecedented glimpse into the assembly, testing, and launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The star cluster Pismis 24 lies within the much larger emission nebula called NGC 6357, located about 8,000 light-years from Earth. The gas below the stars glows through ionization caused by intense ultraviolet radiation from the massive young stars within the cluster.

At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a bobcat wades through one of the waterways near Launch Pad 39B.

Astronaut Franklin R. Chang-Diaz works with a grapple fixture during a June 2002 spacewalk – the first spacewalk of the STS-111 mission.

Amid a patchwork of fields, towns, and winding rivers and roads in central Brazil stands a monolithic oval-shaped plateau. This conspicuous feature, the Serra de Caldas (also known as the Caldas Novas dome and Caldas Ridge), is perched about 300 meters (1,000 feet) above the surrounding landscape in the state of Goiás.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero Galaxy with its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which shows dust from the galaxy’s outer ring blocking stellar light from stars within the galaxy. In the central region of the galaxy, the roughly 2,000 globular clusters, or collections of hundreds of thousands of old stars held together by gravity, glow in the near-infrared. The Sombrero Galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. From Earth, we see this galaxy nearly “edge-on,” or from the side.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a cloudscape in the Large Magellanic Cloud., a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Astronaut Edward H. White II, pilot of the Gemini IV four-day Earth-orbital mission, floats in the zero gravity of space outside the Gemini IV spacecraft.

Scientists have discovered a star behaving like no other seen before, giving fresh clues about the origin of a new class of mysterious objects.

President Donald Trump steps onstage to speak following the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Sixteen of 19 astronaut candidates named on May 29, 1980, and two European trainees as payload specialists pose for photographers in the briefing room in the public affairs facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.