NASA

Written by William Farrand, Senior Research Scientist, Space Science Institute Earth planning date: Friday, June 12, 2026 Rather than going from stage to stage at a music festival to hear different bands playing different varieties of music, Curiosity has been ascending up Mount Sharp through physical bands of exposed rocks with textural and tonal differences. […]

NASA selected a mission concept to research how space weather and dynamics within Earth’s atmosphere influence the space environment and help improve prediction capabilities for impacts on crucial technology, such as GPS and low Earth orbit satellites, as well as astronauts in space. The DAPHNE (Dynamic Atmosphere-Ionosphere Explorer) mission will enter Phase B of development, […]

NASA has selected eight new companies and will acquire new data products from six existing Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition contract holders to expand the range of commercial satellite data available to researchers, civil agencies, and decision-makers. Such measurements supplement NASA’s Earth satellites by contributing high-resolution and frequent observations to enhance the agency’s set of…

Rohit Goeptar was born into a poor family in Suriname, South America, the kind where both parents work three jobs and they still can only provide food and shelter for their family. At around age six, his family moved to California to start a new life. Only two years later, he moved back to South America […]

Description A prototype four-wheel rover developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with advanced mobility and robotic autonomy capabilities trundled across the Colorado Desert near Plaster City, California, during a field test in March 2026. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), the rover served here as a testbed for autonomy software developed for […]

On a bleak stretch of the Colorado Desert in Southern California, a compact four-wheeled rover recently trundled about 16 miles (26 kilometers) with minimal intervention from the team of engineers trailing it. Called ERNEST (Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain), this prototype is being used by NASA to advance both robotic autonomy and the […]

This image, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and released on June 5, 2026, shows just a small portion of one of the Orion Molecular Clouds, a long and massive filament of cold gas and dust beyond the Orion Nebula. Every stage of star formation — from the youngest stellar embryos to protoplanetary discs […]

NASA Wednesday announced a new public‑private partnership to advance Mars science by combining the agency’s scientific leadership with commercial innovation. Under this model, NASA will provide the Aeolus atmospheric‑science instrument payload suite, while Relativity Space supplies the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations necessary to deliver the instruments to Mars. This partnership reflect…

Researchers using two of humanity’s most powerful observatories — NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes — have definitively shown that Terzan 5 is not a globular star cluster as it was once classified, offering new insight into how galaxies like our own form and evolve over time. A globular star cluster typically has only […]

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on NASA’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging the unique environment of microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else. Quantum [&#8230…

The Transient Artifact and Continuous Learning System (TACLS) leverages data from continuously operating satellite networks coupled with machine learning models to help meteorologists at the National Weather Service forecast flash floods more efficiently.

NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. Sponsored by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), a division of the U.S. Department of […]

The aurora australis arcs over Earth during an active solar event in this photograph taken on June 5, 2026, from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia. Auroras are colorful, dynamic, and often visually delicate displays of an intricate dance of particles and magnetism between […]

Celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites the public to its campus at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California for an open-house event, Explore JPL. On Oct. 10 and 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT, visitors will get the chance to visit JPL’s most iconic facilit…

The aftermath of a supernova, a stellar explosion, is usually a slowly fading cloud of hot gas. So when astronomers pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83), they did not expect to find a population of supernova remnants, or the debris from these explosions, showing dramatic changes in their brightness. […]

Students in New Jersey will hear from NASA astronauts Chris Williams and Jessica Meir as they answer prerecorded STEM questions while aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at 12:05 p.m. EDT, Thursday, June 18, and will stream live on the agency’s Learn With NASA YouTube channel. This event is hosted by Newton Public Schools […]

Scientists await a big splash in the Pacific Ocean as one of the most research-packed Dragon spacecraft to date returns, completing the 34th SpaceX commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. Biological and materials samples, along with tested hardware, are heading back to research teams on Earth for further analysis, advancing NASA’s […]

Voices Shaping the Future of Space Members of the public are invited to join some of NASA’s brightest minds as they discuss agency missions and current topics in aerospace technology, science, and innovation. Each event will feature NASA experts, and the series will cover a range of topics including our search for life within the […]

This March 20, 2026, image of Messier 64, or the Black Eye Galaxy, is a composite view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. It shows Messier 64 captured at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths by Webb, while Hubble’s image shows the galaxy in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. Messier 64 is characterized […]

Looking somewhat like a swarm of bees returning to their hive, this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster MACS0329-0211.