NASA announced its 2025 Astronaut Candidate Class on Sept. 22, 2025. The 10 candidates, pictured here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are: U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri [...]

This artist’s concept shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and NASA’s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) on the lunar surface.Credit: Blue Origin As part of the agency’s Artemis campaign, NASA has awarded Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, a CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) task order with an option to deliver a rover [...]

All the pieces are stacking up – literally – for NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis program coming in 2026. Teams are finishing integration of the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II test flight with its launch abort system on Sept. 17 inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center [...]

NASA/JPL-Caltech In this infrared photograph taken on June 2, 2025, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. At the time, when Psyche was about 143 million miles (230 [...]

5 Min Read From Supercomputers to Wind Tunnels: NASA’s Road to Artemis II Of the many roads leading to successful Artemis missions, one is paved with high-tech computing chips called superchips. Along the way, a partnership between NASA wind tunnel engineers, data visualization scientists, and software developers verified a quick, cost-effective solution to improve [...]

5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.NASA/JPL-Caltech The project has exceeded all of its technical goals after [...]

The commercial aviation industry is a crucial component of the U.S. economy, playing a vital role in transporting people, intermediate/final goods, and driving demand for various goods and services nationwide. This network enhances the quality of life for the whole country and facilitates business interactions within and globally, boosting productivity and prosperity. However, the [...]

An artist’s concept of a supermassive black hole, a surrounding disk of material falling towards the black hole and a jet containing particles moving away at close to the speed of light. This black hole represents a recently-discovered quasar powered by a black hole. New Chandra observations indicate that the black hole is growing at [...]

2 Min Read Building a Lunar Network: Johnson Tests Wireless Technologies for the Moon  From left, Johnson Exploration Wireless Laboratory (JEWL) Software Lead William Dell; Lunar 3GPP Principal Investigator Raymond Wagner; JEWL intern Harlan Phillips; and JEWL Lab Manager Chatwin Lansdowne. Credits: Nevada Space Proving Grounds (NSPG) NASA engineers are strapping on backpacks loaded [...]

5 min read New NASA Mission to Reveal Earth’s Invisible ‘Halo’ A new NASA mission will capture images of Earth’s invisible “halo,” the faint light given off by our planet’s outermost atmospheric layer, the exosphere, as it morphs and changes in response to the Sun. Understanding the physics of the exosphere is a key [...]