2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA engineer Hanbong Lee demonstrates capabilities to manage busy urban airspace traffic during a recent simulation at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.NASA/Brandon Torres-Navarrete NASA is helping shape the future of urban air travel with a new simulation that will manage how [...]
5 Min Read What a Blast! NASA Langley Begins Plume-Surface Interaction Tests Views of the 60-foot vacuum sphere in the which the plume-surface interaction testing is happening. Credits: NASA/Joe Atkinson In March as Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 landed on the Moon, researchers from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, employed a novel [...]
5 Min Read NASA Begins Moon Mission Plume-Surface Interaction Tests Views of the 60-foot vacuum sphere in the which the plume-surface interaction testing is happening. Credits: NASA/Joe Atkinson In March, NASA researchers employed a new camera system to capture data imagery of the interaction between Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander’s engine plumes and [...]
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Chicago/H. McCall Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe held together by gravity, containing up to several thousand individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of superheated, X-ray-emitting gas. The mass of this hot gas is typically about five times higher than the total mass of all the galaxies in galaxy [...]
Photo of the Day This cosmic close-up looks deep inside the Soul Nebula. The dark and brooding dust clouds outlined by bright ridges of glowing gas are cataloged as IC 1871. About 25 light-years across, the telescopic field of view spans only a small part of the much larger Heart and Soul nebulae. At [...]
Nicolas Escurat A flash of lightning, and then—something else. High above a storm, a crimson figure blinks in and out of existence. If you see it, you are a lucky witness of a sprite, one of the least-understood electrical phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Sprites occur at some 50 miles (80 kilometers) altitude, high above [...]
A pilot signals to a crew member before takeoff from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Aug. 21, 2025. Accompanying him in the high-flying ER-2 aircraft is one of the most advanced imaging spectrometers in the solar system.NASA/Christopher LC Clark Called AVIRIS-5, it’s the latest in a long line of sensors pioneered [...]
Michelle Hoehn is a cost accountant at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, where her work contributes to NASA’s Artemis program that will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars. NASA/Danny Nowlin Michelle Hoehn vividly remembers the day a seed was planted for her future at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near [...]
The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, with Expedition 73 NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, and Alexey Zubritsky aboard, Dec. 9, 2025.NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA astronaut Jonny Kim returned to Earth on Tuesday alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey [...]
Photo of the Day Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. Such visual spectacles occur every day for astronauts in low Earth orbit, but the featured video captured several from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011 and set them to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds, orange city [...]
