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 [...]
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 [...]
This composite image of the Cassiopeia A (or Cas A) supernova remnant, released Jan. 8, 2024, contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), infrared data from Webb (red, green, blue), and optical data from Hubble (red and white). A study by the XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft has made the first-ever X-ray detections of chlorine [...]
By the time the Artemis II Orion spacecraft launches to the Moon next year, its many components will already have traveled thousands of miles and moved across multiple facilities before coming together at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Branelle Rodriguez, Artemis II vehicle manager for the Orion Program, has overseen many parts of that journey. Her [...]
Student teams competed in the 2025 Invention Challenge at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Dec. 5. The event pits middle and high school teams against each other as they try to get handmade devices to accomplish a task.NASA/JPL-Caltech The 2025 Invention Challenge at JPL called on teams to build devices capable of moving about [...]
3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s broadcast of the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse has won an Emmy Award for Excellence in Production Technology. At the 76th Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards on Dec. 4, in New York City, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the [...]
