APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 September 24 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. OriginalAnnotated The [...]
4 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Testing at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley in March 2026 demonstrated autonomous technology that could identify an incursion – a vehicle, wayward suitcase, or other runway obstacle that could impact an aircraft’s safe landing.NASA/Brandon Torres-Navarrete NASA’s researchers know that when you settle [...]
Photo of the Day A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), with its monthly monitoring of the Moon, captured today’s images [...]
Credit: NASA The Republic of Croatia became the 74th signatory to the Artemis Accords on Wednesday during a ceremony in the capital city of Zagreb with NASA and U.S. Department of State officials present. “It is my privilege to welcome the Republic of Croatia as the latest signatory of the Artemis Accords,” said NASA Deputy [...]
Credit: NASA NASA announced Wednesday a mission to explore the history and evolution of the universe, PRIMA (PRobe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics), is advancing to the next phase of development. This space telescope is the first in a new class of NASA astrophysics missions, called Probe Explorers, within the agency’s longstanding Explorers Program. “The PRIMA [...]
NASA astronaut Anil Menon smiles for a portrait while conducting spacesuit maintenance inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock.Roscosmos/Anna Kikina Ultrasound scans using augmented reality and artificial intelligence topped the health research schedule aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The Expedition 75 crew also collected blood and saliva samples to study how the immune [...]
A photo of the Dynamic Aviation A200 aircraft, which will conduct low-flying research flights over farmland near Greeley, Colorado, to measure emissions in October 2026. Dynamic Aviation Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from [...]
An image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy cluster MACS J0417 is part of repeated observations to monitor for the reappearance of supernova Athena, which can help astronomers measure the expansion rate of the universe.NASA, ESA, STScI, M. Pascale (UCLA); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of massive [...]
Daily images of ice cover in the Arctic Ocean show sea ice melting around the pole from March 15, 2026 to Sept. 12, 2026. Trent Schindler/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 12, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the [...]
Astronaut Shannon W. Lucid checked on wheat plants aboard Russia’s Mir Space Station on Sept. 23, 1996. Lucid left Mir later that day along with the rest of the STS-79 crew except for John E. Blaha, who was beginning a four-month stay aboard the station.NASA Shannon Lucid’s Record-Setting Mission Aboard Mir Three days before returning [...]
