Northrop Grumman’s 21st Cygnus cargo craft, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays, is pictured in the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm shortly after its capture on Aug. 6, 2024.NASA NASA and Northrop Grumman are targeting the safe arrival of the company’s Cygnus XL at approximately 7:18 a.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 18, to the [...]
NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket poised to send four astronauts from Earth on a journey around the Moon next year may appear identical to the Artemis I SLS rocket. On closer inspection, though, engineers have upgraded the agency’s Moon rocket inside and out to improve performance, reliability, and safety. SLS flew a [...]
6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) It’s been 30 years since the discovery of the first planet around another star like our Sun. With every new discovery, scientists move closer to answering whether there are other planets like Earth that could host life as we know it. NASA/JPL-Caltech The milestone [...]
Photo of the Day Can you spot famous celestial objects in this image? 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier cataloged only two of them: the bright Lagoon Nebula (M8) at the bottom, and the colorful Trifid Nebula (M20) at the upper right. The one on the left that resembles a cat's paw is NGC 6559, and [...]
Technicians completed integrating NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) satellite to an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter ring at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 4. Integrating the rideshares to the ring [...]
4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Daily images of ice cover in the Arctic Ocean (left) and around Antarctica reveal sea ice formation and melting at the poles over the course of two years (Sept 14, 2023 to Sept. 13, 2025).Trent Schindler/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio With the end of [...]
NASA/Jonny Kim NASA astronaut Zena Cardman processes bone cell samples inside the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox on Aug. 28, 2025, as part of an experiment that tests how microgravity affects bone-forming and bone-degrading cells and explore potential ways to prevent bone loss. This research could help protect astronauts on future long-duration missions to [...]
6 min read NASA’s IMAP Mission to Study Boundaries of Our Home in Space Summary NASA’s new Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23 to study the heliosphere, a giant shield created by the Sun. The mission will chart the heliosphere’s boundaries to help us better [...]
Northrop Grumman’s 21st Cygnus cargo craft, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays, is pictured in the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm shortly after its capture on Aug. 6, 2024.NASA NASA and Northrop Grumman are delaying the arrival of the Cygnus XL to the International Space Station as flight controllers evaluate an alternate burn [...]
NASA researchers Matt Gregory, right, Arwa Awiess, center, and Andrew Guion, left, discuss live flight data being ingested at the Mission Visualization and Research Control Center (MVRCC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on Aug. 21, 2025.NASA/ Brandon Torres-Navarrete NASA and its partners recently tested a tool for remotely piloted operations that [...]
