Image Credit: National Institute of Aerospace NASA has selected eight student teams as finalists in the 2026 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, giving them the resources to help address a critical challenge for U.S. aviation: maintenance.  Challenges facing the commercial aviation industry include a shortage of qualified maintenance workers and increasing demands to keep complicated aircraft running for longer. With Gateways to Blue Skies, NASA taps into student innovation [...]

1 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA Graphics NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, invites innovative companies, government agencies, and organizations to attend Partnership Days, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, April 15 and 16, at the center. The event offers a unique opportunity to explore collaboration with NASA [...]

Super Therm has been applied in several places, including handrails on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge over the Colorado River. The selection of its makeup of ceramic and polymeric materials was assisted by NASA scientists. Credit: Superior Products InternationaI II, LLC NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing [...]

2 min read NASA Volunteers Study Biofilm Adaptability in Space Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that stick to one another and also adhere to a nearby surface. They are intricately associated with life on Earth, enabling functions essential to human and plant systems. NASA’s Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) Analysis Working Groups study biofilms [...]

A clump of sargassum – an invasive species of algae – floats along in the current off the short of La Parguera, Puerto Rico. NASA/Milan Loiacono NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external [...]

Download PDF: Insights into Spallation Mechanisms of Thermal Protection System Materials from Mass Spectrometry and HyMETS Testing An effort was undertaken to investigate the mechanisms responsible for internal pressure build up within thermal protection system (TPS) materials subjected to high-enthalpy environments. Understanding how gases evolve, migrate, and interact with the microstructure of a TPS is essential for [...]

Download PDF: Computational Modeling of Failure at the Fabric Weave Level in Reentry Parachute Energy Modulators Energy modulators (EM) are textile mechanical devices designed to dissipate snatch loads that occur when parachutes are deployed. Although critical for mitigating shock loads, recent flight testing has shown increasing variability in EM behavior, raising concerns about their performance predictability and [...]

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA engineers Jonathan Davis, left, and Markus Perkins inspect a flight-like cryocooler developed by Creare LLC prior to its integration into the CryoFILL system NASA is testing. Engineers are working inside NASA Glenn Research Center’s Creek Road Cryogenics Complex on Sept. 24, 2025.Credit: NASA/Jef [...]

2 min read Webinar 3/25: NASA CSDA Vendor Focus – Satellogic Satellogic satellite imagery of coastal Louisiana shows sediment plumes entering the Gulf of Mexico, illustrating how Earth observation data can monitor coastal and environmental dynamics. Image courtesy of Satellogic Join us on Wednesday, March 25 at 2:00 p.m. EDT (-04:00 UTC) to learn [...]

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Van Allen Probe A is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere almost 14 years after launch. From 2012 to 2019, the spacecraft and its twin, Van Allen Probe B, flew through the Van Allen belts, rings of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, to understand how particles were gained and lost. The belts [...]