NASA News Releases

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has named Stephen Cash director of the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, effective Monday, Oct. 19. Cash, a veteran NASA engineer and aerospace executive, returns to lead the center where he began his career more than four decades ago. “Marshall contributions to NASA’s…

Shortly after NASA’s Artemis II mission splashed down on April 10, 2026, U.S. Navy divers captured underwater imagery of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. In the months after, the agency measured whether the thermal protection system effectively safeguarded the crew and Orion systems as the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. This…

As the supercooled propellant flowed into the core stage, and NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket roared to life, Allison Mjoen and her family watched with awe and pride. Mjoen, NASA’s operations manager for the agency’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, helped shape the systems and ground operations that will one…

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove.

High-definition images of nighttime lights show where the hurricane knocked out power along the Florida Panhandle and how quickly the lights came back.

NASA is playing an important role in JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission, to advance our understanding of Mars’ moons and build on the agency’s long history of exploring the Red Planet. The mission aims to characterize and determine the origin of Mars’ moons Phobos and…

A phenomenon rarer than a solar eclipse and more powerful than any single storm system is unfolding this fall, and NASA is tracking it closely. El Niño is a natural climate pattern that emerges roughly every two to seven years marked by warmer-than-normal water temperatures in parts of the equatorial…

From the International Space Station’s unique position 250 miles above Earth, the Sun is a vital source of energy. Solar power supports the station’s life support systems, daily activities, and hundreds of research investigations that improve life on Earth and prepare humans for deep space exploration. Over the past five…

A NASA Dynamic Aviation A200 aircraft will conduct low-flying research flights over farmland near Transit, Texas, from Thursday, Oct. 22, through Monday, Nov. 9. These flights will measure gaseous and particulate emissions from animal feeding operations. Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems.…

Registration is open for the 2026 NASA Space Apps Challenge, a two-day global event on Saturday, Nov. 14 and Sunday, Nov. 15, where teams work to create solutions inspired by NASA’s most ambitious exploration goals and making use of the agency’s free and open data. The annual challenge, often called…

NASA has selected 12 U.S. institutions to receive $12 million to accelerate academic research and technology development in support of the agency’s priorities for exploring the Moon, Mars, and deep space. Through NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Space Technology Artemis Research (M‑STAR) initiative, selected institutions will each…

NASA’s Artemis II mission sent four astronauts around the Moon and brought them safely back to Earth, laying a foundation for crewed flights to the Moon’s surface. Additional engineering data analysis of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield confirmed initial data showing the heat shield performed as expected. In particular, NASA…

A formation of radio waves looks remarkably like a treble clef in this Oct. 14, 2026, image from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Researchers used Chandra to find that the Treble Clef is likely caused by an outburst from a supermassive black hole, followed by a collision of two galaxy clusters.…

APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 15 – The… 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…

During El Niño, a cascade of fires across the tropics begins in equatorial Asia and continues in the central and eastern Amazon.

NASA will preview two upcoming spacewalks to complete solar array installation and power augmentation of the International Space Station during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Oct. 20, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. NASA will stream the event through a variety of platforms. Learn where to…

Editor’s Note: This article was updated Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, to reflect a change to the event start time. Students in Florida will hear from NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney as they answer prerecorded STEM questions while aboard the International Space Station. The Earth-to-space call will begin at…

Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to break down the cause of a remarkable formation of radio waves they have nicknamed the “Treble Clef” because its distinct shape strongly resembles the musical symbol. The researchers discovered the Treble Clef is likely caused by an outburst from a supermassive black…

Sunlight illuminates the exhaust plumes of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft on Oct. 13, 2026. This visual phenomenon is known as a “jellyfish”; it happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a…

If you’ve ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold. That’s why NASA researchers are working to develop a battery that could function in the brutal cold of the Moon’s South Pole, where…

NASA will provide an update on its plans to return American astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2028 at 2 p.m. EDT, Friday, Oct. 23, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Learn where to watch online: https://www.nasa.gov/live Participants in the briefing include: The update will include…

What a cosmic coincidence! In today’s image, Mars joins the Beehive cluster below an auroral curtain and above a horizon of happy little trees near Lansjärv, Sweden.

Though it remained offshore, the storm lashed coastal areas with high winds and flooding—and produced remarkable rippling patterns in the upper atmosphere.

NASA engineer and astronaut Christina Koch will serve as the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer beginning on Sunday, Nov. 1, following the retirement of Katherine Van Hooser, who will conclude more than 35 years of distinguished service to the agency on Wednesday, Oct. 21. In her new role, Koch will…

Description This infographic illustrates the distances driven by various rovers on the surface of Earth’s Moon and Mars. Of the vehicles shown, the NASA Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity are still operational and moving across the surface; the figures shown for those two are distances driven as of Oct. 11,…

Description Members of NASA’s Perseverance Mars mission team gather in the Mars Yard at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with a certificate from Guinness World Records marking the rover distance record on the Red Planet. Positioned in front of the team is OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for…

Description Rover tracks and a rocky Martian landscape are shown in this image captured by one of the navigation cameras (navcams) aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Oct. 11, 2026, the 2,006th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. During that sol’s drive, spanning 299.6 feet (91.31 meters), the mission…

Three NASA-supported small spacecraft, along with many commercial payloads, are shown before being encapsulated in a SpaceX Falcon 9 ahead of launch on Oct. 1, 2026. The ASCENT Propulsion Dual Mode CubeSat, the Supernova Remnants and Proxies for ReIonization Testbed Experiment (SPRITE) CubeSat, and the Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection…

1 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) View all current NASA job openings at USAJobs Vacancy Announcement for Chief Counsel at NASA Glenn Research Center Return to OGC Homepage

Description A lunar lander from Voyager Technologies completed nearly three months of environmental testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in late September 2026. The tests demonstrate that the spacecraft is prepared to face the harsh conditions of launch, its journey to the Moon, and landing on the…