NASA

NASA

NASA Armstrong Advances Flight Research and Innovation in 2025

In 2025, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, advanced work across aeronautics, Earth science, exploration technologies, and emerging aviation systems, reinforcing its role as one of the agency’s primary test sites for aeronautics research. From early concept evaluations to full flight test campaigns, teams enhanced measurement tools, refined safety systems, and generated data that supported missions across NASA.…

NASA

Holidays in Space: 25 Years of Space Station Celebrations

In the quarter century that humans have lived and worked aboard the International Space Station, astronauts and visitors from around the world have celebrated countless holidays more than 250 miles above Earth while traveling 17,500 miles per hour. Crews have marked Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah, New Year’s, birthdays, and national holidays as they circle the planet every 90 minutes.   Holiday…

NASA

Artemis II Crew Rehearse Launch Day Demonstration

The four astronauts set to fly around the Moon during NASA’s Artemis II test flight depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, during a dress rehearsal for launch day on Dec. 20, 2025. From left are CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch. The launch…

NASA

Wind-Sculpted Landscapes: Investigating the Martian Megaripple ‘Hazyview’

Written by Noah Martin, Ph.D. student and Candice Bedford, Research Scientist at Purdue University While much of Perseverance’s work focuses on ancient rocks that record Mars’ long-lost rivers and lakes, megaripples offer a rare opportunity to examine processes that are still shaping the surface today. Megaripples are sand ripples up to 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) tall that are mainly…

NASA

NASA Johnson’s 2025 Milestones

NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston closed 2025 with major progress across human spaceflight, research, and exploration. From Artemis II mission preparations to science aboard the International Space Station, teams at Johnson helped prepare for future missions to the Moon and, ultimately, Mars. Orion Stacked for Artemis II, Orion Mission Evaluation Room Unveiled  NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft with its…

NASA

NASA Shares SpaceX Crew-12 Assignments for Space Station Mission

As part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission, four crew members from three space agencies will launch no earlier than Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026, to the International Space Station for a long-duration science expedition. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively, and will be accompanied by ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey…

NASA

Water Droplet Science

NASA astronaut Don Pettit demonstrates electrostatic forces using charged water droplets and a knitting needle made of Teflon. This series of overlapping frames from Feb. 19, 2025, displays the unique attraction-repulsion properties of Teflon and charged droplets, similar to how charged particles from the Sun behave when they come in contact with Earth’s magnetic field. Highly energetic particles from space that collide…

NASA

Apollo 8: Christmas on the Moon

NASA

NASA’s Wideband Technology Demo Proves Space Missions are Free to Roam

Just like your cellphone stays connected by roaming between networks, NASA’s Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or PExT, technology demonstration is proving space missions can do the same by switching seamlessly between government and commercial communications networks. NASA missions rely on critical data to navigate, monitor spacecraft health, and transmit scientific information back to Earth, and this game-changing technology could provide multiple benefits…

NASA

Betelgeuse and the Crab Nebula: Stellar Death and Rebirth

What happens when a star dies? In 2019, Betelgeuse dimmed in brightness, sparking speculation that it may soon explode as a supernova. While it likely won’t explode quite yet, we can preview its fate by observing the nearby Crab Nebula. A view of the constellations Orion and Taurus, along with notable features: Betelgeuse in Orion, and Aldebaran and the Crab Nebula in Taurus.…