NASA's Swift space telescope is expected to crash back to Earth in the next few days.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will reenter Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled fashion, after a robotic rescue mission failed to boost the scope to a higher orbit.

Swift launched to Earth orbit back in November 2004. Over the next two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes: a Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), an X-Ray Telescope (XRT), and its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT).

On Oct. 20, NASA reported that Swift's orbit had decayed to 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth and that the roughly 3,300-pound (1,500-kilogram) observatory was no longer able to compensate for the effects of the increased drag. It entered safe mode, followed by Swift's operations team at Pennsylvania State University sending a command to the spacecraft that effectively ended its operations ahead of its destructive and fiery nose-dive.

It's unclear at the moment exactly when and where Swift will plunge to Earth. But researchers definitely have their eyes peeled.

A surge of reentries

In physics fashion, for the most part, what goes up must come down — with more space hardware to follow.

Thanks to the growing surge in low Earth orbit constellations and technology refresh cycles, there are 10 times more objects reentering per year than there were just five years ago, said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a watchful eye on what's going on above our planet.

"It is unfortunate that Swift was not 'reorbited,' but from a reentry hazard perspective it is a small portion of the stuff coming back in. The rub on this, of course, is that, while many people bemoan the reentry of more objects, I am much more upset about the rapid rate of abandoning massive objects above 400 miles [644 km]," McKnight told Space.com.

Swift will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard, McKnight said. However, the internal workings of the observatory's X-ray and optical telescope might survive, McKnight said.

Where in the world?

Similar in view is Dean Sladen, a quality manager and aerospace engineer at the U.K. precision-components supplier Accu Components.

"Once Swift falls to about 120 kilometers [75 miles], the end usually comes within a few minutes. The air in front of it heats up so much that the satellite will start to glow. Solar panels and antennas are typically the first to tear off, and at around 78 kilometers [48 miles], roughly eight times the height of a passing airliner, the main body breaks apart. Most of it will melt and vaporize," said Sladen.

While it isn't yet known exactly where any surviving pieces will land, Sladen noted that Swift's orbit only passes over a band within about 21 degrees of the equator.

"That band is mostly ocean, though it also crosses populated parts of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America," he said.

Surviving leftovers

As for which parts are most likely to survive and reach ocean or ground, Sladen pointed out that most of Swift's body is aluminum, wiring and electronics, which melt away early in the reentry process. What reaches Earth is usually small, dense and heat-resistant, such as titanium, steel and glass.

"The most likely survivors are its six heavy reaction wheels, the spinning flywheels it used to aim itself, along with tougher telescope parts such as lenses and mirrors. Its mask of around 52,000 tiny lead tiles will almost certainly melt. Only a handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down — nothing recognizable as a telescope," Sladen said.

Sladen said that, at the current time, it appears that no detailed risk assessment has been published for Swift's fall.

"However, this does not mean NASA has not done the work," said Sladen.

"NASA's own orbital debris requirements state that the risk of human casualty from surviving debris shall not exceed one in 10,000, so it is highly likely this work has been completed but not published," he told Space.com. "Personally, I believe it should be published, as NASA has done with previous satellites. The risk is almost certainly very small, but it would give people a clear, factual picture rather than guesswork."

Design for demise

Sladen added that there's far more focus on how a satellite's life ends these days than there was in the past.

"Many now carry enough propulsion to steer themselves into a remote stretch of ocean, or are built from materials designed to burn up completely, an approach called 'design for demise.' NASA and the European Space Agency limit the chance of anyone being hurt by a reentry to one in 10,000, and if a satellite can't meet that, it's expected to come down in a controlled way," said Sladen.

So, should people be worried about having a nasty run-in with Swift leftovers?

Sladen doesn't think so. NASA has said that harm to anyone on the ground is unlikely, and LeoLabs also describes the risk as very small. Most of the spacecraft will burn up, and any surviving pieces will most likely fall into the sea, he said.

"The real concern is the long-term trend. With more satellites being launched than ever, the number of uncontrolled reentries is growing, which is why designing satellites to come down safely matters more and more," Sladen concluded.

The leader of NASA's first mission around the moon in half a century is the last to announce what's next for him after retiring from active astronaut duty.

All four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, which flew around the moon in April, have hung up their spacesuits and moved on to greener pastures. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), managed by Caltech, announced yesterday that former NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman will step into the role of Caltech associate vice president and deputy director of JPL, beginning Nov. 30.

"Reid has spent his career at the edge of what is possible, and he has the technical judgment, operational experience, and leadership to help push that edge farther," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a JPL press release.

Wiseman announced his transition to "astronaut emeritus" alongside Artemis II pilot Victor Glover in September. Glover, subsequently, accepted a full-time role as executive advisor to the president of his alma mater, California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly).

Artemis II mission specialists, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen, also made the decision to step away from their spaceflight careers. Hansen announced his career change in July, and has since entered into reservist duty with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Koch, more recently, was appointed as NASA's acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

The quartet launched aboard NASA's Orion capsule on April 1, and completed a 10-day flight around the far side of the moon and back. Their mission took them further from Earth than any crewed spaceflight in history, and captured the attention of millions, who were captivated by the astronauts' incredible views and their ability to demonstrate the best traits of humanity, even while being the four people farthest from it.

The mission served as a stepping stone in NASA's Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon and eventually establish a permanent base there. NASA is targeting mid-2027 for Artemis III as a flight test with Orion and the two Artemis lunar lander spacecraft (SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon). If everything goes according to plan, that mission will pave the way for Artemis IV, and the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2028.

A Baltimore native, Wiseman is a retired U.S. Navy captain who served as an aviator and test pilot before joining NASA's astronaut corps in 2009. He launched to space for the first time on the on the Soyuz TMA-13M mission to the International Space Station (ISS). He spent 165 days in orbit serving as part of ISS Expeditions 40 and 41, and completed two spacewalks totaling nearly 13 hours.

Before his selection for Artemis II, Wiseman worked as NASA's chief astronaut, overseeing crew readiness, astronaut assignments and flight safety from Dec. 2020 - Nov. 2022.

As JPL's new deputy director, Wiseman will serve under Director Dave Gallagher, helping oversee "strategic leadership, stewardship, and continuous improvement of laboratory operations," according to the JPL release.

JPL is a federally funded research and development center specializing in robotic space exploration. The lab is responsible for some of NASA's most recognizable planetary missions, including the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers, Europa Clipper and the Voyager probes. JPL also operates NASA's Deep Space Network, which provides continuous communications with spacecraft throughout the solar system.

"I've explored the furthest reaches of what a human can explore at NASA — and there were truly no words in the English vocabulary to describe seeing the sun disappear behind the moon from deep space," Wiseman said.

"But that experience was really the jumping off point to go do the impossible things that Caltech and JPL dream, dare together, and do for NASA and the nation.”

Two astronauts successfully installed and deployed the second-to-last upgraded solar array for the International Space Station (ISS) during the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the orbiting outpost.

Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), both ISS Expedition 75 crewmates, completed the 7-hour-and-11-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) at 3:08 p.m. EDT (1908 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 29). The spacewalk began and ended inside the U.S. Quest airlock, with both astronauts wearing NASA's extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits.

It was the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut since April 2019, when David Saint-Jacques ventured into the void with NASA's Anne McClain.

Once outside, Menon and Kutryk worked on unbolting the ISS roll-out solar array (iROSA) from a temporary stowage platform. The 10-by-2-by-4-foot (3-by-0.6-by-1.2-meter) rolled-up assembly was delivered to the space station inside the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule earlier this month, on the company's 35th ISS resupply mission for NASA.

Menon then secured himself at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and carried the 750-pound (340-kilogram) iROSA to the space station's port side, where he and Kutryk next installed it on the 2A electrical power channel. Kutryk made his way to the worksite along the station's backbone truss.

Using bolts to mount the IROSA in place and connecting its electrical cables to tie it into the station's power system (during a night pass, out of safety concerns), the array was ready to be extended. No motor was needed to deploy the iROSA to its 63-foot (19-m) length. The potential energy held by the assembly's rolled-up carbon composite booms was enough to fully unroll the panel.

"And we see the iROSA deploying now," reported Mission Control four hours and 23 minutes into the spacewalk.

About 12 minutes later, the array had fully extended, draping over about half of the larger but less capable legacy panel on the P4 truss. The station's eight original arrays are showing degraded power output as they have exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs, when used in tandem with their older counterparts, have increased the station's power supply by 20% to 30%.

The additional power is needed to support ongoing and planned station operations, including its safe and controlled deorbit, which is currently scheduled for 2030.

Having worked ahead of their schedule, Menon and Kutryk removed some of the beams holding the final iROSA in place on its temporary platform and rotated two launch locks that were used in its delivery on Dragon.

Thursday's EVA was the 100th U.S. outing from the space station without a now-retired space shuttle docked to the complex. Overall, it was the 285th spacewalk in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades, including 66 EVAs out of the Russian segment of the station and 119 by visiting shuttle crews.

The first U.S. spacewalk outside of the Quest airlock was made by Expedition 4 crewmates Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch on Feb. 20, 2002. The 5-hour-and-47-minute EVA mostly tested Quest's systems and completed "housekeeping chores."

"Being outside, I can say it is always sunny in space," said Menon at the conclusion of Thursday's EVA. "I find it incredible what we have been able to do to provide new solar arrays to the space station. In fact, we have been ... doing complex operations like this for over 26 years."

"This is USOS [United States Operating Segment] EVA 100, which is an incredible milestone. I think it really signifies how much we have done," he said.

This was Menon's fourth spacewalk and Kutryk's first. Menon has now logged 26 hours and 31 minutes working in the vacuum of space during his current stay on the space station.

Kutryk is the fifth Canadian astronaut to conduct an EVA. He and Menon are scheduled for another EVA on Nov. 5, when they are expected to install the eighth and final iROSA, completing the five-year process to upgrade the station's power supply.

U.S. President Donald Trump just met another NASA Artemis crew.

The astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission visited the Oval Office on Thursday (Oct. 28) and posed for a few photos with the president.

Their visit came nearly six months to the day after that of the Artemis II crew, who stopped by the White House on April 29, 19 days after the end of their historic flight around the moon.

The Artemis III astronauts are NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano (pilot). All four — plus backup crewmate Bob Hines of NASA, and agency chief Jared Isaacman — made the White House trip.

"It was a great day at the White House with President Trump and the talented crew of Artemis III," Isaacman wrote via X on Thursday.

Artemis III will launch to low Earth orbit in the summer of 2027, if all goes according to plan. The roughly two-week-long mission will aim to dock NASA's Orion capsule with SpaceX's Starship vehicle and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA selected Starship and Blue Moon to be the crewed lunar landers for the Artemis program, so Artemis III will provide valuable practice: On moon-landing missions, astronauts will launch aboard Orion and then meet up with either Starship or Blue Moon, which will carry them to the lunar surface and back up again.

That's slated to happen for the first time on Artemis IV, which NASA plans to launch in 2028.

We don't yet know which private lander(s) will launch on Artemis III; NASA would like to fly both of them, but it's unclear if both will be ready when the time comes.

That uncertainty applies to Artemis IV as well. We'll have to wait a bit before we know which spacecraft will have the honor of putting astronauts down on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The next International Space Station (ISS) spacewalk will have more maple-leaf flavor than usual, as a Canadian astronaut will become the first to go outside the orbiting complex in seven years.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, who's also a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, will help the ISS boost its power supply during his first-ever spacewalk on Thursday (Oct. 29). Kutryk will be joined by NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who has done three spacewalks already and also serves as a colonel with the U.S. Space Force.

The duo are scheduled to venture outside the orbiting lab at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), kicking off a spacewalk that will last roughly 6 hours and 45 minutes. You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).

It will be the first of two extravehicular activities (EVAs) for Menon and Kutryk, with the second expected to occur no sooner than Nov. 5. During the two spacewalks, the astronauts will deploy the seventh and eighth International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs).

iROSAs lie on top of the existing, decades-old arrays on ISS, which are naturally degrading with age. The first iROSA rolled out in 2021. Once all eight are installed and running, the station will see its power supply rise from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts — a boost of roughly 30%.

A Canadian capcom, too

The capcom (capsule communicator) for both spacewalks will be CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons. She has experience in this role already, serving as a capcom on NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon this past April. And she'll serve as lead capcom for Artemis III, which will test crewed lunar landers in Earth orbit next summer, if all goes to plan.

Also helping Kutryk and Menon will be Canadian space technology, specifically Canadarm2 — the ISS robotic arm tasked for spacewalk support, among other maintenance duties.

"It's been busy preparing for the upcoming spacewalks," Menon said about Canadarm2 in a Saturday (Oct. 24) X post. Ground controllers recently moved the arm over to the "trunk" or storage area of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, which brought the two iROSA arrays up earlier this month.Canadarm2 picked up the IROSAs and moved them to a transporter for the astronauts. "It even loosened bolts for us before the spacewalks … I'm grateful for the help," Menon added.

During the Oct. 29 spacewalk, Canadarm2 will do even more. Kutryk and Menon will slide an array off its transport rail and then have Menon get onto a Canadarm2 platform, to put the array into his hands. From inside the ISS, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins will carefully move Canadarm2 to put Menon and the array at the ISS port-installation site, supporting the 2A electrical-power channel.

Each array is about 10 feet (3 meters) long when folded up and weighs 750 pounds (340 kilograms) here on Earth, according to Garrett Hehn, NASA's spacewalk flight director. The agency therefore knows the iROSAs are "a lot to handle," he said during a press conference on Oct. 20 that previewed the two upcoming spacewalks.

As such, NASA looked at how previous iROSA spacewalks were performed and created a new "elegant series of maneuvers, where we've tried to rotate around the actual center of mass of the arrays, rather than the crew member," Hehn added. "It was a lesson learned from previous EVAs, of how we thought we could make it a little less tiring on Anil."

Kutryk will move over to the installation location, hand-over-hand, to join Menon. There, the two will place the IROSA onto the older solar array, using a "mod kit" placed on a previous spacewalk. "We've got a series of bolts to structurally attach it [the IROSA] and release, in order for this folded-up configuration to fold open, and basically go from about 10 feet long to around 20 feet [6 m] long," Hehn explained.

"These arrays," he added, "I kind of think of them like a snap bracelet … They basically have a series of magnets up the side, where they deploy with enough energy that it just continues rolling out steadily. That process will take about 10 minutes on the day of the EVA."

Following that, the astronauts need to access power cables at a time when that area of the ISS is not in sunlight; the station will be (as always) moving through its orbit, circling the Earth every 90 minutes, so timing will be important.

"We can't have any sun on the arrays, whenever we're handling those hot cables," Hehn said. "Basically, we'll use a jumper to bring together both the legacy arrays' power, and this new rollout solar arrays' power, in order to have a pretty substantial gain to our power-generation capability."

The Nov. 5 EVA will essentially have the astronauts do the same installation procedure with another array, this time heading to the starboard side of the space station. The last IROSA installation, however, will take place a little farther from the station, beyond Canadarm2's reach. So the astronauts will do a "leapfrog" to get out there.

After Menon, the array and Canadarm2 are brought to the installation location, Hehn said, Kutryk — moving to the same location by himself, hand over hand — will go into another platform installed on the station truss, and take the IROSA from Menon's hands. As Kutryk waits in place, Menon will exit the robotics platform, move it from the Canadarm2 to another spot on the space station's truss, and then get back on to the platform to hold the IROSA securely for installation for the 3B electrical-power channel.

"This is the way that we close that final distance that the robotic arm is unable to do on its own," Hehn said.

Canadian robots, support teams — and new funding

The CSA's last spacewalk was during the agency's previous mission seven years ago, which involved astronaut David Saint-Jacques. On April 8, 2019, Saint-Jacques successfully fought difficult equipment during a busy excursion alongside NASA astronaut Anne McClain.

CSA has a 2.3% contribution to ISS, usually working out to a flight every five or six years. However, Kutryk's slot was delayed two years, from 2024 to 2026, because he was originally assigned to fly up on Boeing's Starliner capsule, which needs more flight testing following numerous issues that cropped up during its crewed demonstration flight in 2024.

Kutryk, who launched Oct. 1 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon with three other astronauts, has generated a lot of political and industry excitement in Canada. His mission marks a rare pair of CSA astronaut launches in a single year, as Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen just launched in April. (The last time this happened was in 2009, when Robert Thirsk was doing a long-duration station excursion and Julie Payette visited during a two-week space shuttle mission.)

Canadian astronaut missions are unusual, even when including private missions — or non-CSA government astronauts, like now-retired NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel, who has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship. Canada is therefore using the new CSA mission as a catalyst. In recent weeks, Canada announced several government and industry commitments to keep the momentum going even after Kutryk returns next spring.

For example, Canada just announced its first bipartisan space caucus, named Hansen a space advisor to the prime minister, pledged to soon give CSA its first space strategy since 2019, and promised, if at all possible, to announce a mission assignment for Gibbons within the next year. (The latter may depend on factors such as NASA's availability for missions, as Canada does not launch astronauts on its own.)

On the industry side, Canada's defense department last week promised the launch company NordSpace $20 million CDN ($14 million USD) for a 10-year launch pad access agreement at the company's young spaceport in the province Newfoundland and Labrador; additional mission costs will be paid when those are ordered. Canada also recently promised $200 million CDN ($140 million USD) to Maritime Launch Services over 10 years, committing to a launch pad at the company's emerging spaceport in Nova Scotia.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover left a mark on the Martian landscape when it passed a historic milestone driving across the Red Planet.

What is it?

On Oct. 11, Perseverance passed 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) driven on Mars. This is farther than anything has ever traveled on the surface of another world, earning the rover the interplanetary driving record.

Previously, this record was set by NASA's Opportunity rover, and it took Opportunity roughly 14 years to drive this far. Perseverance traversed this distance in just over 5 years.

In this snapshot captured by Perseverance, the rover looked back at its progress, capturing its own tracks pressed into the planet's dusty surface. This moment of reflection captures years of achievement on the Red Planet.

Perseverance's driving record comes after many years of different rovers pushing autonomous driving on other worlds to new levels. As Vandi Verma, Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shared in a recent mission update, the rover team continues to push the envelope, exploring new and better ways to drive the rovers remotely from another planet.

Why is it incredible?

While Perseverance has traveled nearly 30 miles across the surface of another planet, the rover has accomplished so much more than just this distance record on its enduring mission.

Since landing on Mars back in 2021, Perseverance has observed, sampled and studied a wide variety of rocks, boulder fields, Martian slopes and more. Recently, observations made using Perseverance provided the strongest evidence yet of possible biosignatures on the planet.

While we have not yet found conclusive evidence that life once existed on Mars, as the rover has made its way across the planet's surface, it has gotten us closer to that answer than we have ever been before.

I have been dreaming of doing research in space as an astronaut my whole life, but for some reason, the thought of working underwater made me nervous. I’ve known for a long time that astronauts train underwater to simulate different scenarios they’re likely to experience in space. Diving was never an issue for me, either — I even made it as far as becoming a certified rescue diver. So what was the problem?

This summer, I led a simulated space mission in an underwater habitat called the Jules’ Undersea Lab. It is a research station that is located 22 feet (6.7 meters) underwater near Key Largo, Florida. You have to scuba dive to get in and out of the station. To become an aquanaut, you have to stay underwater for at least 24 hours in a so-called state of saturation.

I had been preparing for many years for this aquanaut experience, both as a scientist and as an analog astronaut. An analog astronaut is someone who takes part in a simulated space mission, where they live and work in conditions similar to those that astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) experience today, or will one day experience on the moon and Mars.

I’m no stranger to simulated space missions, either; I have been the Commander of almost 40 such missions in different facilities around the world. Almost all of those missions were on land, though, which made them substantially safer than a mission underwater. The risks of something going wrong during a simulated spacewalk or even during basic maintenance activities underwater are significantly higher than during standard analog missions on land.

Despite knowing all of that, a mission underwater was something I definitely wanted to experience to improve my skills as a leader, researcher and diver. However, the closer I got to the start of the mission, the more worried I became. My brain went through all the terrible scenarios that could occur during the mission while I was preparing for it — from someone’s gear malfunctioning during a spacewalk underwater to storms forcing us to evacuate in the middle of the night. Perhaps I still had some trauma from watching "The Abyss" by James Cameron as a child 😉.

Our mission was symbolically called SEA STAR, and I spent over a year organizing it. It took some time to get the right team and research projects together, as well as the necessary funding. My goal was to lead a mission simulating what astronauts go through on the ISS, both in terms of the diverse projects they work on and the challenges they face living in space. Only for us the deadly environment surrounding us wasn’t space, but water.

Since the health and safety of the crew is at higher risk during underwater missions, the team has to adhere to more strict procedures than they would need to during a simulated space mission on land. That, in turn, makes the mission feel more similar to an astronaut’s mission in space. The underwater environment also allowed us to perform neutral buoyancy experiments during simulated spacewalks, as well as scientific research focused on the effects of high atmospheric pressures on humans.

Our SEA STAR crew was composed of experienced analog astronauts and divers. Paul Bakken, an experimental engineer, was our Executive Officer responsible for most of the mission’s logistics. The Health and Safety Officer was Dr. Brandy Nunez, who performed microgreens research on top of overseeing the wellbeing of the crew. Our team’s Mission Specialist was Jenn Pint, who is an industrial safety expert. She was in charge of a project focused on developing a taxonomy for analyzing environmental and crew interaction factors in a space analog environment, in collaboration with Interstellar Performance Labs.

As the Commander of the crew, my main responsibilities were to make sure the crew was safe, in good health and spirits, getting along well and on top of their work. I worked with Paul to plan the mission’s schedule and to tweak it as needed — for instance, when we faced unexpected problems or some things were taking longer than planned. I also brought several research and educational projects with me on the mission, which I performed on top of my Commander duties.

Even though I was a bit concerned about the risks of the aquanaut mission before it started, I trusted my crew. I knew that we would find a way to problem-solve and face the challenges that would come our way, just like astronauts do in space. I was also looking forward to all of the interesting experiments that we had planned for the mission, which ranged from cognitive research under pressure to testing environmental student sensors.

In the end, I mostly had to trust myself that I had what it takes to not only perform this mission, but also to lead it. As I put on my scuba gear, before diving underwater for five days, I focused on the positive aspects of the mission. The nervous voices in my head made themselves heard a couple of times while I entered the water. Nevertheless, I was completely calm by the time I took my last breath of Earth air. I just waved at our collaborators on land, submerged myself and started our intense “space,” a.k.a. underwater, mission.

You can follow Dr. Michaela Musilova at her website and on social media: @astro_michaela (Instagram, TikTok and Threads), @Dr. Michaela Musilova (Facebook) and @astro-michaela.bsky.social (Bluesky).

NASA has officially ended the mission of its Swift space telescope, after a private satellite failed in its bold bid to rescue the aging spacecraft.

That rescue mission was led by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies, whose LINK spacecraft tried to meet up with Swift this summer to boost its orbit.

That didn't work out, however, so Swift continues its fall back toward Earth. The telescope is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere "in the next few weeks," NASA said in a statement on Friday (Oct. 23).

That statement served primarily to announce the end of the Swift mission after more than 20 very productive years.

The telescope launched to Earth orbit in November 2004, tasked with studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) — the most powerful explosions in the cosmos. Swift was designed to operate for two years, but it continued studying the high-energy universe for more than two decades.

"In that time, Swift played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics that showed how critical rapid-response observations are to the entire community," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement.

NASA had hoped to keep Swift going even longer. In September 2025, the agency awarded a contract to the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to rescue the observatory, which was falling back to Earth thanks to atmospheric drag.

Swift has no thrusters capable of counteracting this drag. So Katalyst built a refrigerator-sized spacecraft called LINK, which aimed to rendezvous with Swift, grapple it with three robotic arms and boost it to a higher orbit, allowing the observatory to continue its science work.

NASA and Katalyst stressed from the start that success was far from guaranteed. After all, LINK's mission was unprecedented: No private spacecraft had ever captured and boosted a satellite that wasn't designed to be serviced in this way. And the rate of Swift's orbital decay demanded a rapid timeline: LINK launched on July 3, a little over nine months after Katalyst won the $30 million NASA Swift-rescue contract.

LINK was not able to execute its very challenging mission. About three weeks after liftoff, it suffered problems with its propulsion system and orientation-maintaining reaction wheels, which caused it to start spinning at an unexpected rate. These issues prevented LINK from capturing and boosting Swift, but the private craft did manage to get within 7.5 to 9.3 miles (12 to 15 kilometers) of the observatory and photograph it.

"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement on Sept. 25, the day that LINK fell back to Earth.

"And while we'll be sad to see Swift's mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be worthwhile either way — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology, challenging us to meet unprecedented mission timelines, and testing how we operate satellites to extend their time in low Earth orbit," he added.

Swift — which was officially renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2018, after its first principal investigator, who died a year earlier — gathered its last scientific data on Oct. 20, according to NASA's Friday update.

During its long and storied career, the space telescope observed more than 2,000 GRBs. And it did other work, too, studying more than 1,400 supernova explosions, as well as eyeing asteroids, comets and black holes and conducting an all-sky survey in X-ray light. The mission's data has contributed to about 7,000 published scientific papers to date, according to NASA officials.

And that number is sure to keep rising far into the future.

"Swift leaves us with an extraordinary archive of multiwavelength observations that will fuel new discoveries for decades more," Domagal-Goldman said in the Oct. 23 statement.

NASA just gave us our best look yet at its Artemis III moon-lander test flight.

The agency laid out a detailed concept of operations for Artemis III today (Oct. 23) during a press conference at Kennedy Space Center, stressing how important the flight is to its moon plans and how challenging it will be to make everything go right.

"We're launching three of the most powerful rockets in the world, and undertaking what is likely the most complicated launch campaign ever undertaken," Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager, said during today's event, which lasted more than two hours.

Those three rockets are NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, all of which will fly from Florida's Space Coast.

If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will lift off first, carrying Blue Origin's Blue Moon lunar lander to low Earth orbit (LEO). SLS will go next, launching the Artemis III astronauts — NASA's Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio, and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano — aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft.

SLS will deploy Orion into a highly elliptical orbit, one that gets as close to Earth as 18 miles (29 kilometers) and as far away as 1,122 miles (1,806 km), according to Parsons. The capsule will then maneuver itself into an orbit with an altitude of about 345 miles (555 km).

"That's really about getting thermal stability," Parsons said. "Orion was built as a deep-space vehicle, and so we're going to have to really manage the thermal environments, which are higher in a low Earth orbit."

The Artemis III crew will spend two days checking out Orion and its systems in LEO before meeting up with Blue Moon, which will take place on Flight Day 3 at an altitude of 273 miles (439 km).

"Over the next two days, the crew will conduct operations docked with Blue Moon," Parsons said. "They're going to open up the hatch. They're going to enter the lander. They're going to evaluate the environmental controls, the life support systems. We'll confirm that the spacecraft can maintain the right atmospheric pressure, and we're also going to test emergency scenarios, dual vehicle control, and we're going to put our Mission Control teams through their paces."

After those operations are complete — likely on Flight Day 6 or thereabouts — Starship will launch, with a specially built docking adapter on its nose.

The SpaceX vehicle — the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage of its fully reusable Starship megarocket — will meet up with Orion in LEO on Flight Day 8, at an altitude of about 237 miles (381 km). But this will be a very different encounter than the rendezvous with Blue Moon.

"The demonstration with Starship is shorter, about two hours," Parsons said. "The crew will not enter the Starship during the mission, but it gives us critical data and allows us to really understand the forces of docking, how we're going to push, how we're going to work together."

Artemis III will continue for another six to nine days after Orion undocks from Starship before finally heading back down to Earth for a parachute-aided ocean splashdown. (The nominal mission length is 14 days, Parsons said, but it could last as long as 17 days.)

During that time, the crew will evaluate their survival suits — something that didn't get done during the 10-day Artemis II flight around the moon this past April — and do a variety of other work as well, from detailed health assessments to scientific experiments and technology demonstrations. The main goal is to keep everything on track for Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028, if all goes to plan.

"Everything we do on Artemis III is designed to reduce risk for our future lunar landing missions," Parsons said. "We're teaching these teams how to work together, how to make critical real-time mission decisions, all in an environment that is low Earth orbit, where if something goes wrong, we can come home much more quickly."

It's unclear at the moment which of these two privately developed landers — Blue Moon or Starship — will fly on Artemis IV, pulling off the first crewed lunar touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972.

NASA is still preserving optionality, "to give both of our lunar landing partners the greatest opportunity for readiness in advance of astronauts landing on the moon in 2028," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during today's event.

"We have no intention of surrendering a viable path to the surface before the data and schedule compels us to do so," he added.

No matter what decision NASA makes for Artemis IV, both Blue Moon and Starship should hit the gray dirt relatively soon, according to Parsons. "Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028," he said.

And those missions will be quite different from each other. For example, on Blue Origin touchdowns, Orion will meet up with Blue Moon in lunar orbit. On SpaceX landings, however, Starship will likely dock with the NASA capsule in Earth orbit and propel it to the moon, Parsons said — the "push" he referred to above.

It remains unclear when exactly Artemis III will launch. NASA is targeting the summer of next year but may find it tough to meet that timeline: Last month, in an internal memo, Isaacman told agency employees that Artemis III was about 90 days behind schedule.

Some of the biggest challenges have involved the supply chain for the mission's lunar landers, Parsons said during today's event. But he and Isaacman both stressed that NASA is confident in its ability to work through such issues.

"We're moving with real speed and purpose right now," Isaacman said.

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — NASA's Artemis II astronauts were just minutes away from a critical engine burn that would send them toward the moon when an unexpected cabin leak warning threatened to change the course of their historic mission.

"If it had happened five minutes later, we may not have been able to have that burn," Artemis II pilot Victor Glover revealed during an Oct. 18 discussion with Canadian former astronaut Chris Hadfield at the Starmus VIII festival here in Tenerife.

The incident unfolded on April 2, the second day of the Artemis II mission, as the astronauts' Orion spacecraft swooped back toward Earth after traveling some 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) away. Orion had been completing a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, giving the crew and mission control an opportunity to test the capsule's systems before committing to the journey to the moon. Orion was now approaching its closest point to our planet, roughly 100 miles (160 km) above the surface, ahead of the crucial translunar injection (TLI) burn that would send the astronauts moonward.

"Jeremy looks out the window and says, 'I think we're going to run smack dab into the middle of Earth,'" Glover recalled, referring to Artemis II mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. "Because we were getting so low."

The close approach brought additional challenges, as Orion passed through a region populated by orbital debris and satellites.

"The density of things is going up from where we are, and also an increase in radiation," Glover explained.

It was at this particularly demanding point in the mission that Orion issued a warning that indicated a possible cabin leak, around 15 minutes before the critical TLI burn.

"So, determining whether it was real or not was a big deal," Glover said.

The crew and mission control faced a crucial question: Was it safe to continue heading to the moon, or would they have to abandon the planned maneuver and cut the mission very short? "Are we going to do a TLI and burn to go to the moon, or are we putting on our spacesuits to prepare to come back to Earth right now?" Glover recalled.

The timing was particularly critical. The TLI burn was designed to propel Orion out of Earth orbit and onto its trajectory around the moon, marking the first time astronauts had headed toward Earth's nearest neighbor since the Apollo era.

Luckily, as NASA flight director Judd Frieling told us during an April 2 media briefing, the warning turned out to be a false alarm.

So Artemis II received the go-ahead. Orion fired its main engine for approximately five minutes and 50 seconds, successfully setting the four astronauts on their journey around the moon.

"We're watching the timer count down, velocities go up, and the magenta and green numbers coming together," Glover recalled.

"Everything is tracking. It's looking good."

Before long, the crew had broken free of Earth's gravitational hold and were hurtling toward the moon at around 24,500 mph (39,430 kph).

Despite the tense moments before the burn, Artemis II went on to make history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (the mission's commander), Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), along with Hansen, traveled farther from Earth than any humans before them, reaching a maximum distance of 252,756 miles (406,771 km) during their journey around the moon.

The four astronauts returned safely to Earth on April 10, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego after nearly 10 days in space.

NASA will provide an update about its Artemis moon plans today (Oct. 23), and you can watch it live.

The news will come during a press conference at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which starts today at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

"The update will include details about NASA’s Artemis III mission that will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems needed for future lunar landings, and how plans to return American astronauts to the moon by 2028 are progressing," NASA officials said in an Oct. 14 media advisory.

Three agency officials will participate in Friday's "Artemis Acceleration" event. They are:

• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
• Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager

NASA is currently gearing up for Artemis III, which is targeted for mid-2027. The mission will test rendezvous and docking technologies between NASA's Orion capsule and one or both of the private spacecraft that NASA picked to be the Artemis program's crewed lunar landers: SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

After that will come Artemis IV, which will land astronauts near the lunar south pole in early 2028, if all goes to plan. That will be the first crewed moon touchdown since Apollo 17 way back in 1972.

It's unclear which lunar lander will fly on Artemis IV; that depends on how the development of each one progresses and what happens on Artemis III.

And there will be other landings after Artemis IV. NASA plans to establish a moon base via Artemis, and doing so will require a variety of missions, both robotic and crewed.

The agency feels some urgency in this quest, for China has similar goals. It's important that the U.S. wins this new space race, military and political officials have said, so that the nation can establish the norms of responsible behavior on Earth's nearest neighbor.

NASA has revealed new details about its plans to return astronauts to the surface of the moon, outlining a series of upcoming milestones for SpaceX and Blue Origin as both companies race to ready their lunar landers for the agency's Artemis program.

During an Oct. 5 presentation at the Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Antalya, Türkiye, Steve Creech, acting manager of NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) Program, laid out development timelines for both spacecraft, with key demonstrations planned through early 2028 that include orbital refueling and uncrewed lunar landing tests to qualify the vehicles to fly astronauts to the surface of the moon.

A more pressing deadline, however, is NASA's Artemis III mission, which is targeted for the third quarter (Q3) of 2027. Artemis III will launch four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will rendezvous and dock with test versions of both companies' landers for interoperability checkouts. Those demonstrations will help inform NASA's determination about which lander the agency will choose to carry astronauts to the moon's surface on Artemis IV, targeted for early 2028.

SpaceX and Blue Origin were both awarded NASA contracts to develop HLS vehicles — Starship and Blue Moon, respectively — and have spent the past several years refining their respective lunar lander designs and dealing with various delays along the way. In the face of those delays, and in an effort to better structure its mission progression for success, NASA overhauled its Artemis program architecture in February to maintain its goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028 and establish a more regular cadence of uncrewed landings in the meantime.

As part of that shakeup, Artemis III, previously the program's first crewed lunar landing mission, was moved up a year and repurposed for the lunar lander vehicle tests the agency is preparing to fly to LEO next year. The program's first moon landing remains scheduled for 2028, but was shifted to the manifest for Artemis IV.

Between now and then, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have more than a dozen test demonstrations and vehicle milestones to achieve, including success during Artemis III and flights afterward. This will all lead up to a key decision NASA must make: Which vehicle will carry out the first crewed landing on the surface of the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972?

Starship reached for the first time on its most recent test flight, which occurred on Sept. 28 from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. NASA lists several other important goals for the vehicle to achieve in 2026, including (in the order listed during the IAC presentation) the first return and catch of the rocket's upgraded Version 3 (V3) booster at its launch pad; the first-ever return and catch of a Ship upper stage; the first Starship launch from one of SpaceX's launch pads still under construction on Florida's Space Coast; and, possibly, the first V3 booster reflight.

NASA also expects SpaceX to complete the initial build of the crew cabin for its lunar lander Starship variant. SpaceX released renders of Starship's interior last year, as well as images of the test elevator astronauts are using to train for Starship egress on the lunar surface, but little else has been made public about the progress the company has made on the cabin's design.

Should the cabin's initial build wrap up by the end of the year, as NASA's presentation suggested, SpaceX will use Q1 2027 to complete integration of the systems that Starship will need to communicate with Orion during Artemis III, and deliver a cabin simulator for astronauts to train on leading up to the mission. SpaceX plans to continue Starship test flights through Q2 of next year, complete a landing leg demonstration and begin crew cabin airlock tests.

Blue Origin's lunar lander mockup is ready for NASA Artemis astronaut training

For Artemis III, SpaceX plans to fly one of its existing V3 Starship upper stages, with some slight modifications. Starship and Orion will dock as part of Artemis III but the SpaceX vehicle won't be equipped with a crew cabin for the mission's astronauts to enter. Between the end of this year and the beginning of the next, SpaceX is expected to complete the addition of a docking system and nosecone cover to the Artemis III Starship vehicle, which, NASA documents suggest, has already completed its mechanical fit checks.

Other notches on SpaceX's checklist leading up to Artemis III include the first propellant transfer demonstration with Starship in orbit. As the first-ever launch vehicle and spacecraft designed for full reusability, Starship's fuel constraints require that its tanks be topped off in order to fly beyond LEO. For a moon landing mission, this could mean up to a dozen launches of SpaceX's Starship "tanker" spacecraft to an orbiting fuel depot, which the moon-bound Starship will visit. To pull that off, though, SpaceX has to show it can successfully transfer those cryogenic fuels on orbit, and also store them effectively enough to prevent too much boil-off.

Starship won't require any refueling flights to complete its objectives for Artemis III, but SpaceX is expected to launch its first Starship tanker vehicle within a few months of that mission as it gears up for the Artemis IV moon landing mission. To that end, a launch of an uncrewed Starship lunar lander variant is targeted sometime toward the end of Q3/beginning of Q4, with an uncrewed lunar landing mission carried out before the end of 2027.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has its own set of milestones to meet as it develops its Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2) lander — a 52-foot-tall (16 meters) spacecraft powered by three BE-7 engines. Unlike the bare-bones V3 Starship that SpaceX will launch on Artemis III, Blue Origin plans to fly a completed test vehicle, incorporating the crew cabin, partial life-support, flight software and other systems needed to allow astronauts to enter the lander from Orion during their time docked in LEO. Astronauts will be able to enter Blue Moon from Orion to get a feel for the lander in zero-g and test some of its systems.

NASA's timeline shows the company working to complete a series of manufacturing and testing milestones in the last few months of 2026, including continued BE-7 testing and qualification of Blue Moon's BT-7 maneuvering thrusters. The company also faces its Artemis III interim design review and a critical design review for an upcoming landing demonstration mission in 2028.

Blue Origin is also working to restore its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) to operation and return its New Glenn rocket to flight, following an explosion of the rocket in May that caused extensive damage to the facility. NASA's presentation places that milestone in Q4 2026, a timeline the company has also been very vocal about maintaining. A recent Reuters report, however, suggests that may not happen until early 2027.

By early 2027, the company expects to complete the spacecraft's communications systems and finalize its flight software, with assembly, integration and testing continuing into Q2. Q1 2027 is also when Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 lander (a smaller, uncrewed version of its MK2 successor) will launch to the lunar surface as a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program of robotic moon missions.

During Q2 2027, as the Artemis III mission approaches, Blue Origin is expected to complete integration of its test lander with New Glenn and conclude qualification of its BE-7 engine. Throughout next year, the company plans to continue construction and refurbishments at its launch facilities and hopes to have a new launch pad ready to support the upgraded, more powerful New Glenn 9x4 rocket l by the end of Q3. The first flight of that rocket variant is scheduled for Q4 2027, alongside a second MK1 lunar mission and the launch of an uncrewed MK2 demonstration lander.

That spacecraft is expected to attempt its own uncrewed lunar landing in Q1 2028, around the same time Blue Origin has scheduled a third MK1 flight. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will need to demonstrate that its lander can safely reach the moon's surface,operate there and return to lunar orbit before NASA clears it to carry astronauts on a future Artemis mission.

NASA's overall timeline remains the same as it has been since the February revamp, with Artemis III expected to launch in mid-2027, followed by a crewed lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028, and possibly another on Artemis V that same year. There may be changes on the horizon, though. NASA will host a press conference on Friday (Oct. 23) with Administrator Jared Isaacman and Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, as well as Artemis program director Jeremy Parsons. During the event, which you'll be able to watch here at Space.com, they will discuss the status of the upcoming moon missions and an "Artemis acceleration."

SpaceX and Blue Origin still face tight schedules to complete their respective uncrewed landing demonstrations before Artemis IV. With SpaceX targeting Q4 2027 and Blue Origin Q1 2028, both are pushing the margins against NASA's hopes to return astronauts to the lunar surface that same year. Which company ultimately gets the green light for that first landing mission will depend on the progress each makes between now and then, and whether their landers can demonstrate the readiness that NASA requires to safely carry astronauts to the surface of the moon and back again.

Editor's note: Japan launched its bold MMX sample-return mission to the Mars moon Phobos on Oct. 19) at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT).
Watch a replay of the liftoff and read our launch story here.

Japan's mission to Mars is one of the most ambitious in spaceflight history. It aims to become the first spacecraft to return to Earth from Mars orbit, carrying with it the first-ever samples from the Red Planet system.

The mission, known as Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), is a first-of-its-kind endeavor to study the origin of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos. The robust undertaking includes a landing on Phobos to collect the samples — which will likely be the first from the Mars system to return to Earth — and a search for evidence that could shed light on events during the formation of the solar system billions of years ago.

MMX launched on an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on Monday (Oct. 19) at 3:41 p.m. EDT (1941 GMT; 4:41 a.m. local time in Japan, Oct. 20). After a 10-month journey to reach Mars, the spacecraft will spend about three years studying Phobos, deploying a rover and landing to collect its samples. The mission will then shift its focus to Deimos for a series of flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule is scheduled to land in Australia in 2031.

The spacecraft

The MMX spacecraft is comprised of three main parts, as well as a small rover. After release from its H3 launch vehicle, a propulsion module will provide the boost to put MMX on course for Mars. MMX's main exploration module carries the microwave-size IDEFIX rover and most of the mission's scientific instruments, while the return module houses the sample-return capsule.

Japan's Mitsubishi Electric built MMX's three main modules, with the French space agency CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales) and Germany's DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt) jointly developing IDEFIX. The little rover is named for a dog in the 1960s French comic "Asterix," in a nod to the country's first satellite, Astérix, which launched in 1965.

IDEFIX carries a suite of cameras, as well as the Raman Spectrometer for MMX (RAX) and miniaturized radiometer (miniRAD) instruments to analyze Phobos' surface composition and temperature.

Most of MMX's scientific instruments are housed on the exploration module, like NASA's Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma rays and Neutrons (MEGANE, pronounced "meh-gah-nay") device, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and France's MIRS (MMX InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument.

The exploration module also houses the Japanese-built TENGOO (TElescopic Nadir imager for GeOmOrphology) tight-zoom camera, wide-angle OROCHI (Optical RadiOmeter composed of CHromatic Imagers) multispectral camera, laser altimeter (LIDAR) and Mass Spectrum Analyzer (MSA). The return module, meanwhile, carries Japan's Circum-Martian Dust Monitor (CMDM) and Interplanetary Radiation Environment Monitor (IREM).

The mission

MMX will arrive in orbit around Mars in August 2027, at which point it will shed its propulsion module and transition into a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos that allows the probe to fly in a sort of formation with the small, asteroid-sized moon as they both circle the Red Planet.

The spacecraft will spend its first few months in the Martian system observing Phobos from different altitudes, using its TENGOO and OROCHI cameras, LIDAR and MSA to map the moon's surface, study its composition and select potential landing sites.

IDEFIX will be released in late 2028 or early 2029, during the first of two MMX landing rehearsals, at about 130 feet (40 meters) above Phobos. Due to the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) moon's extremely low gravity, the rover will be able free-fall to the surface damage-free (hopefully), right itself after a few bounces and begin exploring to gather data on the terrain and surface conditions.

MMX sample collection could begin as early as December 2028, the acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, Lindsay Hays, said during a mission briefing on Oct. 15. The spacecraft will attempt two collection landings, with its exploration and return modules descending and returning to orbit as one vehicle.

On Phobos' surface, two different sampling mechanisms — the Corer Sampling Mechanism (C-sampler) and Pneumatic Sampling Mechanism (P-sampler) — will extract and collect at least 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of material for stowage inside the spacecraft's return capsule before MMX lifts off again for orbit. After its first touchdown and sample collection, MMX will return to QSO near Phobos before descending to a second landing site for a similar attempt and subsequent return to orbit.

MMX will end its observations of Phobos after about three years focused on the Martian moon, and will transition into a higher, resonant orbit around Mars in 2030. That course will repeatedly intersect Deimos' path for a series of flybys to collect and compare data with those from Phobos observations as scientists aim to investigate the moons' origins.

Near the end of 2030, the exploration module will separate, leaving the return module to fire its engine out of Mars' gravitational influence and begin an eight-month journey back to Earth with the collected samples. As MMX closes the last stretch of void during its approach to Earth in 2031, the sample-return capsule will separate and enter the atmosphere for a targeted parachute landing in Australia's Woomera region, where its contents will be recovered for laboratory analysis by Japan and its mission partners.

Phobos and Deimos

Those samples, and the data collected by MMX, could tell scientists a lot — about the moons' composition, geography and, perhaps most importantly, how they came to exist in the first place. There are two leading theories for Phobos and Deimos' origins, both of which point to very different versions of ancient Martian history.

"Phobos and Deimos are interesting, but not just in their own right. Their presence is a key piece of the larger story of the Mars system," said Tom Statler, MMX program executive and scientist in NASA's Planetary Science Division, during the Oct. 15 mission briefing. "By uncovering the moons' origin, we'll gain new insights into the history of both Mars and Earth, especially those events that shaped both planets billions of years ago and helped create the worlds we see today."

Both Phobos and Deimos are relatively small and irregularly shaped, and bear several resemblances and spectral characteristics to primitive D-type asteroids — ancient bodies thought to preserve material dating back to the solar system's formation about 4.6 billion years ago. Those similarities suggest Phobos and Deimos may have formed elsewhere in the solar system and were later captured by Mars' gravity.

Their near-circular, equatorially-aligned orbits around the Red Planet, however, somewhat complicate that theory. For example, a captured asteroid would be much more likely to have entered an elongated and tilted orbit akin to the direction and velocity of its original approach, scientists say. A competing hypothesis, therefore, offers a much more violent, but somewhat familiar, narrative for the moons' origins.

An enormous collision with ancient Mars could have blasted material into orbit to form a debris disk from which the two moons eventually coalesced. Such a process, which would be similar to the formation of Earth's moon, could explain their circular, equatorial orbits.

The contradicting geological and orbital observations for Phobos and Deimos collected to date have prevented scientists from definitively establishing one hypothesis over the other. MMX aims to provide an answer.

"It's two totally different lines of evidence that point in two different directions. That's what makes it an interesting puzzle," Statler said. Several theories have also been presented for hybrid scenarios combining the two, he added.

"There's all kinds of different ways, all kinds of different combinations of those two basic scenarios," Statler explained. "But that's the puzzle from the start, the two seemingly contradictory lines of evidence that are pointing us to what … the real history was, but we don't know what it is yet."

The science

Each theory for where Mars' moons came from predicts different chemical characteristics for their surfaces. Presumably, captured asteroids would preserve chemical signatures of material originating elsewhere in the solar system, potentially rich in volatile elements like hydrogen. Moons formed through a planetary impact, however, would contain a mixture of Mars and impact material, altered by the intense heat of such a violent collision.

Determining which scenario is more likely could reveal whether Mars experienced a massive moon-forming collision or acquired its moons from elsewhere in the early solar system. Either answer could offer new insights into the planet's evolution and the events that shaped the terrestrial planets like Earth billions of years ago, mission team members say.

"At this point, we know nothing about the composition of Phobos," David Lawrence, MEGANE principal investigator at APL, said during the Oct. 15 briefing. "We have information about mineralogy, but no elemental composition. And so, elements are really a key way to get at some of these foundational questions."

MMX's scientific suite has been carefully calibrated to make those determinations. The cameras and sensors on the MMX exploration module's TENGOO, OROCHI and LIDAR instruments will map Phobos' terrain, geological features and variations in surface materials from orbit, to provide clues about the moon's formation and evolution. Complementing those measurements, MIRS is designed to detect and classify Phobos' surface minerals and search for organic compounds to further differentiate its possible origin as an asteroid or ancient chunk of Mars.

The RAX spectrometer and miniRAD instrument aboard IDEFIX will add localized context to those observations by examining surface mineralogy and their thermal properties up close.

Back in orbit, NASA's MEGANE instrument will measure Phobos' elemental composition through gamma-ray and neutron spectroscopy that can scan tens of centimeters beneath the moon's surface for signs of volatile elements. Higher abundances of hydrogen, chlorine, sodium and potassium, for instance, would favor the asteroid-capture hypothesis, while lower abundances of those compounds could point to the heat and chemical deterioration associated with a planetary impact.

"In Japanese, 'megane' means eyeglasses," Lawrence said. "So we like to think of MEGANE as being an instrument that will look at Phobos with gamma ray and neutron glasses."

When compared to the samples MMX will return to Earth, MEGANE's findings could help scientists determine if volatile depletion found on Phobos reflects the intense heat of a post-impact formation or billions of years of subsequent erosion from the natural effects of space exposure.

MSA, meanwhile, will measure charged particles around Phobos, searching for evidence of subsurface ice and investigating how solar wind exposure has altered the moon's surface. It will also study atmospheric particles escaping from Mars. CMDM will measure dust around Mars, including particles potentially ejected from its moons by impacts.

Comparative observations of Deimos after MMX's final departure from Phobos will help establish whether the moons share similar compositions and, potentially, a common origin.

Once safely returned to Earth, laboratory analysis of the Phobos samples will allow scientists to examine chemical composition and mineralogy with a precision beyond that of MMX's onboard instruments. Tests like isotopic analyses — measuring subtle differences in the atomic makeup of elements — can help identify the samples' origins by comparing their chemical fingerprints with those of Martian rocks and asteroid material.

JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) scientists think some returned material could even originate from Mars itself, deposited on Phobos after ancient asteroid impacts blasted rocks off the Red Planet's surface, potentially holding evidence of its geological past.

International effort

The JAXA-led mission represents interagency partnerships with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which are providing hardware and communications support through the Deep Space and Estrack networks.

NASA's contributions to MMX also include MEGANE, the Honeybee Robotics-built P-sampler, and an approximately $87 million investment through the end of the mission. NASA is funding the United States scientists on the MMX team, who will, alongside NASA's astromaterials experts, "be fully involved in the examination and scientific analysis of the Phobos samples when they are delivered to Earth," Hays said during the mission briefing. "We get all of the value and all of the scientific participation at a lower cost total [than funding the entire mission]."

For its role, NASA will receive at least 15% of the returned samples, with materials to be maintained at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis and long-term preservation. To that end, MMX's scientific impact could extend far beyond the mission's conclusion.

"The Phobos samples will be historic," Statler said, with the potential "for future research to answer the questions we don't even know yet how to ask."

Dean Robbins is a journalist and children's author. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who died on Sept. 30 at age 90, played a key role in putting astronauts on the moon. She was a problem-solver extraordinaire, and it all started in early childhood.

Considering the name "daddy longlegs" unfair to female arachnids, young Margaret decided to call half of them "mommy longlegs." Wondering why the neighborhood baseball players were all boys, she determined to join the team herself.

As she grew up in the 1940s and '50s, Margaret noticed a similar problem with various professions. Why were doctors, judges and scientists almost always men? The solution: she would study hard in school and prepare herself for any job she might care to do.

It's no surprise that a born problem-solver would gravitate to computers. In the late 1950s, the new technology offered mind-bending possibilities, and this college math major saw a chance to put her skills to use on a cosmic scale.

Hamilton had long been a stargazer, thanks to a philosophical father who taught her to love the night sky. In 1965, after stints in meteorology and satellite tracking, she became interested in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology project that designed in-flight computers for NASA's moon mission.

The team, of course, consisted solely of men. But, just as with her neighborhood baseball team, Hamilton refused to accept limitations for herself or anybody else. She kicked open the door and quickly rose to director of software engineering.

With her knack for devising novel solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, no one was better suited for the job. Working with the era's primitive technology, Margaret thought through the various mishaps that could occur on a spaceflight and designed the software to handle every contingency.

The epochal Apollo 11 moon mission of 1969 put her planning to the test. As astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin neared the moon's surface in their lunar module, an error overloaded the onboard computer's processing unit. Mission Control faced the prospect of aborting the landing, but Margaret's ingenious programming allowed the system to prioritize essential tasks while canceling the inessential ones. The lunar module touched down without a hitch, and Armstrong and Aldrin became famous.

Sadly, Margaret Hamilton did not. She continued to work behind the scenes, contributing to the five additional lunar landings as well as Skylab and the space shuttle. In 1976, she struck off on her own to start a software company. She might have lived the rest of her life in obscurity if not for a fateful black-and-white photograph from 1969.

This image began to attract attention on the internet in the 2010s. It showed Margaret wedged between a coatrack and a blackboard at MIT, standing beside a towering stack of her printed code from the Apollo missions. Bespectacled and smiling, she radiates the confidence of a scientist who had stormed the boys' club and conquered the universe.

I was one of those fascinated by the photograph, and I contacted Margaret about the possibility of profiling her in a children's book. She initially resisted, uncomfortable with being the center of attention. But she came to see the appeal of a book about herself that she could read to her great-grandchildren, so that they might be inspired to break barriers themselves one day. She warmed to the task of telling her life story and even sent me examples of her Apollo code, which Lucy Knisley incorporated in the illustrations for "Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing."

With the 2016 book and movie "Hidden Figures" calling attention to women's overlooked contributions to the space program, Hamilton soon had to get used to being the center of attention. She received a Presidential Medal of Freedom and achieved LEGO immortality in the "Women of NASA" set. In 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, Google used reflected moonlight to create a massive portrait of Margaret in the Mojave Desert. Rarely has so humble a soul received so grand a tribute.

The world will miss Margaret Hamilton, but, just like her great-grandchildren, we will always have her example to inspire us. She showed that, no matter how daunting the obstacles, there are few problems we can't solve.

TENERIFE, CANARY ISLANDS — The Artemis II astronauts may have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth to the moon, but they made sure the rest of us didn't miss out on the adventure.

Now, their efforts to bring the wonders of space exploration back down to Earth have earned them one of science communication's most prestigious honors: the Stephen Hawking Medal.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, accepted the award on Saturday (Oct. 17), during the opening ceremony of the Starmus VIII festival. The honor recognizes all four crew members, including NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who wasn't in attendance.

For Wiseman, the experience of seeing our home planet from the vicinity of the moon carried a powerful message.

"If we could take each of you 250,000 miles away from this planet, 400,000 kilometers away from planet Earth, and you would see Earth the size of your thumb. It's tiny," Wiseman told the audience.

"When you're there looking through the moon, back at this tiny Earth, the only thing you feel is love, peace, hope, unity", he continued. "Those aren't the right words, but that is all you feel."

During their historic Artemis II mission, the astronauts did far more than put NASA's Orion spacecraft through its paces. Through live communications, interviews and glimpses into life aboard the spacecraft, not to mention the jaw-dropping photos that just keep on coming, they helped turn an extraordinarily complex mission into something people worldwide could experience and connect with.

And that's exactly what the Stephen Hawking Medal is designed to celebrate.

Established in 2016 by physicist Stephen Hawking and Starmus, the award honors those who have gone above and beyond to make science accessible, engaging and inspiring.

The Artemis II crew joins some pretty impressive company. Previous recipients include Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, naturalist David Attenborough, primatologist Jane Goodall and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

This year's ceremony marks the medal's 10th anniversary, with filmmaker Ridley Scott also among the 2026 honourees.

"It's a special thrill for us at Starmus to be able to honor the intrepid Artemis II crew members in the same way that we honored the Apollo astronauts who paved the way to the moon over 50 years ago," Starmus co-founder and Queen guitarist Brian May said in a statement ahead of the ceremony.

Wiseman left the audience with one final thought.

"When you come home to this beautiful planet, you realise that it's in every single one of us to choose to make tomorrow better," he said. "So let's all choose to make tomorrow better".

Starmus VIII runs from Oct. 17-22 across Tenerife and La Palma in the Canary Islands. This year's festival, themed "The Search for Truth", brings together leading scientists, astronauts, musicians and artists to celebrate scientific discovery and explore the importance of evidence and scientific thinking.

The astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station wish that we could all see Earth as they just did.

An orbital view reveals the immense beauty of our blue planet, the only world we know of that hosts life. But it also highlights how fragile that life is, tethered to our lonely Earth in the vast void of space, according to Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir of NASA.

"You see this very thin, tenuous band of an atmosphere, and you know that that is all that is supporting life, and we really need to do our best to protect it," Meir said on Thursday afternoon (Oct. 15), during a press conference that discussed the recently concluded Crew-12 mission.

"I wish that I could bring all the eyes of all the humans to look back at the Earth in this extraordinary way that we are so privileged to have," she added. "I think it really does change you philosophically and [in] how you see each other, how you see yourself, how you see the human race when you look on it down from the vantage point that we have from above — you know, [it] gives everybody this understanding that we need to protect our planet, that it's not only so beautiful, but it's so precious."

From the International Space Station (ISS), Meir said, it's clear that everything on Earth is connected — and that the borders we've laid down between states and nations are artificial constructs.

"You realize that we really are one human when you are in space," she said. "I wish I could share that perspective with all the eyes of all the humans. I think it would be a very healthy thing for everyone to understand.

Crew-12 mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, voiced similar sentiments, though he would turn an ISS visitor's eyes inward, to focus on the crew.

"I always say that the life of crewmembers on board the space station is the best example of how people need to live on Earth," Fedyaev said during Thursday's briefing (in Russian; in interpreter translated his words into English in real time)."

"We don't have borders. We are all friendly. We're just one crew, and the safety of the crew, the safety of the station, depends on the actions of the entire crew," he added. "So, if humankind does arrive at the same conclusion — that our Earth, our planet, is one and the same space vessel that flies through space — we need to take care of it and not to destroy it. So, that's what I would like to show to everyone on Earth."

Meir and Fedyaev are far from the only ones to have their perpsectives shifted by a space mission. Pretty much every astronaut experiences this phenomenon, which is known as the overview effect, a term coined in 1987 by space philosopher Frank White.

Crew-12 consisted of Meir, Fedyaev, NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway (the mission's pilot) and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot (mission specialist). It was the second spaceflight for Meir and Fedyaev and the first for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched toward the ISS on Feb. 13 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Their Crew Dragon capsule, named Freedom, arrived at the orbiting lab a day later.

Crew-12 spent nearly eight months aboard the ISS, finally returning to Earth on Oct. 8. They conducted a wide range of scientific experiments and maintenance work during that time and set a few records as well.

For example, Adenot became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, and she broke the mark for longest continuous spaceflight by a European at 237 days. The previous record, 201 days, was set by Luca Parmitano in 2019-2020.

Your invitation to revisit the Space Age has arrived.

Whether you miss the days when people got dressed up to fly or you wish your "other" ride was a rocket, Mission: 60s has a *space* reserved for you.

"This is a three-day celebration of Apollo, aviation, space exploration and 1960s culture," reads a promo for the Oct. 23 to 25 event in New York. "You will be fully immersed in the sights, sounds and spirit of the 1960s Space Age."

"The weekend features astronauts, Apollo flight directors, Mission Control engineers, Star Trek legends, space artists, a Saturday Spacefarer Soiree with live music (1960s attire encouraged!), and a Sunday NASA Artemis keynote."

Organized by Luna Replicas, a company specializing in vintage space gear, and Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that underwrites spaceflight experiences, Mission: 60s is aimed at being the bridge between the last time humanity reached for the moon and today's "second space race" to do it again — this time to stay.

Launch pad

Your journey back to the 60s begins when you check into the TWA Hotel at the John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York.

Once a functioning terminal for Trans World Airlines (as featured in the 2002 movie "Catch Me If You Can"), the TWA Flight Center has been reimagined as a hotel like no other.

"At the center of the hotel is Eero Saarinen's iconic TWA Flight Center, where restaurants, bars and retail outlets have taken flight. Two hotel wings, designed to reflect and defer to the landmark TWA Flight Center, sit behind the historic building and contain 512 guest rooms with views of JFK's runways and the TWA Flight Center," reads the hotel's website.

The TWA Hotel is only the first sight straight out of the past that guests will encounter. On Friday (Oct. 23), Mission: 60s begins with a guided tour of the 1964 World's Fair site in Flushing Meadows. Today the home to the New York Hall of Science, the outdoor exhibits includes the Rocket Park, where Gemini-Titan II and Mercury-Atlas D rockets and a Saturn V F-1 engine still stand.

"The space age was less than 10 years old when rockets like these powered incredible missions to outer space," reads the description on the museum's website. "Visitors will learn about the history of these vehicles as well as the United States' mission to reach the moon."

Also on view at the World's Fair site is the Unisphere, a spherical stainless steel representation of Earth, and the Astro-View Observation Towers (later reimagined as actual flying saucers in the 1997 movie "Men in Black").

The first day concludes with Space For Humanity's (separately-ticketed) "Celestial Soiree" and a Mission: 60's pool party on the hotel's rooftop.

MCC, ILC and ILM

Saturday and Sunday at Mission: 60s will bring together members of Mission Control (MCC), spaceflight experts (including ILC Dover, makers of the Apollo spacesuit) and representatives from the Hollywood community who brought about the 60s-era visions of space exploration (including Industrial Light & Magic [ILM]) for a series of engaging panel discussions.

Among the various topics scheduled for the two days of talks are:

• Apollo Mission Control & Flight Operations
• Apollo to Artemis & Beyond
• Women in Aerospace
• Apollo Communications: The Sights & Sounds From the Moon
• SciFi Inspires
• The Overview Effect
• Making Space Real: Art & Visual Effects That Sold Humanity on Space
• Space Advocacy

Featured speakers and moderators include Apollo flight director Gerry Griffin, TIME Magazine science editor Jeffrey Kluger, former NASA astronauts Nicole Stott and Ron Garan, "Star Trek" actor Bob Picardo and researcher Frank White.

On Saturday evening, there will be a second gala, "The Spacefarer Soiree," featuring a limited meet and greet aboard a Lockheed Constellation airliner and music by Bonnie Gordon. Set in 1969, attendees are encouraged to come wearing their finest period clothing.

Then, on Sunday afternoon, Uplift Aerospace will host a shared "Overview" VR experience for up to 50 people participating together.

Both days will include a vendor and artists' hall, with guests signing autographs and their books, as well as companies such as NASA's official patch provider A-B Emblem, selling Apollo-themed souvenirs and memorabilia.

A weekend pass is $150 per person, with add-ons for VIP access, the galas and Friday's World Fair excursion. Single-day admission is $85.

Don't expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.

On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

"With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became "emeritus" astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

"I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he's also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.

Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).

If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028. We don't yet know who will fly on that historic mission.

Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.

"In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA's engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency's programs and projects," agency officials said in Tuesday's statement.

Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That's the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

"Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space," Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.

"After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role," he added. "I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars."

NASA's DART mission made a cosmic mess four years ago — and now a new spacecraft is ready to scout out exactly what the first-of-its-kind collision accomplished.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into a small space rock called Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, in humanity's first test of planetary defense. That's the field dedicated to protecting Earth from the possibility of a calamitous asteroid impact, and DART mimicked how humans could change the orbit of a threatening space rock, taking it off its collision course.

The mission definitely succeeded, shortening the little asteroid's orbit around a larger rock called Didymos by about 33 minutes. But in order to make the most of the experiment, scientists ensured a second spacecraft would follow DART at a more leisurely pace. That decision will pay off this month with the arrival of a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft dubbed Hera, which launched in October 2024, two years after DART's impact.

"Hera wants to be the detective, like Inspector Colombo, going back to the crash scene," said Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and principal investigator of the Hera mission.

Scientists have been able to do limited monitoring of the Didymos system over the years with telescopes both on the ground and in space. That's how they calculated the basic change to the orbit, and they've built a basic sketch of what happened.

"We know that there was a lot of material kicked up," said Angela Stickle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory affiliated with both missions. "We know that we probably left a pretty significant mark on Dimorphos."

But the story isn't over and scientists are far from satisfied. No one knows how big a crater the impact left, or whether it completely rearranged all the asteroid's boulders. There are hints Dimorphos is now tumbling, and material may have moved between it and the larger Didymos.

Even the change to the orbit is complicated, said Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University affiliated with both missions: The time Dimorphos took to circle Didymos was still changing some six months after impact, for reasons that aren't clear. "This thing that we thought was going to be very cut and dry turned out to be really interesting and complicated," Thomas said.

That's where Hera comes in, with its first arrival maneuver scheduled for Oct. 15. During three careful braking maneuvers, the spacecraft will slow down and approach the space rocks. Assuming everything goes smoothly, by early November, the spacecraft will come within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the two rocks and begin its early science observations, then move even closer in early December.

Mission personnel can't wait for their first glimpses of Dimorphos — the first time scientists will visit someplace they've seen before without knowing what they'll find. "For us, it's like a new world," Michel said. "The new image won't have anything to do with the previous one, so that's really exciting."

In addition to mapping the two asteroids and seeing what kind of crater the impact left, scientists will also have their eyes peeled for any pieces of the DART spacecraft, although they don't expect to find anything. "We were coming in really fast, so typically, the whole spacecraft you would expect to just kind of shatter or melt," Stickle said. The only sliver of possibility is that part of the two long solar panels stretching off the spacecraft may have snapped off and survived. (The appendages may also have turned the crater shape into an oval.)

In January, once Hera has settled in, it will release two tiny companions that have piggybacked out to Dimorphos. One, called Milani, will identify the composition of materials on and around Dimorphos. The other, Juventas, will use radar to peer inside Dimorphos — the first time scientists have ever been able to study the interior of a space rock directly. Juventas will end its mission by landing on the small asteroid, and Milani may attempt a landing as well.

The trio of spacecraft will operate in tandem throughout early 2027, and the main spacecraft will operate at least through September 2027. All told, they will give scientists an unprecedented look at the pair of asteroids — the first binary asteroid a spacecraft has ever studied in detail. And the Didymos–Dimorphos duo is a good one to visit first. "It's very ordinary, and I mean that in the best possible way," Thomas said.

Ordinary except, of course, for that time humans punched it, opening the door for the Hera mission to explore the previously unremarkable rocks. And finally, that moment is just around the corner.

"Nothing really worries me," Michel said of the spacecraft's arrival. "It's really just excitement now."

In a milestone achievement, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has broken the record for most miles driven on a world beyond Earth.

On Oct. 11, Perseverance hit 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) traveled on Mars, breaking the record previously held by NASA's Opportunity rover which went 28.06 miles (45.16 km). It took Oppy 14 years to cover all that ground; Perseverance, by contrast, has been on Mars for just 5.5 years.

The new record is far from the end of Perseverance's journey, however; the mission team thinks the rover could eventually more than double the distance it's already traveled.

"Our original design was only planned to last for [about] 20 kilometers of driving," Mark Maimone, a rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.

"We've more than doubled that already … and we're looking really good to go for up to 100 kilometers total," added Maimone, who works as a designated principal in autonomous planetary rover navigation on Perseverance and helped to develop the autonomous driving systems on NASA's previous Mars rovers.

"So we could double what we've done so far," he said. "And we have great expectations that [Perseverance] can continue its mission of exploring and collecting really useful and beneficial samples that will tell us so much more about the history of Mars."

Indeed, Perseverance remains in great shape, mission team members stressed.

"We are very fortunate that all of Perseverance's original capabilities are more or less intact, especially for the science instruments," JPL's Vivian Sun, the mission's deputy project scientist, told Space.com.

Perseverance landed on the floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (46 km) Jezero Crater in February 2021. It was far from the first robot to traverse the planet's surface; the Perseverance team built on years of experience with the Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

Through the triumphs and missteps of these previous craft, NASA learned how to better explore another planet with a rover operated from millions of miles away. Perseverance saw massive improvements made to everything from its specialty wheels to its autonomous driving system and onboard tools and instruments.

This "could not have been done without the previous missions that we've sent to Mars," Sun said.

"Five years later [after landing], we're definitely a very well oiled machine," she added. "There's a lot of technical advancements on Perseverance that are the result of many people, many engineers, working on this new technology year after year for decades now."

And, according to both Sun and Maimone, this teamwork is the real secret behind Perseverance's endurance and success.

"The magic sauce for our operations team is how cohesively we work together," Sun said. The engineers, rover drivers and science team all work together and keep each other's work in mind as they make decisions on everything from driving speed to science targets, she added.

"I'm just super appreciative of all the people that have and still work on the mission. They're really what makes the mission special," Sun said.

What's next for Perseverance

As the team mentioned, Perseverance is nowhere near done on Mars. The rover could keep driving for many more miles on the Red Planet, and the scientists and engineers at NASA have big plans and high hopes for its future.

"We are currently planning to continue down south on the crater rim," Sun said. "There's a whole diversity of different rocks along this crater rim going south that we want to investigate and figure out how it indicates conditions from early Mars."

Jezero is a giant crater created by an impact from an asteroid or comet billions of years ago. Perseverance's work has shown that Jezero hosted a lake for long stretches billions of years ago. Scientists are therefore eager to continue exploring the site, searching for clues about what the planet looked like in the ancient past, and if it could have possibly hosted life.

"There are huge chunks of pre-Jezero crust that were embedded in the stratigraphy or got thrown up by the impact, and they're now incorporated onto the crater rim," Sun said. "These are our chance to probe like really old rocks that don't really exist in any other form on the surface anymore."

As part of Perseverance's next steps south on the crater rim, the team is heading toward an area called "Rainbow Falls."

Sun said that the Rainbow Falls area is thought to have kaolinite, a clay mineral that forms when water interacts with rock. By studying these types of minerals, mission scientists might be able to get a better idea of the conditions on Mars all of those billions of years ago, when water filled Jezero Crater.

"Whenever we are looking at clay minerals, I think the question of habitability and the search for potential biosignatures is always on the table," Sun said. "So that is very much the case when we get to Rainbow Falls, or even when we see kaolinite."

Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus XL spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay.

Northrop Grumman's uncrewed Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station's huge Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), while the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean.

The departing vehicle is the second of Northrop Grumman's "Cygnus XL" line of freighters but the 24th Cygnus of any type to fly cargo to the orbiting lab. The company named it the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, after a NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.

The S.S. Steven R. Nagel launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11, carrying 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) of science gear and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It's carrying some stuff down as well — thousands of pounds of trash, which will burn up along with the Cygnus when it reenters Earth's atmosphere on Sunday (Oct. 11).

That's the usual fate for three of the four robotic ISS resupply vehicles in operation today — Cygnus XL, Russia's Progress and Japan's HTV-X. Only SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is reusable; it wraps up its orbital flights with parachute-aided ocean splashdowns.

Cygnus XL is different than Dragon in another way as well: The Northrop Grumman vehicle does not dock to the ISS on its own. Rather, it's grappled by Canadarm2, which berths it to the station and moves it around in other ways as necessary.

During today's operation, which was commanded from the ground, Canadarm2 detached the S.S. Steven R. Nagel from the Earth-facing port of the ISS' Unity module and then maneuvered it into position for release at 12:45 p.m. NASA astronaut Luke Delaney monitored these activities from the ISS.

"We're just really excited to have had the S.S. Stephen R. Nagel on board, and all the science and research, critical hardware," Delaney said shortly after the Cygnus was released.

"Appreciate all the teams that came together to make this complex operation a success, from assembly, launching, docking and now the undock," he added. "Thanks for continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge and experiments on board, to include the research during this deorbit phase. These true are the building blocks of the future of space exploration."

And about that deorbit science: The S.S. Stephen R. Nagel is carrying heat shield prototypes that will get a test during the freighter's fiery reentry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 with news of the Cygnus XL's departure from the ISS.

We have our first look at the science from Artemis II, and it's as amazing as we might have hoped.

This past April, four astronauts strapped in for a flyby around the moon and back to Earth. The first mission to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, this success marked an incredible historic milestone. The Artemis II crew also conducted groundbreaking science, observing parts of the moon no human had ever laid eyes on before. And now, we have our first look at some of the science from the mission.

"It's the science community's job now to take these data and go do magical things with it," David Hollibaugh Baker, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during a Wednesday (10/7) press conference that announced the mission's initial science results.

This is just the first batch of data from the mission, but it includes a whopping 996 new images, 814 GB of observations and 521 minutes of audio from the crew that has never been heard before. Everything from that astronauts' handwritten notes and drawings to photographs and verbal observations have revealed exciting new information — about impact flashes on the moon, for example, as well as the terminator line between the lunar "day" and "night" sides and a whole range of lunar colors and observations from beyond the mysterious far side.

Let's take a quick look at some of the highlights.

Impact flashes

"Dude, no way!" Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman of NASA exclaimed in newly released mission audio.

"It's just like a 'bloop!'" mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency added as the flashes appeared on the lunar surface. .

As Artemis II's Orion capsule flew by the moon, the four astronauts onboard — Wiseman, Hansen and NASA astronauts Victor Glover (mission pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist)— started seeing flashes of light on the lunar surface. These were impact flashes caused by small rocks hitting the lunar surface and vaporizing in the impact.

"We have seen three impact flashes so far," Wiseman said to Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was not sun glint off a particulate from the thrusters or the purge tanks. It was definitely impact flashes on the moon."

"Amazing news," Mission Control responded. "I literally just looked over at the SER [Science Evaluation Room], and they were jumping up and down, literally."

In total, the crew saw five impact flashes on the moon's surface, which the mission's science team was able to confirm didn't come from other sources.

While the Artemis II crew was equipped with cameras, they were also trained to make observations with the unaided eye. And impact flashes happen too quickly to photograph them, so — as you can see above — the crew used a tablet to make annotations and describe their observations.

"We wanted them to look visually, so there are not camera images of that, but we have their annotations of when they saw them," Jennifer Heldmen, science theme lead for the Artemis II mission, said during the briefing.

A rainbow moon

In addition to seeing impact flashes across the lunar surface, the Artemis II crew observed a wide range of colors on the moon.

Looking up in the night sky, it might seem that the moon is just shades of gray. But as the astronauts saw during their flyby, the moon is gray, black, brown, tan, white, green and even blue. This muted rainbow of colors was not only visually striking, as the astronauts' photos show, but it can also help scientists determine what types of rocks and minerals might be found in different regions across the moon's surface.

"The crew reported greens and yellowish hues on top of Aristarchus Plateau, signaling they were seeing remnants of different styles and epochs of volcanic activity, and the crew contrasted those colors to nearby browns and grays of adjacent volcanic plains," Ariel Deutsch, a member of the Artemis II Lunar Science Team, said during the briefing, givingone example of these colorful observations.

"To me, it's primarily like a brownish-green glass, and then if I went up into the mares [dark volcanic deposits] to the north of Aristarchus, I would give that a very muted brown," Wiseman said in mission recordings shared in this release.

"It's like a jaundiced cheek of the moon," Koch remarked in mission audio, describing yellowish colors on the moon.

And while the crew took some amazing photographs of the moon, in this data release we can also see their handwritten notes annotating the colors they saw on the moon.

The far side of the moon

As the moon is tidally locked to Earth, it has one "day side" that always faces us and one far or "night side" that is always facing away. When the Artemis II astronauts flew by the moon, they flew around the entire object, even around the far side. During their flyby, they were able to see a part of the far sidethat has never been observed up close like this before.

"The Artemis II crew were the first people to see this section of the moon illuminated in all of human history," Alex Stoken, a member of the Crew Lunar Observations team, said during the briefing.

When they approached the moon's far side, the crew also came upon the terminator line, or the boundary between the day and night sides of the moon.

At the terminator, the team was able to view the incredible contrasting shadows and textures of the lunar surface, revealing sharp details about the moon's topography.

"The terminator is the most striking thing that I’ve seen so far," Glover said as the crew flew by.

As they rounded the moon's far side, the moon was backlit by the sun, essentially eclipsing it. This allowed for incredibly unique and sharp views of the moon.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," Koch said in the capsule. "You can actually see mountains."

These are just a few highlights from this incredibly thorough and detailed data release. As we dig deeper into this initial science, you can take a dive through the data yourself here and here.

World Space Week 2026 is off to a great start, and everyone's favorite daily pop culture animation has joined the celebration.

Today's Google Doodle (Oct. 6) features the tech company's logo over a sparkling view of the Rosebud Nebula. The image was captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with stars that shimmer periodically on the search engine's home page.

This year's World Space Week runs from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10. The theme, "Rocket Revolution," highlights the leaps in accomplishments humanity has achieved over the past decade and more of spaceflight, with the goal of uniting industry leaders, agencies, educational institutions, students and enthusiasts for space-related activities and celebrations around the globe.

"This World Space Week 2026 Doodle celebrates the technology behind awe-inspiring astrophotography," it says on the Oct. 6 Google Doodle page, which shares a brief description of the Rosebud Nebula:

"Located 3,300 light-years away, this reflection nebula is home to over 130 young stars. Its clouds of gas and dust form a physical shape resembling an unopened, blooming rosebud, glowing rosy-pink from dust heated by these stars."

World Space Week was officially established by the United Nations in 1999. It marks the dual observance of launch of Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, on Oct. 4, 1957, and the 1967 signing of the Outer Space Treaty on Oct. 10, which solidified the basic principles for peaceful exploration of the cosmos.

Read more about what's happening during World Space Week 2026

The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission returned to Earth this morning (Oct. 8) after nearly eight months in space.

Crew-12's Crew Dragon capsule, named "Freedom," undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning (Oct. 7), beginning a roughly 27-hour trip back to its home planet.

Everything went well during the journey: Freedom splashed down as planned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles today at 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT). Not long after that, the four astronauts were safely extracted from the capsule aboard a recovery ship. They'll be taken to terra firma for standard medical examinations and to begin the 45-day-long postflight conditioning process, which will help their bodies readjust to life with gravity.

"The crew is doing well. They were all smiles exiting the capsule," Bill Spetch, deputy manager of commercial, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, said during a post-splashdown press conference today. "It's great to have them back after 237 days in space, 235 of those on the space station."

The Crew-12 astronauts are Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Meir and Fedyaev had each been to space once before, while Crew-12 was the first mission for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 13. Their arrival brought the station up to its normal complement of seven crewmembers. It had been operating with a skeleton crew of three since Jan. 15, when SpaceX's Crew-11 mission headed home a month early to deal with a medical issue experienced by one of its astronauts, NASA's Mike Fincke.

That was the first medical evacuation in the long history of the ISS. But it was not an emergency situation, NASA officials stressed at the time, and Fincke is doing fine now here on terra firma. (He retired in August with a total of 549 days in space, the fourth-most ever for a NASA astronaut.)

Crew-12, in turn, was relieved by the four-person Crew-13, which arrived at the ISS last Thursday (Oct. 1). Crew-13 made it to the station less than eight hours after launch — the quickest-ever ISS trip for an American spacecraft. (The world record is just over three hours, by a Russian Soyuz crewed vehicle.)

Crew-13 was originally supposed to launch on Sept. 12. However, an issue with the propulsion system on its Crew Dragon capsule, named "Grace," pushed things back, giving Crew-12 a few extra weeks in orbit.

The Crew-12 astronauts were very busy during their nearly 10 months off Earth, performing a variety of maintenance work and dozens of scientific experiments.

Then there were the spacewalks. Meir performed four of them, bringing her lifetime total to seven. And on Aug. 18, Adenot stepped outside the ISS, becoming the first French woman ever to walk in space. She did two more over the next two weeks, including one with Meir, which was just the sixth all-female extravehicular activity in the station's history.

Adenot also set a record on Crew-12, spending more time in space continuously (237 days) than any other ESA astronaut ever had. Luca Parmitano set the previous record of 201 days back in 2019-2020.

The Crew-12 astronauts felt a mix of emotions about their homecoming, as big transitions are always bittersweet. Indeed, Meir gave us a sense of this a few weeks back.

"What I'm looking forward to most is seeing my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” Meir said during a Sept. 16 call with reporters from the station.

"I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again," she added, "feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have."

Splashdown didn't wrap up all Crew-12 activities today. NASA and SpaceX will talk about the mission this afternoon, during a press conference scheduled to start at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT). The briefing will also discuss the planned Oct. 13 launch of SpaceX's robotic CRS-35 cargo mission to the ISS. Participants are:

• Bill Spetch, deputy manager of Commercial, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Dr. Liz Warren, deputy chief scientist, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Lee Echerd, senior mission manager, Customer Operations and Integration, SpaceX
• Andreas Mogensen, leader, Human Exploration Group, (ESA)

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 7 with news of successful undocking. It was updated again at 6 p.m. ET that day to correct its headline, which previously said the Crew-12 astronauts have spent nearly 10 months in space. It was updated again at noon ET on Oct. 8 with news of successful splashdown.

SpaceX's latest astronaut launch just set a new space record.

The company's Crew-13 mission for NASA arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Oct. 1) at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), 7 hours and 55 minutes after it launched from Florida's Space Coast.

That's the fastest any American spacecraft has ever reached the orbiting lab, NASA officials said.

The previous record was 12 hours and 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule during the robotic CRS-31 resupply flight. The fastest that astronauts had made the trip in a U.S. vehicle was 14 hours and 43 minutes, which was achieved by the Crew-11 mission in August 2025.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during Crew-13's post-launch press conference today.

"The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we've had to date," she said, adding that "this is close to the fastest it could be."

Crew-13 didn't set the overall speed record to the ISS, however — not even close. In May 2020, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts reached the orbiting lab just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz caught up to the ISS after just two orbits of Earth.

The Soyuz isn't faster or more powerful than a cargo or crew-carrying Dragon capsule. Rather, the difference in chase-down times comes down primarily to choices made by mission controllers; Russia tends to target more aggressive "fast-track" trajectories.

Crew-13 delivered four astronauts to the orbiting lab: NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The quartet will live and work in space for the next six months.

They'll relieve the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which launched in mid-February. Those spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — could return to Earth in their Crew Dragon capsule as soon as Monday (Oct. 5), according to NASA officials.

In case you are feeling the empty hole of moon missions, void since the return of the Artemis II astronauts from their trip around the lunar far side six months ago, NASA has you covered.

The agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launched Artemis II on April 1, carrying a crew of four on the first mission around the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972. SLS lifted off from Launch Complex-39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, and, to the awe of hundreds of thousands, climbed a bright blue early evening sky on a trail of smoke left by the vehicle's solid rocket boosters up into space.

More than 300,000 people traveled to the Space Coast to watch the launch from dozens of locations around KSC and surrounding cities. But the best views wouldn't be seen until well after the rocket cleared the pad, when NASA technicians recovered the slew of engineering footage captured by dozens of specialized cameras distributed everywhere from the base of the launch pad to drones positioned in the air to track every detail of the launch. Now, NASA has released that footage to the public.

The newly-released videos include a wide spectrum (literally) of views and angles that follow SLS from just before engine ignition through solid rocket booster separation as the rocket leaves Earth's atmosphere. NASA teams used scientifically calibrated in-flight imaging (SCIFLI) to compile footage ranging from the visible light spectrum, to short-wave infrared (SWIR), near-infrared (NIR), mid-wave infrared (MWIR) and infrared — to give you a few helpful acronyms for context as you pursue these videos on NASA's Artemis II album. These different wavelengths of light captured views imperceivable to the eye and typical camera sensors, and allowed NASA technicians to filter out things like the extreme brightness of the flames from the rocket’s engines.

Artemis II was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent base on the surface of the moon in the 2030s. It was also the first flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft with astronauts aboard. Essentially a shakedown cruise for Orion's life support systems, the mission flew NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth.

The next mission in NASA's lunar line up, Artemis III, will last longer, but won't fly as far. Artemis III is scheduled to launch in mid-2027 with NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andrew Douglas, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano of Italy. They will launch aboard Orion to Earth orbit, where their spacecraft will rendezvous with the two commercial lunar landers NASA has contracted for the Artemis program, SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

Artemis III is expected to last about two weeks as Orion will rendezvous and dock with each lander separately to test the spacecrafts' interoperability. That mission will serve as a precursor to the program's first actual lunar landing with astronauts on Artemis IV, which NASA is targeting to lift off in 2028.

City lights streak by as stars twinkle in the distance in this image captured from aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

In a photo recently captured by NASA astronaut Anil Menon from the ISS, bars of city light can be seen streaking beneath the station — 262 miles (422 kilometers) beneath, to be exact. It's just one fleeting moment, but it showcases both the unnatural beauty of the city lights as well as the natural beauty of our planet and the stars in the distance.

The city lights beam from Central Asia. They're streaking because the ISS travels at about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), and this image was captured as a long exposure. Auroras blaze on the lefthand side of the photo, and star trails sparkle across the blackness of space in the distance.

Why is it incredible?

All in one image, we can see streaking city lights, an extension of the ISS and its hardware, colorful auroras glowing green, red and orange, and star trails speckling the cosmos.

In just this one long-exposure image, Anil has captured the beauty of Earth, its human-populated cities, the universe we inhabit and the incredible technology we have managed to create and sustain in orbit.

It also remains incredible that, while so much amazing science and technical progress happens aboard the space station, it is also a place where art like this photograph can be made. Even in space, hundreds of miles above Earth, hurtling at thousands of miles per hour, astronauts working hard to make progress for humanity are able to find brief moments of transcendent beauty.

Russia's robotic Progress 96 cargo spacecraft met up with the space station today (Sept. 19).

Progress 96 launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (Sept. 16), kicking off a three-day orbital chase of the International Space Station (ISS).

That chase came to an end today at 9:44 a.m. EDT (1344 GMT), when the freighter docked with the space-facing port of the ISS' Poisk module. The two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Black Sea at the time, according to NASA's docking webcast.

Progress 96 carried about 3 tons of food, fuel and other supplies for the occupants of the ISS.

There are currently seven of those folks: Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon of NASA, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

Progress 96 will stay attached to the ISS for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

This is the ultimate fate of most ISS resupply spacecraft — every Progress, HTV-X vehicle (which is built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Cygnus (provided by Northrop Grumman). The only reusable freighter in the current fleet is SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 19 with news of successful docking.

Europe's prototype spacesuit aboard the International Space Station (ISS) still needs some work after European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot performed its first fit and dexterity checks on orbit.

EuroSuit launched aboard the SpaceX CRS-34 Cargo Dragon mission, which lifted off May 15 and docked to the ISS about two days later with nearly 6,500 pounds (2,950 kilograms) of supplies and equipment. Adenot arrived on the ISS three months earlier, in February, as a member of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission. Her time with the suit gave European engineers their first astronaut feedback on the intravehicular activity (IVA) prototype in orbit, and she did not give a five-star review.

"I think there are still a lot of points that will be improved in the future," Adenot told Space.com on Sept. 16, during a call with reporters previewing the Crew-12 mission's impending return to Earth. "We are looking forward to the future steps."

EuroSuit was developed by the French Space Agency (CNES), the Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES), spaceflight systems company Spartan Space, and sports clothing brand Decathlon. As the "I" in IVA suggests, EuroSuit is not designed for spacewalks. It's meant for use inside a spacecraft during the most critical phases of flight, specifically launch and landing, similar to the black-and-white spacesuits worn by astronauts who launch aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

One of the suit's biggest innovations is supposed to be its ease of use. EuroSuit is designed for astronauts to put on, without help from another crewmember, in less than two minutes, and take off in the same amount of time. This would be a big advantage in emergency situations when astronauts may need to don their suits quickly — for example, to deal with a spacecraft pressure leak or to evacuate the space station.

Adenot's on-orbit tests focused on the ergonomics of the suit, rather than full life-support performance. She was tasked with donning and doffing the suit and assessing its dexterity by handling small objects and manipulating a tablet's touchscreen.

EuroSuit fits into a broader European effort to build more independent capabilities in space. CNES says the project reflects Europe's ambition to be more autonomous in human spaceflight, with the French space agency focusing specifically on intravehicular suits.

"By relying on the exceptional expertise of our partners, we are prepared to deliver this type of suit when the time comes," Sébastien Barde, CNES deputy director for exploration and human spaceflight, said in a statement last year.

The project is coordinated by CNES, which brought together the aerospace, medicine and activewear expertise that went into EuroSuit's development. Spartan Space, the suit's primary contractor, created the overall design, with MEDES contributing biomonitoring systems for tracking astronaut vital signs and other data. Decathlon brought ergonomic insight into textiles meant for extreme environments.

Feedback from Adenot's ISS tests will help guide EuroSuit technicians toward a more informed architecture, which will include key systems like pressurization, atmospheric control, and communications that will be needed for the final design.

"This EuroSuit is at the very first step of its development," Adenot said. "Everything in the design of space systems goes incremental. I would say right now we are at the very beginning of its journey."

Leaving the International Space Station will be bittersweet for its outgoing crew, who’ve been living aboard the orbital lab since February performing maintenance and upgrades and carrying out dozens of microgravity research experiments.

The astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission launched to the ISS on Feb. 13 and are now gearing up for their return to Earth. When exactly that might take place, however, is still up in the air, as their replacements don't yet have a launch date. NASA and SpaceX had targeted Sept. 12 for the liftoff of Crew-13, but have twice delayed that mission to allow additional time for preflight tests and data analysis. Now, NASA is targeting a Crew-13 launch no sooner than early October, according to a Sept. 16 statement from the space agency.

As is standard practice with ISS crew rotations, the astronauts of Crew-12 will remain aboard the station and continue a typical day-to-day schedule through a brief overlap period between crews once their replacements are safely aboard. In the meantime, the members of Crew-12 — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — are reflecting on their time in space and also looking forward to the comforts of Earth upon their return.

The quartet gathered in the station’s Kibo laboratory module for a call with reporters yesterday (Sept. 16) to discuss the past several months aboard the ISS and their upcoming trip home. It was the first time “in quite a while,” Meir said, that just the four Crew-12 astronauts found themselves together. They currently share the station with the three astronauts of Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 mission — NASA's Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.

Their coming together “really started evoking those memories of our trip up here and our ride on the [SpaceX] Dragon, and of course started to get us anticipating that ride home that hopefully we're going to have pretty soon around the corner,” Meir said on the call.

All four reflected on some of their most profound moments during their spaceflight and shared some of what they’re looking forward to once they’re back on Earth. “My biggest eureka moment happened just recently, on the final spacewalk that we did,” Meir said, referring to her Sept. 1 extravehicular activity (EVA). She performed a total of four EVAs during this current stint aboard the ISS, bringing her career total spacewalk tally to seven.

“It was the first time that I ever got to ride the Canadarm on a spacewalk,” Meir said, describing the EVA as a “full circle” moment. She helped fix the Canadarm during a previous spacewalk on this mission, “and then to ride it with these guys driving me around was the most incredible feeling,” she said.

Fedyaev recalled another notable spacewalk event. During the May 27 Roscosmos EVA that featured cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, Fedyaev controlled the station’s European Robotic Arm (ERA) with both his comrades attached.

“The most [memorable] moment in my flight was the work with the ERA manipulator,” Fadyaev said. “We moved … two cosmonauts in one moment on the ERA from SM module to the MLM module,” he added, referring to Russia’s Zvezda Service Module and Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module. It was the first-ever time that two cosmonauts were transported simultaneously between modules using the ERA, and the experience stood out for Fadyaev, who skillfully handled the robotic arm’s controls.

Adenot pointed to the second of her two spacewalks as a point of pride during what is her first mission to space. She and Menon spent the majority of their Aug. 18 EVA removing a failed Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) on the station’s Z1 truss, but stuck bolts and electrical connectors ate up so much time that they had to defer installing the spare until Aug. 25. Adenot recalled her relief when engineering teams on the ground confirmed the new SGANT’s functionality. “After two EVAs trying to fix it with Anil, it was a great thing to hear,” she said.

The Crew-12 astronauts also discussed some of the science they’ve helped carry out during their time on orbit. One of Hathaway’s proudest moments came when he heard the celebrations from teams in mission control over ISS communications channels after the crew completed upgrades to the station’s Cold Atom Lab, which facilitates quantum mechanics experiments.

“We spent, it must have been two or three hours trying to figure out how to get this part to fit into the slide it was supposed to fit in,” Hathaway said. “Hearing the cheers … over the space-to-ground loops when we finally got it properly installed and it was ready to do science was a pretty fun moment for me.”

Some of Meir’s favorite experiments took place in the Life Sciences Glovebox, including investigations involving neocartilage and stem cells. “Previous experiments have shown that the stem cells actually divide for longer, more continuously, in microgravity than they do on Earth,” Meir said. “So potentially that's something very novel that was discovered. And potentially, if it becomes cost-effective, we could produce stem cells up here to be used for targeted therapies back on Earth.”

As for what they’re looking forward to once they return to Earth, the answer is pretty much everything. “One of the things about living in space is, it's an expeditionary lifestyle,” Hathaway said. “We don't have a lot of selection of food. We don't have running water … So going home and being able to take a nice long hot shower will be very relaxing and very nice. And of course, I'm looking forward to seeing my family. But a hot shower is near the top of my list.”

Adenot, too, has her mind in the water. “I love water sports,” she said. “We don't have a lot of variety of sports [aboard the ISS], and obviously we don't have water sports. So I'm looking forward to these.”

“What I'm looking forward to most is seeing my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” Meir said, and added a few more things to her list. “I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again,” she said, “feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have.”

Like most test pilots, Jack Hathaway was always looking for a faster and more capable winged vehicle to fly. Even as a kid, he dreamed of being at the controls of the "coolest plane out there."

Unfortunately for him, he was a few years too young.

NASA's first space shuttle orbiter, OV-101 or "Enterprise," made its debut 50 years ago today (Sept. 17). Though only a prototype used for atmospheric and ground tests, Enterprise proved that a spacecraft could launch like a rocket and land as a glider, enabling the world's first reusable orbital platform.

Enterprise became a museum piece in 1985. Twenty-six years later, the three-surviving space-worthy orbiters followed, permanently landing in institutions on both U.S. coasts. Hathaway did not become an astronaut until a decade after that.

"It was definitely one of my goals to be able to fly something like it someday, and didn't quite make it. Maybe [had I] been a couple years older I would have, but I look back at it and it was pretty awesome," said Hathaway on Wednesday (Sep. 16), taking part in a press conference from on board the International Space Station. "It built this space station, which [people] have inhabited now for over 25 years, which is pretty awesome.

"We're thankful for the people that flew the space shuttle who came before us," he said.

'A great day'

"Would you now roll out orbiter 101, now christened the 'Enterprise,'" directed Jim Fletcher, then the NASA administrator, on Sept. 17, 1976, as he stood before an audience outside the vehicle's manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California.

As the crowd caught its first glimpses of the now familiar black-and-white winged spacecraft, a marching band performed the theme to "Star Trek." Most of the TV show's primary cast were there as NASA's invited guests. OV-101 was originally going to be named the "Constitution" before a grassroots letter writing campaign convinced the government to name its first space shuttle after the show's fictional starship.

"We are on the verge of a new era," said Barry Goldwater, the then-ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Aeronautics and Space Sciences. "As we witness today the rollout of the space shuttle, we are on the verge of a new era, not only in spaceflight, but in the lives of men and women and children all across this Earth."

"I submit that the space shuttle will present us with a remarkable opportunity to exploit the new frontier of space for the benefit of all mankind and to continue to expand our knowledge of the space environment in which we live," he said.

"What a great day that was in 1976!" recalled Star Trek's Spock, actor Leonard Nimoy, as the Enterprise arrived in New York for its display at the Intrepid Museum in 2012. "It was a great day for America, a great day for us to be connected to that history."

An inspiration

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir was born 10 months after Enterprise's reveal. Like Hathaway, her Expedition 74 and SpaceX Crew-12 crewmate, she grew up watching the space shuttle fly.

"I do think that the space shuttle program had a huge part in inspiring me," she said from on board the ISS in response to a question from collectSPACE. "When people ask me what made me want to be an astronaut, you know, there wasn't one moment that I describe, but I very vividly recall in the classrooms [watching] space shuttle launches."

In February 1977, five months before Meir was born, Enterprise made its first flight mounted to the top of NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. It flew a total of 16 times, of which five saw it separate from the 747 and land on its own on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Two pairs of two astronauts each took turns flying the tests: Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton as one crew and Joe Engle and Richard Truly as the other.

Before turning Enterprise over to the Smithsonian, one of the last uses NASA had for the orbiter was to inspire and engage the public. The orbiter was the only one in history to be carried atop a Boeing 747 on a transatlantic tour of European countries and be displayed at the Paris Air Show in France in 1983. It was also exhibited at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans.

"Seeing them when we were growing up as kids in the classroom, seeing it on the evening news — I think that was one of the things that really inspired me and got me interested in spaceflight and exploration in general," Meir said.

Fifty years ago, NASA rolled out its first space shuttle while a host of iconic Star Trek actors watched on to celebrate the historic step forward in human spaceflight.

What is it?

On September 17, 1976, NASA rolled out the space shuttle Enterprise, the first-ever space shuttle (which happens to bear the same name as the USS Enterprise from Star Trek).

This grand reveal took place at the Rockwell manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California — and there was no shortage of fanfare. As the shuttle rolled out of its hangar, the Air Force Band of the Golden West played music from Star Trek as a crowd of 600 guests looked on and listened.

Among the guests were Star Trek icons including series creator Gene Roddenberry; Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock; Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura); George Takei (Mr. Sulu); James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery Scotty Scott); DeForest Kelley (Dr. Bones McCoy); and Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov). The crew took a moment to pose in front of the shuttle with NASA Administrator James D. Fletcher.

Why is it incredible?

The start of the space shuttle program was a "historic step in the nation's space program," Fletcher said at the time.

And today, 50 years in the future, it is clear in looking back that this truly was a historic step. NASA's space shuttle program ran until 2011 when the shuttle Atlantis made its final flight. For over 30 years, NASA astronauts flew to and from space aboard space shuttles, making incredible leaps such as the construction of the International Space Station and the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The space shuttle program also included tragic incidents with the Challenger and Columbia missions, showing NASA and the world just how dangerous space can be.

Russia launched a cargo mission toward the International Space Station today (Sept. 16), delivering the freighter spacecraft to orbit for a three-day rendezvous journey.

The robotic Progress 96 spacecraft lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT).

From engine ignition through solar array deployment on the spacecraft, the Progress 96 launch was completely nominal. It was "a flawless launch," said NASA's Rob Navias during the mission's livestream this morning, with "an excellent climb to orbit by the Soyuz booster."

Progress 96 is loaded with about 3 tons of food, propellant and other supplies for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The freighter will deliver this cargo three days after launch, if all goes according to plan. You'll be able to watch rendezvous and docking activities when the time comes.

The freighter will remain docked to the orbiting lab for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent down to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

The Progress 94 spacecraft met this fate on Sept. 7, departing from ISS' Poisk module to make room for Progress 96.

Progress is one of four spacecraft that fly operational cargo missions to the ISS these days, along with Japan's HTV-X, SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus. All but Dragon are expendable, burning up in our air when their time in orbit is up.

There are currently seven people living aboard the ISS — NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon; the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, who last month became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk; and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10 a.m. ET on Sept. 16 with news of successful launch.

NASA astronaut Victor Glover is now "astronaut emeritus." He's hanging up his spacesuit for a position he hopes can guide the future engineering and science leaders of tomorrow.

Glover, who served as pilot on NASA's Artemis II mission that flew around the moon in April, officially began his new role as executive advisor to Jeff Armstrong, president of the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly),on Sept. 1, and is stepping away from the majority of his duties at the space agency.

NASA announced on Sept. 9 that Glover, as well as Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, are transitioning to emeritus status beginning this month, but are not retiring from the agency outright. Even astronauts who do fully retire from NASA are still retained "in the system," Glover told Space.com, "but I actually get to have a badge that is a little bit different. I can come back. I have a NASA email address. I still work closely with the agency. I'm considered a special government employee."

"It allows me to have just a slightly more robust and meaningful relationship with NASA," Glover said — but "more robust" won't necessarily equate to the same daily commitment. His role at Cal Poly will be full-time, according to the university, but he's not exactly going to be putting in typical work hours there either.

"We're still figuring it out," he said. "It's not going to be nine to five. I'm not a faculty member. I don't have a class I have to teach or a board that I oversee. It'll be where the school needs me the most and where I can highlight what great work they're already doing."

Glover's connection to Cal Poly runs deep. He's a Cal Poly alum who graduated with an engineering degree in 1999. A two-sport athlete, he wrestled for the university and played on its football team. And it's where he met his wife, Dionna, who also graduated from Cal Poly. The two have since raised four daughters, all of whom have either graduated or are currently attending their parents' alma mater. With Glover's multifaceted connection to the university, Cal Poly sees his potential contributions as equally diverse.

The university says that Glover, in his position as executive advisor, will work with the gamut of university leadership, including the president, provost and college deans. He will help "identify, develop and accelerate strategic initiatives, partnerships and philanthropy aimed at expanding the university's leadership in engineering, applied computing, aerospace, aviation, maritime, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, autonomous systems and national defense," according to Cal Poly's statement.

How that will manifest into Glover's actual contributions is still being figured out. "There's just so much potential," he said, adding that he wants to serve in an additive role for Cal Poly where he can "get in and help, and do the most good."

Cal Poly has been undergoing a period of significant change and expansion over the past several years. This fall, for the first time ever, the university transitioned from a quarter system to a semester-based one. It also recently completed its integration with the former California State University Maritime Academy, whose Vallejo campus is now Cal Poly's Solano Campus and home to the Cal Poly Maritime Academy.

"They're hitting on all cylinders in so many areas," Glover said. "There's so many areas where Cal Poly is doing amazing things, and each of those things by themselves have been a big deal."

The university operates on a "Learn by Doing" philosophy, which emphasizes hands-on, real-world experience alongside classroom instruction. Glover credits his professional successes to this system, and his experiences over a decade at NASA have reinforced his belief in that kind of educational approach.

"Putting energy and time into building trust is just as important, or more important, as building technology, and so I think there's a lot of areas where my NASA experience will also feed back into Learn by Doing," Glover said. "I think everything I did at NASA has a place here."

"At NASA we do some pretty challenging things, pretty risky things, but we have a really strong scientific and technical understanding of what we're doing," Glover said. "That kind of risk-informed decision making is an important part of what we do here [at Cal Poly], whether it's professional development or helping these students to become the next generation of leaders."

Glover cited Charles Lindbergh's book "We," and its perspective on learning to fly a plane, as an example for Learn by Doing's effectiveness. "You teach yourself to fly," Glover said. "An instructor is really there to keep you from having ultimate mistakes. But you teach yourself to fly. It's something that you have to work out yourself. And I think that this school really understands that … We want to make sure that these students can critically think and analyze, but we also want to make sure that they can do the work with their hands."

Flying is something with which Glover has an extensive familiarity. Before he joined NASA in 2013, he was a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot with 4,000 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft who flew 24 combat missions, though he is now best known for piloting NASA's Orion spacecraft around the moon on Artemis II.

Glover launched aboard Orion on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on April 1 with three crewmates — Wiseman, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The quartet spent approximately 10 days aboard the Orion capsule and flew a course around the moon's far side. Their mission was the first to fly a crew to lunar space since Apollo 17 in 1972, and it captured the attention of millions across the world as the astronauts sent back views of the moon unlike any humanity had ever seen.

Artemis II was the first crewed mission in NASA's Artemis program, which has the ultimate goal of establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface. The next time Orion launches, on Artemis III, the spacecraft's crew will be tasked with testing out docking hardware with the program's lunar lander vehicles in Earth orbit. NASA is targeting mid-2027 for that mission. If it's successful, Artemis IV will follow in 2028 as the program's first lunar landing attempt, with subsequent missions with more crew and cargo to incrementally assemble an outpost on the surface of the moon in the 2030s.

As the only people to fly aboard Orion in space so far, the Artemis II crew's experience and insight into the spacecraft, and how future Artremis astronauts can best train to fly it, are invaluable to NASA — hence Glover and Wiseman's emeritus status.

Hansen, who trained at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) and lived in Houston since his induction as a CSA astronaut in 2009, announced in July that he's stepping back from active astronaut duty beginning this month and moving back to Canada. On Sept. 8, the day before NASA made the announcement about Glover and Wiseman, Hansen posted a video on X stating that his Artemis II duties officially concluded on Sept. 2.

That leaves Koch as the only Artemis II crew member on an active astronaut roster, but Glover and Wiseman, as emeritus flyers, aren't out of the agency entirely. "With our experience flying Orion in space, the agency knows that we can still make a meaningful contribution to Artemis and human spaceflight in general, without having to be there full time," Glover said. "We can still support our colleagues and their families and the mission while we go off and pursue other other opportunities."

Supporting other astronauts on NASA's roster, and the teams that run the missions, are the parts of the job that Glover enjoyed the most. "[The emeritus status] allows us to still support our colleagues, which is the best part of being an astronaut. It's not flying in space," Glover said.

"I told [NASA leadership], ‘Nothing has really changed,'" Glover said. "If they call me and say, ‘Hey, we need this,' they can count on me to be there because they are so fantastic. I will always be there to carry the water for them when they need it."

Though he'll still be helping astronauts prepare for future missions every now and then, Glover said his own spaceflight days are behind him. Glover had flown to space once before, prior to Artemis II, as pilot of SpaceX's Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Glover spent 168 days in orbit on that stint, serving as flight engineer for Expeditions 64 and 65, and completed four spacewalks.

"I didn't make this move planning to go back to space," Glover said. "I was pretty satisfied after my first space mission, so I don't have this hole in my heart that needs to be filled by going to space again."

A few NASA astronauts who've left and moved on to the private sector have ended up going back to space, like Peggy Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 before joining Axiom Space and later commanding the company's Ax-2 and Ax-4 private astronaut missions to the ISS. But Glover doesn't see a move like that in his future.

"If I wanted to go to space, I would have stayed at NASA. It's the gold standard," Glover said. "I love our corporate partners and what they're doing. There's some really amazing things, including what Jared Isaacman himself has done … But I would have stayed at NASA full time as an active astronaut if I was trying to go back to space."

Isaacman was sworn in as NASA administrator in December 2025. His spaceflight experience came before that: In September 2021, he commanded SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, the first all-civilian orbital spaceflight, and later performed the first commercial spacewalk during the private Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024.

In fact, Glover said it was harder walking away from his career flying fighter jets than it was to walk away from the opportunity to maybe one day fly in space again. Harder still might be leaving behind the place he's called home for more than a decade, but ultimately he said it was an easy choice. He's lived in Houston and worked at JSC since his selection into NASA's astronaut class in 2013, but expects he and his family will make the permanent move to the West Coast, to be closer to Cal Poly.

"One of the reasons why this was just such an easy decision to make is that both NASA and Cal Poly … and everybody understands that we need time to get used to this new reality, and they're all giving us a lot of grace and space as we just kind of figure out what the right rhythm, what the right ops tempo is," Glover said. He thinks he and the family will make the move sometime after the New Year.

In the meantime, though you may not see him quite as much on NASA's social media channels, he has made a few appearances in posts on his daughter Maya's TikTok profile. In posts celebrating his return from the moon and recent career shift, Glover can be seen performing dance routines with his family — but don't bother refreshing your feed to load more any time soon.

"Don't expect to see a whole lot more of that, because I would do anything for my kids, but you know, well, I guess almost anything for my kids," Glover said jokingly. When asked which was harder to train for, between piloting Orion and the dance moves, he said, "Oh, clearly the dance moves."

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir just shared some tips for controlling curls in the tough environment of microgravity — and it was a big deal for curly-haired people like me.

Meir's hair-care advice came Wednesday (Sept. 9) in a 5.5-minute video she posted to X from the International Space Station (ISS), where everything floats and "where curls are even more free to be what they want to be," the Expedition 75 astronaut wrote.

And if you think all this talk about hair care sounds frivolous, take it from a fellow curly: the representation matters. More on that in a moment, but first, let's see how Meir takes care of her curly hair in microgravity.

According to Meir, washing in orbit requires no-rinse shampoo, especially focusing on the scalp, where sweat and salt build up. She has less access to hair products than we do here on Earth, as you would imagine, so she keeps it simple: a careful squeeze of her pouch of water, then working the expelled water along her hair roots, and also rubbing it on the scalp. Meir then uses a "dedicated T-shirt" to dry her hair, which she described as thick as well as curly.

In between treatments, Meir avoids brushes (for pretty obvious reasons of frizz) and uses her hands and fingers instead to "work" her hair. Luckily, humidity is not much of an issue on the ISS, but she does use leave-in conditioner: "My Earthly 3a curls become more like 3c," she said. Meir has been on the ISS since February, and she said she's looking forward to having an actual shower when she gets back home to Earth.

OK, so about that representation. My editor asked me to talk not only about Meir's video but also my own connections to her words, which brings up some teenage angst. In the 1990s, I was (then, as now) a curly-haired person who was just (bitterly) old enough to remember all the curly rock stars of my childhood in the '80s. But dare to wear curls in my school in like, 1994? As if! Lame!

All the young women around me were rocking the flat-haired "Rachel from 'Friends'" look that would take thick-haired curlies like me forever to achieve. I couldn't be bothered — I like sleep! Which apparently was enough for my classmates (of any gender) to deliver unprintable and sometimes racist insults, or to hide their faces from me because I was "ugly," or to spread rumors that I carried hair lice, and so forth. I couldn't believe it; other kids were sporting awesome and stand-out 'dos like mullets and mushroom cuts, so what was wrong with curls?

To be clear, as a 40-something I now have perspective: I later learned that some of my classmates had complex (even tragic) issues of their own contributing to the bullying, and I have no idea how other kids in my classes fared with their hairdos. The real lesson learned is that representation matters, inclusivity is possible and inclusivity matters across multiple dimensions. While looks may not sound important, at first glance, they really are: curly hair is a dimension of diversity. (I know I am just one female voice, with white U.K. ancestry; other people with curly hair will have different perspectives.)

So, back to the curly-hair-space-care routine: as a fellow curly, can I confirm that it stands up? Yes it does. While I'm no astronaut like Meir, I can offer you an analog: the two weeks I spent in 2014 at the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station in rural Utah, during which my crew was able to shower every two days, if we were lucky.

On that simulated Red Planet mission, I also used no-rinse shampoo to save on water, only combed (never brushed) my hair when it was wet, and mostly wore it bun-style to protect the curls in the meantime. While it took me two showers to feel normal when I at last reached a hotel room with running water, my hair bounced — so to speak — back quickly. That shows my curls are resilient, and since my 20s I've felt lucky to have them; my hair takes me a minimum of work or styling besides a quick wash and comb, and — as long as I don't touch my hair after it's wet — it's happy.

And to all those kids teasing me back in the day, allow me a moment of moon joy: NASA's Christina Koch sported curly hair during NASA's Artemis II lunar mission earlier this year. Koch herself, by the way, later spoke about her moon-mission braids at an event in my literal city in Canada (as, speaking of representation, I'm Canadian). Yes, of course there was more to this historic mission than hair: I covered Artemis II's science and activities at numerous in-person events for three-plus years, and some of its crew members for 17 years. But to see curls on a person looping around the moon? Bonus.

Every curly-haired person's experience is different, however, so I'd like to hear from you. There's a comment section with this article to chat about microgravity (or analog) curly-hair care, other curly-haired astronauts, or similar topics. Let us know your thoughts.

Rocket Lab still holds out hope that it can build NASA's next Mars orbiter.

The agency picked Blue Origin for that job earlier this month, awarding Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company $700 million to develop, launch and operate the Mars Telecommunications Network (MTN).

Today (Sept. 11), however, Rocket Lab announced that it has challenged that decision, filing a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

"NASA's award decision appears to be inconsistent with the eligibility criteria mandated by Congress. In addition, the agency’s punitive review of Rocket Lab's technical volume was inconsistent, making incorrect assertions and conclusions," Rocket Lab said today in an X post that laid out its argument.

"Procurement standards exist to ensure fair competition and protect public investment," the California-based company added. "We are pursuing this review to ensure those standards are upheld for critical infrastructure that will underpin American exploration at Mars for decades to come."

As its name suggests, the MTN orbiter will serve as a communications link between mission controllers here on Earth and other NASA spacecraft studying the Red Planet. Just two agency orbiters fulfill that relay role these days, and both are quite old: Mars Odyssey launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off in 2005.

NASA had been eyeing a new Mars telecom orbiter for years and finally got Congressional funding for it in July 2025 — $700 million, to be precise. The agency issued a request for proposals this past May, drawing considerable interest from the private sector.

Blue Origin and Rocket Lab were widely considered the front-runners, and NASA ended up going with Blue. The award calls for the company to deliver MTN (which, despite the "network" in its name, is a single spacecraft) to NASA no later than Dec. 31, 2028. It's expected to be up and running at the Red Planet by 2030.

Blue Origin has been in Rocket Lab's shoes before, and has behaved similarly. Bezos' company filed a protest with the GAO in 2021 after NASA picked SpaceX to provide the first crewed moon lander for the agency's Artemis program.

The GAO denied the protest in July of that year. Blue Origin then sued NASA but lost in court in November 2021. The story has a happy ending for the company, however: NASA decided to select a second Artemis lander as well, and Blue Origin won that contract in 2023. We'll see how this story plays out for Rocket Lab...

LINK, the satellite sent to boost the orbit of NASA's Swift Observatory, may have had to give up on its mission, but LINK's manufacturer and operator Katalyst Space hasn't completely abandoned the spacecraft to its cosmic demise.

NASA called off LINK's mission to rendezvous with its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory when the specialized probe encountered a thruster control issue. LINK was delivered to orbit on July 3, aboard an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, but began to spin uncontrollably about three weeks after reaching space. Swift's orbit began decaying faster than expected last year, due to increased solar activity, and LINK was designed to rendezvous with Swift, grapple it, and then raise the observatory to a more stable altitude.

LINK's Swift Boost mission was considered a "Hail Mary" attempt from its onset. NASA's discovery of Swift's swiftly decaying orbit meant the Arizona-based Katalyst had less than a year to design, manufacture and test LINK before needing to launch. Now, with both of their missions on the short-track for destruction, NASA and Katalyst are left both trying to get the most out of their spacecraft with the time each has left.

LINK's failure means Swift is destined to burn up in Earth's atmosphere before the end of the year, and LINK itself is expected to fall to the same fate within just the next few weeks. But the probe's inability to save Swift hasn't stopped Katalyst from getting as much data from LINK as it can. Though a closer rendezvous is no longer in the cards, the spacecraft managed to successfully fire all three of its electric propulsion thrusters and adjust its orbit to fly within 7.5 to 9 miles (12 to 15 kilometers) of Swift. Katalyst was also able to deploy all three of LINK's robotic arms, which would have been used to grapple Swift for its orbital adjustment.

Swift launched in November 2004, and has been studying high-energy phenomena like gamma-ray bursts, supernovas, black-hole ejections and fast radio bursts across the universe for more than 20 years. Despite its impending demise, two of Swift's three science instruments — its X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) — were turned back on in late August after being shut down in February to minimize atmospheric drag on the spacecraft in anticipation of LINK's now defunct orbital boost efforts.

With the option for LINK to raise Swift's orbit now off the table, Katalyst and NASA are working to perform whatever technology demonstrations are possible aboard the spacecraft, in the hopes the technology can be used to service other satellites on missions in the future.

Three of NASA's Artemis II astronauts are starting off the school year with new assignments.

Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both NASA astronauts, will transition into "emeritus status" in September, the space agency announced on Wednesday (Sept. 9). Meanwhile, Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen shared a video on X on Tuesday (Sept. 8) concerning his already-announced transfer from active duty to reserve status in the Canadian military.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, appears to still be on active duty, as no announcements have been made saying otherwise.

The Artemis II quartet flew around the moon in April, becoming the first people to go beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. The historic journey was widely expected to be the last step in active astronaut duty for at least some of the mission's four astronauts, especially Hansen, who had waited for a flight assignment for 17 years in part due to how Canadian Space Agency funding is allocated. (Robotics provided by the CSA form a minority share of international space partnerships with NASA, and astronaut flight rates are tied to funding.)

The Artemis II astronauts made a series of public appearances together this summer, culminating on Aug. 28 when President Trump awarded them the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Hansen was only the second non-American to receive the award, which had previously been given to just 30 astronauts total.

While NASA's Wednesday announcement about Glover and Wiseman did not explicitly state that the duo are exiting active astronaut duty, their new role is described as allowing the astronauts to assist NASA as consultants and "individuals with a high degree of technical and professional knowledge," while allowing them to do other things.

The two astronauts are expected to help NASA plan future Artemis program missions. "I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in the statement.

Glover, who also retired from the U.S. Navy recently, will now assume a full-time role at his alma mater, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, which has aerospace and space programs. The news was announced by the university on Wednesday, but the position took effect on Sept. 1. Glover will be an administrative leader providing advice to senior leadership on education, research and workforce strategies, according to Cal Poly.

"The most meaningful moments of my NASA career were supporting astronauts and their families through missions, and mentoring interns and new hires as they began their own journeys in technical and public service," Glover wrote Wednesday in a post on X about the career change.

Wiseman did not share any specific updates about his career plans on social media. The astronaut also exited active astronaut duty temporarily between 2020 and 2022 when he was chief of the astronaut office for NASA, a role that precludes flying in space as the chief is involved in flight assignments. Wiseman left that role and resumed active astronaut duty before being assigned to Artemis 2, which occurred shortly before the public announcement of the mission's crew in April 2023.

"NASA gave me tremendous responsibility, supported me through two space missions — and my time as chief astronaut — and was always there for my family when we needed it most," Wiseman said in the NASA statement about his career change. "I'm thrilled to continue serving future missions and programs through the emeritus program."

Hansen's Artemis 2 duties officially concluded on Sept. 2, according to his X account, and the astronaut — who has been based out of Houston since 2009 — posted a new video of himself Wednesday walking in the woods in Canada. Hansen said he has retired as a colonel with the Royal Canadian Air Force and is now a reservist working with 3 Canadian Space Division, which is essentially Canada's Space Force.

"The intention of that is to continue to serve Canada and government — the Canadian Space Agency — when it makes sense, to help us take advantage of some of the extraordinary opportunities that are before us right now," Hansen said in the video, adding that he will divulge more details about that work shortly.

Hansen also said he accepted a role as honorary national president with the Canadian military's Air Cadet League of Canada, which the astronaut has often said helped equip him with both flying and leadership skills when Hansen was growing up.

Additionally, Hansen pledged to "continue to share the moon joy" both as an individual and with his crew. For example, he recently joined a Canadian keynote-speakers bureau in which he plans to speak about how to accomplish personal "moonshots." In October, Hansen will also co-release "Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space" (HarperCollins Publishers, 2026) — a book that discusses his career and Artemis 2 — which he co-wrote with Canadian author John Larsen.

On Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket — then, after completing their job, the rocket's boosters safely landed back on Earth. Watching the events unfold, Space.com's Chelsea Gohd caught one of these beautiful landings on camera as onlookers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center watched in awe.

What is it?

The Roman Space Telescope is NASA's next great observatory, meant to revolutionize how we view the cosmos. Equipped with instruments like a coronagraph that can directly image exoplanets and a Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) that has a massively wide field of view, it's designed to work with big names like the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope and reveal our universe's intricacies on a grand scale.

But to get to space, like any other space telescope, it needed a rocket to ferry it there. In this case, that was SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. Falcon Heavy is about 230 feet (70 meters) tall and can lift nearly 141,000 pounds (64 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit. And importantly, Falcon Heavy's two boosters are reusable.

After launching a payload to space, the boosters split and each lands back on Earth in an upright position. In the image above, Gohd captured one of those boosters landing in the distance.

Why is it incredible?

Though we hear about it so often, there is something undeniably dreamlike about living in a time when a rocket can land its parts back on Earth so precisely. I was also there for the launch of the Roman Space Telescope in Florida, and it was breathtaking to watch such a huge piece of equipment navigate mid-air and straighten itself before landing. The crowd in the picture was equally astonished while the event unfolded.

My mother texted me just after she watched the Roman Space Telescope launch live online, exclaiming that the booster's landing looked just like a taxi returning to its station, getting ready for the next task. I hadn't thought about it that way before, but she was correct.

One of the boosters that participated in Roman's launch landed at Landing Zone 2 and the other hit the ground at Landing Zone 40. As NASA explained in a statement, one of these boosters carried out its very first mission while the other was on its third.

Now, the next spectacle to take our breath away will be Roman's very first images of the universe. Those are expected to drop next year.

Like most of their compatriots here on terra firma, the three Americans living off Earth will get to put their feet up today (Sept. 7).

NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon will get Labor Day off aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the agency said on Friday (Sept. 4). European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, will also be off duty.

However, the three Russian cosmonauts living on the ISS will have to clock in as usual.

The trio — Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina — "will be busy monitoring the Progress 94 resupply spacecraft when it undocks on Monday, packed with trash and obsolete gear, from the Poisk module," NASA officials said in an update on Friday.

"It will be replaced by the Progress 96 resupply spacecraft after it launches from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sept. 9 for an automated docking two days later to Poisk’s vacated port," they added.

Adenot, Feyaev, Hathaway and Meir arrived at the ISS in mid-February on SpaceX's Crew-12 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon are relative newcomers, reaching the station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14.

NASA astronauts on long-duration missions to the ISS generally work a relatively normal schedule, getting weekends and major holidays off. Such downtime is crucial to mission success, as it helps the spaceflyers stay happy, healthy and productive.

They may not be able to mark the holidays in exactly the same ways we do here on Earth, however. For example, the astronauts won't be grilling any hamburgers or hot dogs today, as open flames are verboten on the ISS.

As today's schedule shows, international crewmates do not always have the same days off in orbit. But they try to celebrate major holidays like Christmas together, both to cement the bonds that exist between them and to take the sting out of being so far away from family and friends.

After nearly eight years traveling through the inner solar system, the trailblazing BepiColombo spacecraft has finally begun its arrival at Mercury.

The joint European Space Agency (ESA)-Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission reached a major milestone today (Sep. 3), entering its arrival phase at one of our sun's least-studied planets. BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), the main power and propulsion system that has ferried a dual stack of planetary probes through space for nearly eight years, released its payload to kick off a sequence of operations that will ultimately place the two spacecraft in Mercury's orbit.

The separation left ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, known as Mio, together for their final approach, which will take about six more months. "It will basically be a new mission starting today," said Bruno Sousa, ESA's head of operations definition and engineering, during today's mission livestream.

BepiColombo launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, on Oct. 19, 2018, beginning a journey that was expected to take about seven years. To assist its plunge sunward, the spacecraft's trajectory has included one flyby of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury, as it has shed more and more gravitational energy during to slow its approach to the system's innermost planet.

"It's one of the most complicated missions we have ever flown," Sousa said. The mission was made even more complicated in April 2024, when a solar panel issue reduced the available power for MTM's electric thrusters. Engineers devised a lower-thrust trajectory that saved BepiColombo's mission but delayed its Mercury arrival from December 2025 to November 2026.

Today's maneuver doesn't place BepiColombo in orbit around Mercury quite yet. MPO and Mio will spend the next several weeks navigating toward the planet ahead of orbital insertion on Nov. 21. "Arriving to Mercury is not as simple as other missions that do a big maneuver and they are there," said Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo's operations manager. "In our case, it's going to be six months of continuous activities."

The Nov. 21 arrival will begin a sequence of 16 maneuvers to progressively lower and reshape BepiColombo's orbit. Mio is scheduled to separate from MPO around Dec. 9 and settle into a highly elliptical polar orbit. MPO will jettison Mio's MOSIF sunshield (Magnetospheric Orbiter Sunshield and Interface Structure) on Dec. 16, then continue lowering its own altitude before reaching its own polar orbit on March 10, 2027.

BepiColombo is scheduled to begin science operations on April 6, 2027, with MPO and Mio studying Mercury simultaneously from complementary orbits. MPO will focus on Mercury's surface composition, geology and planetary interior, while Mio will investigate the planet's magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind.

Today's separation took place at 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), but confirmation of that event didn't come for more than an hour following its scheduled execution. Acquisition of signal from BepiColombo came just before 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT), followed by a positive telemetry reading indicating the spacecraft was where it was supposed to be.

"I'm again extremely relieved," Montagnon said. "That the telemetry comes exactly at the moment we expect it, and that we see in the telemetry that the configuration of the spacecraft is the correct one," she said, "this is the best case scenario."

Blue Origin will build NASA's next Mars orbiter.

The agency announced on Tuesday (Sept. 1) that it has selected Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company to develop the $700 million Mars Telecommunications Network (MTN), which is expected to be up and running at the Red Planet by 2030.

"The award marks a milestone in NASA's strategy to expand communications and navigation services beyond Earth and the moon, establishing the foundation for sustained exploration of Mars in the coming decades," NASA officials said in a statement on Tuesday.

As its name suggests, the MTN — previously known as the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter — will primarily serve to aid NASA science missions rather than gather data of its own.

The MTN is "a next-generation communications system that will enable reliable, high-bandwidth communications and navigation services for current and future Mars missions," NASA officials said in the statement.

The need for such a data-relay craft is expected to become acute in the coming years as NASA's fleet of current Mars orbiters ages and the agency works to prepare the Red Planet ground for crewed missions in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

At the moment, just two NASA orbiters relay data and commands between the agency's Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers and their handlers on Earth — Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2001 and 2005, respectively. The European Space Agency's Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft help out as well.

All four of these orbiters are gathering science data of their own, however. The MTN will not have a split focus; it will be a dedicated communications craft.

NASA got $700 million for a Mars telecom orbiter in July 2025, when Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill. The agency laid out requirements for the spacecraft in February of this year, then issued a request for proposals in May.

Blue Origin and Rocket Lab were viewed as the front-runners for the contract, and both pushed hard for it, touting their bona fides and expertise.

Blue Origin won out in the end, however. The company will base MTN on its Blue Ring spacecraft platform, which it describes as "an all-in-one, high-powered hybrid solar electric and chemical propelled spacecraft that provides unmatched mission maneuverability, versatility, and capacity at dramatically lower profile costs."

Blue Ring has not flown a mission yet, but a prototype version of it went to space on the first-ever launch of Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket in January 2025. Though Blue Ring can fly on other rockets as well, MTN will presumably launch on a New Glenn; the newly announced NASA contract calls for Blue Origin to "design, develop, integrate, launch and operate" the Mars telecom mission.

The contract calls for Blue Origin to deliver the spacecraft to NASA no later than Dec. 31, 2028.

Two astronauts replaced a spacecraft docking aid and a video camera during a successful spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on Tuesday (Sept. 1).

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot got through most of the tasks set out for them even in light of Adenot's spacesuit developing a mobility issue late in the extravehicular activity (EVA), which lasted six hours and 49 minutes.

After beginning the spacewalk from the U.S. Quest airlock at 8:40 a.m. EDT (1240 GMT), Meir and Adenot set about the first and most important activity of the outing: replacing the planar deflector on the forward port of the station's Harmony Node 2. The retroreflector is used to support navigation during rendezvous and docking operations by visiting spacecraft. The older reflector that they replaced had become coated in thruster residue from earlier spacecraft arrivals and departures.

They also replaced the Camera Port 3 (CP3) high-definition (HD) camera on the station's truss.

"And it's off!" reported Meir after freeing the spent camera assembly that was swapped out for spare. Her words were met by applause in Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"That worked, great!" she said.

From there, Adenot headed off to continue an ongoing scientific study by swabbing areas on the exterior of the airlock and her gloves for possible microorganisms. Meir, meanwhile, rode one end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm to a site near the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), torquing 46 bolts in preparation for future maintenance of the particle physics detector.

Meir also relocated power and thermal jumper cables and an articulating portable foot restraint for use on a later spacewalk.

There were some other tasks planned, time permitting, but toward the end of the EVA, Adenot reported losing mobility in her left shoulder joint. Erring on the side of caution, Mission Control called for Adenot to wait where she was until Meir could follow her back to the airlock.

Once there, Meir was able to unzip a portion of Adenot's extravehicular mobility unit's (EMU's) upper arm assembly to inspect what was happening. In doing so, she freed the kink that had limited Adenot's motion.

"I think it was where the cable got caught in between the shoulder MLI [multi-layer insulation] and the rotation [joint]. I don't think it was held up by anything but some friction," said Meir.

The two Expedition 75 crewmates then proceeded back into the airlock to complete the EVA at 4:29 p.m (2029 GMT).

Tuesday's spacewalk was Meir's seventh and Adenot's third. Meir, who has a total of 49 hours and 22 minutes on EVA, now ranks third among all women astronauts at NASA for total number of spacewalks. She trails only Peggy Whitson with 10 and Suni Williams at 9.

Adenot now has spent 19 hours and 42 minutes working in the vacuum of space.

This spacewalk was the 284th supporting the International Space Station's assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was the seventh spacewalk this year, fifth EVA for Expedition 75 and the sixth all-female spacewalk in history.

NASA's next big space telescope is not only meant to unlock some of the mysteries of dark energy. It also is a pioneer in the naming of missions.

Scientific American recently said that the observatory, which launched on Aug. 30, is the first ever space telescope ever named after a real-life woman: American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, who supported development of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope and was NASA's first head of astronomy in the 1960s.

The story is very different when it comes to men. For example, NASA's "Great Observatories," which launched between 1990 and 2003, were all named after famous U.S. male astronomers or physicists: the Hubble Space Telescope (Edwin Hubble), the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (Arthur Compton), the Chandra X-ray Observatory (Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) and the Spitzer Space Telescope (Lyman Spitzer).

Indeed, relatively few spacecraft of any kind have borne female names over the years — and most of the ones that did were not honoring actual, real-life people.

For instance, a number of missions with female names took them from mythology (e.g., NASA's Europa Clipper and China's Chang'e moon probes). Others used female names not attached to particular individuals (such as NASA's Clementine moon mission, and the European Space Agency's LISA, which is an acronym for "Laser Intraferometer Space Antenna.")

A notable exception is Sojourner, the mini-rover on NASA's Mars Pathfinder lander mission that was made famous again by the 2015 film "The Martian;" it's named after Sojourner Truth, a Civil War-era abolitionist. Sojourner's name was selected in 1995 from a worldwide naming contest for students and suggested by 12-year-old Valerie Ambroise of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Some other notable examples of missions honoring real-life women include:

• ESA's long-delayed ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin, which is now set to launch to Mars in 2028. It's named after a British scientist who contributed to discovering the structure of DNA. (Part of the rover's mission is to analyze potential biosignatures on the Red Planet's surface.)
• The Cygnus International Space Station (ISS) resupply program, which is managed by Northrop Grumman. Multiple Cygnus freighters have been named after female NASA astronauts, including Janice E. Voss, Sally Ride and Kalpana Chawla, and one of them honored the American mathematician and "hidden figure" Katherine Johnson.
• Satellogic's ÑuSat/NewSat series. It has commonly named satellites after female historical figures in science, such as Black American chemist Alice Ball, Polish physicist-chemist Marie Curie and Australian radio astronomer Ruby Payne-Scott.
• Canada's GHGSat has a program in which employees name the company's Earth-orbiting satellites after family members, which has generated names from real-life people like Eleonore and Penny.
• The U.S. Space Force nicknamed its GPS III Space Vehicle-08 "Ms. Creola Katherine Johnson," another nod to the mathematician

What this means

Throughout history, the names of ocean-going ships — ships on the water, not spaceships — often have associations with women. The U.K.'s Imperial War Museums (IWM) suggests that women's names are used due to two traditions. The first is that, very generally speaking, the word "boat" is a "female" word in some languages that use gendered nouns, but that is by far not universal, even among the imperial sailing powers of the 1400s to 1600s.

The second association, which seems more likely, is the notion of a mother, goddess or similar "female figure" guiding a crew, which we see in theaters right now with "The Odyssey:" Athena helps Odysseus, reflecting the ancient Greek epic story. (For example, figureheads — sculptures on sailing ship prows — were often, although not always, carved in the likeness of women, Royal Museums Greenwich states.)

There are famous sailing ships with female names that many Americans can cite, such as the nicknames for the three Spanish ships — the Niña, Pinta and Santa María — used by Christopher Columbus during his famed first voyage to the New World in 1492.

"There's always been a tradition to name ships — and oftentimes after women," Valerie Neal, emerita curator in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's department of space history, told Space.com. Neal's research includes extensive work on female astronauts.

The U.S. space program has historically leaned upon mythological names of both genders for its missions, she noted, citing the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo human spaceflight programs as examples of male monikers. These days, Neal added, the education system is less tilted toward introducing children to old Greek or Roman myths, which may explain why it's now more common to name missions after real-life individuals.

In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, "there was a big debate at the time of the space shuttle naming whether to name the space shuttles after historic figures, or after concepts," Neal said. "One idea was even after Native American tribes." (For example, Tafuna High School in American Samoa recommended the name "Hōkūle'a" for shuttle, as noted in NASA's 1991 monograph "From Ship to Shuttle: NASA Orbiter-Naming Program")

The space shuttles were ultimately named Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour after "historic ships of exploration," Neal said. You can read more about the origins of those names in this piece by The Space Foundation.

The Cygnus spacecraft "USS Janice Voss," which flew to the ISS in 2014, was the first U.S. orbital mission known to Neal to be named after a woman. "She had had an affiliation with the Orbital Sciences Corporation, and so they wanted to honor her," said Neal, referring to a previous company that managed the Cygnus program.

The flock of Cygnuses named after women — at least six of them, according to Neal — is "a good sign that people are starting to think of contemporary figures, or more contemporary, [and] naming spacecraft as a tribute to them, and to their contributions in science and exploration and discovery."

Naming a flagship space telescope after Nancy Grace Roman is another good sign, of course. And choosing her for this honor makes sense; she was in "a class by herself — because her name is so directly associated with astronomy and large space telescopes" like Hubble, Neal said.

"It is recognizing her significance in the history of space exploration as a leader who made so much possible, through her own work as an astronomer, but then as an administrator and manager at NASA made possible the orbiting solar observatories, the orbiting astronomical observatories — and then Hubble and the other great observatories that followed."

Roman's name on the telescope, she added, is "elevated" because "her name coincides exactly with the spacecraft and its purpose, whereas the names of the astronauts that are attached to the [ISS] resupply missions … not all of them had any connection to the International Space Station. Several did, but not all."

Neal said she's hopeful that more women will see their names attached to space missions, including both those historical astronomers who saw "their bosses were getting all the credit" as well as the numerous non-male scientists making impacts in the field today.

"I think it's entirely possible that, in time, there will be another major observatory named for a woman," Neal added. She noted that recommendations from the science community every 10 years form the basis of new space missions, and that the next such "decadal survey" in astrophysics is expected to wrap up around 2030.

In the nearer term, NASA is considering ideas such as an ultraviolet telescope, an advanced X-ray imaging satellite, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory for launch in the 2030s or early 2040s, presenting more opportunities to attach female names to flagship space missions.

Sidebar: Female mission names

With thousands of flown or planned missions to space, and numerous parts making up each spacecraft, it is difficult to compile a comprehensive list of probes or instruments that have had female names. The following is therefore a partial list, though an extensive one. In no particular order, it includes:

• Telescopes/observatories: NASA's Roman, ESA's Gaia, NASA's Pandora, the British-American Ariel V telescope, ESA's NewAthena, ESA's Ariel, ESA's LISA, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).
• Human spacecraft: Mercury Aurora 7, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Grace.
• Satellites/ISS missions: ESRO-1A and 1B's nicknames of Aurora and Boreas, multiple Cygnus ISS resupply spacecraft, much of the Satellogic NuSat/NewSat constellation, several GHGSat spacecraft, Space Force's GPS III Space Vehicle-08 (nicknamed Ms. Creola Katherine Johnson), and the Russian Resurs-DK1 satellite's multinational cosmic-ray module PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics).
• Moon: China's Chang'e series, the Soviet Union's Luna series, NASA's Artemis program and missions, Intuitive Machines' IM-2 lander Athena, JAXA's Selene/Kaguya, NASA's Clementine, the NASA ARTEMIS moon-orbiting probe.
• Venus: ESA's Venus Express, the Soviet Union's Venera series.
• Mars: ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover, NASA's Sojourner rover, JAXA's failed Nozomi orbiter.
• Jupiter/moons: NASA's Juno, NASA's Europa Clipper.
• Asteroids: NASA's Lucy, ESA's Hera.
• Other hardware: Some spacecraft/rocket parts have female names (e.g. the US military's Juno II rocket, Firefly Aerospace's Miranda engine, ESA's Europa and Ariane rockets).

The following at first glance appear to have female names, but either were not confirmed before this story's deadline or were confirmed to have other origins:

• Japan's MUSES Program (Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft), which may or may not reflect the English/Ancient Greek meaning of goddesses of knowledge.
• DoD's ALEXIS (the Array of Low Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors) and JAXA's Akatasuki (Venus Climate Orbiter) may not just reflect female names.
• NASA's Uhuru, which is not named after the female "Star Trek: The Original Series" character but after the Swahili term for "freedom."
• NASA's Dawn is meant to reflect the solar system's beginning, and not a person.
• The Soviet Vega series to Venus is meant to be VeGa, or as National Geographic once wrote, "a contraction of the Russian words for your dual targets, Venera and Gallei."

Repairing an engineering marvel like the International Space Station is no easy feat by itself, but it's even more impressive when it's done 250 miles (400 kilometers) up.

What is it?

In this photograph, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot works on the exterior of the International Space Station on Aug. 25, 2026.

The photo was taken while Adenot and NASA astronaut Anil Menon were conducting a 6.5-hour spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), to replace one of two Space-to-Ground antennas on the outside of the ISS.

This was the second EVA that Adenot and Menon performed to replace the antenna. During a previous spacewalk a week earlier, the pair ran out of time before the new antenna could be installed.

With that first spacewalk, Adenot became the first woman from France to ever conduct an EVA.

Why is it incredible?

It can be hard to conceptualize just how high up the ISS orbits until you see a photo like this one; few people on Earth have ever flown as high as 250 miles (400 km), so that altitude can feel a bit abstract. Seeing an astronaut like Adenot clinging to the space station with the clouds and blue oceans of Earth below puts things into perspective.

At that height, the ISS orbits at quite a high rate of speed. The orbital laboratory zips around Earth at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), meaning it circles the planet 16 times a day. This photo was taken on day 194, or orbit 3010, of Adenot's mission, which began in February when she launched to the ISS as part of NASA's Crew-12 mission.

Two astronauts will conduct history's sixth all-female spacewalk today (Sept. 1), and you can watch it live.

NASA's Jessica Meir and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency will venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) at around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on an excursion expected to last about 6.5 hours.

You can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will start at 7:00 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

During today's spacewalk, Meir and Adenot "will replace a retroreflector on the forward port of the space station's Harmony module to support spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking operations," NASA officials said in a media advisory.

"After installing the reflector, the crew will work to install jumper cables for the data-relay systems, prepare the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer's radiator for future maintenance, and replace a high-definition camera on the station's truss," they added.

(The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a $2 billion particle physics experiment mounted to the exterior of the ISS that studies cosmic rays and hunts for mysterious dark matter, among other tasks.)

Adenot will be "crew member 1" on today's spacewalk and will wear a suit with red stripes, NASA officials said. Meir will wear an unmarked suit and serve as "crew member 2."

It will be the third spacewalk for Adenot, who two weeks ago became the first French woman ever to perform an extravehicular activity (EVA). It will be the seventh for Meir, which will put her third among female NASA astronauts behind Peggy Whitson (10 EVAs) and Suni Williams (nine).

There have been just five all-female ISS spacewalks to date, and Meir has been part of three of them — the first three, in fact. She conducted those with fellow NASA astronaut (and Artemis II crewmember) Christina Koch on Oct. 18, 2019, Jan. 15, 2020 and Jan. 20, 2020.

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is back to studying the universe after spending months in a low-drag configuration while awaiting an orbital rescue mission that ultimately fell short.

Mission controllers restarted two of Swift's three science instruments — its X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) — on Aug. 26. Both instruments had been shut down in February as part of an effort to minimize atmospheric drag and keep the aging spacecraft in orbit long enough for another spacecraft to reach and boost it to a higher altitude, according to an Aug. 28 statement from NASA.

Swift's third instrument, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), remains offline. Operations of the BAT were halted in April to conserve power, allowing controllers to position Swift's solar panels in a way that further reduced drag from its interaction with Earth's atmosphere. NASA says the mission team hopes to resume data collection with the instrument within the next few weeks.

"Over the last 21 years, Swift has been NASA's multitool for studying the cosmos," NASA officials said in the statement. "It observes a wide range of light, rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, and sends alerts to other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations."

The return to science follows NASA's decision to abandon plans to boost Swift's orbit using LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft built by the Arizona company Katalyst Space. LINK launched July 3 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket with the ambitious goal of rendezvousing with Swift, grabbing the observatory and raising its orbit.

However, the rescue mission encountered trouble in late July when LINK developed attitude-control problems that caused it to spin and disrupted communications. Two of the spacecraft's three reaction wheels were found to be inoperable, while its cold-gas thruster system also experienced some loss of functionality.

Although engineers managed to reduce LINK's spin and regain attitude control, NASA and Katalyst announced Aug. 19 that the spacecraft would no longer attempt to capture and boost Swift. Instead, LINK is expected to rendezvous with Swift and perform proximity operations, providing an opportunity to demonstrate technologies that could be used for future in-space satellite servicing missions — leaving Swift without the orbital boost intended to extend its life and its future increasingly uncertain.

Launched in 2004, Swift was originally designed for a two-year mission studying gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. More than two decades later, the observatory continues to detect and rapidly follow up on fleeting cosmic events in gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet and visible light, while alerting other observatories so they can turn their attention to the same targets.

Unlike some spacecraft in low Earth orbit, Swift doesn't have a propulsion system capable of counteracting atmospheric drag. Increased solar activity has heated and expanded Earth's upper atmosphere, increasing the drag on Swift and causing its orbit to decay faster than previously expected.

NASA's low-drag operations had been expected to keep Swift above an altitude of about 185 miles (300 kilometers) until October. Below that threshold, operating the observatory becomes increasingly difficult and its descent accelerates, NASA officials said in the statement.

Now that science operations have resumed — and the planned orbital boost is off the table — NASA expects Swift to reach that critical altitude within the next one to two months. Without intervention, the observatory is likely to crash back to Earth later this year, mostly burning up as it reenters the atmosphere, according to the space agency.

For now, the veteran space telescope is making the most of the time it has left — and once again scanning the universe.

One of NASA's intrepid Mars rovers has notched another impressive milestone during its exploration of the Red Planet.

What is it?

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam camera to capture a panorama made up of 323 individual images. The images were taken on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2, 2026, the 4,972nd and 4,973rd Martian days (or sols) of the rover's mission, just as Curiosity notched a total of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of elevation gain throughout its now 14-year exploration of the Red Planet.

The images show the wide expanse of a broad valley nicknamed "Valle Grande," a depression on the side of Mars' Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer) mountain the rover has been climbing since 2014. The valley's floor and northern rim can be seen in the distance.

Why is it incredible?

Curiosity's mission has been incredible for a number of reasons. For one, the daring "sky crane" maneuver that NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used to land the SUV-sized robot on the Red Planet changed Mars landings forever.

Since then, Curiosity has discovered clues that liquid water once flowed across the surface of Mars and has found tantalizing evidence of complex organic molecules on the Red Planet, including some that scientists consider to be the "building blocks" of life.

And even after 14 years of traveling across the Red Planet and suffering considerable damage to its wheels, NASA says Curiosity has plenty of exploration and science left to conduct.

Another one of NASA's Mars rovers, Perseverance, recently notched a travel milestone of its own when it surpassed 26.2 miles (42.2 km) of travel  — the length of a marathon  — across the Martian surface.

Four astronauts just received the United States' highest space honor.

President Donald Trump gave the astronauts of NASA's Artemis II moon mission the Congressional Space Medal of Honor today (Aug. 28) during a ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"This is a very rare thing. It's for courageous people, brilliant people, bestowed on astronauts who have distinguished themselves with exceptional service to the nation and all of mankind," Trump said during the event.

Artemis II launched on April 1 and came back to Earth nine days later. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term base near the moon's south pole in the coming years.

The flight sent four people — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — on a looping journey around the lunar far side. It was the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and its astronauts got farther from their home planet than any people ever had before.

Artemis II engaged folks around the world thanks to its importance, its historic nature and the charisma of its astronauts. And some fortuitous orbital dynamics didn't hurt, either: The Artemis II crew were lucky enough to observe a total solar eclipse from beyond the moon, something human eyes had never seen firsthand before.

The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is awarded "to any astronaut who in the performance of his duties has distinguished himself by exceptionalIy meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the Nation and of mankind," NASA wrote in a description of the award, citing Congress' stated criteria.

Though the president gives out the medal, he does so on the recommendation of the NASA administrator, the agency added. Before today, just 30 people had received the award, and most of them are pretty big names. Past honorees include Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong; Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who were the first Americans to reach space and orbit Earth, respectively; Gemini astronaut Ed White, the first American to perform a spacewalk; and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell.

The award was also given to each of the 14 astronauts who died in the space shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Hansen therefore wasn't the first non-American to receive the medal. Ilan Ramon, one of the seven people who perished when Columbia broke apart upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, was from Israel.

During his speech at today's ceremony, Trump said that the United States is entering a golden age of spaceflight and exploration. And he thanked the Artemis II astronauts for being a guiding light.

"Thanks to the crew of Artemis II, those dreams are closer than ever before," the president said. "We're on the cusp of an adventure and something that's so special, people have really not imagined anything. It's really, civilization is into the stars. The stars are up there and they're beautiful, and you're right next to them. You have the courage to be right next to them. Few people do, but you're leading the way. It's great, great bravery."

The astronauts reciprocated the warmth. For example, they gave the president a blue flight jacket commemorating the mission. And Wiseman, Artemis II's commander, thanked Trump for calling the crew during their mission.

"The one thing that really sticks out to us is, you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is of the job that we have just accomplished," Wiseman said during the ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation and inspire the world, and for us, that showed us we were on the right track. So, thank you for that call."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 28 with quotes and information from the medal ceremony.

A private spacecraft failed to rescue NASA's Swift space telescope, meaning the big observatory will come crashing back to Earth in the near future.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched to Earth orbit in November 2004. Over the past two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes.

But Swift's science work is now done, and its days in orbit are numbered.

Call to action

In September 2025, NASA put out a call to action to save Swift, whose orbit was decaying quickly due to high solar activity. The bottom line: The observatory needed a boost to a higher orbit soon, or it would be dragged down to its death in Earth's atmosphere.

The Arizona-based company Katalyst Space Technologies answered that call, and won a $30 million NASA contract to perform the re-boost. In hurry-and-scurry mode, Katalyst built a robotic spacecraft called LINK, which launched on July 3 to meet up with Swift and haul it to a higher orbit.

But LINK suffered attitude-control issues after launch, causing NASA and Katalyst to wave off the rescue attempt.

Timeline troubles

Ghonhee Lee is the CEO of Katalyst Space Technologies.

Speaking to CNN News Central on Aug. 24, Lee said: "You know, this is not the outcome that we wanted, but I think it's very important to recognize the unprecedented scale. This was an ambitious, high-risk, high-reward mission where we designed, built and launched a space robot within nine months."

Lee said that the timeline worked against the group. "I think if we had had 12 months even — just three more months — it would have made a tremendous difference," he told CNN's Kate Bolduan.

Swift is now coming back down to Earth, but it's unclear when and where.

Uncontrolled reentry

"Yes, Swift will have an uncontrolled reentry," said Alise Fisher, public affairs specialist in astrophysics within the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The spacecraft's specific timing for reentry will depend on a number of factors, Fisher told Space.com. "Swift is not likely to reenter sooner than October. NASA will share more information as reentry approaches, following established interagency procedures for such notifications."

NASA expects most of the Swift spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, Fisher said, "but some components are expected to survive reentry. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is unlikely."

Survivability analysis

Swift's dry mass is 613 kilograms (1,351 pounds). The spacecraft's science gear includes a Burst Alert Telescope, an Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope and an X-Ray Telescope.

So what might make it to Earth during Swift's speedy fall through the atmosphere?

The observatory's "dry mass and instruments are such that it will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard," said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a persistent eye on what's going on in Earth orbit.

"However, it has both an X-ray telescope and optical telescope, so the internal workings of those devices might survive," McKnight told Space.com. He said that optical lenses, along with titanium tanks, are components that might make it to the ground.

"I am sure that they have done the analysis but have seen no public reporting on the survivability analysis," he said.

A sign of things to come?

Swift is unlikely to burn up entirely upon reentry, given its mass, said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a junior fellow at the university's Outer Space Institute.

We also don't know where it will come down, he noted.

"It has an orbital inclination of 21 degrees, so could reenter anywhere in any latitude from 21 North to 21 South," Wright told Space.com. "The most likely outcome is that any surviving debris will land in the sea, but there is a chance it could impact a built-up area and cause a casualty."

Even if Swift's return to Earth is uneventful, "there are more and more uncontrolled reentries of satellites and rockets each year, and the chance that someone will be hit is growing," Wright said.