NASA is joining international partners to hunt for ice on the Moon in support of future human exploration. The agency is providing a water-detecting instrument, the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), to the Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation).
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 25, 2022 and has been updated to reflect changes including the completion of Hangar One’s restoration. Restoration has been completed on Hangar One, a historic landmark in the San Francisco Bay Area and a key part of the region’s early aviation history. In December 2025, Planetary Ventures completed restoration of […]
Airflow around rockets as they travel from Earth into space can have a dramatic impact on a mission, which is why NASA used advanced simulations to provide the best possible launch conditions for the Artemis II test flight around the Moon. To better understand the Artemis Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s flight environment, engineers turned to a NASA-developed tool called the Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics […]
NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft is preparing for its second flight, a step that will set the pace for more flight testing in 2026. Over the coming months, NASA will take the quiet supersonic jet faster and higher, while validating safety and performance, a process known as envelope expansion. NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less will be at the X-59’s […]
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and NASA announced NASA Force on Wednesday, a dedicated talent track within the US Tech Force initiative designed to recruit and deploy the nation’s top engineers and technologists to support America’s space program. NASA Force will identify and place high-impact technical talent into mission-critical roles supporting NASA’s exploration, […]
Certain nutrients critical for human health lack the shelf life needed to span multi-year missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA’s BioNutrients-3 is part of an experiment series testing ways to use microorganisms to produce these nutrients in space and on demand. The on-demand nature of this experiment is similar to making nutrient-dense fermented […]
High-altitude flight is getting increasing attention from sectors ranging from telecommunications to emergency response. To make that airspace more accessible, NASA is developing an air traffic management system covering those altitudes and supplementing its work with real-time data from a research balloon in Earth’s stratosphere. Aircraft at high altitudes – 50,000 feet or higher, or roughly 10,000 to 20,000 feet above most commercial traffic – offer new […]
Using cutting-edge material licensed from NASA, a protective heat shield manufactured in-house by Varda Space Industries for the first time enabled one of its capsules to blaze through Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday, marking a significant milestone for the agency and America’s space industry. The material, known as C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), provides a […]
New simulations performed on a NASA supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the maelstrom of interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars’ final moments that may be detectable by future observatories. “Just before neutron […]
A team of NASA scientists deployed on an international mission designed to better understand severe winter storms. The North American Upstream Feature-Resolving and Tropopause Uncertainty Reconnaissance Experiment, or NURTURE, is an airborne campaign that uses a suite of remote sensing instruments to collect atmospheric data on winter weather with a goal of improving the models […]