NASA News

NASA has selected one small explorer mission concept to advance toward flight design and another for an extended period of concept development. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Science Management Council selected CINEMA (Cross-scale Investigation of Earth’s Magnetotail and Aurora) to enter Phase B of development, which includes planning and design for flight and mission operations. The […]

Picture this: You’re just about done with a transoceanic flight, and the tracker in your seat-back screen shows you approaching your destination airport. And then … you notice your plane is moving away. Pretty far away. You approach again and again, only to realize you’re on a long, circling loop that can last an hour […]

Most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive black holes in their centers, according to a recent  study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This contrasts with the common idea that nearly every galaxy has one of these giant black holes within their cores, as NASA leads the world in exploring how our universe works. A team […]

Images captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft made its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun in December 2024 have now revealed new details about how solar magnetic fields responsible for space weather escape from the Sun — and how sometimes they don’t. Like a toddler, our Sun occasionally has disruptive outbursts. But […]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured a blowtorch of seething gasses erupting from a volcanically growing monster star in this image released on Sept. 10, 2025. Stellar jets, which are powered by the gravitational energy released as a star grows in mass, encode the formation history of the protostar. This image provides evidence that protostellar jets […]

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system, as NASA leads the world in exploring the universe from the Moon to Mars and beyond. Observations of the ultra-hot super-Earth TOI-561 b suggest that the exoplanet is surrounded by a […]

The right combination of conditions allowed this distinctive low cloud to form in California’s Central Valley for weeks.

The center leverages AI along with JPL’s unique infrastructure, unrivaled tools, and years of operations expertise to support industry partners developing future planetary surface missions.   NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Wednesday inaugurated its Rover Operations Center (ROC), a center of excellence for current and future surface missions to the Moon and Mars. […]

NASA and its partners have supported humans continuously living and working in space since November 2000. After 25 years of habitation, the International Space Station continues to be a proving ground for technology that powers NASA’s Artemis campaign, future lunar missions, and human exploration of Mars.   Take a look at key technology advancements made […]

Retirement Information for NASA Employees The NSSC provides general administrative, advisory, and transactional support for federal benefits programs to all NASA employees, calculates retirement estimates, and processes retirement packages. In consideration of retiring employees on administrative leave, resources typically available only to NASA employees behind the NASA firewall are temporarily available below.  Most of your […]

The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Dec. 9, 2025, with Expedition 73 NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky aboard. The trio returned to Earth after logging 245 days in space as members of Expeditions 72 […]

NASA is helping shape the future of urban air travel with a new simulation that will manage how electric air taxis and drones can successfully operate within busy areas.   The demonstration, held at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley earlier this year, focused on a system called the Strategic Deconfliction Simulation, which helps […]

In March, NASA researchers employed a new camera system to capture data imagery of the interaction between Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander’s engine plumes and the lunar surface. Through NASA’s Artemis campaign, this data will help researchers understand the hazards that may occur when a lander’s engine plumes blast away at the lunar dust, […]

Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe held together by gravity, containing up to several thousand individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of superheated, X-ray-emitting gas. The mass of this hot gas is typically about five times higher than the total mass of all the galaxies in galaxy clusters. In addition to these […]

A flash of lightning, and then—something else. High above a storm, a crimson figure blinks in and out of existence. If you see it, you are a lucky witness of a sprite, one of the least-understood electrical phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Sprites occur at some 50 miles (80 kilometers) altitude, high above thunderstorms. They […]

Called AVIRIS-5, it’s the latest in a long line of sensors pioneered by NASA JPL to survey Earth, the Moon, and other worlds. Cradled in the nose of a high-altitude research airplane, a new NASA sensor has taken to the skies to help geoscientists map rocks hosting lithium and other critical minerals on Earth’s surface […]

Michelle Hoehn vividly remembers the day a seed was planted for her future at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. As a seventh grader, the Bogalusa, Louisiana, native joined her dad for Father/Daughter Day at NASA Stennis. Hoehn knew she wanted to be part of something bigger, something that sparked wonder and […]

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim returned to Earth on Tuesday alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, wrapping up an eight-month science mission aboard the International Space Station to benefit life on Earth and future space exploration. They made a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 12:03 a.m. EST (10:03 a.m. local time), southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, […]

The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant glows in X-ray, visible, and infrared light in this Jan. 8, 2024, image that combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble, Webb, and Spitzer space telescopes. A study by the XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft has made the first-ever X-ray detections of chlorine and potassium from […]

By the time the Artemis II Orion spacecraft launches to the Moon next year, its many components will already have traveled thousands of miles and moved across multiple facilities before coming together at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Branelle Rodriguez, Artemis II vehicle manager for the Orion Program, has overseen many parts of that journey. Her […]