Category: Space Agency

Source: NASA

A new study using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope finds that star formation in the nearby Andromeda galaxy has undergone a 500-million-year decline, with an even steeper drop in the last 40 million years. Andromeda, a spiral galaxy comparable in size to our Milky Way, is close enough to be seen with the unaided eye from areas with dark skies. Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth, practically our cosmic backyard, Andromeda offers an opportunity for astronomers to examine its stellar populations in detail, leading to better understanding of the past of galaxies like our own.
The results published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers combined data from two Hubble surveys: the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury and the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Southern Treasury. Together, these two surveys mapped two-thirds of the disk of Andromeda in ultra-sharp detail. In total, the team measured about 200 million individual stars across the galaxy, giving them a detailed picture of Andromeda’s past activity.
“We need to measure the individual stars because they are the fossil record of the galaxy’s formation. Hubble is the only telescope that can give you high enough spatial resolution over a large enough area to be able to do that in Andromeda,” said Ben Williams, astronomer at the University of Washington and a co-author on the study.
Massive stars are bluer and short-lived, while less massive stars are redder and longer-lived. As a result, areas that have experienced recent star formation tend to have a larger fraction of blue stars, while areas with less recent star formation typically have a redder population. The team divided the Andromeda images into thousands of squares, spanning 300 light-years on each side of the square, and determined the history of star formation within each parcel to gain a comprehensive view of the galaxy’s past.

Steady decline
Previous research showed the Andromeda galaxy experienced a dramatic burst of star formation about 2 billion years ago, likely due to a past interaction or merger with another galaxy. Since that time, star formation has been steadily declining.
Astronomers measure the rate of star formation in terms of the mass, or amount of gas and dust, converted into stars per year. The researchers calculated that, 500 million years ago, Andromeda formed stars at a rate of about one solar mass per year. However, the formation rate dropped to about half that by 40 million years ago. The current rate has plummeted even farther, to about one-fifth the mass of our Sun per year.
The team also examined whether that decline was consistent across the galaxy or concentrated in certain areas. They found that much of the recent star formation has occurred in a star-forming ring located about 32,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center. As a result, much of the decline they measure is driven by decreasing activity within that ring.
Rather than being the result of reduced material from which new stars can form, the decline is more likely to be a natural winding down from its previous, more active state.
“It’s just like after running a marathon, sometimes you’ve got to take a bit of a breather,” said Tobin Wainer, lead author, University of Washington.
Likely suspect
The team also investigated whether there was any connection between the decrease of activity in Andromeda and its proximity to satellite galaxy M32 (Messier 32). The M32 galaxy is separated from Andromeda by about 16,000 light-years in the plane of the sky; however, its 3D location in space is uncertain. As a result, astronomers are unsure if or when it might have interacted with Andromeda in the past.
“One of the major motivations for this program was to probe potential interactions between M32 and Andromeda’s disk,” said Zhuo Chen, co-author, University of Washington.
Survey data from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Southern Treasury allowed the team to study the history of star formation in Andromeda near M32. They found that this area showed signs of decreased star formation compared with other regions. The timing of this decrease, which this study finds began roughly 60 million years ago, could help constrain when the M32 galaxy interacted with Andromeda’s disk.
“We can’t explicitly say that we are seeing a decrease in star formation because of M32. But it’s right there, and it’s definitely the most likely suspect,” said Wainer.

The team plans to continue analyzing the Hubble data and combine it with data from ground-based observatories to gain additional insights into the history of Andromeda.
“There’s a strong scientific value to this archival data. Andromeda is important because it’s a neighbor that is close enough that we can see it in great detail while also getting a global perspective,” said Raja GuhaThakurta, co-author, University of California Santa Cruz.
An even greater global perspective is likely to come from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after it launches as early as Sunday, Aug. 30. Roman’s gigantic field of view can cover at least 100 times as much area as Hubble at near-infrared wavelengths in a single observation. A newly approved Roman observing program will image the entirety of Andromeda’s disk and areas of its surrounding halo, allowing astronomers to measure hundreds of millions of stars and enabling groundbreaking new science.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

 

Source: NASA

NASA will provide coverage as astronauts venture outside the International Space Station during three spacewalks in August to continue upgrading solar arrays, replace a communications antenna, and connect power and data cables in support of space station operations.
Experts will preview the upcoming spacewalks during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, July 30, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA will stream these events through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online:

NASA Live

NASA participants in the news conference include:

Bill Spetch, deputy manager of Commercial, Low Earth Orbit Program
Chris Dobbins, spacewalk flight director
Chloe Mehring, spacewalk flight director

United States-based media interested in attending in person must contact the Johnson newsroom no later than 3 p.m., Wednesday, July 29, at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. Media joining by phone should request dial-in details by the same deadline. To ask a question, media must dial in no later than 15 minutes before the start of the news conference.
Thursday, Aug. 6
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon will exit the Quest airlock to install hardware that will modify the station’s 3B power channel and prepare it for the future installation of an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (IROSA). The solar array, scheduled for delivery later this year, will be the seventh IROSA and will provide additional power to support critical station operations, including its safe and controlled deorbit.
Watch NASA’s live coverage of U.S. spacewalk 96 beginning at 6:30 a.m. The spacewalk is expected to start at 8 a.m. and last about six and a half hours.
This spacewalk will be the sixth for Meir and the first for Menon. Meir will serve as spacewalk crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes. Menon will serve as crew member 2 and will wear an unmarked suit.
Thursday, Aug. 13
During U.S. spacewalk 97, two astronauts will replace a Space-to-Ground antenna on the orbital complex. The antenna is a critical communication system NASA uses to transmit data and high‑speed communication between the Mission Control Center in Houston and the space station.
Tuesday, Aug. 25
The U.S. spacewalk 98 crew members will connect power channel cables and data relay systems as part of ongoing maintenance, including preparations for the space station’s future deorbit. The astronauts also will replace a navigational aid used for spacecraft docking on the Harmony module’s forward port.
NASA will share additional details about U.S. spacewalks 97 and 98, including timing, assigned crew members, and coverage information, closer to each operation.
The spacewalks will be the 281st, 282nd, and 283rd conducted in support of space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.
To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
Joshua Finch / Jimi RussellHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1100joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones / Anna Schneider Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111 sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov / anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

Source: NASA

NASA astronaut Chris Williams is all smiles in this July 26, 2026, photo taken shortly after he landed with Expedition 74 Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Sergei Mikaev in Kazakhstan. This was Williams’ first mission.
Williams spent eight months aboard the International Space Station, where he supported a wide range of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations. He also completed two spacewalks to prep for space station power system upgrades and to replace a faulty joint on the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Source: NASA

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured an “orphan” black hole lighting up as it devoured a star on the outskirts of a faraway galaxy. These phenomena are rare to begin with, and none had ever before been seen so far outside of a galaxy’s core.
“We were looking for these star-shredding events as a way to find otherwise invisible supermassive black holes wandering away from the galactic cores where they usually reside,” said Robert Stein, a research fellow at The University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “With this discovery, which is one of just a couple that have been confirmed so far, we’ve validated a new technique and can use it to hunt for more.”
A paper describing the results, led by Stein, was published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Researchers saw an ultrabright flare unleashed by a star being torn apart by extreme gravitational forces after drifting too close to a monster black hole — a phenomenon called a tidal disruption event. The black hole behind the blast weighs in at about a million times the Sun’s mass. Its existence was first flagged in November 2025 as an unusual brightening in a galaxy about 750 million light-years away by ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility), a survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.
“Out of the half million flashes ZTF detects each night, our new artificial intelligence algorithm automatically recognized a flare that looked a lot like a tidal disruption event, despite its unusual location in the outskirts of a galaxy,” Stein said. For a few months, the tidal disruption event outshone its entire host galaxy in ultraviolet wavelengths, temporarily radiating with the light of about 10 billion suns.

Other telescopes, including the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) telescope in Chile, followed up on the ZTF source to look at the event’s spectrum, which revealed features supporting that it was likely a tidal disruption event. Astronomers then used NASA’s Swift to look at wavelengths they can’t detect with ground-based telescopes to uncover new information. For example, Swift’s UVOT (Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope) took the blip’s temperature and found that it had quite a fever at about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit (30,000 degrees Celsius).
“The combination of all this data helped us rule out other explanations and confidently say it’s a tidal disruption event, despite its strange location,” said Jonathan Carney, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who took the first spectra that supported the flare’s interpretation as a tidal disruption event.
Hidden heavyweights
Nearly every galaxy in the universe is anchored by a supermassive black hole sitting right in the center. About once every 100,000 years, a star will drift too close to this invisible heavyweight and trigger a tidal disruption event.
While they’re rather rare in any given galaxy, scientists scour millions of galaxies for them. Each year, astronomical surveys typically spot about 30 tidal disruption events occurring somewhere in the universe.
Prior to 2024, they’d only been seen in galaxy cores. That’s partly because astronomers mainly looked for them there; after all, it’s where all the known supermassive black holes were, and you can’t get a tidal disruption event without one (the gravitational pull of lighter black holes isn’t strong enough).
Then scientists saw the telltale signs of a star being shredded 2,600 light-years from the center of its host galaxy. That inspired more astronomers to look beyond galaxy cores for similar events, and now a team has identified one more than 30,000 light-years away from a galaxy’s center.

Oddball origin story
So how did the newfound black hole become so off-kilter?
“It must have originated in a galaxy’s center, but not the one it’s in the outskirts of now,” Stein said. “We think the host galaxy’s supermassive black hole is still at its core, but the one eating the star could have started off in a small galaxy that merged with the big one we see today.”
The researchers have outlined two possibilities. Three or more galaxies may have merged together, and the gravitational tug-of-war between their central supermassive black holes may have flung the lightest black hole out to the galaxy’s edge.
Or a dwarf galaxy could be midway through a merger. As the dwarf’s stars fell into the larger galaxy, one may have passed too close to the dwarf’s supermassive black hole.
“Further discoveries could reveal the origin of this apparent ‘orphan’ black hole,” Stein said. “The key science question we want to answer is: How common are wandering black holes?”
The answer may soon be within reach. “Pointed science observations with Swift’s UVOT and XRT (X-Ray Telescope) instruments are temporarily suspended as the mission awaits an orbit boost, which is planned for this summer,” said co-author S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard. The spacecraft, whose primary mission ran from 2004 to 2006, is slowly sinking toward Earth due to atmospheric drag after more than 20 years of observations of the changing universe. Nudging it to a higher orbit could extend its lifetime even longer. “Once it resumes normal operations, Swift could continue searching for more examples of out-of-place black holes.”
In the coming years, scientists will use the new technique to search for disintegrating stars in observations from the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, in Chile and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
“Rubin’s wide, deep surveys will reveal a much larger sample of tidal disruption events than current observatories are capable of collecting, including ones that are off-center,” Carney said. “And Roman’s space-based surveys will extend the current search zone by seeing ones that are farther away, looking back through 9 billion years of cosmic history.” Adding their observations to Swift’s and those from ground-based observatories will bring astronomers closer than ever before to completing a census of the universe’s behemoth black holes.
To learn more about the Swift mission, visit:
https://nasa.gov/swift
By Ashley BalzerNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.301-286-1940

Source: NASA

Each time the Moon covers the Sun during a total solar eclipse — darkening daytime skies and briefly revealing the Sun’s ethereal outer atmosphere, the corona — it presents new opportunities to better understand our star and its influence on Earth.
On Wednesday, Aug. 12, as the next total solar eclipse sweeps over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain, NASA-funded science teams will be chasing the Moon’s shadow with a high-altitude jet and scientific balloons to investigate the Sun’s dynamics and how the temporary darkening of our skies affects our atmosphere.
“From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system,” said Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The Sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence.”

Soaring in the nose cone of NASA’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft is a suite of four cameras to take high-resolution images of the corona in several different wavelengths of visible and infrared light. Part of an instrument developed by the NASA Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the cameras will capture at least 20 images per second, recording structures, outflows, and rapid changes in the corona during the total solar eclipse.
With these images, scientists hope to learn more about the formation of prominences (solar material that gets suspended above the Sun’s surface), better understand the corona and how it gets heated to nearly a million degrees, and investigate how material in the corona and the solar wind are related, which flows out from the Sun across the solar system.

By chasing the Moon’s shadow, the jet will extend how long the cameras can observe the corona. On the ground, the longest anyone will be able to see the corona is two minutes and 18 seconds. But flying along the eclipse path at 460 miles per hour, the jet’s view of the corona will last nearly three minutes.
NASA’s WB-57 will fly at 50,000 feet, above any clouds that might obscure the view of the corona from the ground. The altitude also allows the cameras to observe some infrared wavelengths that get absorbed by the lower atmosphere before reaching the ground, and the corona only has been observed in those wavelengths a few times before.

The instrument, called SCIFLI Multispectral Airborne Imager, or SAMI, also flew on a WB-57 during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, providing valuable imagery and information about the corona. However, the study’s principal investigator, Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says each total solar eclipse provides new opportunities to learn more about the corona.
“The Sun is always changing,” Caspi said. “Every eclipse is different. So we could see things we didn’t see before. And we learn from each eclipse how to better observe the next one.”
Caspi’s team also is making some enhancements for the 2026 campaign based on lessons learned in 2024. For example, the team will adjust exposure times to better capture bright features that were overexposed in 2024 imagery. They will also leverage software developed since 2024 to process and analyze the data sooner than before.
The experiment is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Low Cost Access to Space Program.

[embedded content]

When a total solar eclipse suddenly turns daytime skies dark, our atmosphere changes in ways we don’t yet fully understand.
The NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, led by Angela Des Jardins at Montana State University, is sending students from several U.S. universities to Iceland and Spain to launch scientific balloons before, during, and after the eclipse to better understand those changes.

In Iceland, two teams will launch a total of 80 balloons starting 18 hours before the eclipse until eight hours afterward to study how the eclipse affects Earth’s “boundary layer,” the part of the atmosphere that touches the ground. The thickness of the boundary layer changes depending on factors such as surface temperature and moisture in the air.
Previous balloon flights during solar eclipses in October 2023 and April 2024 showed that the boundary layer collapsed, or decreased in thickness, in locations with clear skies but not where there were cloudy skies. Scientists wonder whether that will be different in Iceland in 2026. Changes in the boundary layer are driven by the day-night cycle. However, in Iceland in August, the days are long and nights are short, so the nighttime influences might not be as strong as in 2023 or 2024.
“Will this eclipse be able to collapse the boundary layer?” said Matthew Bernards, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Idaho, who leads one of the Iceland teams.

In Spain, three balloon teams will launch a total of six balloons with 360-degree cameras to image the eclipse shadow from above. These balloons also will include instruments designed to measure levels of ozone in the atmosphere, which requires sunlight to form. Similar balloon experiments showed that ozone decreased during totality in April 2024. Scientists wonder whether there will be differences with this eclipse, particularly since it happens at a later time of day and during a different season.

[embedded content]

While the total solar eclipse won’t be visible in the U.S., some parts of the country will be able to see a partial solar eclipse. Learn more about where to see the eclipse and how to view it safely.

by Vanessa ThomasNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Source: NASA

Concluding an eight-month science mission aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Chris Williams returned to Earth on Sunday alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.
The crew made its safe, parachute-assisted landing at 5:27 a.m. CDT (3:27 p.m., Kazakhstan time), southeast of Dzhezkazgan, after departing the space station at 2:03 a.m., aboard the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft.
The crew was in space for 241 days, orbiting the Earth 3,856 times and traveling more than 102 million miles. They launched to the International Space Station on Nov. 27, 2025. The mission was the first for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud-Sverchkov.
While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Williams supported a wide range of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations. He helped advance research for new cancer treatments and improved in-space manufacturing of materials used in high-performance computers and electronics. Williams also completed two spacewalks to prep for space station power system upgrades and to replace a faulty joint on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The crew’s work aboard the space station helps improve life on Earth and prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars.
Following post-landing medical checks, the crew members will fly by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where recovery teams are based. Williams then will board a NASA aircraft bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station helps NASA understand and overcome the challenges of human spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and build on the foundation for long-duration missions to the Moon, as part of the Artemis program, and to Mars.
To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:
www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
Joshua Finch / Jimi RussellHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1100joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Leah Cheshier / Anna SchneiderJohnson Space Center, Houston281-483-5111leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov / anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

Source: NASA

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a spiral galaxy struggling against titanic forces that appear on galactic scales in space. This is NGC 4654, an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden). It is classified as an “intermediate” because its overall shape lies between spiral galaxies that have a bar across their centers and those that don’t. NGC 4654 has a weak bar structure at its center and is located 72 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo Cluster, a particularly massive and populous galaxy cluster.
NGC 4654 is particularly asymmetric, with a rounded and clearly-defined edge on one side and a long tail of gas stretching out from the opposite side — outside the field of view captured in this image. This gaseous tail is the result of ram pressure stripping, a force that galaxies can experience as they plow through space. NGC 4654 moves with such high velocity that it sweeps up and rams through the hot, rarefied gas filling the space between the Virgo Cluster’s galaxies. This intracluster medium in turn exerts a “ram pressure” on the galaxy, compressing the galaxy’s leading edge and dragging its gas behind the galaxy, creating the elongated tail.
It’s not just the galaxy’s gas that is unevenly distributed: its stars are too, and this is more unusual for a spiral galaxy. While the spiral arm on its leading edge is rich with stars and gas, the opposite arm noticeably lacks stars, influencing the galaxy’s lopsided spiral shape. Astronomers think that ram pressure alone is unlikely to cause this effect. Rather, NGC 4654 was also subjected to the gravitational force of fellow Virgo Cluster galaxy NGC 4639. While the two galaxies are far apart now, it’s thought that a fly-by interaction between them around 500 million years ago ripped away NGC 4654’s gas along one side, limiting star formation there and creating the asymmetry in its shape.
Many galaxies that undergo ram pressure stripping suffer reduced star formation rates as the cold gas that collapses to form their stars is pulled away and lost. NGC 4654, however, is still forming nearly two Suns’ worth of stars every year, a rate comparable to other galaxies of similar size. The active star formation is visible in the latest Hubble data included in this image. The data picks up on a wavelength of red light emitted by the clouds of energized gas where newborn stars lurk. The bright pink bubbles that appear across NGC 4654 — from its forward spiral arm, to around its weak bar, and out to the edge of its disk — are areas where these newborn stars shine.
The data used in this image came from two observing programs (#15654, #17502) that aim to link the gas in galaxies with star formation. By observing many prominent galaxies in the vicinity of our own, researchers hope to better understand how gas moves in galaxies, where and when it collapses to form stars and star clusters, and what effect those new stars have on the gas around them.
Text Credit: ESA/Hubble

Media Contact:
Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MDclaire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Source: NASA

NASA and Blue Origin announced Friday they recently agreed to conduct second stage hot fire testing for the company’s New Glenn rocket on the B-2 test stand at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
The annex to a reimbursable Space Act Agreement signed earlier this month highlights NASA’s commitment to working alongside commercial partners toward Artemis missions in 2027 and beyond.
“Stennis continues to be a hub for the commercial space industry,” said Sen. Roger Wicker. “Mississippi warmly welcomes Blue Origin’s return to the coast and to our legendary rocket testing facilities.”
“The success of Artemis II has roots at NASA Stennis, and I’m excited about the prospect of Blue Origin establishing a rigorous test program in Mississippi as part of future American crewed missions to the Moon and beyond. I hope its use of B-2 test stand becomes a long-term arrangement that broadens our state’s contribution to space exploration. I will certainly do what I can to make that a reality,” said Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
“Mississippi continues to play a vital role in America’s space program, and this agreement between NASA and Blue Origin is another major win for Stennis Space Center. The world-class capabilities at the B-2 test stand will help advance the next generation of rocket propulsion while supporting high-skilled jobs and strengthening our nation’s leadership in space exploration. I look forward to seeing the innovation that comes from this partnership,” said Rep. Mike Ezell.
Testing, targeted to begin this fall, directly supports NASA’s work to achieve the national goal of landing American astronauts on the surface of the Moon and building a Moon Base near the lunar South Pole. These efforts aim to strengthen American leadership in space, unlock scientific discovery, drive innovation with industry, and prepare for human missions to Mars.
 “Winning the new space race means moving faster and working alongside a strong commercial industry. Supporting Blue Origin at NASA’s Stennis Space Center puts world-class American infrastructure to work advancing the capabilities needed to return astronauts to the Moon, establish a sustained lunar presence, and prepare for Mars. Partnerships like this strengthen our industrial base and help ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in space,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Building on the successful Artemis II flight from April, Artemis III is a highly choreographed, multi-launch campaign that will require four astronauts to test rendezvous and docking capabilities of NASA’s Orion spacecraft with commercial human landing systems from Blue Origin and SpaceX in low Earth orbit.
In addition, Blue Origin’s New Glenn will be used to launch missions that will land on the Moon.
“We are proud to partner with NASA and build on our shared commitment to returning America to the Moon and our broader mission to build a road to space for the benefit of Earth,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp. “Stennis helped take Americans to the Moon, and through this partnership, it will help take us back.”
In May, NASA announced the first three Moon Base missions to begin building sustained operations, including an award to Blue Origin to launch a robotic mission this fall. The company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander will deliver NASA payloads to the lunar South Pole’s Shackleton Connecting Ridge, demonstrating capabilities that reduce risk for astronauts to land on the Moon during Artemis IV and V in 2028.
To support upcoming testing at Stennis, NASA will provide the engineers, equipment, and building services needed to design, build, and install parts that will prepare the B-2 for second stage testing of the rocket named in honor of the late NASA astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. The rocket’s second stage is powered by two BE‑3 engines that use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants, with each engine generating 200,000 pounds of thrust in vacuum.
In addition to providing hands‑on technical support, NASA also will assist Blue Origin’s test operations by providing dedicated workspace and sharing agency expertise and lessons learned from propulsion testing conducted at the test stand.
Blue Origin will work toward second stage rocket testing on a stand with a history of testing rocket stages for Moon missions dating back to the 1960s. The agency constructed the stand to test the Saturn V rocket stages that carried humans to the Moon during the Apollo Program. More recently, NASA conducted a Green Run test series of the SLS core stage on the stand before the Artemis I test flight.
For more information about NASA’s Artemis program, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
-end-
Camille Gallo / Cheryl WarnerHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1600camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov
Sallie BilboStennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi228-342-6512sallie.n.bilbo@nasa.gov

Source: NASA

NASA is working with industry to advance the next phase of cislunar infrastructure for the agency’s Artemis program and Moon Base, including orbital assets and demonstrations. Under a contract awarded to Advanced Space, the agency’s CAPSTONE 02 mission will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations, autonomous navigation, and cislunar communication capabilities while continuing to characterize the radiation environment at the Moon.  
The CAPSTONE 02 mission, targeted for launch in 2027, will use two small spacecraft in lunar orbit to facilitate these demonstrations to support future NASA lunar and deep space missions.  
NASA’s original CAPSTONE demonstration, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, became the first U.S. commercial mission to the Moon and the first spacecraft to operate in a near rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon. This is a nearly stable orbit, thanks to the interactive pull of gravity from both the Earth and the Moon.  
The mission successfully validated communications, networking, and autonomous navigation capabilities while gathering operational experience in cislunar space. The second CAPSTONE mission expands upon these accomplishments by transitioning from orbit validation to demonstrations that will inform future lunar exploration and infrastructure development. 

Christopher Baker
Lead of the In‑Space Infrastructure portfolio within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

NASA’s CAPSTONE 02 mission will demonstrate advanced relative navigation technologies for rendezvous and proximity operations in cislunar space. These techniques are more sophisticated than those used in low Earth orbit and are designed to support NASA astronauts as they dock with Moon landers in cislunar orbit, enabling safe crew transfers to and from the lunar surface. 
The demonstration will fly two identical spacecraft of approximately 400 kilograms (882 pounds) from Terran Orbital Systems, Inc. Mission operators will conduct a series of rendezvous and proximity operations and loitering – or formation flying – techniques in lunar orbit with each spacecraft to better understand the trajectories of the spacecraft under the simultaneous influence of Earth and Moon gravities, otherwise known as three-body orbits.   
The CAPSTONE 02 mission will use ground tracking measurements, optical sensors, and celestial bodies to help one spacecraft locate and rendezvous with another. The mission will apply  navigation strategies similar to those planned for Orion’s approach to a lunar lander in deep space, helping NASA build confidence in these techniques for future exploration. 
Each CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft will have the ability to switch between ‘chaser’ and ‘target’ roles, testing a broad range of operational scenarios under a variety of environmental conditions in cislunar space. Transporting crew to the lunar surface from cislunar orbit depends on knowing how well navigation systems will perform during these operations. Since these conditions can’t be fully recreated on Earth, they must be tested in space. 
The CAPSTONE 02 mission also will serve as an operational testbed, enabling testing of three NASA-developed navigation software suites. Each software application will collect data during CAPSTONE 02’s low energy transfer trajectory, which will take it from the Earth to beyond the Moon before settling into a lunar orbit. The spacecraft will carry an optical imaging payload from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to support the navigation demonstration as well as capture imagery of the Moon. In addition, the mission will further mature the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System navigation software that was first demonstrated on CAPSTONE as a method of determining spacecraft position relative to other spacecraft without relying on Earth-based tracking.  
The suite of technologies on CAPSTONE 02 are designed to automate routine navigation tasks, reduce reliance on traditional space-to-ground data, and enable new mission concepts that may be derived from increased inter-satellite coordination. Additionally, the CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft are designed for cost-effective, rapid deployment, demonstrating a scalable and repeatable mission model. 
“This mission represents an important step in the maturation of cislunar capabilities,” said Sean Fuller, Moon Base CAPSTONE manager. “By expanding on the lessons learned from CAPSTONE to demonstrate increasingly sophisticated operational concepts, CAPSTONE 02 lays the foundation for lunar infrastructure and commercial services that support Artemis, Moon Base, and future missions to deep space.”  
The CAPSTONE 02 mission is funded by NASA’s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate with support from the Research and Technology Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by Small Spacecraft & Distributed Systems, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate. NASA used a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract to fund the mission.  
To learn more about NASA’s CAPSTONE mission, visit: 

CAPSTONE 02

Source: NASA

From left, Expedition 74 flight engineers Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, and Anil Menon of NASA pose for a July 18, 2026, photo while holding a cake celebrating their recent arrival aboard the International Space Station. The trio arrived at the space station on July 14, 2026, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier the same day.
Kikina, Dubrov, and Menon are in the second week of their planned eight-and-a-half-month mission. They are using their new skills to conduct space research while still familiarizing themselves with living and working in space.
Keep up with space station activity on the International Space Station blog.
Image credit: NASA/Chris Williams