Feed aggregator

SpaceX's Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.

A comparison of the thylacine’s genome to other marsupials has revealed that the creatures lost genetic diversity long before humans and dingoes arrived in Australia

A comparison of the thylacine’s genome to other marsupials has revealed that the creatures lost genetic diversity long before humans and dingoes arrived in Australia

Sometimes even the sky surprises you.

At the core of the

What are those curved arcs in the sky?

What's hovering above the Sun?

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe lost contact with Earth for nearly a full day recently, but the problem was solved in time for its planned Aug. 31 Venus flyby.

3 Min Read Inside NASA’s New Orion Mission Evaluation Room for Artemis II 

As NASA’s Orion spacecraft is carrying crew around the Moon on the Artemis II mission, a team of expert engineers in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will be meticulously monitoring the spacecraft along its journey. They’ll be operating from a new space in the mission control complex built to host the Orion Mission Evaluation Room (MER). Through the success of Orion and the Artemis missions, NASA will return humanity to the Moon and prepare to land an American on the surface of Mars.

Inside the Mission Evaluation Room, dozens of engineers will be monitoring the spacecraft and collecting data, while the flight control team located in mission control’s White Flight Control Room is simultaneously operating and sending commands to Orion during the flight. The flight control team will rely on the engineering expertise of the evaluation room to help with unexpected spacecraft behaviors that may arise during the mission and help analyze Orion’s performance data.

The new Orion Mission Evaluation Room inside the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.NASA/Rad Sinyak

The Mission Evaluation Room team is made up of engineers from NASA, Lockheed Martin, ESA (European Space Agency), and Airbus who bring deep, expert knowledge of the spacecraft’s subsystems and functions to the mission. These functions are represented across 24 consoles, usually staffed by two engineers in their respective discipline, often hosting additional support personnel during planned dynamic phases of the mission or test objectives.

“The operations team is flying the spacecraft, but they are relying on the Mission Evaluation Room’s reachback engineering capability from the NASA, industry, and international Orion team that has designed, built, and tested this spacecraft.”

Trey PerrymAn

Lead for Orion Mission and Integration Systems at NASA Johnson

Perryman guides the Artemis II Orion Mission Evaluation Room alongside Jen Madsen, deputy manager for Orion’s Avionics, Power, and Software.

With crew aboard, Orion will put more systems to the test, requiring more expertise to monitor new systems not previously flown. To support these needs, and safe, successful flights of Orion to the Moon, NASA officially opened the all-new facility in mission control to host the Orion Mission Evaluation Room on Aug. 15.

The Orion Mission Evaluation Room team works during an Artemis II mission simulation on Aug. 19, 2025, from the new space inside the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.NASA/Rad Sinyak

During Artemis II, the evaluation room will operate in three daily shifts, beginning about 48 hours prior to liftoff. The room is staffed around the clock throughout the nearly 10 day mission, up until the spacecraft has been safely secured inside the U.S. Navy ship that will recover it after splashdown.

Another key function of the evaluation room is collecting and analyzing the large amount of data Orion will produce during the flight, which will help inform the room’s team on the spacecraft’s performance.

“Data collection is hugely significant,” Perryman said. “We’ll do an analysis and assessment of all the data we’ve collected, and compare it against what we were expecting from the spacecraft. While a lot of that data comparison will take place during the mission, we’ll also do deeper analysis after the mission is over to see what we learned.”

The Orion Mission Evaluation Room team works during an Artemis II mission simulation on Aug. 19, 2025, from the new space inside the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.NASA/Rad Sinyak

If unplanned situations arise during the mission, the Mission Evaluation Room has additional layers of ability to support any specific need that presents itself.  This includes various engineering support from different NASA centers, Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Test Lab, ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Center, and more.

“It’s been amazing to have helped design and build Orion from the beginning – and now, we’ll be able to see the culmination of all those years of work in this new Mission Evaluation Room."

Jen Madsen

Deputy Manager for Orion’s Avionics, Power, and Software

“We’ll see our spacecraft carrying our crew to the Moon on these screens and still be continuously learning about all of its capabilities,” said Madsen.

The Artemis II test flight will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen around the Moon and return them safely back home. This first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign will set the stage for NASA to return Americans to the lunar surface and help the agency and its commercial and international partners prepare for future human missions to Mars.

The Orion Mission Evaluation Room Team gathers for a group photo on Aug. 18, 2025.NASA/Josh Valcarcel Share

Details Last Updated Aug 26, 2025 Related Terms

• Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
• Artemis
• Artemis 2
• Johnson Space Center
• Johnson's Mission Control Center
• Orion Program

Explore More 3 min read Lindy Garay: Supporting Space Station Safety and Success Article 2 days ago 3 min read NASA Shares Final Contenders for Artemis II Moon Mascot Design Contest Article 4 days ago 5 min read NASA’s Bennu Samples Reveal Complex Origins, Dramatic Transformation

Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2020, is a mixture of dust that…

Article 4 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

Even if life never took hold on Ceres, the discovery could help broaden the range of environments that could potentially be habitable.

The rare sailback houndshark, which has an unusually large dorsal fin, was first described by scientists in 1973. That was the last record of its existence, until now

The rare sailback houndshark, which has an unusually large dorsal fin, was first described by scientists in 1973. That was the last record of its existence, until now

For the first time, astrophysicists have spotted a supernova right before it explodes. This is a rare glimpse inside a massive star before it meets its doom. The star was stripped down to its core, and the observations confirm theories that show stars have onion-like layers.

Now versions of the Great Filter argument had been around for decades (just like Fermi was not the first person to ask where everybody is), but the most comprehensive form of the argument comes from Robin Hanson in 1996.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the most powerful signals in the universe. They can emit as much power in a few milliseconds as our Sun does in several days. Despite their strength, we still don’t have a definitive answer to what causes them. That is partly because, at least for the ones that only happen once, they are really hard to point down. But a new extension to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) might provide the resolution needed to determine where non-repeating FRBs come from - and its first discovery was one of the brightest FRBs of all time, which helped researchers track it with an unprecedented level of precision, as described in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A new study led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in Barcelona presents a new method and protocol for detecting supernovae within days. Their findings are crucial to astronomers hoping to learn more about these powerful events and the life cycles of stars.

Scientists thought they had Jupiter figured out until NASA's Juno spacecraft peered inside our Solar System’s largest planet and discovered something completely unexpected. Jupiter doesn't have the solid, well defined core that researchers had imagined, instead, Jupiter's core is mysteriously fuzzy and blurred, defying everything we thought we knew about how giant planets form. Now, powerful computer simulations are overturning the leading theory about how this strange structure came to be, suggesting that Jupiter's secrets run deeper than anyone realised.