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A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu is spreading south along the Antarctic Peninsula and could devastate populations of penguins and other seabirds

Data sent to Earth by its MAPP moon rover on Intuitive Machines' ill-fated IM-2 mission will help Colorado company Lunar Outpost prepare for future lunar voyages.

This video sparkles with synthetic supernovae from the OpenUniverse project, which simulates observations from NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. More than a million exploding stars flare into visibility and then slowly fade away. The true brightness of each transient event has been magnified by a factor of 10,000 for visibility, and no background light has been added to the simulated images. The pattern of squares shows Roman’s full field of view.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and M. Troxel

The universe is ballooning outward at an ever-faster clip under the power of an unknown force dubbed dark energy. One of the major goals for NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is to help astronomers gather clues to the mystery. One team is setting the stage now to help astronomers prepare for this exciting science.

“Roman will scan the cosmos a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can while offering Hubble-like image quality,” said Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore county working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-principal investigator of the Supernova Cosmology Project Infrastructure Team preparing for the mission’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey. “We’re going to have an overwhelming amount of data, and we want to make it so scientists can use it from day one.”

Roman will repeatedly look at wide, deep regions of the sky in near-infrared light, opening up a whole new view of the universe and revealing all sorts of things going bump in the night. That includes stars being shredded as they pass too close to a black hole, intense emissions from galaxy centers, and a variety of stellar explosions called supernovae.

This data sonification transforms a vast simulation of a cosmic survey from NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into a symphony of stellar explosions. Each supernova’s brightness controls its volume, while its color sets its pitch –– redder, more distant supernovae correspond to deep, low tones while bluer, nearer ones correspond to higher frequencies. The sound in stereo mirrors their locations in the sky. The result sounds like celestial wind chimes, offering a way to “listen” to cosmic fireworks. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, M. Troxel, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Cosmic Radar Guns

Scientists estimate around half a dozen stars explode somewhere in the observable universe every minute. On average, one of them will be a special variety called type Ia that can help astronomers measure the universe.

These explosions peak at a similar intrinsic brightness, allowing scientists to find their distances simply by measuring how bright they appear.

Scientists can also study the light of these supernovae to find out how quickly they are moving away from us. By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time.

Using dozens of type Ia supernovae, scientists discovered that the universe’s expansion is accelerating. Roman will find tens of thousands, including very distant ones, offering more clues about the nature of dark energy and how it may have changed throughout the history of the universe.

“Roman’s near-infrared view will help us peer farther because more distant light is stretched, or reddened, as it travels across expanding space,” said Benjamin Rose, an assistant professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a co-principal investigator of the infrastructure team. “And opening a bigger window, so to speak, will help us get a better understanding of these objects as a whole,” which would allow scientists to learn more about dark energy. That could include discovering new physics, or figuring out the universe’s fate.

The People’s Telescope

Members of the planning team have been part of the community process to seek input from scientists worldwide on how the survey should be designed and how the analysis pipeline should work. Gathering public input in this way is unusual for a space telescope, but it’s essential for Roman because each large, deep observation will enable a wealth of science in addition to fulfilling the survey’s main goal of probing dark energy.

Rather than requiring that many individual scientists submit proposals to reserve their own slice of space telescope time, Roman’s major surveys will be coordinated openly, and all the data will become public right away.

“Instead of a single team pursuing one science goal, everyone will be able to comb through Roman’s data for a wide variety of purposes,” Rose said. “Everyone will get to play right away.”

This animation shows a possible tiling pattern of part of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey. The observing program, which is being designed by a community process, is expected to have two components: wide (covering 18 square degrees, a region of sky as large as about 90 full moons) and deep (covering about 5.5 square degrees, about as large as 25 full moons). This animation shows the deeper portion, which would peer back to when the universe was about 500 million years old, less than 4 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This Is a Drill

NASA plans to announce the survey design for Roman’s three core surveys, including the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, this spring. Then the planning team will simulate it in its entirety.

“It’s kind of like a recipe,” Hounsell said. “You put in your observing strategy — how many days, which filters — and add in ‘spices’ like uncertainties, calibration effects, and the things we don’t know so well about the instrument or supernovae themselves that would affect our results. We can inject supernovae into the synthetic images and develop the tools we’ll need to analyze and evaluate the data.”

Scientists will continue using the synthetic data even after Roman begins observing, tweaking all aspects of the simulation and correcting unknowns to see which resulting images best match real observations. Scientists can then fine-tune our understanding of the universe’s underlying physics.

“We assume that all supernovae are the same regardless of when they occurred in the history of the universe, but that might not be the case,” Hounsell said. “We’re going to look further back in time than we’ve ever done with type Ia supernovae, and we’re not completely sure if the physics we understand now will hold up.”

There are reasons to suspect they may not. The very first stars were made almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, compared to stars today which contain several dozen elements. Those ancient stars also lived in very different environments than stars today. Galaxies were growing and merging, and stars were forming at a furious pace before things began calming down between about 8 and 10 billion years ago.

“Roman will very dramatically add to our understanding of this cosmic era,” Rose said. “We’ll learn more about cosmic evolution and dark energy, and thanks to Roman’s large deep view, we’ll get to do much more science too with the same data. Our work will help everyone hit the ground running after Roman launches.”

For more information about the Roman Space Telescope visit www.nasa.gov/roman.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940

Explore More 7 min read NASA’s Roman and ESA’s Euclid Will Team Up To Investigate Dark Energy Article 2 years ago 7 min read NASA’s Roman Mission to Probe Cosmic Secrets Using Exploding Stars Article 4 years ago 4 min read NASA Successfully Joins Sunshade to Roman Observatory’s ‘Exoskeleton’ Article 4 weeks ago Share

Details Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms

• Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Dark Energy
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Stars
• The Universe

Help us uncover the secrets of the Sun! Our Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been watching the Sun since February 2020. With five years’ worth of data waiting to be explored, it’s time to dig in. The new ‘Solar Radio Burst Tracker’ Zooniverse project is ready for you.

In what might be a first in spaceflight history, the next crew to launch to the International Space Station has adopted a mission patch that began with ideas put forth by an AI.

The U.S. Space Force's X-37B spaceplane (which looks remarkably like a Space Shuttle that someone forgot to put the windows in!) completed its seventh mission this week, touching down at Vandenberg Space Force Base after 434 days in orbit. Although the mission is classified, Space Force officials, said that it followed a highly elliptical orbital path while conducting various tests and experiments. They also described the mission as operating "across orbital regimes,” whatever that means…is classified!

Animal emotions—including joy—may be key markers of conscious beings

Despite headlines, there were fewer food recalls in 2024 than in 2023, but more people died from food poisoning linked to outbreaks

Men who had given blood more than 100 times in their life were more likely to have blood cells carrying certain beneficial mutations, suggesting that donating blood promotes the growth of these cells

Men who had given blood more than 100 times in their life were more likely to have blood cells carrying certain beneficial mutations, suggesting that donating blood promotes the growth of these cells

A paper published in 2023 spurred discussion about whether life exists on an exoplanet named K2-18b. Two years later, the puzzle continues — and some scientists are expressing doubt.

Astronomers know the Flame Nebula well—a stellar nursery around 1,400 light years away. It’s less than a million years old and is teeming with brown dwarfs, objects that never quite accumulated enough mass to begin fusing elements in their core. When comparing the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) infrared observations with Hubble's visible light images of the Flame Nebula, the difference is, ahem - astronomical! The infrared wavelengths penetrate the obscuring gas and dust, revealing clusters where young stars and brown dwarfs are taking shape.

Video: 00:02:43

On 12 March 2025 ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence performs a flyby of Mars. The gravity of the red planet shifts the spacecraft’s trajectory towards the Didymos binary asteroid system, shortening its trip by months and saving substantial fuel.

This is a simulation of that flyby, with closest approach to Martian moon Deimos taking place at 12:07 GMT and Mars occurring at 12:51 GMT. It was made using SPICE (Spacecraft, Planet, Instrument, C-matrix, Events) software. Produced by a team at ESA’s ESAC European Space Astronomy Centre, this SPICE visualisation is used to plan instrument acquisitions during Hera’s flyby.

Hera comes to around 5000 km from the surface of Mars during its flyby. It will also image Deimos, the smaller of Mars’s two moons, from a minimum 1000 km away (while venturing as close as 300 km). Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon Phobos as it begins to move away from Mars. In this sped-up simulation, Deimos is seen 30 seconds in, at 12:07 GMT, while the more distant star-like Phobos becomes visible at two minutes in, at 12:49 GMT.

The spacecraft employs three of its instruments over the course of these close encounters, all located together on the ‘Asteroid Deck’ on top of Hera:

Hera’s Asteroid Framing Camera is formed of two redundant 1020x1020 pixel monochromatic visible light cameras, used for both navigation and science.

The Thermal Infrared Imager, supplied by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, images at mid-infrared wavelengths to determine surface temperatures.

Hera’s Hyperscout H is a hyperspectral imager, observing in 25 visible and near-infrared spectral bands to prospect surface minerals.

Did you know this mission has its own AI? You can pose questions to our Hera Space Companion!

A dramatic total lunar eclipse will turn the moon blood red for millions across North America overnight on March 13-14. Here are the best times to watch the show unfold.

3 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA / Lillian Gipson

NASA has selected three university teams to help solve 21st century aviation challenges that could transform the skies above our communities. 

As part of NASA’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI), both graduate and undergraduate students on faculty-led university teams will contribute directly to real-world flight research while gaining hands-on experience working with partners from other universities and industry. 

By combining faculty expertise, student innovation, and industry experience, these three teams will advance NASA’s vision for the future of 21st century aviation.

koushik datta

NASA Project Manager

This is NASA’s eighth round of annual ULI awards. Research topics include: 

• New aviation systems for safer, more efficient flight operations  

• Improved communications frequency usage for more effective and reliable information transfer 

• Autonomous flight capabilities that could advance research in areas such as NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission 

“By combining faculty expertise, student innovation, and industry experience, these three teams will advance NASA’s vision for the future of 21st century aviation,” said Koushik Datta, NASA University Innovation project manager at the Agency’s Ames Research Center in California. 

This eighth round of annual ULI selections would lead to awards totaling up to $20.7 million for the three teams during the next three years. For each team, the proposing university will serve as lead. The new ULI selections are: 

Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida 

The team will create a framework for developing trustworthy increasingly autonomous aviation safety systems, such as those that could potentially employ artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

Team members include: The Pennsylvania State University in University Park; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro; University of Florida in Gainesville; Stanford University in California; Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico; and the companies Collins Aerospace of Charlotte in North Carolina; and ResilienX of Syracuse, New York. 

University of Colorado Boulder 

This team will investigate tools for understanding and leveraging the complex communications environment of collaborative, autonomous airspace systems.  

Team members include: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; The University of Texas at El Paso; University of Colorado in Colorado Springs; Stanford University in California; University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis, North Carolina State University in Raleigh; University of California inSanta Barbara; El Paso Community College in Texas; Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina; the Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensing research partnership; the company Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company, in Manassas, Virginia; and the nonprofit Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida 

This team will research continuously updating, self-diagnostic vehicle health management to enhance the safety and reliability of Advanced Air Mobility vehicles.  

Team members include: Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; The University of Texas at Arlington; University of Southern California in Los Angeles; the company Collins Aerospace of Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Argonne National Laboratory. 

NASA’s ULI is managed by the agency’s University Innovation project, which also includes the University Student Research Challenge and the Gateways to Blue Skies competition.

Watch the NASA Aeronautics solicitations page for the announcement of when the next opportunity will be to submit a proposal for consideration during the next round of ULI selections. 

About the AuthorJohn GouldAeronautics Research Mission Directorate

John Gould is a member of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications team at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. He is dedicated to public service and NASA’s leading role in scientific exploration. Prior to working for NASA Aeronautics, he was a spaceflight historian and writer, having a lifelong passion for space and aviation.

Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 5 min read NASA’s Chevron Technology Quiets the Skies Article 5 hours ago 2 min read NASA Marks 110 Years Since Founding of Predecessor Organization Article 1 week ago 3 min read NASA’s X-59 Completes Electromagnetic Testing Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA

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Details Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactSteven Holzsteven.m.holz@nasa.gov Related Terms

• University Leadership Initiative
• Aeronautics
• Flight Innovation
• For Colleges & Universities
• Transformative Aeronautics Concepts Program
• University Innovation

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission has successfully touched down on the lunar surface and is now undertaking various experiments. Two of these experiments have been captured on video; the first is the LISTER drill, capable of penetrating the lunar regolith to depths of up to 3 meters. It will provide scientists with data to measure the Moon's cooling rate. Additionally, footage has been obtained of the PlanetVac experiment, which is evaluating regolith sample collection methods under the Moon's vacuum conditions.

Why does this Moon look so unusual?

5 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Artist’s concept of drones flying in an urban environment near large city skyscrapers.NASA / Maria Werries

Remotely piloted aircraft could transform the way we transport people and goods and provide our communities with better access to vital services, like medical supply deliveries and efficient transportation. 

NASA’s Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) subproject is working with partners to safely integrate remote air cargo and air taxi aircraft into our national airspace alongside traditional crewed aircraft.

These new types of vehicles could make air cargo deliveries and air travel more affordable and accessible to communities across the country.  

The Need

The United States large air cargo fleet is expected to grow significantly through 2044 to meet cargo demand, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

However, pilot shortages exacerbated by early retirements and crew reductions implemented during the coronavirus outbreak continue to present a challenge to the air cargo industry.  

In the future, one pilot could potentially manage multiple aircraft remotely. This could help meet the rising demand for air cargo operations, mitigate pilot shortages and costs, and increase the number of daily air cargo deliveries.

Additionally, remotely piloted air taxis could reduce travel time for passengers and alleviate traffic congestion because they could avoid crowded roads and highways.  

Identifying the Technical Challenges 

Commercial companies are investing in autonomous technologies to enable remote air cargo deliveries and air taxi operations.

NASA is working with the industry along the way to identify the unique technical challenges that must be overcome to safely put these new types of aircraft into routine operation.  

The agency has identified several challenges that need to be addressed for safe and scalable remote operations. Among these challenges are airspace integration, avoiding airborne and ground-based hazards, and resilient communication technologies. 

The main difference between conventional crewed aircraft and remotely piloted aircraft is the location of the pilot. Remote pilots operate aircraft from a control station on the ground instead of the cockpit.

This means remote pilots will need new automation and decision support systems for operating the aircraft since they can’t rely on their eyes and view from the cockpit. Since remote pilots are on the ground, they need a reliable communications link that allows remote pilots to interact with the aircraft and maintain command and control.

If the command-and-control capabilities are lost, an autonomous system would need to take over to make sure the uncrewed aircraft can fly and land safely, according to NASA researchers. Adequate software and procedures must be in place to safely manage off-nominal losses of the command-and-control capabilities.

Air Traffic Control may help keep the uncrewed aircraft’s path clear from some traffic during takeoff and landing, while onboard automation technologies would need to avoid all other traffic, fly the aircraft along a known path, and check to ensure the runway is clear to land.  

A significant related challenge is that pilots are typically responsible for looking out the window for nearby aircraft and remaining well clear of them. Since the remote pilot is not in the aircraft, they will need an electronic detect and avoid system. 

Detect and avoid systems rely on information, sensors, and algorithms to help the remotely piloted aircraft remain clear of other aircraft. Some detect and avoid configurations are expected to use ground surveillance systems for detecting nearby air traffic at lower altitudes.

These systems could improve overall situational awareness of traffic near the airport by providing a more comprehensive picture of live traffic. 

Additionally, automation and decision support tools could help remote pilots with other responsibilities that typically require pilot decisions from the cockpit, like integrating with traffic at non-towered airports.  

Implementing Solutions 

To address these challenges and others, NASA researchers are working with industry partners to research and test technologies, concepts, and airspace procedures that will enable remotely piloted operations.  

For example, industry is developing automated taxi, takeoff, and landing capabilities to help integrate remotely piloted aircraft operating at busy airports.

These technologies could enable aircraft to navigate and integrate with other airport traffic autonomously, following standard routes and air traffic control commands for safe sequencing and spacing between other aircraft. 

Automated hazard detection would enable the aircraft to identify potential conflicts or hazards and take corrective actions without input from a remote pilot. This would ensure the aircraft safely navigates the airport environment even if the remote pilot is supervising multiple aircraft or their response is delayed. 

NASA researchers are beginning to test emerging technologies for remotely piloted aircraft operations with commercial partners. The goal is to help mature technical standards and assist in the development of certification requirements anrtd procedures required to integrate remotely piloted operations into the airspace.  

NASA aims to bridge technical and regulatory gaps through these industry partnerships involving research, testing, and development. Ultimately, NASA hopes to enable pilots to remotely fly multiple large aircraft to airports across the country at once, more efficiently transporting people and goods.

This could enable carriers to meet rising air travel and transport demands in a safe, affordable, scalable way and expand access to new communities. 

PAAV is a subproject under NASA’s Air Traffic Management Exploration project within the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

Facebook logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Instagram logo @NASA@NASAaero@NASA_es Linkedin logo @NASA Explore More 4 min read NASA Kicks off Testing Campaign for Remotely Piloted Cargo Flights Article 2 months ago 2 min read NASA Flight Rerouting Tool Curbs Delays, Emissions Article 3 months ago 3 min read NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality Article 3 months ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA

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Details Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 EditorJim BankeContactHillary Smithhillary.smith@nasa.gov Related Terms

• Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles
• Air Traffic Management – Exploration

3 Min Read NASA, Partners to Conduct Space Station Research During Expedition 73 NASA

NASA astronauts are gearing up for a scientific mission aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 73 NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will launch in March as part of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will join the crew when he launches aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in April alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.

Read more about some of the microgravity research planned by NASA and its partners:

Subjects for human research NASA

Astronauts often serve as test subjects, submitting blood and other samples for research. NASA astronaut Anne McClain is pictured submitting a sample on a previous mission with assistance from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut David Saint-Jacques. McClain will participate in NASA’s Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research investigation, or CIPHER, a suite of integrated studies on physiological and psychological changes seen in space. Results could provide valuable insights for future deep space missions.

Testing lunar navigation NASA

The Expedition 73 astronauts plan to engage with students worldwide through the ISS Ham Radio program. Researchers are using the program’s hardware to test software for the Navigation and Communication Testbed (NAVCOM), which could help shape future lunar navigation. Researchers from the investigation recently launched a related study to the Moon aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost to help bridge existing Earth navigation with emerging lunar-specific solutions.

Advancing fire safety  NASA

Expedition 73 is scheduled to conduct a Material Ignition and Suppression Test (SoFIE-MIST), testing material flammability in microgravity. This research could improve fire safety on future missions, contributing to models used to select materials for space facilities and helping to determine the best ways to extinguish fires in space.

Keeping blood flowing Angelo Taibi/ASI

Expedition 73 crew members will participate in Drain Brain 2.0, which examines how blood flows from the brain to the heart in microgravity using this plethysmograph, a device that can record the volume of blood drainage from the skull. Results could identify which processes in the body compensate for the lack of gravity, helping to ensure proper blood flow for astronauts on future missions and people with cardiovascular issues on Earth.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology, and human innovation that enables research not possible on Earth. For more than 24 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, through which astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for developing a low Earth economy and NASA’s next great leaps in exploration, including missions to the Moon under Artemis and, ultimately, human exploration of Mars. 

Learn more about the International Space Station, its research, and its crew, at: 

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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Space Station Research and Technology

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Space Station Research Results

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Details Last Updated Mar 11, 2025 Related Terms

• ISS Research
• International Space Station (ISS)

Scientists are warning of potentially severe environmental impacts after a cargo ship collided with a tanker transporting jet fuel