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3D-printing could make it easier to make large quantum computers
We may have 10 times less carbon storage capacity than we thought
We may have 10 times less carbon storage capacity than we thought
Queen ant makes males of another species for daughters to mate with
Queen ant makes males of another species for daughters to mate with
First map of mammal brain activity may have shown intuition in action
First map of mammal brain activity may have shown intuition in action
The futuristic new tech that could bridge broken nerves and mend minds
The futuristic new tech that could bridge broken nerves and mend minds
Thinning Arctic Sea Ice
Thinning Arctic Sea Ice
Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats in the ocean. This photo, taken from NASA’s Gulfstream V Research Aircraft on July 21, 2022, shows Arctic sea ice in the Lincoln Sea north of Greenland.
This image is the NASA Science Image of the Month for September 2025. Each month, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate chooses an image to feature, offering desktop wallpaper downloads, as well as links to related topics, activities, and games.
Text and image credit: NASA/Rachel Tilling
Thinning Arctic Sea Ice
Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats in the ocean. This photo, taken from NASA’s Gulfstream V Research Aircraft on July 21, 2022, shows Arctic sea ice in the Lincoln Sea north of Greenland.
This image is the NASA Science Image of the Month for September 2025. Each month, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate chooses an image to feature, offering desktop wallpaper downloads, as well as links to related topics, activities, and games.
Text and image credit: NASA/Rachel Tilling
Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge
The next era of lunar exploration demands a new kind of wheel – one that can sprint across razor-sharp regolith, shrug off extremely cold nights, and keep a rover rolling day after lunar day. The Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge seeks that breakthrough. If you can imagine a lightweight, compliant wheel that stays tough at higher speeds while carrying lots of cargo, your ideas could set the pace for surface missions to follow. For this phased Challenge, Phase 1 rewards the best concepts and analyses, Phase 2 funds prototypes, and Phase 3 puts the best wheels through a live obstacle course simulating the lunar terrain. Along the way, you’ll receive feedback from NASA mobility engineers and the chance to see your hardware pushed to its limits. In Phase 3, to prove concepts, NASA is using MicroChariot, a nimble, 45 kg test rover that will test the best designs from Phase 1 & Phase 2 at the Johnson Space Center Rockyard in Houston, Texas. Whether you’re a student team, a garage inventor, or a seasoned aerospace firm, this is your opportunity to rewrite the playbook of planetary mobility and leave tread marks on the future of exploration. Follow the challenge, assemble your crew, and roll out a solution that takes humanity back to the Moon.
Award: $155,000 in total prizes
Open Date: Phase 1 – August 28, 2025; Phase 2 – January 2026; Phase 3 – May 2026
Close Date: Phase 1 – November 4, 2025; Phase 2 – April 2026; Phase 3 – June 2026
For more information, visit: https://www.herox.com/NASARockandRoll
Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge
The next era of lunar exploration demands a new kind of wheel – one that can sprint across razor-sharp regolith, shrug off extremely cold nights, and keep a rover rolling day after lunar day. The Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge seeks that breakthrough. If you can imagine a lightweight, compliant wheel that stays tough at higher speeds while carrying lots of cargo, your ideas could set the pace for surface missions to follow. For this phased Challenge, Phase 1 rewards the best concepts and analyses, Phase 2 funds prototypes, and Phase 3 puts the best wheels through a live obstacle course simulating the lunar terrain. Along the way, you’ll receive feedback from NASA mobility engineers and the chance to see your hardware pushed to its limits. In Phase 3, to prove concepts, NASA is using MicroChariot, a nimble, 45 kg test rover that will test the best designs from Phase 1 & Phase 2 at the Johnson Space Center Rockyard in Houston, Texas. Whether you’re a student team, a garage inventor, or a seasoned aerospace firm, this is your opportunity to rewrite the playbook of planetary mobility and leave tread marks on the future of exploration. Follow the challenge, assemble your crew, and roll out a solution that takes humanity back to the Moon.
Award: $155,000 in total prizes
Open Date: Phase 1 – August 28, 2025; Phase 2 – January 2026; Phase 3 – May 2026
Close Date: Phase 1 – November 4, 2025; Phase 2 – April 2026; Phase 3 – June 2026
For more information, visit: https://www.herox.com/NASARockandRoll
Acting NASA Administrator Duffy Selects Exploration-Focused Associate Administrator
Acting NASA Administrator Sean P. Duffy Wednesday named Amit Kshatriya as the new associate administrator of NASA, the agency’s top civil service role.
A 20-year NASA veteran, Kshatriya was most recently the deputy in charge of the Moon to Mars Program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In this role, Kshatriya was responsible for program planning and implementation for crewed missions to the Moon through the Artemis campaign in preparation for humanity’s first mission to Mars.
Promoting Kshatriya to NASA’s top ranks puts America’s return to the Moon through Artemis at the very core of our agency. The move exemplifies President Donald J. Trump and Duffy’s seriousness about returning Americans to the Moon and before China.
“Amit has spent more than two decades as a dedicated public servant at NASA, working to advance American leadership in space. Under his leadership, the agency will chart a bold vision to return to the Moon during President Trump’s term,” said Duffy. “Amit’s knowledge, integrity, and unwavering commitment to pioneering a new era of exploration make him uniquely qualified to lead our agency as associate administrator. With Amit we’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Kshatriya’s promotion also signals how the Trump Administration sees the commercial space sector as an American economic engine. By putting a proven leader at the top, NASA is set to partner even more closely with America’s booming space industry, grow the space economy, and ensure the future of exploration is built in the United States.
Born in Wisconsin, educated at California Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin, Kshatriya is one of only about 100 people in history to serve as a mission control flight director. He brings unparalleled operational and strategic experience to NASA’s executive leadership team.
-end-
Bethany Stevens
Headquarters, Washington
771-216-2606
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov
Acting NASA Administrator Duffy Selects Exploration-Focused Associate Administrator
Acting NASA Administrator Sean P. Duffy Wednesday named Amit Kshatriya as the new associate administrator of NASA, the agency’s top civil service role.
A 20-year NASA veteran, Kshatriya was most recently the deputy in charge of the Moon to Mars Program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In this role, Kshatriya was responsible for program planning and implementation for crewed missions to the Moon through the Artemis campaign in preparation for humanity’s first mission to Mars.
Promoting Kshatriya to NASA’s top ranks puts America’s return to the Moon through Artemis at the very core of our agency. The move exemplifies President Donald J. Trump and Duffy’s seriousness about returning Americans to the Moon and before China.
“Amit has spent more than two decades as a dedicated public servant at NASA, working to advance American leadership in space. Under his leadership, the agency will chart a bold vision to return to the Moon during President Trump’s term,” said Duffy. “Amit’s knowledge, integrity, and unwavering commitment to pioneering a new era of exploration make him uniquely qualified to lead our agency as associate administrator. With Amit we’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Kshatriya’s promotion also signals how the Trump Administration sees the commercial space sector as an American economic engine. By putting a proven leader at the top, NASA is set to partner even more closely with America’s booming space industry, grow the space economy, and ensure the future of exploration is built in the United States.
Born in Wisconsin, educated at California Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin, Kshatriya is one of only about 100 people in history to serve as a mission control flight director. He brings unparalleled operational and strategic experience to NASA’s executive leadership team.
-end-
Bethany Stevens
Headquarters, Washington
771-216-2606
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov
What to Know about Hurricane Season and Forecast Accuracy
Hurricane forecast maps are more complex than they appear. Understanding them could change how you prepare for the next storm.
Live Video from the International Space Station (Seen From The NASA ISS Live Stream)
Ancient "Molten Rock Raindrops" Reveal When Jupiter Was Born
Hidden within meteorites that fall to Earth are tiny spheres that have puzzled scientists for decades. These mysterious droplets, called chondrules, are time capsules from the birth of our Solar Syste and now, a team from Japan and Italy have used them to pinpoint exactly when Jupiter formed, solving a long standing planetary mystery.
Juno Detected the Final Missing Auroral Signature from Jupiter’s Four Largest Moons
Jupiter hosts the brightest and most spectacular auroras in the Solar System. Near its poles, these shimmering lights offer a glimpse into how the planet interacts with the solar wind and moons swept by Jupiter’s magnetic field. Unlike Earth’s northern lights, the largest moons of Jupiter create their own auroral signatures in the planet’s atmosphere — a phenomenon that Earth’s Moon does not produce. These moon-induced auroras, known as “satellite footprints,” reveal how each moon interacts with its local space environment.
Juno capturing the marks on Jupiter of all four Galilean moons. The auroras related to each are labeled Io, Eur (for Europa), Gan (for Ganymede), and Cal (for Callisto). NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS team/MSSS/Gill/Jónsson/Perry/Hue/Rabia
Before NASA’s Juno mission, three of Jupiter’s four largest moons, known as Galilean moons — Io, Europa, and Ganymede — were shown to produce these distinct auroral signatures. But Callisto, the most distant of the Galilean moons, remained a mystery. Despite multiple attempts using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Callisto’s footprint had proven elusive, both because it is faint and because it most often lies atop the brighter main auroral oval, the region where auroras are displayed.
NASA’s Juno mission, orbiting Jupiter since 2016, offers unprecedented close-up views of these polar light shows. But to image Callisto’s footprint, the main auroral oval needs to move aside while the polar region is being imaged. And to bring to bear Juno’s arsenal of instruments studying fields and particles, the spacecraft’s trajectory must carry it across the magnetic field line linking Callisto and Jupiter.
These two events serendipitously occurred during Juno’s 22nd orbit of the giant planet, in September 2019, revealing Callisto’s auroral footprint and providing a sample of the particle population, electromagnetic waves, and magnetic fields associated with the interaction.
Jupiter’s magnetic field extends far beyond its major moons, carving out a vast region (magnetosphere) enveloped by, and buffeted by, the solar wind streaming from our Sun. Just as solar storms on Earth push the northern lights to more southern latitudes, Jupiter’s auroras are also affected by our Sun’s activity. In September 2019, a massive, high-density solar stream buffeted Jupiter’s magnetosphere, briefly revealing — as the auroral oval moved toward Jupiter’s equator — a faint but distinct signature associated with Callisto. This discovery finally confirms that all four Galilean moons leave their mark on Jupiter’s atmosphere, and that Callisto’s footprints are sustained much like those of its siblings, completing the family portrait of the Galilean moon auroral signatures.
An international team of scientists led by Jonas Rabia of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), CNRS, CNES, in Toulouse, France, published their paper on the discovery, “In situ and remote observations of the ultraviolet footprint of the moon Callisto by the Juno spacecraft,” in the journal Nature Communications on Sept. 1, 2025.
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