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The Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and his two cosmonaut colleagues arrived at the International Space Station early Tuesday morning (April 8).

In the early universe, primordial black holes could acquire a "dark charge," giving them an unnaturally long lifetime, new research suggests. This makes them an interesting candidate for dark matter.

Image: Smile meets Maxwell

A Navy SEAL, medical doctor and NASA astronaut lifted off for an eight-month stay on the International Space Station — and that was just one of the three crewmates on Soyuz MS-27.

Mercury pollution accumulating in trees could offer a new way to monitor destructive gold mining operations

Mercury pollution accumulating in trees could offer a new way to monitor destructive gold mining operations

A never-before-flown SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit today (April 7) from the coast of California.

Physicists think the insides of black holes may be complex mazes of tangled strings in higher dimensions

A fresh analysis of a decade's worth of Hubble Space Telescope observations shows Uranus takes 17 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds to complete a full rotation — 28 seconds longer than the estimate provided by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft nearly 40 years ago.

Astronomers have discovered a remarkable star system just 150 light-years from Earth that's destined for a spectacular cosmic display. The system contains a white dwarf star drawing material from its companion star, with the pair orbiting at just 1/60th of the Earth-Sun distance. With their combined mass reaching 1.56 times that of our Sun, these stars are gradually spiralling toward each other, setting the stage for a spectacular explosion. Fortunately, scientists estimate this cataclysmic event won't occur for roughly 23 billion years, long after our own Sun will have reached the end of its life cycle.

India's POEM-4 experiment module burned up and fell into the Indian Ocean to avoid becoming space debris.

The U.S. Space Force has awarded $13.7 billion in national-security launch contracts to SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin for missions that will lift off between 2027 and 2032.

Since joining NASA in 2017 as a contractor supporting the International Space Station, Caroline Cawthon has held many roles supporting real-time operations as a certified flight controller, team lead, and lead systems engineer.  

Caroline Cawthon’s official NASA portrait. NASA is one of the biggest most impressive networks of engineering, science, and space program expertise in the world and to not leverage that experience in mentorship would be a waste.

Caroline Cawthon

CLDP Engineering and Integration Lead

Now, she is supporting America’s future in orbit as the systems engineering and integration lead for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program engineering technical authority. Cawthon supports the program’s chief engineer office. In this position, she plays a key role in the oversight of phase 1 partner requirements and processes as part of the program’s two-phase approach to support the development of commercial space stations. 

Growing up in military and NASA communities, Cawthon was fascinated with aviation and aerospace from a young age and aspired to become a fighter pilot and engineer. She first met an astronaut while attending Space Camp at the Euro Space Center in Belgium, sparking her interest in human spaceflight and solidifying her goals to work for NASA, make an impact, and be a part of making history. She later earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical and materials engineering and her master’s degree in aeronautics and space systems. 

Cawthon attending Space Camp as a child at the Euro Space Center in Belgium. Image courtesy of Caroline Cawthon

Cawthon describes the best part of her day as the people she works with, and her passionate and mission-driven team reminds her that the mission she’s working toward will make a difference in the future of human spaceflight.

“Between the program, engineering team, and our industry partners, there are thousands of years of experience with human spaceflight that I get to leverage every day to learn and grow in my role and to help NASA accomplish our mission,” shared Cawthon. 

A recent example of this mission-driven teamwork was the development of the program’s technical standards design evaluation document. As the lead for this task, Cawthon was proud of how everyone’s hard work and contributions came together. 

The biggest lesson Cawthon has learned while working with NASA is to continue being curious, learning, and growing both personally and professionally.  

“NASA is one of the biggest most impressive networks of engineering, science, and space program expertise in the world and to not leverage that experience in mentorship would be a waste,” Cawthon said. 

Cawthon pictured with her husband and daughter. Image courtesy of Caroline Cawthon

Outside of work, Cawthon enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and daughter. She and her family also like to be on the road, exploring new places and meeting new people. They enjoy international travel and small weekend adventures like the local zoo and aquarium.  

Learn more about NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at:

Commercial Space Stations

Credit: NASA

NASA has selected ARES Technical Services of McLean, Virginia, to provide safety and mission assurance services at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The Safety and Mission Assurance Services III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with an estimated total value of $226 million. The contract will have a five-year effective ordering period starting on June 1, 2025, with an optional six-month extension period.

Under the contract, the vendor will provide support to the agency’s Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate at NASA Goddard. This includes performing independent surveillance, audits, reviews, and assessments of design, development, test, and mission operations activities on site at NASA and supplier facilities.

For information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov

Jacob Richmond
Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland
301-286-6255
jacob.a.richmond@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Apr 07, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Wallops Flight Facility

2 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA uses radio frequency (RF) for a variety of tasks in space, including communications. The Europa Clipper RF panel — the box with the copper wiring near the top — will send data carried by radio waves through the spacecraft between the electronics and eight antennas. Credit: NASA

Even before we’re aware of heart trouble or related health issues, our bodies give off warning signs in the form of vibrations. Technology to detect these signals has ranged from electrodes and patches to watches. Now, an innovative wall-mounted technology is capable of monitoring vital signs. Advanced TeleSensors Inc. developed the Cardi/o Monitor with an exclusive license from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 

Over the course of five years, NASA engineers created a small, inexpensive, contactless device to measure vital signs, a challenging task partly because monitoring heart rate requires picking out motions of about one three-thousandth of an inch, which are easily swamped by other movement in the environment.  

By the late 1990s, hardware and computing technology could meet the challenge, and the NASA JPL team created a prototype the size of a thick textbook. It would emit a radio beam toward a stationary person, working similarly to a radar, and algorithms differentiated cardiac and respiratory activity from the “noise” of other movements.  

When Sajol Ghoshal, now CEO of Austin, Texas-based Advanced TeleSensors, participated in a demonstration of the prototype, he saw the potential for in-home monitoring. By then, developing an affordable device was possible due to the miniaturization of sensors and computing technology.  

The Cardi/o vital sign monitor uses NASA-developed technology to continually monitor vital signs. The data collected can be sent directly to medical care providers, cutting down on the number of home healthcare visits. Credit: Advanced TeleSensors Inc.

The Cardi/o Monitor is 3 inches square and mounts to a ceiling or wall. It can detect vital signs from up to 10 feet. Multiple devices can be scattered throughout a house, with a smartphone app controlling settings and displaying all data on a single dashboard. The algorithms NASA developed detect heartbeat and respiration, and the company added heart rate variability detection that indicates stress and sleep apnea.  

If there’s an anomaly, such as a dramatic heart rate increase, an alert in the app calls attention to the situation. Up to six months of data is stored in a secure cloud, making it accessible to healthcare providers. This limits the need for regular in-person visits, which is particularly important for conditions such as infectious diseases, which can put medical professionals and other patients at risk.  

Through the commercialization of this life-preserving technology, NASA is at the heart of advancing health solutions.  

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Details Last Updated Apr 07, 2025 Related Terms

• Technology Transfer & Spinoffs
• Spinoffs
• Technology Transfer

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Although astronomers have ruled out a smash-up between Earth and an asteroid known as 2024 YR4 in the year 2032, the building-sized space rock still has a chance of hitting the moon. In fact, the chances — slight as they are — have doubled in the past month.

Colossal Biosciences claims three pups born recently are dire wolves, but they are actually grey wolves with genetic edits intended to make them resemble the lost species