Curiosity Sends a Postcard From Mount Sharp’s Boxwork Region (News Release)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day on November 18, 2025, spanning periods that occurred on both the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission. The panoramas were captured at 4:15 p.m. on Sol 4,722 and 8:20 a.m. on Sol 4,723 (both at local Mars time), then merged together. Color was later added for an artistic interpretation of the scene with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one.
The resulting “postcard” is similar to ones that the rover took in June 2023 and November 2021. Adding color to these kinds of merged images helps different details stand out in the landscape.
The scene captured in this postcard shows Curiosity at the top of a ridge referred to as a boxwork formation. These formations crisscross a region in the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain which Curiosity has been climbing since 2014.
Curiosity used the drill on the end of its robotic arm to collect a rock sample from the top of this ridge at a spot nicknamed “Nevado Sajama.” This view looks north across the boxwork formations and downslope of Mount Sharp towards the floor of Gale Crater, a vast impact crater that the mountain is located within. The crater’s rim can be seen far in the distant horizon, approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) away.
Wheel tracks are visible in the hollow behind Curiosity, where a sample was also drilled at a spot nicknamed “Valle de la Luna.”
The boxwork formations are believed to have been created billions of years ago when water on ancient Mars dripped through rock cracks, carrying minerals with them. The minerals hardened after the water dried up; eons later, wind sandblasted the softer rock around these hardened minerals, exposing the ridges that Curiosity is exploring today. These ridges may reveal more about the planet’s watery past.
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
NASA Works MAVEN Spacecraft Issue Ahead of Solar Conjunction (News Release)
NASA is continuing efforts to recontact its MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, which was last heard from on December 6. In partnership with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), the MAVEN team has sent commands for spacecraft recovery and is monitoring the network for a spacecraft signal.
The MAVEN team also continues to analyze tracking data fragments recovered from a December 6 radio science campaign. This information is being used to create a timeline of possible events and identify likely root cause of the issue. As part of that effort, on December 16 and 20, NASA’s Curiosity team used the rover’s Mastcam instrument in an attempt to image MAVEN’s reference orbit, but MAVEN was not detected.
Additional analysis will continue, but planned monitoring will be affected by the upcoming solar conjunction.
Mars solar conjunction – a period when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun – begins on Monday, December 29, and NASA will not have contact with any Mars mission until Friday, January 16. Once the solar conjunction window is over, NASA plans to resume its efforts to reestablish communications with MAVEN.
NRL / NASA / JHUAPL. Movie processed / compiled by Guillermo Stenborg (JHUAPL)
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Observes Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS (News Release)
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS from October 18 to November 5, 2025, with its WISPR (Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument. The spacecraft snapped around 10 images of the comet per day. During this period, Parker Solar Probe was speeding away from the Sun following its 25th solar flyby on September 15.
In these initial images — which still need to go through final calibration and processing — the comet can be seen heading behind the Sun from Parker’s point of view. At the time, the comet was near its closest point to the Sun, at a distance of about 130 million miles, placing it just outside the orbit of Mars. The images offer a valuable look at the comet over a period when it couldn’t be seen from Earth because it appeared too close to the Sun from Earth’s perspective.
The WISPR team is continuing to process the data to remove stray sunlight and compensate for exposure times, which differed between the images, causing the comet to appear as if it changed brightness. The final images will ultimately help scientists better study this interstellar visitor.
Comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, in July. It is the third known object originating from outside our Solar System discovered passing through our solar neighborhood. Comet 3I/ATLAS was also seen by other NASA heliophysics missions including PUNCH, STEREO and SOHO.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completes 26th Closest Approach to Sun (News Release)
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its 26th close approach to the Sun on December 13, again matching its record distance of 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the solar surface.
The spacecraft checked in with flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland — where Parker Solar Probe was also designed and built — Thursday, transmitting a beacon tone indicating that its systems were operating normally. The spacecraft was out of contact with Earth and operating autonomously during the close approach.
The spacecraft also equaled its record-setting speed of 430,000 mph (687,000 kph) — a mark that, like the distance, was set and subsequently matched during close approaches on December 24, 2024; March 22; June 19; and September 16. Parker Solar Probe will remain in this orbit around the Sun and continue making observations. The next steps for the mission in late 2026 and beyond are formally under NASA review.
During this solar encounter from December 8 through December 18, Parker’s four scientific instrument packages gathered data from inside the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona. The flyby, as the fifth at this distance and speed, is allowing the spacecraft to conduct unrivaled measurements of the solar wind and solar activity while the Sun is in an active phase of its 11-year cycle.
Parker will begin returning detailed telemetry on its status on Friday, December 19, with science data transmission for this solar encounter set to start on Thursday, January 15, 2026. Parker’s observations of the solar wind and solar events, such as coronal mass ejections and the aftermaths of flares, are critical to advancing humankind’s understanding of the Sun and the phenomena that drive high-energy space weather events that pose risks to astronauts, satellites, air travel, and even power grids on Earth. Understanding the fundamental physics of space weather enables more reliable prediction of astronaut safety during future deep-space missions to the Moon and Mars.
Parker Solar Probe was developed as a part of NASA’s Living With a Star (LWS) program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The LWS program is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL manages Parker Solar Probe for NASA and designed, built and operates the mission.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Ready to Roll for Miles in Years Ahead (News Release)
After nearly five years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has traveled almost 25 miles (40 kilometers), and the mission team has been busy testing the rover’s durability and gathering new science findings on the way to a new region nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” where it will be searching for rocks to sample in the coming year.
Like its predecessor Curiosity, which has been exploring a different region of Mars since 2012, Perseverance was made for the long haul. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built Perseverance and leads the mission, has continued testing the rover’s parts here on Earth to make sure the six-wheeled scientist will be strong for years to come. This past summer, JPL certified that the rotary actuators that turn the rover’s wheels can perform optimally for at least another 37 miles (60 kilometers); comparable brake testing is underway as well.
Over the past two years, engineers have extensively evaluated nearly all of the vehicle’s subsystems in this way, concluding that they can operate until at least 2031.
“These tests show the rover is in excellent shape,” said Perseverance’s deputy project manager, Steve Lee of JPL, who presented the results on Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, the largest gathering of planetary scientists in the United States. “All the systems are fully capable of supporting a very long-term mission to extensively explore this fascinating region of Mars.”
Perseverance has been driving through Mars’ Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river system, where it has been collecting scientifically compelling rock core samples. In fact, in September, the team announced that a sample from a rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” contains a potential fingerprint of past microbial life.
More efficient roving
In addition to a hefty suite of six science instruments, Perseverance packs more autonomous capabilities than past rovers. A paper published recently in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics highlights an autonomous planning tool called Enhanced Autonomous Navigation, or ENav. The software looks up to 50 feet (15 meters) ahead for potential hazards, then chooses a path without obstacles and tells Perseverance’s wheels how to steer there.
Engineers at JPL meticulously plan each day of the rover’s activities on Mars. But once the rover starts driving, it’s on its own and sometimes has to react to unexpected obstacles in the terrain. Past rovers could do this to some degree, but not if these obstacles were clustered near each other.
Past rovers also couldn’t react as far in advance, resulting in the vehicles driving slower while approaching sand pits, rocks and ledges. In contrast, ENav’s algorithm evaluates each rover wheel independently against the elevation of terrain, trade-offs between different routes, and “keep-in” or “keep-out” areas marked by human operators for the path ahead.
“More than 90% of Perseverance’s journey has relied on autonomous driving, making it possible to quickly collect a diverse range of samples,” said JPL autonomy researcher Hiro Ono, a paper lead author. “As humans go to the Moon and even Mars in the future, long-range autonomous driving will become more critical to exploring these worlds.”
New science
A paper published Wednesday in Science details what Perseverance discovered in the “Margin Unit,” a geologic area at the margin, or inner edge, of Jezero Crater. The rover collected three samples from that region. Scientists think that these samples may be particularly useful for showing how ancient rocks from Mars’ deep interior interacted with water and the atmosphere, helping create conditions supportive for life.
From September 2023 to November 2024, Perseverance ascended 1,312 feet (400 meters) of the Margin Unit, studying rocks along the way — especially those containing the mineral olivine. Scientists use minerals as timekeepers because crystals within them can record details about the precise moment and conditions in which they formed.
Jezero Crater and the surrounding area holds large reserves of olivine, which forms at high temperatures, typically deep within a planet, and offers a snapshot of what was going on in the planet’s interior. Scientists think the Margin Unit’s olivine was made in an intrusion, a process where magma pushes into underground layers and cools into igneous rock. In this case, erosion later exposed that rock to the surface, where it could interact with water from the crater’s ancient lake and carbon dioxide, which was abundant in the planet’s early atmosphere.
Those interactions form new minerals called carbonates, which can preserve signs of past life, along with clues as to how Mars’ atmosphere changed over time.
“This combination of olivine and carbonate was a major factor in the choice to land at Jezero Crater,” said the new paper’s lead author, Perseverance science team member Ken Williford of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle. “These minerals are powerful recorders of planetary evolution and the potential for life.”
Together, the olivine and carbonates record the interplay between rock, water and atmosphere inside the crater, including how each changed over time. The Margin Unit’s olivine appeared to have been altered by water at the base of the unit, where it would have been submerged. But the higher Perseverance went, the more the olivine bore textures associated with magma chambers, like crystallization, and fewer signs of water alteration.
As Perseverance leaves the Margin Unit behind for Lac de Charmes, the team will have the chance to collect new olivine-rich samples and compare the differences between the two areas.
NASA JPL Shakes Things Up Testing Future Commercial Lunar Spacecraft (News Release)
As Firefly Aerospace prepares to follow its successful soft landing on the Moon, an engineering model for its next lander is being put through its paces.
The same historic facilities that some 50 years ago prepared NASA’s twin Voyager probes for their ongoing interstellar odyssey are helping to ready a towering commercial spacecraft for a journey to the Moon. Launches involve brutal shaking and astonishingly loud noises, and testing in these facilities mimics those conditions to help ensure that mission hardware can survive the ordeal. The latest spacecraft to get this treatment are Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 2 vehicles, set to launch to the Moon’s far side next year.
The Environmental Test Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California is where dozens of robotic spacecraft have been subjected to powerful jolts, extended rattling, high-decibel blasts of sound, and frigid and scorching temperatures, among other trials. Constructed in the 1960s and modernized over the years, the facilities have prepared every NASA spacecraft built or assembled at JPL for the rigors of space, from the Ranger spacecraft of the dawning Space Age to the Perseverance Mars rover to Europa Clipper, currently en route to the Jupiter system.
That legacy, and the decades of accumulated experience of the Environmental Test Laboratory team at JPL, is also supporting industry efforts to return to the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and its Artemis campaign, which will bring astronauts back to the lunar surface.
In recent months, a full-scale model of Firefly’s uncrewed Blue Ghost Mission 2 spacecraft was put through its paces by the experts in the lab’s vibration and acoustic testing facilities. Lessons learned with this model, called a structural qualification unit, will be applied to upcoming testing of the spacecraft that will fly to the Moon as early as 2026 through NASA’s CLPS.
“There’s a lot of knowledge gained over the years, passed from one generation of JPL engineers to another, that we bring to bear to support our own missions as well as commercial efforts,” said Michel William, a JPL engineer in the Environmental Test Laboratory who led the testing. “The little details that go into getting these tests right — nobody teaches you that in school, and it’s such a critical piece of space launch.”
Testing just right
The Environmental Test Laboratory team led environmental testing for Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander in 2024, and seeing the spacecraft achieve a soft Moon landing in March was a point of pride for them. Firefly’s next CLPS delivery debuts a dual-spacecraft configuration and hosts multiple international payloads, with the company’s Elytra Dark orbital vehicle stacked below the Blue Ghost lunar lander. Standing 22 feet (6.9 meters) high, the full structure is more than three times as tall as the Mission 1 lander.
This fall, a structural qualification model of the full stack was clamped to a “shaker table” inside a clean room at JPL and repeatedly rattled in three directions while hundreds of sensors monitored the rapid movement. Then, inside a separate acoustic testing chamber, giant horns blared at it from openings built into the room’s 16-inch-thick (41-centimeter-thick) concrete walls. The horns use compressed nitrogen gas to pummel spacecraft with up to 153 decibels, noise loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss in a human.
Each type of test involves several increasingly intense iterations. Between rounds, JPL’s dynamics environment experts analyze the data to compare what the spacecraft experienced to computer model predictions. Sometimes a discrepancy leads to hardware modifications, sometimes a tweak to the computer model. Engineers and technicians are careful to push the hardware, but not too far.
“You can either under-test or over-test, and both are bad,” William said. “If you over-test, you can break your hardware. If you under-test, it can break on the rocket. It’s a fine line.”
Since the model isn’t itself launching to the Moon, Firefly’s recent Environmental Test Laboratory visit didn’t include several types of trials that are generally completed only for flight hardware. A launch pad-bound spacecraft would undergo electromagnetic testing to ensure that signals from its electronic parts don’t interfere with one another. And, in what is probably the most well-known environmental test, flight-bound hardware is baked or chilled at extreme temperatures in a thermal vacuum chamber from which all of the air is sucked out.
The multiple thermal vacuum chamber facilities at JPL include two large historic “space simulators” built within NASA’s first few years of existence: a chamber that’s 10 feet in diameter and another that’s 25 feet across.
Qualifying for launch
The completion of Environmental Test Laboratory testing on Firefly’s structural qualification model helps prove that the spacecraft will survive its ride out of Earth’s atmosphere aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 2 team is now turning its focus to completing assembly and testing of the flight hardware for launch.
Once at the Moon, the Blue Ghost lander will touch down on the far side, delivering its payloads to the surface. Those include LuSEE-Night, a radio telescope that is a joint effort by NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. A payload developed at JPL called User Terminal will test a compact, low-cost S-band radio communications system that could enable future far-side missions to talk to each other and to relay orbiters.
Meantime, Firefly’s Elytra Dark orbital vehicle will have deployed into lunar orbit ESA’s (European Space Agency’s)Lunar Pathfinder communications satellite — a payload on which NASA is collaborating. Both vehicles will remain in orbit and able to relay data from the far-side surface back to Earth.
“Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 2 will deliver both NASA and international commercial payloads to further prove out technologies for Artemis and help enable a long-term presence on the Moon,” said Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s spacecraft program director. “The extensive spacecraft environmental testing we did at JPL for Mission 1 was a critical step in Firefly’s test campaign for our historic lunar mission. Now we’re collaborating again to support a successful repeat on the Moon that will unlock even more insights for future robotic and human missions.”
NASA Continues MAVEN Spacecraft Recontact Efforts (News Release)
NASA’s MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission team, in partnership with the agency’s Deep Space Network, continues recovery activities after losing contact with the spacecraft on December 6. To date, attempts to reestablish contact with the spacecraft have not been successful.
Although no spacecraft telemetry has been received since December 4, the team recovered a brief fragment of tracking data from December 6 as part of an ongoing radio science campaign. Analysis of that signal suggests that the MAVEN spacecraft was rotating in an unexpected manner when it emerged from behind Mars. Further, the frequency of the tracking signal suggests MAVEN’s orbit trajectory may have changed.
The team continues to analyze tracking data to understand the most likely scenarios leading to the loss of signal. Efforts to reestablish contact with MAVEN also continue.
NASA is also working to mitigate the effect of the MAVEN anomaly on surface operations for NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers. Four orbiters at Mars, including MAVEN, relay communications to and from the surface to support rover operations. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s)ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter all remain operational.
For the next two weeks of scheduled surface operations, NASA is arranging additional passes from the remaining orbiters, and the Perseverance and Curiosity teams have adjusted their daily planning activities to continue their science missions.
Just thought I'd commemorate the fact that today marks 25 years since I took my Geology 104 lab exam at Cal State Long Beach. Today was a turning point in how I would view my remaining years in college after I spent one last class with Yenny (who I called 'Denise' in my Blog for how many years after that); giving her a Christmas card and us exchanging e-mail addresses that would lead to 2001 being one of the most painful years of my life.
Anyways, click on this Blog Entry to read what I originally posted about this day a quarter century ago. Have a nice Saturday!
So how much did this guy pay Boba Fett to bring Han Solo's carbonite-encased body back to his palace on Tatooine? Trump's new nickname should be Pedo the Hutt.
🚨 BREAKING: Oversight Dems received 95,000 new photos from Jeffrey Epstein's estate. These disturbing images raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world.
NASA Teams Work MAVEN Spacecraft Signal Loss (News Release)
NASA’s MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, in orbit around Mars, experienced a loss of signal with ground stations on Earth on December 6. Telemetry from MAVEN had showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind the Red Planet. After the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.
The spacecraft and operations teams are investigating the anomaly to address the situation. More information will be shared once it becomes available.
The MAVEN spacecraft launched in November 2013 and entered Mars’ orbit in September 2014. The mission’s goal is to explore the planet’s upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind to explore the loss of the Martian atmosphere to space. Understanding atmospheric loss gives scientists insight into the history of the Red Planet’s atmosphere and climate, liquid water and planetary habitability.
MAVEN also serves as a communications relay station for rovers on the Martian surface. Last year, the spacecraft celebrated its 10th anniversary in orbit at Mars.
NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Revisits Interstellar Comet (News Release - December 4)
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reobserved interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on November 30, with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. At the time, the comet was about 178 million miles (286 million kilometers) from Earth.
Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky. As a result, background stars appear as streaks of light.
Hubble previously observed 3I/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and a number of NASA missions have since studied the comet as well. Observations are expected to continue for several more months as 3I/ATLAS heads out of the Solar System.
NASA Completes Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Construction (News Release)
NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On November 25, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered—piece by piece, test by test—an observatory that will expand our understanding of the Universe. As Roman moves into its final stage of testing following integration, we are focused on executing with precision and preparing for a successful launch on behalf of the global scientific community.”
After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will send the observatory to its final destination a million miles from Earth.
“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the Universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”
Observing from space will make Roman very sensitive to infrared light — light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see — from far across the cosmos. Pairing its crisp infrared vision with a sweeping view of space will allow astronomers to explore myriad cosmic topics, from dark matter and dark energy to distant worlds and solitary black holes, and conduct research that would take hundreds of years using other telescopes.
“Within our lifetimes, a great mystery has arisen about the cosmos: why the expansion of the Universe seems to be accelerating. There is something fundamental about space and time we don’t yet understand, and Roman was built to discover what it is,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With Roman now standing as a complete observatory, which keeps the mission on track for a potentially early launch, we are a major step closer to understanding the Universe as never before. I couldn’t be prouder of the teams that have gotten us to this point.”
Double vision
Roman is equipped with two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument and Coronagraph Instrument technology demonstration.
The coronagraph will demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from distant stars and make it easier for scientists to see the faint light from planets in orbit around them. The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
“The question of ‘Are we alone?’ is a big one, and it’s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it,” said Feng Zhao, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman.”
The coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for three months spread across the mission’s first year-and-a-half of operations, after which the mission may conduct additional observations based on scientific community input.
The Wide Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel camera that will unveil the cosmos all the way from our Solar System to near the edge of the observable Universe. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon. The mission will gather data hundreds of times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, adding up to 20,000 terabytes (20 petabytes) over the course of its five-year primary mission.
“The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,” said Dominic Benford, Roman’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
Survey trifecta
Using the Wide Field Instrument, Roman will conduct three core surveys which will account for 75% of the primary mission. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will combine the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of space and time. Astronomers will trace the evolution of the Universe to probe dark matter — invisible matter detectable only by how its gravity affects things we can see — and trace the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters over time.
The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will probe our dynamic Universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly. Stitching these observations together to create movies will allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years. That will help astronomers study dark energy — the mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the Universe’s expansion — and could even uncover entirely new phenomena that we don’t yet know to look for.
Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals — gravitational boosts of a background star’s light caused by the gravity of an intervening object. While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including worlds like every planet in our Solar System except Mercury.
Microlensing will also reveal rogue planets—worlds that roam the galaxy untethered to a star — and isolated black holes. The same dataset will reveal 100,000 worlds that transit, or pass in front of, their host stars.
The remaining 25% of Roman’s five-year primary mission will be dedicated to other observations that will be determined with input from the broader scientific community. The first such program, called the Galactic Plane Survey, has already been selected.
Because Roman’s observations will enable such a wide range of science, the mission will have a General Investigator Program designed to support astronomers to reveal scientific discoveries using Roman data. As part of NASA’s commitment to Gold Standard Science, NASA will make all of Roman’s data publicly available with no exclusive use period. This ensures that multiple scientists and teams can use data at the same time, which is important since every Roman observation will address a wealth of science cases.
Roman’s namesake — Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer — made it her personal mission to make cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.
“The mission will acquire enormous quantities of astronomical imagery that will permit scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come, honoring Dr. Roman’s legacy in promoting scientific tools for the broader community,” said Jackie Townsend, Roman’s deputy project manager at NASA Goddard. “I like to think Dr. Roman would be extremely proud of her namesake telescope and thrilled to see what mysteries it will uncover in the coming years.”
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 in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, 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.
NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona / Dan Gallagher
Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples (News Release)
The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early Solar System and the origins of life. As part of the ongoing study of pristine samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx(Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft, three new papers published Tuesday by the journals Nature Geoscience and Nature Astronomy present remarkable discoveries: sugars essential for biology, a gum-like substance not seen before in astromaterials, and an unexpectedly high abundance of dust produced by supernova explosions.
Sugars essential to life
Scientists led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan found sugars essential for biology on Earth in the Bennu samples, detailing their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience. The five-carbon sugar ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, six-carbon glucose were found. Although these sugars are not evidence of life, their detection, along with previous detections of amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids in Bennu samples, show that building blocks of biological molecules were widespread throughout the Solar System.
For life on Earth, the sugars deoxyribose and ribose are key building blocks of DNA and RNA, respectively. DNA is the primary carrier of genetic information in cells. RNA performs numerous functions, and life as we know it could not exist without it.
Ribose in RNA is used in the molecule’s sugar-phosphate “backbone” that connects a string of information-carrying nucleobases. “All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said Furukawa. “The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”
The discovery of ribose in asteroid samples is not a complete surprise. Ribose has previously been found in two meteorites recovered on Earth. What is important about the Bennu samples is that researchers did not find deoxyribose.
If Bennu is any indication, this means that ribose may have been more common than deoxyribose in environments of the early Solar System. Researchers think the presence of ribose and lack of deoxyribose supports the “RNA world” hypothesis, where the first forms of life relied on RNA as the primary molecule to store information and to drive chemical reactions necessary for survival.
“Present day life is based on a complex system organized primarily by three types of functional biopolymers: DNA, RNA, and proteins,” explains Furukawa. “However, early life may have been simpler. RNA is the leading candidate for the first functional biopolymer because it can store genetic information and catalyze many biological reactions.”
The Bennu samples also contained one of the most common forms of “food” (or energy) used by life on Earth, the sugar glucose, which is the first evidence that an important energy source for life as we know it was also present in the early Solar System.
Mysterious, ancient ‘gum’
A second paper, in the journal Nature Astronomy led by Scott Sandford at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, Berkeley, reveals a gum-like material in the Bennu samples never seen before in space rocks – something that could have helped set the stage on Earth for the ingredients of life to emerge. The surprising substance was likely formed in the early days of the Solar System, as Bennu’s young parent asteroid warmed.
Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth, and finding them in the pristine samples from Bennu is important for scientists studying how life began and whether it exists beyond our planet.
Bennu’s ancestral asteroid formed from materials in the solar nebula – the rotating cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to the Solar System – and contained a variety of minerals and ices. As the asteroid began to warm, due to natural radiation, a compound called carbamate formed through a process involving ammonia and carbon dioxide. Carbamate is water soluble, but it survived long enough to polymerize, reacting with itself and other molecules to form larger and more complex chains impervious to water.
The carbamate process suggests that it formed before the parent body warmed enough to become a watery environment.
“With this strange substance, we’re looking at, quite possibly, one of the earliest alterations of materials that occurred in this rock,” said Sandford. “On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the Solar System, we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.”
Using an infrared microscope, Sandford’s team selected unusual, carbon-rich grains containing abundant nitrogen and oxygen. They then began what Sandford calls “blacksmithing at the molecular level,” using the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California. Applying ultra-thin layers of platinum, they reinforced a particle, welded on a tungsten needle to lift the tiny grain, and shaved the fragment down using a focused beam of charged particles.
When the particle was a thousand times thinner than a human hair, they analyzed its composition via electron microscopy at the Molecular Foundry and X-ray spectroscopy at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. The ALS’s high-spatial resolution and sensitive X-ray beams enabled unprecedented chemical analysis.
“We knew we had something remarkable the instant the images started to appear on the monitor,” said Gainsforth. “It was like nothing we had ever seen, and for months we were consumed by data and theories as we attempted to understand just what it was and how it could have come into existence.”
The team conducted a slew of experiments to examine the material’s characteristics. As the details emerged, the evidence suggested that the strange substance had been deposited in layers on grains of ice and minerals present in the asteroid.
It was also flexible – a pliable material, similar to used gum or even a soft plastic. Indeed, during their work with the samples, researchers noticed that the strange material was bendy and dimpled when pressure was applied. The stuff was translucent, and exposure to radiation made it brittle, like a lawn chair left too many seasons in the Sun.
“Looking at its chemical makeup, we see the same kinds of chemical groups that occur in polyurethane on Earth,” said Sandford, “making this material from Bennu something akin to a ‘space plastic.’”
The ancient asteroid stuff isn’t simply polyurethane, though, which is an orderly polymer. This one has more “random, hodgepodge connections and a composition of elements that differs from particle to particle,” said Sandford. But the comparison underscores the surprising nature of the organic material discovered in NASA’s asteroid samples, and the research team aims to study more of it.
By pursuing clues about what went on long ago, deep inside an asteroid, scientists can better understand the young Solar System – revealing the precursors to and ingredients of life that it already contained, and how far those raw materials may have been scattered, thanks to asteroids much like Bennu.
Abundant supernova dust
Another paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, led by Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, analyzed presolar grains – dust from stars predating our Solar System – found in two different rock types in the Bennu samples to learn more about where its parent body formed and how it was altered by geologic processes. It is believed that presolar dust was generally well-mixed as our Solar System formed. The samples had six-times the amount of supernova dust than any other studied astromaterial, suggesting the asteroid’s parent body formed in a region of the protoplanetary disk enriched in the dust of dying stars.
The study also reveals that, while Bennu’s parent asteroid experienced extensive alteration by fluids, there are still pockets of less-altered materials within the samples that offer insights into its origin.
“These fragments retain a higher abundance of organic matter and presolar silicate grains, which are known to be easily destroyed by aqueous alteration in asteroids,” said Nguyen. “Their preservation in the Bennu samples was a surprise and illustrates that some material escaped alteration in the parent body. Our study reveals the diversity of presolar materials that the parent accreted as it was forming.”
NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX Spacecraft Slingshots Past Earth (News Release)
At 1:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, September 23, NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX(Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Apophis Explorer) spacecraft flew within 2,136 miles (3,438 kilometers) of Earth.
During approach and as OSIRIS-APEX passed Earth, it looked home, capturing images and data of our home planet to help calibrate its science instruments.
During the spacecraft’s primary mission, the StowCam instrument was used to verify that the capsule full of sample from asteroid Bennu was safely stowed and prepared to journey back to Earth. Now, StowCam provides a view of the instrument panel, including the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter, provided by CSA (Canadian Space Agency) to create detailed 3D topographical maps of Bennu.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-APEX. Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing.
Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft. International partnerships on this mission include the spacecraft’s laser altimeter instrument from CSA.
OSIRIS-APEX (previously named OSIRIS-REx) is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
NASA’s Mars-bound ESCAPADE Mission Captures First ‘Selfies’ (News Release)
About a week after its launch, NASA’s ESCAPADE(Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission has already captured its first images: a pair of self-portraits showing part of the spacecraft as the twin explorers speed away from Earth.
On November 21, one of the two ESCAPADE spacecraft used its Visible and Infrared Observation System (VISIONS) cameras, provided by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, to capture these images, showing part of a solar panel on the spacecraft.
The images prove that the cameras are working well. The visible-light image also suggests that the spacecraft should have the sensitivity to image Martian aurora from orbit. The infrared camera will be used at Mars to better understand how materials on the surface heat up and cool down during Mars’ day-night cycle and over the planet’s seasons.
The second ESCAPADE spacecraft also successfully took its first photos, but it was targeted towards deep space, so the images were simply black.
The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab and ultimately bound for Mars, launched on November 13 aboard a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Once the ESCAPADE spacecraft reach Mars, they will study how a million-mile-per-hour stream of material flowing from the Sun, known as the solar wind, interacts with the Martian environment and how that drives atmospheric loss at the Red Planet.
Before they head for Mars, though, the two spacecraft are following a “loiter” or “Earth-proximity” orbit around a location in space about a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2. In November 2026, they will return to Earth to use our planet’s gravity to slingshot their way to Mars. They will arrive at the Red Planet in September 2027.
One week ago, we launched our second New Glenn mission. Today, "Never Tell Me The Odds" is back at LC-36 for refurbishment to prepare for its next flight! pic.twitter.com/1FxeStoeSB
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells ‘Spiraling’ Apep, Limits Long Orbit (News Release - November 19)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding beyond the next in precisely the same pattern. (The fourth is almost transparent, at the edges of Webb’s image.) Observations taken prior to Webb only detected one shell, and while the existence of outer shells was hypothesized, searches using ground-based telescopes were unable to uncover any. These shells were emitted over the last 700 years by two aging Wolf-Rayet stars in a system known as Apep, a nod to the Egyptian god of chaos.
Webb’s image combined with several years of data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile narrowed down how often the pair swing by one another: once every 190 years. Over each incredibly long orbit, they pass closely for 25 years and form dust.
Webb also confirmed that there are three stars gravitationally bound to one another in this system. The dust ejected by the two Wolf-Rayet stars is “slashed” by a third star, a massive supergiant, which carves holes into each expanding cloud of dust from its wider orbit. (All three stars are shown as a single bright point of light in Webb’s image.)
“Looking at Webb’s new observations was like walking into a dark room and switching on the light — everything came into view,” said Yinuo Han, the lead author of a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal and postdoctoral researcher at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “There is dust everywhere in Webb’s image, and the telescope shows that most of it was cast off in repetitive, predictable structures.” Han’s paper coincides with the publication of Ryan White’s paper in The Astrophysical Journal, a PhD student at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
Han, White, and their co-authors refined the Wolf-Rayet stars’ orbit by combining precise measurements of the ring location from Webb’s image with the speed of the shells’ expansion from observations taken by the VLT over eight years.
“This is a one-of-a-kind system with an incredibly rare orbital period,” White said. “The next longest orbit for a dusty Wolf-Rayet binary is about 30 years. Most have orbits between two and 10 years.”
When the two Wolf-Rayet stars approach and pass one another, their strong stellar winds collide and mix, forming and casting out heaps of carbon-rich dust for a quarter century at a time. In similar systems, dust is shot out over mere months, like the shells in Wolf-Rayet 140.
High-speed ‘skirmish’
The dust-producing Wolf-Rayet stars in Apep aren’t exactly on a tranquil cruise. They are whipping through space and sending out dust at 1,200 to 2,000 miles per second (2,000 to 3,000 kilometers per second).
That dust is also very dense. The specific makeup of the dust is another reason why Webb was able to observe so much more: It largely consists of amorphous carbon. “Carbon dust grains retain a higher temperature even as they coast far away from the star,” Han said.
While the exceptionally tiny dust grains are considered warm in space, the light they emit is also extremely faint, which is why it can only be detected from space by Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument).
Slicing dust
To find the holes that the third star has cut like a knife through the dust, look for the central point of light and trace a V shape from about 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock. “The cavity is more or less in the same place in each shell and looks like a funnel,” White said.
“I was shocked when I saw the updated calculations play out in our simulations,” he said. “Webb gave us the ‘smoking gun’ to prove the third star is gravitationally bound to this system.” Researchers have known about the third star since the VLT observed the brightest innermost shell and the stars in 2018, but Webb’s observations led to an updated geometric model, clinching the connection.
“We solved several mysteries with Webb,” Han said. “The remaining mystery is the precise distance to the stars from Earth, which will require future observations.”
Future of Apep
The two Wolf-Rayet stars were initially more massive than their supergiant companion, but have shed most of their mass. It’s likely that both Wolf-Rayet stars are between 10 and 20 times the mass of the Sun, and that the supergiant is 40 or 50 times as massive compared to the Sun.
Eventually, the Wolf-Rayet stars will explode as supernovae, quickly sending their contents into space. Either may also emit a gamma-ray burst, one of the most powerful events in the Universe, before possibly becoming a black hole.
Wolf-Rayet stars are incredibly rare in the Universe. Only a thousand are estimated to exist in our Milky Way galaxy, which contains hundreds of billions of stars overall. Of the few hundred Wolf-Rayet binaries that have been observed to date, Apep is the only example that contains two Wolf-Rayet stars of these types in our galaxy — most only have one.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our Solar System, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our Universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
View Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Through NASA’s Multiple Lenses (News Release)
NASA is in the midst of an unprecedented Solar System-wide observation campaign, turning its spacecraft and space telescopes to follow comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System. Twelve NASA assets have captured and processed imagery of the comet since it was first discovered on July 1, and several others will have opportunities to capture more images as the comet continues to pass through our Solar System.
By observing the comet from so many locations, NASA has an opportunity to learn about the ways that 3I/ATLAS differs from our Solar System’s home-grown comets and give scientists a new window into how the compositions of other systems may differ from our own.
Observations from Mars
The closest imagery of the comet was taken by NASA spacecraft at Mars. Earlier this fall, 3I/ATLAS passed by Mars from a distance of 19 million miles, where it was observed by three NASA spacecraft. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO) captured one of the closest images of the comet, while the MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter obtained ultraviolet images that will help scientists understand the comet’s make-up.
Meanwhile, the Perseverance rover grabbed a faint glimpse from the surface of Mars.
Sun watchers’ view
Some of NASA’s heliophysics missions have the unique ability to observe areas of the sky near the Sun, which allowed them to track comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed behind our Sun as seen from Earth, making observations with ground-based telescopes impossible. NASA’s STEREO(Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) captured images from September 11 to October 2, and the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA mission SOHO(Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) observed the comet from October 15 to 26. Images from NASA’s PUNCH(Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which launched earlier this year, reveal the comet’s tail during observations from September 20 to October 3.
Despite previously observing and discovering thousands of comets, this is the first time that NASA’s heliophysics missions have purposefully observed an object originating in another solar system.
Asteroid explorers
NASA’s Psyche and Lucy spacecraft, currently on their respective outbound journeys to study various asteroid targets throughout the Solar System, were able to observe 3I/ATLAS en route. On September 8 and 9, Psyche acquired four observations of the comet over eight hours from a distance of 33 million miles. These images will help scientists refine the comet’s trajectory.
On September 16, Lucy took a series of images from 240 million miles away. Stacking these images together provides detail on the comet’s coma and tail.
The NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope in Chile discovered 3I/ATLAS on July 1. Later that month it was viewed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In August, both NASA’s James Webb Telescope and SPHEREx(Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) captured imagery.
Comet 3I/ATLAS will fly closest to Earth about Friday, December 19, at 170 million miles, which is almost twice the distance between the Earth and Sun. NASA spacecraft will continue to observe the comet as it makes its journey through the Solar System, passing the orbit of Jupiter in spring 2026.
ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)
The Red Spider Nebula, Caught by Webb (News Release)
This new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features a cosmic creepy-crawly called NGC 6537 — the Red Spider Nebula. Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), Webb has revealed never-before-seen details in this picturesque planetary nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars.
Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula form when ordinary stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives. After ballooning into cool red giants, these stars shed their outer layers and cast them into space, exposing their white-hot cores. Ultraviolet light from the central star ionises the cast-off material, causing it to glow.
The planetary nebula phase of a star’s life is as fleeting as it is beautiful, lasting only a few tens of thousands of years.
The central star of the Red Spider Nebula is visible in this image, glowing just brighter than the webs of dusty gas that surround it. The surprising nature of the nebula’s tremendously hot and luminous central star has been revealed by Webb’s NIRCam. In optical-wavelength images, such as from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the star appears faint and blue.
But in the NIRCam images, it shows up as red; thanks to its sensitive near-infrared capabilities, Webb has revealed a shroud of hot dust surrounding the central star. This hot dust likely orbits the central star, in a disc structure.
Though only a single star is visible in the Red Spider’s heart, a hidden companion star may lurk there as well. A stellar companion could explain the nebula’s shape, including its characteristic narrow waist and wide outflows. This hourglass shape is seen in other planetary nebulae such as the Butterfly Nebula, which Webb also recently observed.
Webb’s new view of the Red Spider Nebula reveals for the first time the full extent of the nebula’s outstretched lobes, which form the ‘legs’ of the spider. These lobes, shown in blue, are traced by light emitted from H2 molecules, which contain two hydrogen atoms bonded together. Stretching over the entirety of NIRCam’s field of view, these lobes are shown to be closed, bubble-like structures that each extend about 3 light-years.
Outflowing gas from the centre of the nebula has inflated these massive bubbles over thousands of years.
Gas is also actively jetting out from the nebula’s centre, as these new Webb observations show. An elongated purple ‘S’ shape centred on the heart of the nebula follows the light from ionised iron atoms. This feature marks where a fast-moving jet has emerged from near the nebula’s central star and collided with material that was previously cast away by the star, sculpting the rippling structure of the nebula seen today.
The observations used to create this image come from Webb GO programme #4571(PI: J. Kastner) as part of a joint Chandra-JWST observing programme, which aims to understand how bipolar planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula are shaped by the outflows and jets that emerge from the stars at their cores.
New Glenn Launches NASA’s ESCAPADE, Lands Fully-Reusable Booster (News Release)
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. — The New Glenn orbital launch vehicle successfully completed its second mission, deploying NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers(ESCAPADE) twin spacecraft into the designated loiter orbit, and landing the fully-reusable first stage on Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean.
New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines ignited on Thursday, November 13, 2025, at 3:55:01 PM EST / 20:55:01 UTC from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin. “It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds had perfect odds—never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”
The ESCAPADE spacecraft will begin their journey to Mars once the planets have returned to the ideal alignment in fall 2026. ESCAPADE will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. In addition to deploying the NASA spacecraft, the Viasat HaloNet demonstration onboard New Glenn’s second stage successfully executed the first flight test of Viasat’s telemetry data relay service for NASA’s Communications Services Project.
“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley and all of our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE," said the acting NASA Administrator, Secretary Sean Duffy. "This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet, and how solar eruptions affect the Martian surface. Every launch of New Glenn provides data that will be essential when we launch MK-1 through Artemis.”
New Glenn is foundational to advancing our customers’ critical missions and our own. The vehicle underpins our efforts to establish sustained human presence on the Moon, harness in-space resources, provide multi-mission, multi-orbit mobility through Blue Ring, and establish destinations in low-Earth orbit.
The New Glenn program has several vehicles in production and multiple years of orders. In addition to NASA and Viasat, customers include Amazon’s Project Kuiper, AST SpaceMobile, and several telecommunications providers, among others. The mission marked the vehicle’s second National Security Space Launch (NSSL) certification flight.
Blue Origin is certifying New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the NSSL program to meet emerging national security objectives.
"Today was a tremendous achievement for the New Glenn team, opening a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we look to launch, land, repeat, again and again," said Jordan Charles, Vice President, New Glenn. "We've made significant progress on manufacturing at rate and building ahead of need. Our primary focus remains focused on increasing our cadence and working through our manifest."
Even though the Los Angeles Times was one day late in publishing coverage for Game 7 of the World Series in its newspaper (just like what happened last year), that didn't stop me from adhering to a tradition started in mid-2000 (when Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant won their first NBA title with the Lakers) and displaying today's Dodgers-celebrating printed edition on my wall at home!
Yesterday, I woke up at 4:00 in the morning to buy the L.A. Times paper—at a 7-Eleven over 15 miles from my house. The donut shop that I went to last year no longer carries the L.A. Times (only a Chinese newspaper that costs $1.00 per copy), and another 7-Eleven that I was planning to buy the commemorative edition from didn't have the paper delivered yet...supposedly (7-Eleven clerks are giving me the impression that they don't tell the truth). There were, I think, four copies of today's L.A. Times left at the 7-Eleven I eventually went to.
And in case you're wondering— no, I didn't go to today's championship parade in downtown Los Angeles. This is the second straight Dodgers celebration that I couldn't attend because I had a doctor's appointment in the late afternoon. I definitely intend on going to the parade if they manage to three-peat next year!
Over a year after they beat the New York Yankees in five games to win their second World Series championship since 2020, the Los Angeles Dodgers were once again at the top of the baseball world when they defeated the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-4, in a thrilling Game 7 tonight!
The Dodgers' victory is the first time in 25 years since a Major League Baseball team won back-to-back titles...the last time being when the Yankees were able to three-peat from 1998 to 2000. This is also the first time since 2009 that an MLB team reached the Fall Classic in two consecutive years—with the Philadelphia Phillies winning against the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 but losing to the Yankees the following year. The Dodgers are also the first team to clinch back-to-back World Series championships on the road since the Cincinnati Reds pulled off the feat in 1975 and '76, respectively!
In regards to team stats, Mookie Betts now has four rings...from the 2018, 2020, 2024 and this year's World Series, respectively. Clayton Kershaw enters retirement as a 3-time World Series champion, while Shohei Ohtani went from winning zero titles during his six years with the Anaheim—err, Los Angeles Angels to securing two championships in his first two seasons in the City of Angels. And last but not least, Yoshinobu Yamamoto—who was given a $325 million contract to play with the Dodgers (and earned it by pitching two complete games this postseason, and was able to secure L.A.'s victory in the last three innings of Game 7)—is the 2025 World Series Most Valuable Player!
(Yamamoto is the second Japanese-born baseball player, behind the Yankees' designated hitter Hideki Matsui in 2009, to become a World Series MVP.)
The Dodgers' championship parade will take place in downtown Los Angeles this Monday. Assuming that Mark Walter (who officially owns the Los Angeles Lakers as well) and Co. keep dishin' out the money to get topnotch talent (like pitchers Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow...who both played on the Rays when they lost to the Dodgers in 2020) to play at Chavez Ravine, then Dodgers fans can expect more celebrations in the years to come.
