It has now been 25 years since 2,977 innocent people were killed by 19 terrorists on one of the darkest days in America's history. We continue to honor them...even as the United States faces new kinds of challenges and threats, most of them homegrown, to our 250-year-old democracy today.
The World Trade Centers fell... The Pentagon was damaged... 40 souls (not including the four cowardly hijackers on that flight) were lost in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But heroes emerged at all three sites of tragedy on that fateful day in 2001.
Never Forget.
If you were young in 2001, or weren’t even born yet, it can be hard to imagine what 9/11 felt like. The shock of that beautiful, cloudless morning. The heartbreak of the families whose loved ones were taken with such swiftness and cruelty. The realization that the forces of…
Twenty-five years ago today, we lost 2,977 souls and in the years since, thousands more to illnesses caused by the attack on our country.
This morning, Jill and I hold close the families who carry that loss every day. We honor the heroes of September 11th: the firefighters and… https://t.co/r7NJSS5kJb
25 years have passed since September 11, 2001. A generation has grown up in the years since, but our responsibility to remember has not changed.
We remember the people who went to work that morning and never came home, and we remember the families who have carried their memories… pic.twitter.com/mINuTlwQk2
25 years ago, terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people, including 2,753 New Yorkers.
As we remember that terrible day, let us also remember the first responders, office workers and strangers who ran toward danger to help each other. Let us remember the extraordinary compassion,… pic.twitter.com/AO4RFEOZA2
Check out this latest episode of Hot Ones Versus by the First We Feast channel...featuring a hilarious faceoff between Obsession's Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston!
This video had lots of funny moments between the duo—from Johnston needing to bring up the fact that he was "a quarter Mexican" after lightheartedly picking on Navarrette's Latino yearning for hot and spicy foods, namely hot Cheetos (she jokingly called upon the Mexican community to 'cancel' Johnston for his insolence), to the "horror charades" game at the end where Inde excitedly guessed that the correct answer to Michael's question was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This Hot Ones Versus episode had some heartwarming revelations as well...such as the fact that Inde always picked up the phone whenever Michael called her, even though she's now "booked and busy" with such upcoming projects as Marvel Studios' 2028 X-Men movie and a sci-fi thriller called The Waffle House Index. Also, Navarrette made Johnston blush after genuinely saying that she would never replace him with another actor to play Bear in Obsession—even if she was offered $10 million to do so. Michael responded in kind that he couldn't picture anyone else to portray Freaky Nikki in Curry Barker's hit horror film.
Anyways, view the episode below before I end up spoiling more moments in it! Just one more question: Did Inde secretly intend on making Michael look like Joaquin Phoenix's Joker when she drew on his face? Watch Hot Ones Versus now!
BepiColombo Begins Mercury Arrival with MTM Separation Success (News Release - September 7)
On 3 September 2026 at 15:49 CEST, the European Space Agency's BepiColombo Mission Control Team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) received the signal they had been waiting for – BepiColombo’s Mercury Transfer Module(MTM) successfully separated from the spacecraft stack. This landmark achievement for the ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission marks the first step of BepiColombo's long-awaited arrival at Mercury.
Over the last eight years, BepiColombo has travelled 9.9 billion kilometres through the inner Solar System and completed nine planetary flybys to reach this historic milestone. Despite parting with the module, BepiColombo would not have made it this far without MTM. It carried BepiColombo from Earth to Mercury, providing power and the highly-advanced solar electric propulsion (SEP) needed to navigate its complex space journey.
Now, MTM’s job is complete.
This separation is the first in a sequence of key manoeuvres that will ultimately see BepiColombo become the first mission to place two spacecraft in orbit around Mercury, in December 2026. The mission's Mercury arrival phase is one of the most complex planetary arrival sequences ever attempted by ESA.
After an intense day of operations at ESA's mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, ESA, industry partners and the mission's scientific community celebrated the acquisition of signal confirming MTM's successful separation. Thousands also followed the milestone live on ESA's YouTube channel.
Letting go
In the months leading up to MTM separation, rigorous simulations challenged the Mission Control Team (MCT) with a wide range of operational scenarios.
On 3 September 2026 came the real deal. At 12:00 CEST, the team gave the official "GO" for separation. For those in the Main Control Room, it marked the culmination of months of preparation.
As the expected separation time arrived at 14:00 CEST, silence fell over mission control. The team would have to wait nearly two hours for confirmation to arrive from 200 million kilometres away.
Following separation, the remaining spacecraft stack entered safe mode, readjusted its attitude and reconfigured itself before transmitting its status back to Earth.
At 14:20 CEST, a preliminary Doppler signal provided the first indication that separation had taken place.
"We heard it loud and clear in the voice loop from Flight Dynamics Manager, Frank Budnik, that they could clearly see from the Doppler data that MTM had separated. After all this waiting and preparation, we all looked at each other and hugged. It was a very powerful moment," says Emmanuela Bordoni, ESA BepiColombo B-shift Spacecraft Operations Manager.
With ESA's Estrack Cebreros and Malargüe deep-space antennas locked on target, all eyes turned to the incoming telemetry.
At 15:49 CEST, mission control received the long-awaited acquisition of signal, prompting cheers and applause.
"We are thrilled, but also relieved. Separating two spacecraft from 200 million kilometres away is not something we do every day. We have prepared intensively for this moment, so we are really pleased to have had a perfect separation," says a beaming Ignacio "Nacho" Clerigo, ESA BepiColombo Spacecraft Operations Manager.
Farewell MTM
Every great collaboration deserves a proper goodbye.
On its final day as part of BepiColombo, MTM captured its last images, continuing a role that it had fulfilled throughout the mission's journey to Mercury.
Alongside its solar arrays and ion thrusters, MTM carried three monitoring cameras that documented the voyage. During the cruise phase, they captured daily snapshots of the spacecraft's journey through the inner Solar System.
The final images marked the closing entry in an eight-year photo diary and the end of a remarkable collaboration that carried the mission to Mercury's doorstep.
As for MTM, with no antenna or onboard computer of its own, the now inoperable module will remain in a stable orbit around the Sun.
"We feel a bit sad to see our old friend MTM going away. It did an astonishing job bringing MPO and Mio here, but as Freddie Mercury once sang, the show must go on!" says Nacho.
To mark the achievement, the MCT took part in one of ESOC's most enduring traditions: the sticker ceremony. On the day after separation, the team gathered to add the MTM sticker on the Briefing Room glass door, securing its place among the missions that have shaped ESOC's history.
"I feel so proud of this team. This is the perfect start to arrival phase," says a smiling Santa Martínez Sanmartín, ESA BepiColombo Mission Manager.
Carrying the mission
Roughly the size of a small car, the Mercury Transfer Module carried two 15-metre-long solar wings that powered the entire spacecraft stack and propelled it using its highly-advanced solar electric propulsion (SEP) system.
This technology uses solar energy to turn xenon gas into plasma that is expelled through four ion thrusters. Unlike chemical propulsion, which provides short, powerful bursts of acceleration, SEP delivers gentle but continuous thrust for days, weeks or even months while using far less propellant.
This efficiency is what made BepiColombo's complex journey to Mercury possible. Along the way, the mission overcame significant challenges. BepiColombo's route to Mercury needed a mid-course rethink after an issue reduced the power available from MTM's solar arrays.
Mission teams adapted the trajectory, allowing the spacecraft to remain on track for arrival.
On 15 June 2026, SEP was switched off, bringing MTM's primary mission to an end and setting up the next major milestone which we saw on 3 September – MTM separation.
What is next for BepiColombo?
Following MTM separation, BepiColombo is still more than three million kilometres from Mercury.
Unlike most interplanetary missions, arrival is not a single event but a six-month sequence of carefully choreographed manoeuvres.
“The next separation will be Mio. After seeing the successful separation of MTM I feel confident about what lies ahead,” says JAXA's BepiColombo Project Scientist, Go Murakami.
With MTM's job complete, the remaining spacecraft stack now enters a new phase of the journey. Using MPO's chemical propulsion system, the MCT will fine-tune the trajectory ahead of Mercury orbit insertion on 21 November. Mio will then be deployed in early December, before MPO is guided into its final science orbit in March 2027.
"Although we already have great science from the cruise phase and nine planet flybys, it's fantastic that we've taken this first important step towards finally being able to use all the powerful instruments on both MPO and Mio to study Mercury," says ESA BepiColombo Lead Project Scientist, Geraint Jones.
By April 2027, the two spacecraft will begin their scientific investigations, offering unprecedented insights into Mercury's surface, interior, magnetic field and surrounding environment.
NASA Roman’s Planet Imager Has Powered On (News Release - September 1)
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully activated the mission’s Coronagraph Instrument, which will block starlight to view planets and dusty disks around nearby stars. Now the instrument will undergo a months-long series of calibrations and tests prior to beginning full science operations.
The coronagraph power-on began at 7:27 a.m. EDT and was completed at 8:22 a.m. on September 1.
The Roman Coronagraph is a system of optics, masks, self-flexing mirrors, and sensors designed to demonstrate the most advanced technologies ever flown in space for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from stars and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them.
Using the coronagraph, scientists will photograph worlds and dusty disks in visible light to help us see giant planets that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far. The Roman coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for a total of three months spread across the mission’s first year-and-a-half of operations.
In addition to direct imaging, Roman will also find planets via the microlensing and transit methods. Read more about the wide array of worlds that Roman will study here.
To learn more about Roman’s commissioning process, visit:
NASA’s Dragonfly Gets Wired Up While Titan Landing Area Is Named (News Release)
Peeking into the clean room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, it might be one of the first things you notice about NASA’s Dragonfly: the dozens of silver cables snaking around and through the structure of the in-progress, Titan-bound rotorcraft.
Collectively, these bundles of wires, cables, and connectors make up the spacecraft’s electrical harness. It’s Dragonfly’s nervous system, fitted to securely transmit power and data between the lander’s computers, actuators, sensors, scientific instruments, and battery.
“The harness doesn’t do anything by itself, but it is necessary for everything else to function,” said Jackie Perry, Dragonfly lander harness lead at APL, which is responsible for designing, building and operating the rotorcraft for NASA. “It’s critical hardware that exists only to serve the rest of the lander. We can’t do anything without it.”
Perry’s small team of engineers and technicians reached a major milestone in July when it installed the harness on the flight fuselage. “Once the flight structure was delivered and the remote interface units and temperature sensors were installed, we were able to start laying the harness,” Perry said.
The wiring harness is typically one of the first components delivered to a spacecraft. Dragonfly passed its critical design review in 2022; fabrication began in late 2024 and finished about a year later. The wire is silver-coated copper, insulated in a heat-resistant, durable polymer coating and wrapped with aluminum, which is then attached to plastic and metal connectors.
Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in summer 2028 and reach Saturn’s moon Titan in late 2034.
Dragonfly’s operating environment on Titan poses some unique challenges. Because of the rotorcraft’s thermos bottle design – insulated to retain heat from its nuclear power source and stay warm in Titan’s extremely cold conditions – the harness had to be designed to route under a layer of thick foam insulation on the outside of the lander and accommodate the circulation of that warm air through the inside. The rotorcraft’s high power demands require both 4- and 8-gauge wire, Perry said, yet the harness has to be flexible enough to weave through a packed interior that includes the flight system and instrument boxes, as well as a nearly 300-pound battery.
The team will continue connecting the harness to science instruments and other flight components as they’re delivered to APL for integration and additional testing.
Titan target area lands name
The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the global body responsible for officially designating objects in space, has approved a name for the large dune field where Dragonfly will land on Titan: Ahmakiq Undae. The region consists of dunes and interdune areas to the south of Selk Crater, extending to the edge of a range of hills or mountains.
In the Mayan tradition, people appealed to the spirit Ahmakiq (pronounced “ah-mahk-eek”) to stop strong winds from damaging their crops. The name literally translates to the “one who locks up the wind,” and aligns with the IAU convention of naming dune fields – or undae, in Latin after gods and goddesses of wind. The Dragonfly team chose Ahmakiq from a list of IAU suggestions.
Once Dragonfly reaches Titan, the rotorcraft will conduct a 3.3-year primary mission, exploring diverse environments from organic dunes to deposits associated with an impact crater – Selk Crater – where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together. Scientific analysis indicates that the impact that formed Selk melted the icy bedrock, potentially creating a large temporary pool that could have remained liquid for hundreds to thousands of years under an insulating ice layer, like winter ponds on Earth.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
NASA Roman Space Telescope’s Antenna, ‘Visor’ Deployed (News Release)
Roman’s antenna and visor-like sunshade have successfully deployed.
Roman will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far via its high-gain antenna, which measures 5.6 feet wide yet only weighs 24 pounds. It’s made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand the spacecraft’s wide temperature fluctuations. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.
At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a deluge of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations in New Mexico, Australia and Japan. These locations are spread out so the Roman team will consistently be able to communicate with the spacecraft.
The antenna deployment lasted about 4 minutes and concluded at 2:03 p.m. EDT on August 31.
The deployable aperture cover, which is a large sunshade designed to keep unwanted light out of the telescope, was released next. It deployed via three booms that were triggered electronically to spring upward. It lasted about 8 minutes and was successfully completed at 6:05 a.m. EDT on September 1.
Roman’s next major milestone is the Coronagraph Instrument activation. In a couple of weeks, the Wide Field Instrument will power on. Both instruments will run through a series of calibrations and tests throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period.
NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.
To learn more about Roman’s commissioning process, visit:
NASA’s Roman Completes First Mid-Course Correction Burn (News Release)
At 12:02 p.m. EDT, Roman began an approximately 3-minute mid-course correction burn to adjust its trajectory toward its final orbit.
It’s the first of two planned orbit adjustments to keep Roman on course for the second Lagrange point, L2. The other, if needed, is planned for later this week, and Roman’s orbital insertion will take place approximately 100 days post-launch. Once in orbit around L2, Roman will only require periodic station-keeping burns roughly every 28 days.
Trace Roman’s path here, and follow along with the blog for further updates.
To learn more about Roman’s commissioning process, visit:
NASA’s Dark Universe-Seeking Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launches (News Release)
Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the Universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our Solar System, known as exoplanets. Its surveys will support a broad range of research extending far beyond the mission’s main science goals.
“Roman is exactly the kind of success story we want to see across NASA,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, this mission reflects more than a decade of dedication from the NASA workforce and our industry partners. Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the Universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America’s space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution.”
The ground control team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from Roman seven minutes after launch. The Falcon Heavy rocket performed as expected, separating from the observatory 31 minutes into the flight. After separating from the center core, the rocket’s boosters safely returned to the launch site for refurbishment.
“Roman will be a discovery machine that will bring us closer than ever before to answering humanity’s most profound questions about our cosmic history,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With its large field of view and fast survey speeds, Roman will usher us into a new era of discovery and make the invisible visible, setting the foundation for humanity’s search for life beyond our Solar System.”
During launch and early orbit, Roman uses the Near Space Network’s ground stations and relay satellites to exchange tracking, telemetry and command data with ground controllers. About 70 minutes after launch, the Deep Space Network takes over communications and guides Roman towards the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. Roman connects to that network through the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia first.
Approximately six hours later the data relay will transfer to the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex in Spain and then to the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex in California, ensuring continuous contact with Roman throughout its journey.
The Roman team also confirmed successful deployment of the observatory’s solar panels and lower instrument sun shade an hour and 23 minutes after launch. Within the upcoming days, Roman’s high-gain antenna and visor-like deployable aperture cover will deploy, ground controllers will initiate the first of two-mid-course corrections, and the Coronagraph Instrument will power on. This instrument will demonstrate the technology that future missions like NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept could use to image Earth-like planets in the search for life in the Universe.
Roman’s Coronagraph will take a giant step in that direction by snapping pictures of Jupiter-like planets.
A few weeks into Roman’s voyage, its primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, will activate. This 300-megapixel infrared camera has 18 4K detectors, each about the size of a saltine cracker. These detectors collect photons of light that will be decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas.
Thanks to the observatory’s rigid design and stable optical performance, it will rapidly scan the sky without needing substantial time between separate observations. The Roman telescope is designed to survey the Universe a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.
Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission, so far. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and citizen scientists will help sift through it and flag significant findings, which astronomers can then study.
“We’ve never been able to view the Universe with eyes like Roman’s before,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “There’s no telling what more we’ll know and have seen by this time next year.”
Roman is the fourth primary mission that NASA has launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Earlier this year, the agency’s Launch Services Program worked with SpaceX to accelerate the launch date to accommodate the space telescope’s early completion.
The telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman are also made by ESA, JAXA, the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
Seventeen Light-Years... That’s how far the Hello From Earth message has traveled since being transmitted from a giant NASA antenna in Australia to the exoplanet Gliese 581d in the summer of 2009.
As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Friday, August 28), the radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—will have ventured across approximately 100 trillion miles (161 trillion kilometers) of deep space...which, as stated at the very start of this Blog entry, equals a distance of seventeen light-years.
The signal, despite traveling 186,000 miles per second (or 671 million miles per hour, or um, 1 billion kilometers per hour), will still take about 3 years to reach the Gliese 581 star system. Carry on!
Roman Space Telescope Transport from PHSF to LC-39A (Photo Release - August 25)
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
Roman’s science instruments are designed to help researchers understand dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the Universe’s expansion. The observatory will also map how galaxies form, cluster and evolve by tracing the influence of dark matter.
Liftoff from NASA Kennedy is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, August 30, 2026.
