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Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second-largest city, lies within a network of narrow valleys in the country’s northern highlands. Though the historic city is known for panoramic views of the surrounding mountains, clear skies have become less common. In recent decades, smoke has increasingly darkened the skies during the dry season, particularly in March and April.

A NASA satellite captured this smoky view of the city and the surrounding region on April 22, 2026, when haze partially obscured valleys and ridges typically visible under clearer conditions. Most of the smoke likely comes from small agricultural and forest fires lit to burn off crop debris or maintain forest ecosystems. In 2026, satellite sensors detected small numbers of fires throughout January, but fire detections became more numerous and widespread in February, March, and April. Fire activity typically peaks in March and fades by May as seasonal rains increase. 

Research indicates that smoke from biomass burning is one of the largest contributors to poor air quality in northern Thailand during the dry season. By one estimate, about 70 percent of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) in Chiang Mai in April comes from biomass burning. Smaller contributors to the region’s hazy skies include vehicles, power plants and industry, and charcoal burning for cooking and heating. Geography also plays a key role; the surrounding mountains block air flow and encourage temperature inversions that trap both local pollution and haze from the broader region in the valleys.

On the same day the satellite image was captured, air quality sensors on the ground recorded “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy” levels of PM_2.5 air pollution throughout Chiang Mai and the region, according to data from the World Air Quality Index project. Prolonged exposure to high levels of air pollution can contribute to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and other health problems.

News reports suggest that the haze is affecting the tourism industry and has contributed to a decrease in the number of international travelers coming to Chiang Mai. After more than a month of persistent haze, the number of tourists arriving in the town of Pai, a popular destination for backpackers northwest of Chiang Mai, was down 90 percent, according to one local newspaper.

Unusually warm and dry conditions have gripped the region in recent weeks, according to meteorologists with the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC). On March 27, the group advised that there was a “high risk” of severe transboundary haze in the region and elevated its alert level to three, the highest on the scale. 

In late March, the group noted that dry conditions were forecast to persist over most parts of the Mekong sub-region, with prevailing winds expected to blow mostly from the south or southwest. “Under these conditions,” ASMC noted, “the hotspot and smoke haze situation could escalate further.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

• ASMC (2026) Regional Haze Situation. Accessed April 22, 2026.
• Bangkok Post (2026, April 17) Pai tourism suffers as haze grips North. Accessed April 22, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026, April 10) Stagnant Skies in Southeast Asia. Accessed April 22, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2024, April 8) Hazy Skies in a Growing City. Accessed April 22, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2024, April 1) Grappling with Thailand’s Seasonal Haze. Accessed April 22, 2026.
• The Nation (2026, April 18) Northern wildfire surge pushes Thailand hotspots to 2026 high. Accessed April 22, 2026.   
• Pani, S., et al. (2020) Black carbon over an urban atmosphere in northern peninsular Southeast Asia: Characteristics, source apportionment, and associated health risks. Environmental Pollution, 259, 113871.
• Pirard, C. & Charoenpanwutikul, A. (2023) Comprehensive review of the annual haze episode in Northern Thailand. Earth ArXiv preprint.
• Orion (2025, February 12) Where There is Smoke. Accessed April 22, 2026.

https://www.nasa.gov/sbir_sttr/nasa-sbir-sttr-program-program-year-2026-information-hub

NASA’s Boeing 777 has returned to the agency’s fleet after undergoing heavy structural modifications as it transforms from a giant passenger plane into the agency’s next-generation airborne science laboratory. After a check flight and a three-hour transit from Waco, the aircraft returned to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on April 22.

Since January 2025, the aircraft has been in Texas receiving hardware and structural upgrades to prepare for science operations. The modifications include installing dedicated research stations and extensive wiring. This allows payload systems to communicate with sensors such as lidar and infrared imaging spectrometers during flights. Cabin windows were enlarged and open portals installed at the bottom of the fuselage to mount remote-sensing instruments.

“Airborne missions at NASA use cutting-edge instruments to explore and understand our home planet,” said Derek Rutovic, program manager for the Airborne Science Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The 777 will be the largest airborne research laboratory in our fleet, collecting data to improve life on our home planet and extend our knowledge of the Earth system as a whole.”

Acquired in 2022 to succeed NASA’s retired DC-8 aircraft, the 777 will expand the agency’s airborne research capacity. It can accommodate 50 to 100 operators and carry 75,000 pounds of equipment for flights lasting up to 18 hours.

“NASA’s DC-8 was an incredible workhorse for Earth science for nearly 40 years,” said Kirsten Boogaard, the NASA 777 program manager at NASA Langley and former deputy program manager of NASA’s DC-8. “Being part of that team, I got to see the impact up close. I’m excited for what the 777 will bring. It gives us the ability to bring together more partners, more educational opportunities, and more instruments. That will make a real difference in the data we collect moving forward.”

The aircraft’s inaugural science mission, slated to deploy in January 2027, will investigate high-impact winter weather events, such as severe cold air outbreaks, wind, snow and ice storms, and hazardous seas. Known as the North American Upstream Feature-Resolving and Tropopause Uncertainty Reconnaissance Experiment (NURTURE), the mission will collect detailed atmospheric observations across a vast region spanning North America, Europe, Greenland, and the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans.

“We’ve been completing the engineering design and analysis to install the NURTURE payload into the aircraft in parallel with the portal modification,” Rutovic said. “We’re excited to get the airplane back home to NASA and on the road to its first mission.”

The NASA 777’s major structural modification was performed by L3Harris Technologies in partnership with Yulista Holding, LLC. Research station and wiring upgrades in the cabin are being performed by NASA and HII. NASA’s Airborne Science Program is responsible for providing aircraft systems that further science and advance the use of satellite data and is part of the Science Mission Directorate’s Earth Science Division.

To learn more about NASA’s airborne science missions, visit:

https://airbornescience.nasa.gov

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team now is targeting as soon as early September 2026 for launch, ahead of the agency’s commitment to flight no later than May 2027.

“Roman’s accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who announced the update at a news conference on April 21 at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to survey deep, vast swaths of sky. While the mission was designed with dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets in mind, Roman’s unprecedented observational capability will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics.

By the end of its five-year primary mission, Roman is expected to amass a 20,000-terabyte data archive. Scientists can draw on it to identify and study 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, billions of stars, and rare objects and phenomena — including some that astronomers have never witnessed before.

Roman will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and SpaceX will share more information about a specific launch date, and the agency will continue to share updates concerning prelaunch preparations as new information becomes available.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, and scientists from various research institutions.

To learn more about the Roman mission, visit:

https://nasa.gov/roman

Media contact:

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

NASA will host a news conference at 1:45 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 29, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to preview astronaut Anil Menon’s upcoming mission to the International Space Station.

Watch the news conference live on NASA’s YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.

Following the news conference, individual interviews with Menon will begin at 3 p.m.

United States-based media interested in attending the news conference in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov by 5 p.m. Monday, April 27. U.S. and international media interested in participating by phone must contact NASA Johnson by 9:45 a.m. Thursday, April 23. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Requests for interviews with Menon should be submitted by 5 p.m., April 27. In-person interviews are limited to U.S. media. International media may request to conduct interviews virtually.

The Soyuz MS-29 mission, targeted to launch Tuesday, July 14, will carry Menon and his crewmates, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, to the International Space Station for an eight-month stay as part of Expeditions 74/75. It will be Menon’s first spaceflight.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, Menon graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. After completing initial astronaut candidate training, he began preparing for his first space station flight assignment.

Menon was born and raised in Minneapolis and is an emergency medicine physician, mechanical engineer, and lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. He holds a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a medical degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Menon completed his emergency medicine and aerospace medicine residency at Stanford and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, respectively.

Menon still actively practices emergency medicine at Memorial Hermann’s Texas Medical Center and teaches residents at the University of Texas’ residency program. For NASA, Menon also has served as an expedition flight surgeon for the agency’s crew members aboard the space station. Previously, Menon worked at SpaceX and served as the company’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch the first crewed Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission in 2020 and building its medical organization to support humans on future missions.

For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and prepare for deep space missions to the Moon as part of the Artemis program in preparation for future human missions to Mars.

Learn more about the International Space Station at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Anna Schneider / Shaneequa Vereen
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov / shaneequa.y.vereen@nasa.gov

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