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With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable? 

Initial, or “first light,” images mark the moment a mission proves its instruments are functioning in space and ready to transition to full science operations. This milestone is especially important for SPARCS, whose observations depend on highly precise ultraviolet (UV) measurements, making the demonstration of the camera’s performance critical to achieving its science goals. The spacecraft launched Jan. 11; the images came down Feb. 6 and were subsequently processed. 

Roughly the size of a large cereal box, SPARCS will monitor flares and sunspot activity on low-mass stars — objects only 30% to 70% the mass of the Sun. These stars are among the most common in the Milky Way and host the majority of the galaxy’s roughly 50 billion habitable-zone terrestrial planets, which are rocky worlds close enough to their stars for temperatures that could allow liquid water and potentially support life. 

“Seeing SPARCS’ first ultraviolet images from orbit is incredibly exciting. They tell us the spacecraft, the telescope, and the detectors are performing as tested on the ground and we are ready to begin the science we built this mission to do,” says SPARCS Principal Investigator Evgenya Shkolnik, professor of Astrophysics at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, which leads the mission. 

The SPARCS spacecraft is the first dedicated to continuously and simultaneously monitoring the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet radiation from low-mass stars for extended periods. Over its one-year mission, SPARCS will target approximately 20 low-mass stars and observe them over durations of five to 45 days.  

Although such stars are small, dim, and cool compared to the Sun, they are also known to flare far more frequently than our solar system’s star. The flares can dramatically affect the atmospheres of the planets they host. Understanding the host star is key to understanding a planet’s habitability.

Future focused  

“I am so excited that we are on the brink of learning about exoplanets’ host stars and the effect of their activities on the planets’ potential habitability,” said Shouleh Nikzad, the lead developer of the SPARCS camera (dubbed SPARCam) and the chief technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “I’m doubly excited that we are contributing to this mission with detector and filter technologies we developed at JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory.” Created in 1989, the facility is where inventors harness physics, chemistry, and material science, including quantum, to deliver first-of-their-kind devices and capabilities for the nation. 

The filters were made using a technique that improves sensitivity and performance by enabling them to be directly deposited onto the specially developed UV-sensitive “delta-doped” detectors. The approach of detector-integrated filters eliminated the need for a separate filter element, resulting in a system that is among the most sensitive of its kind ever flown in space.  

“We took silicon-based detectors — the same technology as in your smartphone camera — and we created a high-sensitivity UV imager. Then we integrated filters into the detector to reject the unwanted light. That is a huge leap forward to doing big science in small packages,” Nikzad said, “and SPARCS serves to demonstrate their long-term performance in space.” 

This technology paves the way for future missions like NASA’s next potential UV-capable flagship mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission concept, as well as smaller interim missions, such as the agency’s forthcoming UVEX (UltraViolet EXplorer), which is led by Caltech in Pasadena.  

The mission takes advantage of advances in computational processing as well, with an onboard computer that can perform data processing and intelligently adjust the observation parameters to better sample the development of flares as they happen.  

“The SPARCS mission brings all of these pieces together — focused science, cutting-edge detectors, and intelligent onboard processing — to deepen our understanding of the stars that most planets in the galaxy call home,” said David Ardila, SPARCS instrument scientist at JPL. “By watching these stars in ultraviolet light in a way we’ve never done before, we’re not just studying flares. These observations will sharpen our picture of stellar environments and help future missions interpret the habitability of distant worlds.”

More about SPARCS 

Funded by NASA and led by Arizona State University, SPARCS is managed under the agency’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis program. The agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) selected SPARCS in 2022 for a ride to orbit. The initiative is a low-cost pathway for conducting scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space, enabling students and faculty to gain hands-on experience with flight hardware design, development, and building.  

Blue Canyon Technologies fabricated the spacecraft bus.

News Media Contact

Matthew Segal
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-8307
matthew.j.segal@jpl.nasa.gov

Alise Fisher / Karen Fox
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546 / 202-385-1287
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov

Kim Baptista  
Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration  
480-727-4662
Kim.Baptista@asu.edu 

2026-016

Stars peek through the dusty, winding arms of NGC 5134, a spiral galaxy located 65 million light-years away, in this Feb. 20, 2026, image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. The telescope’s Near Infrared Camera records shorter-wavelength near-infrared light, mostly from the stars and star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spiral arms.

By using Webb to study the infrared light nearby galaxies like NGC 5134 whose stars and gas can be seen in detail, astronomers can apply their knowledge to galaxies too distant to be observed so closely — like those that are scattered in the background of this image, barely more than points of light.

Read more about this galaxy.

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)

Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy

Galaxies carry the imprints of past encounters. When they pass near one another or collide, gravity pulls their stars into long tails, thin streams, and faint shells – features that preserve the history of these dramatic events. Thanks to deep, high-resolution images from the Euclid space telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with critical contributions from NASA, we can now see these delicate structures more clearly than ever before in unprecedented numbers.

As a volunteer for the Galaxy Zoo: Tidal Tales project, you’ll help identify these signs of galaxy interactions. By classifying galaxy images, you’ll help build the first large catalog of galaxy mergers seen by the Euclid space telescope. Your input will also train computer models to better recognize these features and describe how collisions shape star formation, galaxy growth, and the evolution of the universe. 

Want to help astronomers trace how galaxy collisions reshape the universe over time?  Join Galaxy Zoo: Tidal Tales on Zooniverse today! 

Download PDF: Efficient Large Displacement/Large Rotation Dynamic Simulations Using Nonlinear Dynamic Substructures

Utilizing reduced-order dynamic math models (DMM) in linear system-level dynamic analyses is a well-known practice that enables extreme computational efficiencies. But what about nonlinear system dynamics? Reduced-order DMMs have found their way into contact dynamics. The engineer must look no further than the Henkel-Mar pad separation analysis methodology to verify this fact. More sophisticated applications of DMMs in contact dynamics are possible when certain repetitive geometry pattens are present. For example, Figure 1 shows a type of pipe known as a “flexible” pipe used by the subsea industry. This design features four layers of helically wound steel wires that provide the pipe with its stick/slip behavior during bending, thereby enabling a longer fatigue life in harsh ocean environments. With these helically wound armor layers presenting a repetitive contact topology, contact surfaces can be constructed and tracked enabling the friction logic to operate resulting in the friction hysteretic moment-curvature plot provided in Figure 1 (top). 

As seen from Figure 1, the pipe was subjected to many bending cycles and executed in essentially a real-time computation. A single bending cycle of the same pipe in full finite element model (FEM) resolution (i.e., no use of DMMs) would require 48 hours of computation on 36 central processing units (CPUs) running in parallel given the very large order of the FEM.   

What about utilizing DMMs for computationally efficient nonlinear dynamics involving large displacements and rotations? Before addressing this question, the residual flexibility mixed boundary transformation (RFMB¹) must be defined. The RFMB coordinate transformation is given as follows: 

The transformation is a mix of the following submatrices: constraint modes (ψ) due to unit displacements on the b-set boundary degrees of freedom (DoFs) that remain fixed during the eigenvalue problem, residual flexibility (g) due to unit forces at the c-set boundary DoFs that remain free during the eigenvalue problem, and a truncated set of normal modes (φ) computed with the b-set DoFs constrained. It can be shown that the transformation retains full flexibility at the DMM physical DoFs and retains the full dynamics of the FEM up to the user-selected truncation frequency for the normal modes. The reduction of DoFs, and hence the computational efficiency, arises from the number of kept modes (k) being significantly less than the number of interior FEM DoFs. 

To enable DMM large displacements/rotations, four coordinates are added to the above RFMB to track large rotations. These quaternions replace the rigid-body modes that are only valid for infinitesimal rotations. With this process, the RFMB is transformed into a nonlinear dynamic substructure (NDS). Solution algorithms need to be modified accordingly as well to allow for equilibrium iterations since the problem now is highly nonlinear. As an example, consider the undeformed cantilever beam model (Figure 2) composed of 20 DMMs (single DMM of a beam composed of 5 CBAR elements repeated 20x).   

A moment is applied at the free end (right end) of Figure 2. While small displacement theory is limited and breaks down after a few degrees of rotation, the cantilever beam can be completely rolled up using NDS (see Figure 3) in a highly nonlinear dynamic simulation. Also note that the entire nonlinear dynamic simulation was executed in seconds on a laptop and included all dynamic effects. Similarly, the beam can be bent into a “catenary-like²” shape by turning on gravity and enforcing displacements at each end to the required coupling location (see Figure 4). 

One application for this large displacement/rotation NDS capability has been to include umbilical models in the coupled loads analysis (CLA) framework. Figure 5 shows the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) umbilical that was integrated into the Space Launch System (SLS) CLA. The SLS CLA is an integrated assembly of various component DMMs (boosters, core stage, mobile launcher (ML), upper stage, etc.) to which the ICPS umbilical (ICPSU) and its hoses as NDS DMMs can now be added. For each hose, one end connects to the SLS vehicle and the other end to the ML structure. As an example, Figure 6 shows the evolution of the deformations of the forward vent hose (modeled with 20 NDS DMMs) as it goes from the undeformed geometry (straight line) into its prelaunch geometry during the initial condition setup in the CLA. 

As the timed command for umbilical separation is given, the vehicle-side ground plate separates (using the Henkel-Mar contact/separation algorithm) and the ML gantry rotates the separating umbilical away from the already lifting vehicle (the gantry was brought into the CLA as a NDS capable of large rotations). Figure 7 captures the post-separation forward vent hose dynamics (extracted from the CLA). From this, 100  ICPSU hose clearances to the lifting vehicle can be computed. 

The power of the reduced-order models does not end with linear dynamics. It is possible to introduce large displacements and rotations into reduced-order models to enable seamless integration into large substructured integrated system dynamic analyses such as a CLA. For the specific case of the SLS, this capability allowed us to integrate umbilicals into the CLA to more accurately capture the impact of system flexibilities, dynamic response to forcing functions, pad separation “twang” effects, ML dynamics, and gantry/umbilical timings on clearances.  

For information, contact Dr. Dexter Johnson.  dexter.johnson@nasa.gov 

Winter winds lofted clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert, carrying it north toward the Mediterranean and dispersing it widely across Europe in March 2026. When the dust combined with moisture-laden weather systems, a dirty rain fell in parts of Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.

This animation highlights the concentration and movement of dust throughout the region from March 1 to March 9. It depicts dust column mass density—a measure of the amount of dust contained in a column of air—produced with a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model. The model integrates satellite data with mathematical equations that represent physical processes in the atmosphere.

The animation shows dust plumes originating in northwestern Africa being blown both to the west across the Atlantic Ocean and north toward the Mediterranean. As plumes spread throughout Western Europe over several days, people observed hazy skies from southern England, where sunrises and sunsets took on an eerie glow, to the Alps in Switzerland and Italy, where a dust layer encroached on the Matterhorn.

Not all of the dust remained aloft. Storms encountered some of the dust, causing particles to fall to the ground with rain and coat surfaces with a brownish residue. A low-pressure system, named Storm Regina by Portugal’s weather service, moved across the Iberian Peninsula and brought so-called blood rain to southern and eastern Spain, along with parts of France and the southern UK in early March, according to news reports.

Over the Mediterranean, areas of “dusty cirrus” clouds developed higher in the atmosphere, where dust particles can act as condensation nuclei for ice crystals, according to MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology. Scientists are studying these clouds to better understand their formation and how they affect weather, climate, and even solar power generation.

In a new analysis, researchers used NASA’s MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2), observations from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), and other satellite products to parse the effect of airborne Saharan dust on solar power in Hungary. They found that photovoltaic performance dropped to 46 percent on high-dust days, compared with 75 percent or more on low-dust days. They determined the greatest losses occurred because dust enhanced the presence and reflectance of cirrus clouds and reduced the amount of radiation that reached solar panels.

Some research suggests more frequent and intense wintertime dust events have affected Europe in recent years. Researchers have proposed several factors contributing to these outbreaks, including drier-than-normal conditions in northwestern Africa and weather patterns more often driving winds north from the Sahara.

NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using GEOS-FP data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

References & Resources

• Barcelona Dust Regional Center (2026, March) Daily Dust Products. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• FOX Weather (2026, March 9) Blood rain, a rare weather phenomenon, falls across southern Europe. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• IQAir (2026, March 6) Southwest Europe Air Quality Alert: Southwest Europe Dust. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• Met Office (2026, March 4) What is ‘blood rain’ and will we see it this week? Accessed March 11, 2026.
• MeteoSwiss (2026, March 4) He’s here again, the visitor from North Africa. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2022, March 31) Dusty Storm Clouds Over Europe. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026) Dust/Ash/Smoke. Accessed March 11, 2026.
• Seifert, A., et al. (2023) Aerosol–cloud–radiation interaction during Saharan dust episodes: the dusty cirrus puzzle. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 23, 6409–6430.
• Varga, G., et al. (2026) Saharan dust and cirrus clouds: Dominating indirect impact of dust events on photovoltaic energy generation in Hungary (2019–2024). Solar Energy, 307.

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