‘A.I. Literacy’ Is Trending in Schools. Here’s Why.  The New York Times

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1. The Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Switch re-release is already topping the eShop charts, even as Nintendo mysteriously removes mention of Home compatibility  Eurogamer
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Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible  WIRED

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover approaches Mars in this Feb. 18, 2020, top-down still image captured by a camera on the rover’s descent stage.

Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient microbial life, to advance NASA’s quest to explore the past habitability of Mars. NASA chose Jezero Crater as the landing because scientists believe the area was once flooded with water and was home to an ancient river delta. In summer 2024, the rover collected a sample from the “Chevaya Falls” rock which was found to have potential biosignatures — clues that suggest past life may have been present, but that require more data or further study before any conclusions about the absence or presence of life.

In addition to making discoveries on Mars, the rover itself is demonstrating technogical advances: A new technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California enables Perseverance to figure out its whereabouts without calling humans for help. Dubbed Mars Global Localization, the technology features an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Forty million years ago, a star in a nearby galaxy exploded, spewing material across space and generating a brilliant beacon of light. That light traveled across the cosmos, reaching Earth June 29, 2025, where it was detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Astronomers immediately turned their resources to this new supernova, designated 2025pht, to learn more about it. But one team of scientists instead turned to archives, seeking to use pre-supernova images to identify exactly which star among many had exploded. And they succeeded.

Images of galaxy NGC 1637 taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope showed a single red supergiant star located exactly where the supernova now shines. This represents the first published detection of a supernova progenitor by Webb. The results were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We’ve been waiting for this to happen – for a supernova to explode in a galaxy that Webb had already observed. We combined Hubble and Webb data sets to completely characterize this star for the first time,” said lead author Charlie Kilpatrick of Northwestern University.

Image: SN 2025pht in NGC 1637

Case of missing red supergiants

By carefully aligning Hubble and Webb images taken of NGC 1637, the team was able to identify the progenitor star in images taken by Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) in 2024. They found that the star appeared surprisingly red – an indication that it was surrounded by dust that blocked shorter, bluer wavelengths of light.

“It’s the reddest, most dusty red supergiant that we’ve seen explode as a supernova,” said graduate student and co-author Aswin Suresh of Northwestern University. 

This excess of dust could help explain a long-standing problem in astronomy that could be described as the case of the missing red supergiants. Astronomers expect the most massive stars that explode as supernovas to also be the brightest and most luminous. So, they should be easy to identify in pre-supernova images. However, that hasn’t been the case. 

One potential explanation is that the most massive aging stars are also the dustiest. If they’re surrounded by large quantities of dust, their light could be dimmed to the point of undetectability. The Webb observations of supernova 2025pht support that hypothesis.

“I’ve been arguing in favor of that interpretation, but even I didn’t expect to see it as extreme as it was for supernova 2025pht. It would explain why these more massive supergiants are missing because they tend to be more dusty,” said Kilpatrick.

Carbon “burps”

The team was not only surprised by the amount of dust, but also by its composition. Applying computer models to the Webb observations indicated that the dust is likely carbon-rich, when astronomers would have expected it to be more silicate-rich. The team speculates that this carbon might have been dredged up from the star’s interior shortly before it exploded.

“Having observations in the mid-infrared was key to constraining what kind of dust we were seeing,” said Suresh.

The team now is working to look for similar red supergiants that may explode as supernovas in the future. Observations by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may help this search. Roman will have the resolution, sensitivity, and infrared wavelength coverage to not only see these stars, but also potentially witness their variability as they “burp” out large quantities of dust near the end of their lives.

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).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

Related Links

Read more: NASA’s Webb Opens New Window on Supernova Science

Explore more: ViewSpace Star Death: Crab Nebula

Explore more: ViewSpace Take a Tour of Cassiopeia A

Explore more: Massive Stars: Engines of Creation

Read more: NASA’s Webb Identifies Earliest Supernova to Date, Shows Host Galaxy

More Webb News

More Webb Images

Webb Science Themes

Webb Mission Page

Safety and quality management are integral to every program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and across the entire agency. That gives team members like Regina Senegal, acting chief of the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate’s (SMA) Quality and Flight Equipment Division, a unique opportunity to collaborate with diverse organizations and personnel.

“I’m responsible for managing safety and quality teams for about 13 customers,” Senegal said, noting that these customers include the Orion and Gateway Programs, the Human Landing System, and the Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program. Senegal’s teams work at several levels to implement agency, program, and center SMA requirements, in addition to assisting with monitoring Johnson’s Quality Management System to identify concerns for SMA leadership.

Some teams operate at the program level, helping to write program requirements, establishing assurance programs, and identifying and characterizing risk. Other teams work on a developmental level and focus on ensuring that a piece of hardware, software, and other components meet requirements and are safe. One team is dedicated to extravehicular activity, or EVA, operations, making sure that both crew members and equipment are prepared for safe and successful spacewalks. Senegal’s division is also responsible for calibration, safety, and quality for government-furnished equipment at Johnson, procurement quality, and the Receiving, Inspection and Test Facility.

“This division is probably the most diverse at Johnson because we do a multitude of things and have a multitude of disciplines,” Senegal said. “That’s why I enjoy it.”

Senegal was introduced to quality management as a manufacturing engineer for General Motors, where she worked for seven years before becoming a NASA contractor. She said it was always her goal to work at NASA, but there were no opportunities available at Johnson when she graduated from Prairie View A&M University with a degree in electrical and electronics engineering. “I just kept applying to anything that had to do with NASA, and then SAIC hired me,” she said. SAIC, or Science Applications International Corp., is a subcontractor of NASA.

Senegal has worked at Johnson for 28 years, becoming a civil servant in 2004. In that time, she has been involved in the development and implementation of space and life science experiments, the Human Research Facility, and crew exercise hardware, among other projects. She said her most memorable experience was working to transition crew health equipment from the Space Shuttle Program to the International Space Station. Senegal explained that while the hardware worked well on shuttle missions, it had to be redesigned to support longer missions and larger crews on station. She was not responsible for the redesign, but she had to ensure the equipment worked and was safe. “I really enjoyed that because it was a challenge, and you had all of these great ideas coming together from engineers, doctors, and the crew,” she said. “We became a strong, close team. Everyone was there trying to achieve the same goal.”

Her career in SMA has touched nearly every program at Johnson and some agency-level initiatives. Along the way, she has progressed from group lead to branch chief, deputy division chief, and now division chief—a role she calls her most challenging yet.

“As deputy, you manage parts of the business. As chief, you own it all—mission outcomes, safety posture, budget, culture, and external optics,” Senegal explains. Decisions once offered as advice now carry her endorsement and reputation. The shift means setting direction, allocating resources, and making tough calls, even when every request feels mission-critical. She also shapes how the division recruits, rotates, and grows talent, while tackling challenges like refreshing skill sets and building succession depth in critical disciplines.

In today’s evolving risk environment, Senegal must balance mission risk with project, program, and agency priorities, while keeping programs on schedule. “The chief’s message has to be clear, repeatable, and behavior-shaping,” she says. Building rhythms like staff syncs and risk reviews keeps the team aligned amid competing agendas.

Looking ahead, Senegal sees the team focusing on supporting NASA’s acquisition strategy and improving the speed and quality of organizational decision-making. “We need to define when issues go to the chief, deputy, or branch chiefs—and protect strategic time by saying ‘no’ when ‘yes’ isn’t the right answer.” Her leadership philosophy centers on connection: “Know your team’s strengths and care about them—even small gestures matter,” she says. “When people know you care, it makes coming to work easier.”

Senegal emphasized the importance of sharing SMA lessons learned with early career team members and future agency employees. “They need to know the safety and quality policies, but they also need to understand why we have them in place,” she said. “If you teach them the history behind it, they’re less likely to repeat it, and it helps them understand how and when to accept risk.”

Senegal also encourages the next generation to ask people for their opinions. “Be honest if you don’t know something and say you want to learn more. Never be afraid to speak up.”

For the first time in more than 150 years, giant tortoises are returning to the wild on Floreana Island in the Galápagos — guided by NASA satellite data that helps scientists discover where the animals can find food, water, and nesting habitat.

The effort, a collaboration between the Galápagos National Park Directorate and Galápagos Conservancy, marks a key milestone in restoring tortoise populations to one of the most ecologically distinctive archipelagos on Earth.

On Floreana Island, tortoises disappeared in the mid-1800s after heavy hunting by whalers and the introduction of new predators like pigs and rats, which consumed tortoise eggs and hatchlings. Without the tortoises, the island began to change. Across the Galápagos, giant tortoises historically helped shape the landscape by grazing vegetation, opening pathways through dense plant growth, and carrying seeds across islands.

“This is exactly the kind of project where NASA Earth observations make a difference,” said Keith Gaddis, the manager for NASA Earth Action’s Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re helping partners answer a practical question: Where will these animals have the best chance to survive — not just today, but decades from now?”

Matching Tortoises to Landscape

On Feb. 20, the Galápagos National Park Directorate and conservation partners released 158 giant tortoises at two sites on Floreana.

“It’s a huge deal to have these tortoises back on this island. Charles Darwin was one of the last people to see them there,” said James Gibbs, the Galápagos Conservancy’s Vice President of Science and Conservation and a co-principal investigator of the project.

In 2000, scientists made an unexpected discovery. Gibbs and other researchers found unusual tortoises on northern Isabela Island’s Wolf Volcano, the tallest peak in the Galápagos, that did not look like any other known living tortoises. About a decade later, DNA extracted from bones of the extinct Floreana tortoises — found in caves on the island and in museum collections — confirmed the tortoises carried Floreana ancestry, launching a breeding program that has since produced hundreds of offspring expected to return to the island. Researchers believe that whalers likely moved tortoises between the islands more than a century earlier.

The Galápagos National Park Directorate has raised and released across the Galápagos more than 10,000 tortoises over the last 60 years, one of the largest rewilding efforts ever attempted. But each island presents a different puzzle.

Some hills and small mountains in the Galápagos intercept clouds and stay cool and damp with evergreen vegetation. Others are dry enough that green vegetation appears only briefly after rain. Where these zones occur on the same island, tortoises move between them, with some animals traveling miles each year between seasonal feeding and nesting areas.

“It’s difficult for the tortoises because they get introduced from captivity into this environment,” Gibbs said. “They don’t know where food is. They don’t know where water is. They don’t know where to nest. If you can place them where conditions are already right, you give them a much better chance.”

That’s where NASA satellite data comes in.

NASA Earth observations allow scientists to map environmental conditions across the islands and track how vegetation, moisture, and temperature shift over time — clues to where tortoises can find food and water.

Using those records, Gibbs and Giorgos Mountrakis, the project’s principal investigator, and their team built a decision tool that combines satellite measurements of habitat and climate conditions with millions of field observations of tortoise locations across the archipelago to guide where, and when, to release the animals.

“Habitat suitability models and environmental mapping are essential tools,” said Christian Sevilla, the Director of Ecosystems at the Galápagos National Park Directorate. “They allow us to integrate climate, topography, and vegetation data to make evidence-based decisions. We move from intuition to precision.”

The decision tool draws on multiple NASA and partner satellite missions. Landsat and European Sentinel satellites track vegetation conditions. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission provides rainfall data. The Terra satellite helps estimate land-surface temperature, and terrain data adds elevation and landscape features. In some cases, high-resolution commercial satellite images, acquired through NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program, help teams evaluate potential release sites before field surveys begin.

With tortoise-environment relationships in hand, the team can map habitat suitability today and forecast how it may shift decades into the future as environmental conditions change.

“The forecasting part is critical,” said Mountrakis, of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. “This isn’t a one-year project. We’re looking at where tortoises will succeed 20, 40 years from now.”

Because the tortoises can live more than a century, habitat conditions decades from now matter as much as conditions today.

More Than Conservation

The tortoise release is part of the larger Floreana Ecological Restoration Project, which aims to remove invasive species like rats and feral cats and eventually return 12 native animal species to the island, with tortoises serving as the keystone for rebuilding the ecosystem.

The Galápagos Conservancy is also using NASA satellite data and the decision tool developed to help guide tortoise releases on other Galápagos islands and to plan future reintroductions across the archipelago.

If successful, Floreana Island could once again support a large tortoise population, helping restore relationships between animals, plants, and the landscape that shaped the island for thousands of years.

“For those of us who live and work in Galápagos, this [release] is deeply meaningful,” Sevilla said. “It demonstrates that large-scale ecological restoration is possible and that, with science and long-term commitment, we can recover an essential part of the archipelago’s natural heritage.”

NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen take off on a T-38 training flight from Ellington Field on Feb. 11, 2026, as a waning crescent Moon hovers above. Koch and Hansen, along with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, are part of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Artemis II will fly around the Moon and back to test Orion’s systems and capabilities before returning the crew to a splashdown off the California coast.

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, Artemis will pave the way for new U.S. crewed missions on the lunar surface in preparation to send the first astronauts to Mars.

Image credit: NASA/Brendan Finnegan

Finnish unicorn IQM plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) valuing the company at approximately $1.8 billion — joining the growing cohort of quantum computing companies listed on U.S. stock markets. 

Chinese hackers allegedly broke into the network of an Ivanti subsidiary in 2021. The hackers exploited a backdoor in its VPN product, which allowed the hackers to gain access to 119 other unnamed organizations.

5 days to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket. These lowest rates of the year disappear on February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register here.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a tense discussion over the military's use of Claude. Hegseth has threatened to designate Anthropic a "supply chain risk."