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With rollback of NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft to the Vehicle Assembly Building complete, the agency will host a news conference at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 27. Live from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, leadership will discuss the work ahead for the test flight, as well as provide a broader update on the Artemis campaign.

The news conference will stream on NASA’s YouTube channel. An instant replay will be available online. Learn how to watch NASA content on a variety of platforms, including social media.

NASA participants include:

• Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
• Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate

This event is open to in-person for media previously credentialed at NASA Kennedy for the Artemis II launch. To participate virtually, media must RSVP for call details no later than 30 minutes prior to the start of the event to the newsroom at NASA Kennedy: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media credentialing policy is online.

For more about NASA’s Artemis campaign, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Bethany Stevens / Cheryl Warner
NASA Headquarters
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

Mars is not what it used to be. Once warm, watery, and blanketed by a thick atmosphere, today the Red Planet is cold, dry, and draped by a thin atmospheric veil.

The main culprit is a relentless stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind. Over billions of years, the solar wind has stripped away much of the Martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface water to evaporate.

Now, NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, which launched on Nov. 13, 2025, has turned on the science instruments that will investigate how this happened and how the Sun continues to influence the Red Planet. The science instruments, which are all operating as of Feb. 25, also will study space weather in new ways near Earth and on the way to Mars.

At Mars, ESCAPADE’s findings could also help NASA protect future explorers from the harsh Martian conditions.

“The pioneering ESCAPADE duo will not only investigate the Sun’s role in transforming Mars into an uninhabitable planet, but also will help inform the development of space weather protocols for solar events directed at Mars during future human missions to the Red Planet,” said Joe Westlake, heliophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By joining the heliophysics fleet of missions across the solar system, ESCAPADE will be another weather station making humans and technology in space safer and more successful.”

First of its kind

With its twin spacecraft, ESCAPADE is the first science mission to coordinate two orbiters around Mars, gaining a perspective we’ve never had before. Together, the ESCAPADE twins will measure short-term changes in the magnetized environment around Mars, called the magnetosphere, and uncover real-time processes driving the planet’s atmospheric escape.

“Having two spacecraft is going to help us understand cause and effect — how the solar wind, when it comes to Mars, interacts with the magnetic field,” said Michele Cash, ESCAPADE program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

The ESCAPADE orbiters build on earlier Mars missions that have studied Mars’ atmosphere, but with just one spacecraft.

“The ESCAPADE mission is a game changer,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. “It gives us what you might call a stereo perspective — two different vantage points simultaneously.”

Once ESCAPADE reaches Mars, its twin spacecraft will follow each other in the same orbit, passing over the same areas at different times to uncover when and where changes are happening.

“When we have two spacecraft crossing those regions in quick succession, we can monitor how those regions vary on timescales as short as two minutes,” Lillis said. “This will allow us to make measurements we could never make before.”

After six months, the two spacecraft will shift into different orbits, with one traveling farther from Mars and the other staying closer to it. Planned to last for five months, this second formation aims to study the solar wind and Martian magnetosphere simultaneously, allowing scientists to investigate how Mars responds to the solar wind in real time.

“Prior spacecraft could either be in the upstream solar wind, or they could be close to the planet measuring its magnetosphere,” Lillis said, “but ESCAPADE allows us to be in two places at once and to simultaneously measure the cause and the effect.”

Preparing for human exploration

When people set foot on Mars, they will not be as well protected from solar radiation as their family and friends on Earth.

Earth can withstand the solar wind’s ceaseless onslaught because it has a hardy magnetic field that shields us from the Sun’s energetic particles. However, Mars’ once robust magnetic field has weakened over time. Today it’s a patchwork of localized magnetism in the planet’s crust along with an ever-changing magnetic field generated by the solar wind’s interaction with charged particles in Mars’ upper atmosphere.

This “hybrid” magnetosphere provides little protection against the atmosphere-stripping force of the solar wind. This, plus Mars’ thin atmosphere, allows the Sun’s energetic particles to easily reach the Martian surface, endangering future human explorers there.

“Before we send humans to Mars, we need to understand what type of environment these astronauts are going to encounter,” Cash said.

Additionally, ESCAPADE will provide more information about Mars’ ionosphere — part of the upper atmosphere that future astronauts will use to send radio and navigation signals around the planet, as we do on Earth.

“If we ever want GPS at Mars or long-distance communications, we need to understand the ionosphere,” Lillis said.

Unique journey to Mars

Previous Mars missions have launched when Earth and Mars are aligned in their orbits, which only happens every 26 months. But ESCAPADE launched early, pioneering a new strategy that allows Mars-bound spacecraft to launch almost anytime.

Instead of heading directly to Mars, ESCAPADE’s spacecraft are first looping around a location in space a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2. In November 2026, when Earth and Mars are aligned, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will return to Earth and use our planet’s gravity to slingshot themselves toward Mars for a September 2027 arrival.

This unique “loiter” orbit will extend approximately 2 million miles from our planet, making the ESCAPADE spacecraft the first to fly through a previously unexplored region of Earth’s distant magnetotail, part of Earth’s magnetosphere opposite the Sun.

“We’re going to be doing some discovery science,” Lillis said. “No one has ever measured Earth’s tail this far away.”

Later, during their 10-month cruise to Mars, ESCAPADE’s two spacecraft will study solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic environment that Mars-bound astronauts will also traverse, preparing for future journeys to the Red Planet.

The ESCAPADE mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division and is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program. UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory leads the mission with key partners Rocket Lab; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Advanced Space; and Blue Origin.

by Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

On Thursday, NASA announced Joel Montalbano will serve as the acting associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and Dana Hutcherson will serve as the acting program manager of the Commercial Crew Program. 

SOMD’s programs and activities include the Commercial Crew Program, the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Program, the Human Research Program, the International Space Station Program, the Launch Services Program, the Rocket Propulsion Test Program, the Space Communications and Navigation Program, Space Sustainability, and Human Spaceflight Capabilities. 

Both leaders were previously serving as deputies in their respective roles.  

“Strong leadership is essential to advancing NASA’s mission, and Joel Montalbano and Dana Hutcherson are exceptionally well-qualified to serve in these acting roles,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Their experience and commitment will help ensure we deliver on the President’s National Space Policy, maintain American leadership in low Earth orbit, and build the capabilities required to achieve the near-impossible beyond it.” 

Kenneth Bowersox previously announced his retirement, effective Friday, March 6, after which Montalbano will assume the role as acting head of SOMD. Key priorities for Montalbano will include establishing a low Earth orbit economy ahead of retiring the International Space Station and maintaining America’s superiority in space.  

Prior to his positions at headquarters, Montalbano served as program manager of the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he was responsible for the overall management, development, integration, and operation of the orbiting laboratory. He also has served as a variety of other roles, including deputy program manager for the International Space Station Program Office; director of NASA’s Human Space Flight Program in Russia; and a NASA flight director. He started his career at Rockwell in 1988 and became a NASA civil servant that same year.  

Over the course of his career, he has received many honors, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Johnson Space Center Directors Commendation, Rank of Meritorious Executive, conferred by the President of the United States, NASA Exceptional Service Medal (twice), the Superior Accomplishment Award, NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, Rotary Space Award Nominee, and more.  

Montalbano received a bachelor’s degree in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronautical engineering from Iowa State University. 

Through CCP, Hutcherson will continue her work with the American aerospace industry to develop safe, reliable and cost-effective crew transportation systems for low-Earth orbit destinations, including the International Space Station. She is responsible for the facilitation of spacecraft development, certification, and operations to enable the safe transportation of NASA astronauts for the Commercial Crew Program. 

Hutcherson previously served as deputy manager of the CCP Systems Engineering and Integration Office, and as deputy manager of the program’s Launch Vehicle Systems Office. She also has served as a NASA flow director within the Launch Vehicle Processing Directorate at Kennedy, and other roles at NASA. Prior to NASA, she began her career with United Space Alliance as an airframe engineer.  

Hutcherson has received numerous prestigious honors including Meritorious Presidential Rank Award, NASA’s Space Flight Awareness Leadership Award, and Outstanding Leadership Medal.  

She holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and a master of science in industrial engineering of engineering management from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. 

For more about NASA’s mission, visit:  

https://www.nasa.gov/

-end- 

Bethany Stevens / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov  

February is one of the driest months of the year in northern Colombia’s Córdoba department, a major farming and cattle region. It’s the time of year when farmers normally prepare fields for planting and ranchers move livestock to graze in drying floodplains. In 2026, however, unusually heavy rains in early February upended seasonal rhythms and submerged much of the department under floodwaters.

The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this false-color image (bands 7-5-4) of flooding along the Sinú River on February 9, 2026 (right). Dark floodwaters cover farmland, pastureland, and several communities, particularly to the west of the river. To the east, water levels at a complex of wetlands are unseasonably high. Lorica, a city of roughly 90,000 people, is visible in the upper part of the image. The OLI image on the left shows the same area on January 23, before floodwaters arrived.

After an already wet January, rainfall intensified in early February when an unusual cold front in the Caribbean pushed south on February 1 and 2, forcing moisture-laden air into northern Colombia and over the Andes. This led to several days of intense downpours in Córdoba, with some areas receiving more than 4 to 7 centimeters (2 to 3 inches) of rain per day, according to one analysis of the event.

NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement) estimated rain rates of 1.7 centimeters per hour near Lorica on February 1, the day of the heaviest rains. In the following weeks, storms continued to drench the region. On February 25, imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite indicated that flooding remained widespread.

The floods have been far-reaching and destructive. More than 80 percent of Córdoba flooded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Preliminary estimates cited by news and government sources suggest that thousands of homes were destroyed, more than 11,000 families displaced, and more than 150,000 hectares of farmland inundated.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

• The City Paper Bogotá (2026, February 10) Extreme flooding in northern Colombia triggers humanitarian crisis. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• ClimaMeter (2026, February) February 2026 floods in northern Colombia. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• Colombia Reports (2026, February 12) Colombia declares emergency in response to widespread floods. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• El País (2026, February 10) Carlos Carrillo: “La inundación en Córdoba es mucho más grave de lo previsto en los escenarios más pesimistas.” Accessed February 25, 2026.
• IDEAM (2026) News. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• IDEAM (2026, February 3) Boletín de condiciones hidrometeorológicas y alertas No. 100. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• International Charter Space & Major Disasters (2026) Flood in Colombia. Accessed February 25, 2026.  
• ReliefWeb (2026, February 25) Colombia: Floods. Accessed February 25, 2026.
• Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres (2026, February 15) Con tecnología satelital, UNGRD identifica mancha de inundación en Córdoba. Accessed February 25, 2026.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), which advises NASA and Congress on safety, has released its 2025 annual report on NASA’s performance and challenges.  

While the panel acknowledged NASA’s safety achievements, it warned that the agency’s biggest challenges stem from interconnected factors – workforce, acquisition, technical authority, budgets, and the growing complexity of human spaceflight – requiring sustained attention as missions become more ambitious.

“Independent assessments like this will make NASA better,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “The panel’s report underscores areas where we must raise the bar, from how we structure oversight and manage integrated risk to how we declare and learn from anomalies. We are wholly committed to transparency. That’s how we protect crews, earn trust, and keep the Artemis lunar campaign and our transition to a commercial presence in low Earth orbit on a safe, sustainable path.” 

This year’s report focused on the following topics: 

• strategic vision and governance 
• Moon to Mars program 
• future U.S. presence in low Earth orbit 
• health and medical risks in human spaceflight 
• NASA’s X-59 Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator 

The panel noted progress on Artemis II readiness and improved oversight through the Moon to Mars Program Office, as well as safe International Space Station operations, advances in astronaut health research, and the first flight of the X-59 Low-Boom Demonstrator. At the same time, it flagged significant challenges, including Artemis III’s high-risk posture, lessons from Boeing’s Starliner test, space station deorbit planning, and systemic concerns. 

To respond to these new challenges, the panel recommends NASA: 

• Realign its governance of acquisition strategies for human spaceflight-related capabilities agencywide. 
• Re-examine the mission objectives and system architecture for Artemis III and subsequent missions to establish a more balanced approach to risk.  
• Require timely declaration of mishap or high-visibility close call. 

“We were already on the path to implementing change and this report only adds more urgency,” added Isaacman. “That means recalibrating our acquisition strategy — including a build versus buy versus service procurement approach — restoring core competencies through initiatives like converting contractors to civil servant roles and increasing our launch cadence. We’re also aligning our long-term vision for the agency and industry to guide priorities. This includes clarifying our plans for the Artemis architecture moving forward and accelerating proposals for human landing systems to preserve schedule margin. We’ve already shown what transparency and now accountability looks like — through the Boeing Starliner Program Investigation Team report, we owned our mistakes, classified the mission as a Type A mishap, and launched corrective actions to ensure they never happen again. These steps, along with addressing health and medical risk documentation and overhauling and accelerating programs like X-59, reflect our commitment to live up to the expectations of the world’s most accomplished space agency.”  

On Feb. 19, Isaacman held a news conference to present the agency’s findings from the Starliner Crewed Flight Test. Earlier this month, he outlined a new workforce plan to strengthen NASA’s core competencies in technical, engineering, and operational excellence. The agency also is working with both its human landing system industry providers to streamline and accelerate America’s return to the surface of the Moon by 2028. 

“The panel commends NASA for its impressive efforts in 2025 to strategically enhance the agency’s risk management posture despite turbulence in the agency’s organizational environment,” said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan J. Helms, chair of ASAP. “We very sincerely thank NASA’s leaders and workforce for their passionate dedication to space exploration and their unwavering commitment to the safe pursuit of the nation’s lofty aims to the great benefit of the future of humanity.”  

The annual report is based on the panel’s 2025 fact-finding and quarterly public meetings; direct observations of NASA operations and decision-making; discussions with NASA management, employees, and contractors; and the panel members’ experiences.  

Congress established the panel in 1968 to provide advice and make recommendations to the NASA administrator on safety matters after the 1967 Apollo 1 fire claimed the lives of three American astronauts. 

To learn more about the ASAP, and view annual reports, visit: 

https://www.nasa.gov/asap

-end-

Bethany Stevens / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov

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