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The Republic of Serbia signed the Artemis Accords Thursday during a ceremony hosted by NASA at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 69th nation to join a large community of like-minded nations committed to the peaceful, transparent, and responsible exploration of space.
“Serbia’s connection to NASA reaches back to the Apollo program, when the work of Serbian engineers helped make some of humanity’s greatest achievements in space possible,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson. “Among them was Milojko ‘Mike’ Vučelić, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the critical role he played in bringing the Apollo 13 crew safely home. Their story stands as a reminder that the greatest achievements in space are made possible by talented people working together.”
The broader team of Serbian American engineers played key roles during the Apollo era across systems engineering, propulsion, power systems, spacecraft docking, electronics reliability, and mission coordination. Their expertise supported critical functions ranging from lunar landing analysis to safe spacecraft docking.
Serbia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Đurić signed the Artemis Accords on behalf of the country.
“The great beyond has always inspired humanity to achieve its greatest feats — from the Roman ‘per aspera ad astra’ to Norman Vincent Peale’s belief that if we aim for the Moon, we will at least land among the stars,” said Đurić. “Those words feel especially fitting today. We come from a nation of great minds like Nikola Tesla and Milutin Milanković, but also from the legacy of David Vujic, one of the pioneers of the Apollo missions and a member of the ‘Serbian Seven,’ a group of engineers and technicians whose contributions to NASA helped make the Moon landing possible. In that spirit, we owe it to both our brave ancestors and our children to keep pushing toward new frontiers — to explore, to inspire one another, and to dare even greater things.”
By signing the Artemis Accords, nations open the door to opportunities for future lunar exploration with NASA, such as providing science and technology payloads for the U.S.-led Moon Base and CubeSats for upcoming Artemis missions, advancing humanity’s return to the Moon, and shaping the Golden Age of space exploration and innovation.
Ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to the United States Dragan Šutanovac; State Secretary for Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation Marija Gnjatović; and U.S. Department of State Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Wesley Brooks all participated in Serbia’s signing ceremony.
In 2020, NASA and the Department of State joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. They introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety and coordination between nations as they explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond, committing nations to:
Five years later, President Donald J. Trump’s National Space Policy directed NASA to establish a sustained lunar outpost. With this Moon Base, NASA is putting the principles of the Artemis Accords into practice, inviting every signatory to take part in the endeavor.
More countries are expected to sign the Artemis Accords in the months and years ahead, as NASA continues its work to establish a safe, peaceful, and prosperous future in space.
Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:
2026-07-16 18:40
5 min read

New research led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has revealed the identity of a puzzling near-Earth object by precisely tracking its motion through space and using powerful observatories that image faint celestial objects.
This object has a dual personality: Past images hadn’t revealed obvious cometlike activity, suggesting it might be an asteroid, but its motion recently proved to be irregular like that of a comet. The scientists detailed their findings in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The puzzle began on Aug. 28, 2025, when the object, provisionally known as the asteroid 1998 SH2, passed safely within 2 million miles (3 million kilometers) of our planet during its 4½-year orbit around the Sun. Researchers looking to observe 1998 SH2 with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) planetary radar system had calculated its position using data from previous orbits and factored in the effects that the gravity of the Sun and planets would have on its path. But when 1998 SH2 didn’t show up where they expected, they realized that something unanticipated had been influencing the object’s motion.
By using optical astrometry to precisely measure the object’s position in the sky, the researchers were able to identify the cause.
“After we measured the nongravitational perturbations affecting the motion of 1998 SH2 and recognized they weren’t compatible with the object being an asteroid, we suspected the object could be an active comet,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer with NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at JPL and study lead.
Although 1998 SH2’s orbit around the Sun had been well-tracked from 1998 to 2016, the object had completed two solar orbits without additional observations by telescopes until the 2025 DSN attempts. Analyzing all observations collected since the object’s discovery in 1998, researchers determined the perturbations to 1998 SH2’s motion and hypothesized that the object may be generating a small thrust by venting gas into space, causing it to deviate from its predicted path.
This venting results from the Sun heating ice mixed with rocky material, turning the ice into a gas. With regular comets, this activity forms a trademark bright tail and coma — the gas and dust surrounding a comet’s nucleus. But when an object produces gas and dust in much smaller quantities, its tail and coma may not be detectable to most observatories.
The August 2025 close approach to Earth of 1998 SH2 provided the perfect opportunity for the paper’s authors to gather observational evidence of visible cometary activity. They reached out to astronomers at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, a 3.6-meter (12-foot) optical/infrared telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the 1.5-meter (5-foot) European Southern Observatory’s Danish Telescope in La Silla, Chile, to observe. Astronomers at the powerful European Southern Observatory’s 8.2-meter (27-foot) Very Large Telescope on the Chilean mountain Cerro Paranal also tracked the object.
“The images we collected from these observatories showed a weak but clear tail, thus confirming that 1998 SH2 is, in fact, a comet,” said Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory and coauthor of the study. “That’s how science works — you form a hypothesis, and you set out to test it. This data is exactly what was needed to confirm our hypothesis that 1998 SH2 was a comet.”
As an outcome of the investigation, 1998 SH2 will receive an additional comet provisional designation, P/1998 SH2.
The research also sheds light on another, even more unusual, class of objects called dark comets. Like 1998 SH2, dark comets exhibit significant irregularities, or perturbations, in their trajectory but lack other visible evidence of comet activity — there’s no coma, tail, or visible outgassing. These enigmatic objects fall into two distinct populations: larger ones with orbits similar to those of Jupiter-family comets (short period comets with highly elliptical, or eccentric, orbits), and smaller ones that orbit closer to the Sun. Since the 2016 discovery of the first dark comet, about a dozen more have been identified.
The paper’s authors suggest that many of the larger dark comets, which have orbits like 1998 SH2’s, could turn out to be regular comets if astronomers get the right opportunity to observe them with powerful telescopes capable of imaging incredibly faint objects. And by analyzing the motion of all near-Earth objects using precision astrometry data, researchers may reveal more comets that were previously designated as asteroids if they exhibit cometlike nongravitational perturbations.
“This work shows the importance of continuously tracking near-Earth objects,” said Farnocchia. “Because of outgassing, the motion of comets is more significantly perturbed than that of asteroids. Detecting these perturbations can be an important diagnostic tool for planetary defense that will help understand which objects may be comets rather than asteroids, how their orbits evolve, and how that influences their Earth impact risks.”
NASA’s upcoming Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor will collect data that can be used to support this effort. The first space survey telescope to be built for planetary defense, this next-generation mission will seek out some of the hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light.
NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, the Goldstone Solar System Radar Group, and NEO Surveyor all are managed by JPL and supported by the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. The DSN receives programmatic oversight from the SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program office, also at NASA headquarters.
More information about planetary radar, NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, and near-Earth objects can be found at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroid-watch
News Media Contacts
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2026-046
2026-07-16 14:35
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope takes us 4.4 billion years in the past with this July 3, 2026, image of a young galaxy cluster, MACS J0553.4-3342. The cluster is composed of two actively merging sub-clusters, roughly equal in mass. Each sub-cluster is anchored on an immensely bright and massive elliptical galaxy, easily identifiable as the two brightest points in the center of this scene with the largest glowing halos around them.
Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Fujimoto
2026-07-16 04:00
After a slow start to Canada’s 2026 fire season, activity picked up by the end of June amid dry, warm conditions and returned closer to the 25-year average. By mid-July, almost 850 fires were actively burning across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. More than 180 of those were burning in Ontario.
This NOAA-21 image, acquired on the afternoon of July 14, 2026, shows smoke billowing from the Ontario fires. Winds carried the smoke primarily southeast over much of the southern part of the province, as well as parts of Quebec and the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, tinting the sky shades of gray and yellow and the Sun orange in many areas.
The smoke’s impact on air quality varied, depending largely on altitude. In areas where smoke was high in the atmosphere, air quality impacts were negligible; where it drifted closer to the ground, conditions worsened. Air quality in Toronto, for instance, reached unhealthy levels, according to AirNow. People in the southern parts of the province were also grappling with a heat wave, compounding the health risks.
Much of the smoke came from fires in Northwestern Ontario, where eight blazes saw significant growth on July 13 and 14. The fires prompted officials to issue evacuation orders for several communities in this part of the province, according to news reports.
As of July 14, fires across Canada have burned 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres) since the start of the year—still well below the season totals from the extreme fire years of 2023 and 2025. How the rest of the season plays out remains to be seen. A seasonal fire outlook—compiled by wildland fire experts from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—shows where fire conditions are more or less likely through July, August, and September.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE , GIBS/Worldview , and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Story by Kathryn Hansen.
Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.

In fire-prone ecosystems in Australia’s Northern Territory, prescribed burns are lit to minimize the severity of fires later in the…

Dry, warm, and windy conditions across the U.S. Great Plains led to extreme fire activity in March 2026.

The blaze burned more than 150 square miles and swept through parts of a ski resort.
2026-07-15 21:56

Testing new aerospace concepts in flight remains one of NASA’s most effective ways to advance knowledge and reduce risk.
The Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, supports this mission by using small, remotely piloted and autonomous aircraft as cost‑effective platforms to mature innovative ideas, accelerate learning, and enable smoother transitions to full‑scale flight.
When experiments require a flight platform, several NASA remotely piloted aircraft are available: the Alta‑X quadrotor; the Dryden Remotely Operated Integrated Drone (DROID) with its 10‑foot wingspan; and the Multi‑Use Cub, a 14‑foot‑span fixed‑wing aircraft with an expandable payload capacity for flight experiments. For electric vertical takeoff and landing testing, the HQ‑90 quadrotor provides an additional option.
Once aircraft and experiments are cleared for operations, laboratory pilots support the mission, including ground operations and flight activities.

Each staff member serves as an experienced and certified subscale aircraft pilot and is prepared to fly unique one-of-a-kind or modified commercial aircraft wherever the mission requires.
NASA’s FireSense project conducted flights in the Geneva State Forest, located about 100 miles south of Montgomery, Alabama. NASA Armstrong flight research staff integrated the instrument onto an Alta-X drone and tested the system before deployment. Two team members then transported the drone and sensor to the forest, prepared the vehicle for flight, and operated it during the mission. The NASA sensor was flown on the drone to demonstrate how remotely piloted aircraft can gather localized weather data that influences smoke movement and fire behavior. This information may help operational agencies improve wildfire decision-making and better allocate firefighters and resources.
Other missions occur closer to NASA Armstrong, such as the Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy (EPIC) project. EPIC involved air‑launching a capsule containing a parachute and flexible sensor from the Alta‑X. Laboratory staff piloted the flights, supported flight operations, and worked with the EPIC team to design and integrate the parachute‑drop mechanism and safety system into the aircraft.
These tests demonstrated that a flexible sensor could help researchers study supersonic parachutes. Continuation of this work can help fill gaps in computer models, making supersonic parachutes safer and more reliable for delivering science instruments and payloads to Mars.

The Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory uses rapid design and testing capabilities to help small aircraft fly big ideas. These concepts could lead to future breakthroughs that support NASA’s missions across aeronautics, science, and exploration.
For decades, NASA and its partners have advanced Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology. The research demonstrated an autopilot could detect and recover from an imminent ground collision – a capability now helping save lives in high‑performance U.S. military jets. NASA Armstrong had key roles in that work and developed a simplified version, the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, which was installed on the DROID for testing.
The system demonstrated on the DROID — developed to assist general aviation pilots as well as remotely piloted and autonomous aircraft — performed well and led to further research toward a version that provides alerts and steering cues. The NASA Armstrong Technology Transfer Office is working to license the technology for U.S. businesses to develop the system as a commercial product.
The Prandtl‑D (Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag) flying‑wing glider was also designed, fabricated, and flown at NASA Armstrong. Researchers found that its twisted wing design could reduce drag and generate thrust at the wingtips, advancing concepts that may support greater fuel economy for future aircraft. The original Prandtl‑D is now part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum collection in Washington, and the Prandtl-D3 is at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Researchers continue developing the next generation of the design in the laboratory.
A wide range of capabilities in the laboratory help transform promising concepts into flight-ready test structures. These include rapid prototyping using traditional and advanced 3D manufacturing techniques, as well as composite and conventional fabrication processes. The team of engineers and technicians also provides custom component design and specialized fabrication to meet unique research needs.
The laboratory supports electrical and mechanical design, hardware and software integration, and the safety and flight-readiness processes required for successful missions. Additional technical facilities, such as the Experimental Fabrication Branch and the Environmental Laboratory at NASA Armstrong, further enhance these capabilities. Together, they support development, testing, and validation activities that advance NASA’s aeronautics and exploration goals.
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