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Much of the Saskatchewan River Delta, a large inland delta that straddles the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is too wet for extensive farming. But amid the delta’s winding channels, lakes, and marshes, an “island” of straight-edged fields breaks up the curvy contours. These fields, west of the town of The Pas, make up Manitoba’s northernmost agricultural area.

Known as the Carrot River Valley (Pasquia Area Settlement), the area lies within the Rural Municipality of Kelsey. Its actively farmed land spans more than 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) between the Carrot and Pasquia rivers—tributaries of the Saskatchewan River—and is surrounded by wetlands, including the marshes of the Saskeram Wildlife Management Area to the north.

These images show the valley at two points during the 2026 growing season: on July 2 (left) and September 21 (right). They were acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 satellites, respectively.

Landsat data feed into the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada annual crop inventory. The 2026 inventory was not released as of late September, but the 2025 map shows that farmers in the Carrot River Valley grew mostly canola and spring wheat that year, along with small patches of Canary seed.

The July 2026 image shows green crops across many of the valley’s fields. Planting in the area, part of Manitoba Agriculture’s Northwest crop reporting region, began later than in parts of the region to the south because of wet conditions. Still, fertile soils and long summer days at this northern latitude can help crops grow quickly.

By the time of the September image, the pattern had flipped. The Pas recorded little rainfall in the preceding week (1.6 millimeters, or 0.06 inches), while wetter weather elsewhere in the Northwest region (up to 43.9 millimeters, or 1.7 inches) held up the harvest. By then, farmers across the region had harvested about 10 percent of the canola and 50 percent of the spring wheat.

Managing water has long been a challenge in the valley. In the 1950s, a major flood control and drainage project got underway, and farming in the area today still depends on diking and pumping for agricultural flood protection.

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

References & Resources

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (2025) Annual Crop Inventory. Accessed September 30, 2026.
• Jardine, T. D., et al. (2023) Healthy Delta, Healthy People: The Past, Present and Future of the Saskatchewan River Delta. In Wantzen, K. M. (Ed.), River Culture: Life as a Dance to the Rhythm of the Waters, 397–421. UNESCO Publishing.
• Kelsey Conservation District, Carrot–Saskatchewan River Integrated Watershed Management Plan: A Summary of Watershed Values (PDF). Accessed September 30, 2026.
• Manitoba Agriculture, Reward Versus Risk: Seeding Early In Manitoba. Accessed September 30, 2026.
• Rural Municipality of Kelsey, Elected Officials & General Information. Accessed September 30, 2026.

Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 18, 2026

Curiosity surprised us at the beginning of the week with a change in rock texture — instead of the finely layered bedrock blocks we’ve been seeing in our recent sulfate unit workspaces, suddenly we were looking at blocks covered (and likely filled) with a jumble of small disc-shaped lumps. We’ve seen somewhat similar features before much earlier in the mission — for example, close to the Pahrump Hills back in the Murray mudstones, and they’re sometimes seen in Earth rocks as well, especially in settings in which minerals were precipitating from an evaporating fluid. The disc-like shapes could be created by the growth habits of a specific crystalline mineral that is known to grow into similar shapes, or they could be bits of a harder rock layer that broke up and collected here. We planned Mastcam and MAHLI imaging for more morphological detail on the jumbled disc blocks (“Yungay,” “Chiu Chiu”) as well as LIBS (“Puya Raimondii,” “Liolaemus Tacnae,” “Pisqu Warkatana”) and APXS (“Salar de Vacas”) to investigate their composition. 

Ongoing long-distance imaging projects were furthered by ChemCam long-distance remote imager (RMI) and Mastcam mosaics of the buttes on either side of Valle Grande. These “cutaway”-view images of the strata above the rover will help us map sedimentary structures in these upcoming units and understand how these rocks formed and eroded. Views of more recent erosional deposits will also help us to understand the formation of Valle Grande itself.

In order to identify minerals, Curiosity needs data from the CheMin X-ray diffraction instrument, which means a drill campaign. We’ve driven over a kilometer since our last drill site at Campo Marte, and this will be our first drill above the erosional supersurface. The Wednesday plan’s drive brought us up next to a promising drill workspace a little beyond where we saw the disc-shaped features discussed above (imaged as “Torres del Paine” by Mastcam) and Friday’s planning included site characterization with the instruments on Curiosity’s arm (“Alberta Wild Rose,” “Moonraker Mountain”), ChemCam LIBS (“Osoyoos”), and Mastcam (“Trincomali Channel,” “Yellow Lady’s Slipper”). The team also selected a specific drill target and planned a very short drive to bring it in range of the arm — first for contact science and then, if all goes well, for the preload test and drill.

I’ll be back on planning on Monday as Geology and Mineralogy Science Theme Lead for Drill Sol 1 (Triage Contact Science) and we’ll see how things go from there!

Galaxies, vast collections of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity, are scattered across the immensity of space. But every so often, a coincidence occurs: Two galaxies line up from our point of view on Earth (or from a space telescope) and appear to overlap in the sky. These rare overlapping galaxies give astronomers a chance to study something normally difficult to see: the dust inside one of these distant cosmic objects. That’s the focus of NASA’s new Overlap Zoo project.

Picture the background galaxy acting like a cosmic flashlight, shining through the nearer galaxy. The backlit dust creates dark silhouettes, like shadows on a screen. By studying these silhouettes, astronomers can map how dust is distributed throughout galaxies and learn how it blocks, scatters, and dims starlight traveling through space. Measurements of how dust impacts light can even help astronomers refine estimates of the distances to faraway objects.

However, before we can study galaxy pairs and their dust, we first need to find them! Overlap Zoo is asking for your help with the search. 

“As new and better observations of galaxies continue to multiply, it is becoming incredibly difficult for astronomers to classify every candidate galaxy pair,” said Trevor Butrum, Overlap Zoo project lead and graduate student. “Your help is invaluable to creating the biggest and cleanest catalog of overlapping galaxy pairs for further analysis.”

As a volunteer in Overlap Zoo, you’ll view images that volunteers in the Galaxy Zoo project have identified as containing possible overlapping galaxies. The Overlap Zoo project will teach you how to verify the presence of galaxy pairs in these images, classify key features of each galaxy, and mark their outlines. You’ll learn as you go, classifying as many of these images as you like. Your contributions will help build the first large-scale catalog of galaxy pairs suitable for dust studies and enable a huge step forward in accuracy of astronomical estimates.

Head over to Overlap Zoo and start classifying galaxies today. No prior experience needed – just curiosity and a few minutes of your time. Your observations will help unlock the secrets hidden in these rare cosmic alignments!

Editor’s note: This release was updated on Sept. 30, 2026, to correct the name of the DISCO payload.

NASA selected three new scientific investigations and their payload suites to advance our knowledge of the Moon and help pave the way for building humanity’s first lunar outpost, Moon Base.

The suite of science instruments and technologies was selected through NASA’s Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) program and will fly to the lunar surface using the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative as part of the agency’s Moon Base Program. The payloads will help researchers understand lunar resources, map natural shelters, and assess environmental hazards, laying the foundational groundwork for a safe and sustained human presence under the agency’s Artemis and Moon Base programs. 

“NASA Science is building the ultimate interplanetary survival guide to ensure that science goes first to the lunar surface to provide our future astronaut crews with the vital information, resources, and safety precautions needed ahead of time to survive the night on the Moon,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These PRISM selections will directly help NASA minimize risks to our astronauts while maximizing our agency goals as we set up humanity’s first lunar outpost in preparation for sending the first astronauts to Mars.”

The three payload suites are:

Lunar Environment Monitoring Station – South Pole (LEMS-SP):

• The autonomous LEMS-SP instrument suite will serve as a long-term environmental and hazard monitoring station. The instrument will be designed to help build a picture of the lunar environment by monitoring falling micrometeoroids and tracking the abundance of volatiles, or materials that can easily shift into gas, that drift into the Moon’s thin outer layer of gases. Using a short‑period seismometer to detect seismic events, the instrument could deliver the critical hazard assessments needed to ensure the physical safety of Moon Base hardware.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Mehdi Benna, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

 Geophysical Investigation for Mapping Lunar Interior (GIMLI):  

• The GIMLI payload will be deployed at the Marius Hills Pit on the lunar surface to hunt for subterranean lava tubes and aid in our understanding of fundamental lunar volcanic processes. The payload will scan beneath the Moon’s surface to see whether the Marius Hills Pit leads into a large underground lava tube. If it does, these natural underground spaces could offer future astronauts ready‑made protection from extreme temperatures and harmful radiation — important groundwork for safe, long‑term living on the Moon. Confirming these void spaces now could shift future habitat planning, offering natural, ready-made shelters that provide crucial thermal stability and shielding from deadly ionizing radiation and micrometeoroid bombardment.  

Principal Investigator: Dr. Nathaniel Putzig, Planetary Science Institute

Depth Imager with Spectral and Color Optics (DISCO):  

• The DISCO payload will provide the first direct, on-the-ground measurements of ice hidden in lunar micro-cold traps and also will lay the groundwork for lunar resource utilization and surface operations. The payload will study how the lunar surface behaves, from how rocket exhaust disturbs the ground to how stable it is for mobility, while also pinpointing where ice exists and how much of it is there. Together, this information will help NASA design safe surface operations and develop the technologies needed to turn ice into a usable resource for the future Moon Base.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Ariel Deutsch, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

“Each new PRISM selection strengthens our ability to deliver ambitious, transformative science to the lunar surface,” said Brad Bailey, director of the Exploration Science Strategy Integration Office in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “These investigations exemplify how Artemis and Moon Base are expanding the frontier of lunar exploration, advancing innovative technologies, deepening our understanding of the Moon’s environment, and paving the way for future astronaut missions.”

NASA is increasing its cadence of lunar missions to build a Moon Base, delivering science investigations and technology payloads that contribute to American scientific preeminence, strengthen a sustained presence on the Moon, and advance future human exploration.

NASA’s CLPS initiative supports the Moon Base Program, as the agency works with American companies to deliver scientific, exploration, and technology payloads to the Moon’s surface and orbit.

For more information, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/lunar-science

-end-

Tiffany Blake
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
tiffany.n.blake@nasa.gov

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