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On the southeastern coast of Anglesey, an island off the coast of mainland Wales, lies a little town with a big name. Following a Welsh tradition of naming towns after churches and nearby geographic features, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch roughly translates to “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave.”

Though Wales has many towns with long names, the unusual length of this one is intentional. The settlement, now home to about 3,000 people, was once called Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, but a local resident pushed for the longer version of the name in the 1860s as part of an effort to promote tourism and give its train station the longest name in Britain. Locals usually use a short version of the name—either Llanfairpwll or Llanfair PG.

The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured this image of the town on April 9, 2025. The image below shows a wider view of the same area. The whirlpool mentioned in the name likely refers to a section of the Menai Strait between the Menai Suspension Bridge and Britannia Bridge known as the Swellies. The area is known for having exceptionally treacherous waters because of its complex bathymetry and because tides enter the strait from both ends at different times, creating strong swirling currents. Menai Suspension Bridge, often described as the first modern suspension bridge, was completed in 1826.

Llanddaniel Fab, a village nearby, is the hometown of NASA luminary Tecwyn Roberts. Roberts was a shy boy who grew up without electricity but went on to become one of NASA’s first flight dynamics officers. He is credited with helping to conceptualize NASA’s Deep Space Network, helping design Mission Control at Johnson Space Center, and leading the development of key systems used to communicate with Apollo astronauts.

Llanfairpwll’s full name, with 58 characters, is still shorter than the ceremonial 168-character name for Bangkok, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. However, Llanfairpwll’s full name is said to be the longest one-word place name in Europe and among the longest in the world.

Neighboring planets also boast some lengthy place names. Among the contenders on these other worlds: Schiaparelli crater on Mars, Nantosuelta valley on Venus, and Tchaikovsky crater on Mercury. But even these are less than half the length of the Welsh town’s name. The International Astronomical Union working group responsible for naming planetary features recommends that the first consideration for potential names is that they be “simple, clear, and unambiguous.”

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

References & Resources

• BBC (2019, July 18) The Welshman behind Nasa’s Apollo 11 moon landing mission. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• BBC (2015, March 4) Welsh place names. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• Comerford Way (2016, May 1) I know what Llanfair PG means, but can I pronounce the longest name in Wales? Accessed March 4, 2026.
• HistoryHit (2022, March 30) Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• History Points (2012) NASA space officer’s school, Llanddaniel-fab. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• History Extra (2019, July 18) NASA’s unknown Welsh hero: the story of Tecwyn Roberts. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• NASA (2019, November 5) Goddard Honors an Apollo-era Pioneer, His Legacy. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• University of Southampton (2019, July 17) Rocket Man: Welsh hero of NASA’s moon landings.  Accessed March 4, 2026.
• USGS Astrogeology Science Center Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Accessed March 4, 2026.
• Yahoo (2015, September 12) Here’s the story behind the 58-letter town name in Wales that everyone is talking about. Accessed March 4, 2026.

What We do

The High-Speed Flight (HSF) project develops technologies that make high-speed, airbreathing, commercial flight possible from Mach 1 to Mach 5 and above.

HSF creates tools, technologies, and knowledge that will help eliminate today’s technical barriers to practical supersonic flight, most notably sonic boom. The project supports the X-59 quiet supersonic vehicle testing by gathering acoustic data and validating tools that predict in-flight sonic booms.

HSF conducts fundamental and applied research that explores key challenges in reusable, hypersonic flight technology.

Future Applications

The project evaluates the potential for future commercial hypersonic vehicles, including reusable access to space and commercial point-to-point missions.

Unique Hypersonic Facilities and Expertise

NASA maintains unique facilities, laboratories, and subject matter experts who investigate fundamental and applied research areas to solve the challenges of hypersonic flight. The High-Speed Flight project coordinates closely with partners in industry, academia, and other government agencies to leverage relevant data sets to validate computational models. These partners also utilize NASA expertise, facilities, and computational tools. Partnerships are critical to advancing the state of the art in hypersonic flight.

Contact the High-Speed Flight Project by email at larc-htp-inquiries@mail.nasa.gov

NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program (AAVP) studies, evaluates, and develops technologies and capabilities for new aircraft systems and explores far-future concepts for revolutionary air travel improvements. AAVP develops technologies for all flight regimes from hover to hypersonic to enable safe, new aircraft that are faster, quieter, and more fuel efficient.

AAVP develops a broad range of technologies that maintain U.S. leadership in aerospace, benefitting the nation’s economy and quality of life. AAVP’s research primes the technology pipeline, bolstering U.S. competitiveness.

For subsonic transport aircraft, AAVP accelerates development of key technologies to ensure they will be ready by the late 2020s to transition into U.S. industry’s next-generation single-aisle transport aircraft. AAVP also explores high-risk, high-payoff concepts for future generations of aircraft. The program engages with partners from industry, academia, and other government agencies to maintain a broad perspective on technology solutions to aviation’s challenges, to pursue mutually beneficial collaborations, and to leverage opportunities for effective technology transition.

AAVP Projects

High Speed Flight (HSF)

Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM)

Subsonic Vehicles Technologies and Tools (SVTT)

Legacy AAVP Projects

Advanced Composites (ACP)

Advanced Air Transport Technology (AATT)

Commercial Supersonic Technology (CST)

Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core (HyTEC)

Hypersonic Technology (HT)

Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT)

For the first time, a young, Sun-like star has been caught red-handed blowing bubbles in the galaxy, by astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The bubble – called an “astrosphere” – completely surrounds the juvenile star in this image released on Feb. 23, 2026. Winds from the star’s surface are blowing up the bubble and filling it with hot gas as it expands into much cooler galactic gas and dust surrounding the star. The Sun has a similar bubble around it, which scientists call the heliosphere, created by the solar wind. It extends far beyond the planets in our solar system and protects Earth from cosmic radiation.

This is the first image of an astrosphere astronomers have obtained around a star similar to the Sun. It shows slightly extended emission, rather than a single point of light as seen for other such stars.

Read more about this discovery.

Text credit: Lee Mohon

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/John Hopkins Univ./C.M. Lisse et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/STIS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Listen to this audio excerpt from Paul Boehm, Orion crew support and thermal systems functional area manager:

As the Artemis II astronauts fly around the Moon, they’ll rely on systems inside the Orion spacecraft to live, work, and keep them safe during their mission. At NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Paul Boehm, crew support and thermal systems functional area manager in the Orion Crew and Service Module Office, leads this work.

Boehm oversees life support systems, flight equipment, and Orion Crew Survival System suits worn during launch and re-entry. Developed, designed, and built by Boehm’s team, these systems are set to fly for the first time with crew aboard Orion on Artemis II.

Sustaining the crew in the harsh environment of deep space is no simple task, especially when it comes to a complex system like the environmental control and life support system (ECLSS).

Developing these systems for Orion’s deep space missions to the Moon poses special challenges, such as mass and volume requirements faced when launching heavy spacecraft, and a need for systems that operate reliably without resupply.

“Orion’s ECLSS is unique for Artemis missions because we’re going into deep space,” said Boehm. “It’s a lot longer of a trip that you cannot return quickly from, like a mission on the International Space Station, which is only a couple hours away. Therefore, we try to make a lot of the life support systems regenerative, so you don’t have to carry a lot of consumables, and we also try to make them simpler.”

The system also needs hardware to handle a range of variables that may come its way during the mission, according to Boehm.

“You’re dealing with fluids, you’re dealing with electrical, electronic, and electromechanical components — and you’re also dealing with the human variable of different metabolic situations. Everybody’s different. The ECLSS takes all that into account.”

It’s a challenge that Boehm welcomes and has worked toward throughout his career at NASA. Since starting at NASA Johnson 37 years ago, he has served in disciplines that work directly with crew members, including supporting the astronaut office, extravehicular activities for the space shuttle and space station, and the Orion Program since 2011.

“And so, when I had the opportunity to work on Orion, ECLSS, and crew systems, I said that’s where I want to go, because that way I’ll still be able to help and be directly involved with supporting the crew,” Boehm said. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that.”

As NASA prepares to send crew members around the Moon on Artemis II, seeing Orion and its systems carry the crew will be the marker of a career that’s contributed to moving the future of human spaceflight forward.

“I think that’s why everybody is here working toward this mission — we know it’s for the betterment of humanity,” Boehm said. “Moving things forward for the next generation is something that we all take to heart, and that’s what we’re trying to really do here. We are taking the first step in making history with sending the crew back to the Moon.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his company's investments in OpenAI and Anthropic will likely be its last — but his explanation may not tell the whole story.

Anthropic gave up its contract with the Pentagon over AI safety disagreements -- then, OpenAI swooped in.

The label or distributor has to opt in to tagging their music as AI, so it's unclear how effective this intervention will be.

Google has dropped its commission, charging a 20% service fee and an optional 5% to use its billing services. It will also offer a new process for third-party app stores.

Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor’s determination.  Watch as founder and former CEO […]