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Wave of Dust Rolls Through Texas

2026-03-18 04:01

A line of tan suspended dust stretches roughly northwest-to-southeast for over 100 miles across West Texas.

March 15, 2026

The Ides of March brought perilous weather to West Texas and the state’s Panhandle. A strong cold front blasted south across the arid plains on March 15, 2026, bringing stiff winds that stirred up a curtain of dust. The cloud of suspended particles slashed visibility and made for treacherous travel as it swept across the region. The high winds, coupled with dry conditions, also raised the risk of wildland fires.

The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of blowing dust on its march across Texas at about 4:45 p.m. Central Time (21:45 Universal Time) on March 15. An image acquired by the Terra satellite about 5 hours earlier shows the wall of dust when it was approximately 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the northeast.

Footage captured by a storm chaser shows visibility plummeting to nearly zero as the dense plume passed; similar conditions contributed to a multivehicle crash in North Texas. The National Weather Service also issued a Red Flag Warning for March 15 due to the combination of high winds, low relative humidity, and dry fuels. Several wildland fires ignited in the Panhandle, prompting evacuations, according to news reports.

Weather conditions took a sharp turn with the cold front’s passage. A weather station in Pecos recorded a high of 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius) at 4:30 p.m. local time on March 15, around the time of this image. Temperatures then dropped abruptly, hitting a low of 39ºF (4ºC) around 6 a.m. the next morning. Pecos saw sustained winds of about 25 miles (40 kilometers) per hour with gusts up to 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour on March 15. Several stations in the Panhandle clocked gusts over 60 miles (97 kilometers) per hour.

Much of northern and western Texas has been experiencing moderate or severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Though dust storms are typical in the region this time of year, the lack of rain parches vegetation, dries the land, and increases the area’s susceptibility to these events.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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March 15, 2026

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References & Resources

Amarillo Globe-News (2026, March 16) Video of wildfires, dust storms forcing evacuations in Texas Panhandle. Accessed March 17, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory (2025, March 6) Storm Brings a Potpourri of Hazards to the U.S. Accessed March 17, 2026.
NASA Earthdata (2026) Dust/Ash/Smoke. Accessed March 17, 2026.
National Weather Service, Dust Storms and Haboobs. Accessed March 17, 2026.
National Weather Service, via Iowa Environmental Mesonet (2026, March 14) Urgent – Weather Message. Accessed March 17, 2026.
Texas Storm Chasers (2026, March 13) Texas Weather Roundup: Dangerous Fire Weather, Damaging Winds & Sharp Cold Front Sunday. Accessed March 17, 2026.

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NASA’s X-59 Prepares for Second Flight

2026-03-17 20:55

4 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

An aircraft resting on a section of runway as seen from the front, with its nose facing the camera. The early morning sky is orange in the background.

As its team prepared for second flight, NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft underwent engine run testing on Thursday, March 12, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

NASA/Jim Ross

NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft is preparing for its second flight, a step that will set the pace for more flight testing in 2026.

Over the coming months, NASA will take the quiet supersonic jet faster and higher, while validating safety and performance, a process known as envelope expansion.

NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less will be at the X-59’s controls for second flight. Less will take off and land at Edwards Air Force Base, near the X-59’s home at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

“This will be the first time I’ve flown an X-plane,” Less said. “I think I’ll mostly be focused on getting the test cards done and getting them done correctly. It’ll probably sink in later that I was in the X-59.”

Less will be accompanied by NASA test pilot Nils Larson, who will be flying nearby in a NASA F/A-18 aircraft to observe the X-59.

The X-59 made its first flight Oct. 28, 2025, with Larson as pilot. Afterward, NASA and contractor Lockheed Martin completed an extensive round of post-flight maintenance and inspections. The work involved removing the engine, a section of the tail known as the lower empennage, the seat, and more than 70 panels to perform inspections. All have been reinstalled.

“These guys know what they’re doing. We couldn’t do something like this without a really competent team of hardworking folks,” Less said. “Nils trusted them for the first flight. I trust them for the second flight and every flight after that.”

NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less sits in the X-59's cockpit in a close-up photo. Less is wearing his flight suit, a flight helmet, and glasses, with a radio pressed close to his face. His name and call sign are written just under the canopy glass.

NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took the X-59 through its engine run test on Thursday, March 12, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Less will pilot the aircraft for its second flight.

NASA/Jim Ross

The team completed one of the last ground tests before the flight on March 12 – an engine run firing up the X-59’s modified F-18 Super Hornet F414-GE-100 engine.

“It’s always exciting to see the X-59 come to life on the ground,” said Ray Castner, NASA’s X-59 lead propulsion engineer. “For our team, it’s a moment to pause and appreciate how far this aircraft has come – and how close we are to pushing into the next phase of flight.”

The X-59’s second flight continues the push toward that next phase, with the team closely studying the aircraft’s performance.

“Second flight will look a lot like the first flight,” said Cathy Bahm, NASA’s project manager for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project. “We’ll start the flight at a test condition from first flight to ensure X-59 performs as expected after the maintenance phase, then we’ll start the envelope expansion by testing a little higher and faster.”

The flight marks the start of envelope expansion tests for the X-59. After the aircraft reaches a speed of approximately 230 mph at 12,000 feet and its team performs functional checks, it will advance to 260 mph at 20,000 feet.

First flight was the X-59’s biggest leap so far – going from the ground to airborne. Now, envelope expansion will be a gradual process as the aircraft works toward its mission parameters of about 925 mph, or Mach 1.4, at 55,000 feet.

“From here on out, once we’re airborne, we can increase speed and increase altitude in small, measured chunks, looking at things as we go and not getting ahead of ourselves,” Less said. “Eventually we get to supersonic flight – a few more steps – and we’re out to Mach 1.4 at about 55,000 feet,” said Less.

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which aims to usher in a new age of quiet, commercial supersonic flight over land. The X-59 will demonstrate that an aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the typical loud sonic boom to a quieter thump.

Envelope expansion is Phase 1 of Quesst. It will be followed by Phase 2 flight testing to validate the X-59’s acoustic performance. The team will study how the aircraft’s design disperses the shock waves that typically merge into a sonic boom.

After acoustics validation, NASA plans to fly the X-59 over selected U.S. communities to gather data on how people on the ground perceive its quieter sound signature. NASA will share the results with U.S. and international regulators.

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Last Updated

Mar 17, 2026

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Dede Dinius

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Nicolas Cholula

nicolas.h.cholula@nasa.gov

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Quesst is NASA's mission to demonstrate how the X-59 can fly supersonic without generating loud sonic booms and then survey…

Artemis II

Dim Delights in Cancer

2026-03-17 19:41

3 Min Read

Dim Delights in Cancer

Several bright stars and many background galaxies are visible against a black background.

Another Hubble view of the outskirts of Messier 44 shows a variety of bright stars and many background galaxies.

Credits:
NASA, ESA and C. Scarlata (University of Minnesota – Twin Cities); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Cancer the Crab is a dim constellation, yet it contains one of the most beautiful and easy-to-spot star clusters in our sky: the Beehive Cluster. Cancer also possesses one of the most studied exoplanets: the superhot super-Earth, 55 Cancri e.

Three constellations right to left - Gemini, Cancer, and Leo - with the star cluster known as the Beehive circled in the center of the Cancer constellation. The image also contains notable objects such as the planet Jupiter as seen in March 2026, and stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini, Regulus in Leo, and Procyon in Canis Minor.

Find the M44, the Beehive Cluster, at the center of the Cancer constellation, using nearby stars such as Regulus in Leo, Pollux in Gemini, and Procyon in Canis Minor.

Stellarium Web

Find Cancer’s dim stars by looking in between the brighter neighboring constellations of Gemini and Leo. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t find it at first, since Cancer isn’t easily visible from moderately light-polluted areas. Once you find Cancer, look for its most famous deep-sky object: the Beehive Cluster! It’s a large open cluster of young stars, three times larger than our Moon in the sky. The Beehive is visible to the unaided eye under good sky conditions as a faint, cloudy patch, but is stunning when viewed through binoculars or a wide-field telescope. It was one of the earliest deep-sky objects noticed by ancient astronomers, and so the Beehive has many other names, including Praesepe, Nubilum, M44, the Ghost, and Jishi qi. Take a look at it on a clear night through binoculars. Do these stars look like a hive of buzzing bees? Or do you see something else? There’s no wrong answer, since this large star cluster has intrigued imaginative observers for thousands of years.

The super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e, depicted with its star in this artist’s concept, likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s but with ingredients that could be similar to those of Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

55 Cancri is a nearby binary star system, about 41 light-years from us and faintly visible under excellent dark sky conditions. The larger star is orbited by at least five planets, including 55 Cancri e (a.k.a. Janssen, named after one of the first telescope makers). Janssen is a “super-earth,” a large rocky world 8 times the mass of Earth, and orbits its star every 18 hours, giving it one of the shortest years of any known planet! Janssen was the first exoplanet to have its atmosphere successfully analyzed. Both the Hubble and retired Spitzer space telescopes confirmed that the hot world is enveloped by an atmosphere of helium and hydrogen, with traces of hydrogen cyanide: not a likely place to find life, especially since the surface is probably scorching-hot rock. NASA’s Exoplanet Travel Bureau allows us to imagine what it would be like to visit 55 Cancri e and other worlds.

How do astronomers find planets around other star systems? The Night Sky Network’s “Wobbles and Transits: How Do We Find Planets Around Other Stars?” activity helps demonstrate both the transit and wobble methods of exoplanet detection. Notably, 55 Cancri e was discovered using the wobble method in 2004, and the transit method confirmed its orbital period in 2011!

Want to learn more about exoplanets? Get the latest NASA news about worlds beyond our solar system at NASA Exoplanets!

Originally posted by Dave Prosper: March 2020

Last Updated by Kat Troche: March 2026

Solving Asteroid Bennu’s Mysteries

2026-03-17 14:40

X-ray computed tomography scans of asteroid samples show both their exterior and interior. The outside is a dark gray, rocky surface speckled with white dots, The inside is colored green here, revealing networks of cracks within the sample. At top, the cracks create peaks and valleys, which make the inside look like a topographical map.

NASA/Scott Eckley

These X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans released on March 17, 2026, give us a glimpse inside asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples; these networks solved a mystery that baffled NASA for years.

When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft first approached asteroid Bennu in 2018, scientists expected to see smooth, sandy beach-like surfaces. Instead, they found a celestial body covered in boulders. Observations made in 2007 by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope measured low thermal inertia, indicative of an asteroid whose surface heats up and cools down rapidly as it rotates into and out of sunlight, like a sandy beach on Earth. This was at odds with the many large boulders that OSIRIS-REx found upon arrival, which should act more like blocks of concrete, shedding heat long after the Sun has set.

Data collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during its survey campaign at the asteroid suggested a possible explanation: the boulders could be much more porous than expected. Once the samples were delivered to Earth, researchers were able to investigate this further.

Learn how these XCT scans helped reconcile the discrepancy between what was expected and what was found on Bennu.

Image credit: NASA/Scott Eckley

Asteroid Bennu’s Rugged Surface Baffled NASA, We Finally Know Why

2026-03-17 12:49

5 Min Read

Asteroid Bennu’s Rugged Surface Baffled NASA, We Finally Know Why

These are X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans of particles from asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples.

Credits:
NASA/Scott Eckley

In one of the biggest surprises of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders, with few of the smooth patches that earlier observations from Earth-based instruments had indicated.

“When OSIRIS-REx got to Bennu in 2018, we were surprised by what we saw,” said Andrew Ryan, a scientist with the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, who led the mission’s sample physical and thermal analysis working group. “We expected some boulders, but we anticipated at least some large regions with smoother, finer regolith that would be easy to collect. Instead, it looked like it was all boulders, and we were scratching our heads for a while.”

Particularly puzzling were observations made in 2007 by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which measured low thermal inertia, indicative of an asteroid whose surface heats up and cools down rapidly as it rotates into and out of sunlight, like a sandy beach on Earth. This was at odds with the many large boulders that OSIRIS-REx found upon arrival, which should act more like blocks of concrete, shedding heat long after the Sun has set.

A picture of a man inside a small, closet-sized machine, placing a steel cylindrical container on a round platform. The man is wearing white gloves. A large, steel cylinder protrudes from the wall and is pointed at the small container on the platform.

Scott Eckley, X-ray scientist within NASA Johnson Space Center’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES), demonstrates the process for placing a container holding a piece of asteroid material in an X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) machine. XCT scans let researchers image particles through airtight containers and visualize a rock’s shape and internal structure without damaging the sample. Credits: NASA/Robert Markowitz

Ryan’s team scrutinized rock particles collected from Bennu’s surface using a variety of laboratory analysis techniques. In a study published in Nature Communications the authors reported that the boulders are indeed porous enough to account for some of the observed heat loss, but not all of it. Rather, many of the rocks turned out to be riddled with extensive networks of cracks.

To test whether the cracks could be the reason for the asteroid’s surface losing heat, a team at Nagoya University in Japan analyzed Bennu sample material using lock-in thermography. This laser-based technique allows researchers to hit a tiny spot on the surface of the sample and measure how the heat diffuses through it, similar to how ripples move across a pond.

“That’s when things became really interesting,” Ryan said. “The thermal inertia measured in the lab samples turned out to be much higher than what the spacecraft’s instruments had recorded, echoing similar findings obtained by the team of OSIRIS-REx’s partner mission, JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa-2.”

To make meaningful predictions about how the material would behave in the large boulders on the asteroid, the team had to find a way to scale up the measurements obtained with the small sample particles.

Using a glove box, team members at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston sealed sample particles in air-tight containers under a protective nitrogen atmosphere, then transferred them to a lab where they could perform X-ray computed tomography, or XCT scans. Once a particle was scanned, it went back into the glove box.

Exterior

Interior

An X-Ray Computed Tomography (XCT) view of two irregularly-shaped, dark grey particles side-by-side against a black background.

These are X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans of particles from asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples. One has an extensive and connect framework of curved cracks, whereas the other has sparse, straight, and flat fractures.

Exterior

Interior

exteriod and interior

X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) scans of two asteroid Bennu particles

“The sample goes into its own ‘spacesuit,’ gets a CT scan, and then comes back to its pristine environment, all without having any exposure to the terrestrial environment,” said Nicole Lunning, lead OSIRIS-REx sample curator within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division at NASA Johnson and one of the study’s co-authors. “We can image right through these airtight containers to visualize the shape and internal structure of the rock that’s inside.”

“X-ray computed tomography allows us to look at the inside of an object in three dimensions, without damaging it,” said study co-author and NASA Johnson X-ray scientist Scott Eckley.

It turns out that they’re really cracked too, and that was the missing piece of the puzzle.”

Andrew Ryan

Scientist at University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory

Once mapped in this way, a permanent 3-dimensional digital archive of a sample particle’s shape and interior is created, and the data are entered into a public database. Ryan’s team used the X-ray CT scan data for computer simulations modeling heat flow and thermal inertia. When scaled up to boulder size, the thermal inertia results fell into agreement with what the spacecraft had measured at the asteroid.

Where scientists once expected the boulders of Bennu to be extremely porous and fluffy, perhaps even spongy, the sample analysis revealed something unexpected.

“It turns out that they’re really cracked too, and that was the missing piece of the puzzle,” Ryan said.

Ron Ballouz, a scientist with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and the paper’s second author, said this work transforms how scientists interpret the structure of an asteroid based on its thermal properties seen from Earth.

“We can finally ground our understanding of telescope observations of the thermal properties of an asteroid through analyzing these samples from that very same asteroid,” Ballouz said.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

By Daniel Stolte
University of Arizona

For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

Victoria Segovia
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
victoria.segovia@nasa.gov