2026-06-08 11:08
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2026-06-10 20:32
NASA has selected multiple small businesses for the Western Regional Multiple Award Construction Contract, which supports a broad range of facility enhancement, modernization, and sustainment work at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and other federal agencies in the region.
The contract provides general construction, modification, maintenance and repair, and demolition services, as well as new construction of buildings and facilities that incorporate Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design practices and building information modeling to support efficient and sustainable project execution.
The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract is a follow-on to the agency’s previous regional construction contract and has a potential value of $450 million over a five‑year period.
Contract awardees are:
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
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Jennifer Dooren / Jessica Taveau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
jennifer.m.dooren@nasa.gov / jessica.c.taveau@nasa.gov
Dede Dinius
Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
661-276-5701
darin.l.dinius@nasa.gov
2026-06-10 18:09
Submit your abstract for “Advancing Weather and Environmental Science Through NASA and NOAA Commercial Satellite Data Programs,” a joint session hosted by NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, in partnership with the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Commercial Data Program (CDP).
The session is part of the 23rd Symposium on Operational Environmental Satellite Systems, which will take place at the 2027 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting January 10-14 in Denver, Colorado. It will examine the growing capabilities of commercial Earth observation providers that are creating new opportunities to advance weather research, operational forecasting, and environmental science applications.
NASA’s CSDA program and NESDIS’s CDP collaborate to expand federal access to commercial satellite data and accelerate its use in both research and operational applications.
The CSDA program supports the scientific community by evaluating and acquiring diverse commercial datasets, including optical, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation and Reflectometry, methane, precipitation, and Digital Elevation/Terrain Models for modeling, hazard monitoring, climate studies, and applied research.
Similarly, the CDP operationalizes commercial space-based environmental data, with demonstrated impacts from assimilated observations in weather forecasting and space weather applications. It also conducts pilot projects and transitions the piloted data to operations.
Together, the CSDA and CDP strengthen the nation’s weather enterprise by enabling innovative research, closing observational gaps, and integrating commercial data into real-world forecasting and decision support applications.
To submit an abstract or for additional information about the abstract submission process, visit the symposium’s website.
2026-06-10 17:00
2 min read

As NASA plans long-term missions on the Moon, the agency could use robots to perform routine tasks, allowing crew members to dedicate more time to science and exploration. However, robotic motion control requires complex technology and advances in features like robotic decision-making and object recognition.
These are the challenges a Boulder, Colorado-based robotics company is teaming up with NASA to overcome.
PickNik Inc. recently worked with Shaun Azimi, who leads the Dexterous Robotics team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and other agency roboticists. The team tested software that enabled a robotic arm to recognize a spacecraft hatch, then turn the latch, grasp the handle, and open the door. The arm then was able to transfer cargo bags between the hatch and a bin.
The work was carried out in NASA Johnson’s new Integrated Mobile Evaluation Testbed for Robotics Operations with funding from NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program.
PickNik designed and refined the robotic software, called MoveIt Pro, with support from early government investments. Commercially released in 2023, MoveIt Pro has found a significant customer base.
Automotive company BMW is using the software on its robotic assembly lines. A company called Lightspeed is using MoveIt Pro to program huge robotic arms that build modular “panels” for constructing affordable housing. Another company, known as Hivebotics, used MoveIt Pro to automate its flagship product, a cleaning robot.
Ezra Brooks, principal software engineer at PickNik, said the 35-person company might not have a product without NASA’s early support. Robotic software requires years of research and development to refine algorithms and create a commercial product. NASA enabled much of that foundational work.
NASA’s technological advancements unlock key capabilities for missions at the Moon and beyond while benefiting commercial industries on Earth. For 50 years, NASA has documented the everyday benefits of space technology through the agency’s Spinoff publication. To learn more about the project, visit: https://go.nasa.gov/49CNSi7
2026-06-10 16:05
The final booster motor segments for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that will help propel Artemis III astronauts on their journey to space shipped from Northrop Grumman’s Railyard Shipping Facility in Corinne, Utah on June 2. The eight booster motor segments are on their way to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where they will form the SLS rocket’s twin, five-segment solid rocket boosters, which produce more than 75% of the total thrust at liftoff.
Follow the Artemis blog for updates on Artemis III and future missions.
Image credit: NASA/Brandon Hancock
2026-06-10 14:00

The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces.
A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb — the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot — the research team has identified multiple lines of evidence, all of which support the interpretation that GLIMPSE-17775 is a supermassive black hole enveloped in a dense cocoon of partially ionized gas, a model referred to as the BH* (black hole star) scenario. A paper describing the results was published today in The Astrophysical Journal.
“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” said Kokorev, lead author of the study. “With GLIMPSE-17775 we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”

Soon after Webb first began science operations, it discovered a new, mysterious type of object in the very early universe – abundant red objects that emerged about 600 million years after the big bang. Scientists have explored multiple explanations for these little red dots, including the black hole star scenario.
A set of fortunate circumstances brought about this new, elaborate spectrum of a little red dot. The little red dot that would come to be known as GLIMPSE-17775 was fortunately included in Webb’s imaging and spectroscopy efforts for a project that sought to look for Population III stars and faint galaxies in galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This little red dot is more distant than the galaxy cluster and magnified by gravitational lensing. (GLIMPSE-17775 has a cosmological redshift of 3.5, meaning it existed about 1.8 billion years after the big bang.)
While Webb provided a 30-hour spectrum of the little red dot, the effect of gravitational lensing made it equivalent to 80 hours of telescope time. This combination of Webb’s infrared sensitivity and nature’s own “magnifying glass” amplified the amount of detail that could be gleaned from GLIMPSE-17775. The result was more than 40 spectral lines from this small, red source, which is the most detailed little red dot spectrum to date.
“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”
The spectroscopic data collected by Webb contains multiple lines of evidence that support the interpretation that little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole star: a rapidly accreting, or growing, black hole enveloped in a dense gas cocoon, which is reprocessing the light emitted from near the black hole and producing the features seen in the spectrum.

Among the 40-plus lines that the team detected in GLIMPSE-17775’s spectrum were various independent indicators that all align with the BH* scenario. For example, the team found that many of the spectral lines, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and helium, do not fit a simple model of a rotating gas cloud. Instead, the best fit model includes a broadening effect known as electron scattering, a telltale sign that a dense, layered gas cocoon is enshrouding this source.
The strength and ratios of certain lines to each other, most notably the 16 iron lines that compose what the team has dubbed an “iron forest” and certain oxygen lines, require a high-energy source to produce them, like a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, astronomers noted the fluorescence and absorption of helium in the spectrum, both of which individually suggest that there is a dense medium enveloping a powerful source.
The BH* scenario not only fits GLIMPSE-17775; it also accounts for why most little red dots are faint in X-rays, since any such emission is likely absorbed by the dense gas cocoon.
One missing element of the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece is the part of the spectrum that would reveal what’s known as a Balmer break, or a strong dip in the emitted light that’s a signature characteristic of little red dots. To build a more comprehensive understanding of this little red dot, the team incorporated ancillary data from two observing programs that used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: the Frontier Fields and BUFFALO (Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations) programs.
The Webb and Hubble data together help explain why the Balmer break is weaker than what typically is found in other little red dots: A giant host galaxy is surrounding GLIMPSE-17775. Although a little red dot’s host galaxy is not something that has been usually seen at such scale before, it isn’t inconsistent with the dense gas cocoon model. The black hole star model of little red dots attributes excess blue light to stars in the host galaxy.
When Webb first discovered little red dots, some researchers thought these objects had “broken cosmology,” unsure how galaxies could have grown so big so quickly in the early universe to account for all this light coming from their stars. However, the team believes the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece fits nicely in the existing framework of the universe’s evolutionary history, because black hole masses don’t need to be as high in order to explain the broad emission lines.
“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” said Kokorev. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

While the primary purpose of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of galaxy cluster Abell S1063 was to look for a certain population of stars, scientists obtained a detailed spectrum of GLIMPSE-17775 from the dataset. This little red dot is located behind Abell S1063.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot. More than 40 spectral lines have been discerned from the data, many of which independently support the theory that GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole enshrouded by a hot, dense gas cocoon.
Read more: Black Hole Basics
Explore more: ViewSpace | Black Holes: Searching for the unseen
Watch: NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink
Watch: What Webb Learns from Light
Explore more: NASA’s Universe of Learning: Black Hole Resources
Read more: NASA Connects Little Red Dots with Chandra, Webb
Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Abigail Major
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
2026-06-10 21:33
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