Trending Topics: What is each team's biggest advantage entering Game 4?  NBA.com

Why Carmelo Anthony is trending — and why it’s not the former NBA star  USA Today

3-star QB Kevin Verpaele decommits from Pittsburgh, trending towards another school  247Sports

College baseball transfer portal intel: South Carolina trending, Florida & Ole Miss lining up visits  On3

College Football Stock Watch: Why Penn State Is Trending Up, And Alabama Isn't  FOX Sports

1. Craig Federighi Explains Why Apple Pivoted to a Siri Chatbot App  MacRumors
2. Apple’s new Siri is a dark horse in the AI race  The Economist
3. Apple’s new Siri AI knows when to shut up  The Verge
4. NVIDIA Confidential Computing to Help Expand Apple’s Private Cloud Compute  NVIDIA Blog
5. Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2026  WIRED

1. Valve is phasing out physical Steam gift cards due to scammers  The Verge
2. Physical Steam Gift Cards discontinued. Scammers are to blame.  Mashable
3. Valve discontinues physical Steam Gift Cards, blames "gift card scams" as scammers adapt to protections  PC Guide
4. Valve to discontinue physical Steam gift cards by the end of 2026 due to scammers — says nefarious actors continue to exploit them despite years of restrictions  Tom's Hardware
5. Valve Will Stop Producing Physical Steam Gift Cards Because Of Scammers  Engadget

1. iOS 27 just broke 15 years of muscle memory on iPhone and iPad  9to5Mac
2. Apple Didn't Really Say What's Coming in iOS 27, So I Guess I Will  CNET
3. iOS 27 adds long-desired iPhone volume control feature  Mashable
4. Apple finally figured out how to make old iPhones faster  Macworld
5. 5 things I already love from the iOS 27 beta  The Verge

1. Microsoft Patches Record 206 Flaws, Including Three Zero-Days and Critical RCE Bugs  The Hacker News
2. Microsoft’s biggest-ever Patch Tuesday fixes 206 bugs, including 3 zero-days  Malwarebytes
3. Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, June 2026 Security Update Review  Qualys
4. Blame AI: Patch Tuesday Hits Record 206 CVEs  Dark Reading
5. Microsoft Patches 200 Vulnerabilities  SecurityWeek

1. Google releases Android 17 QPR1 Beta 4 for Pixel  9to5Google
2. Here’s everything new in Android 17 QPR1 Beta 4 [Gallery]  9to5Google
3. List of Pixel Phones Not Receiving Android 17  Nokiamob
4. These Google Pixels won’t receive Android 17 update  MSN
5. Gemini Wants To Take Over Your Android Phone  Yahoo Life UK

Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, APXS Strategic Planner and Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead, University of New Brunswick, Canada

Earth planning day: Friday, June 5th, 2026

In a very broad sense, Curiosity has two modes of doing science – one centred around a defined science campaign (such as the recent boxwork campaign) and the other as we move between campaigns. During a science campaign, with a very defined start and end location, every image and every workspace is carefully choregraphed to make sure we hit all of our science goals for the campaign. This is a lot of pressure!

But in between campaigns, the emphasis moves to driving towards the next major campaign. Our next major stop is the yardang unit, a series of intriguing wind sculpted, pale coloured hills which you can just see in the distance in the cover image for this blog. The rover planners (RPs) sometimes make our drives as long as they can and we drive as far as we can go, other times we stop a little short to look at interesting looking workspaces as we go. As part of the APXS team, I loved being part of the boxwork campaign and getting all the information we needed there …  but as a geologist, there is something very special about this kind of exploring, the sense of being a planetary explorer, ambling along to see what the rocks will show us.

So we continue southwards, trundling over laminated bedrock which varies from predominantly pale coloured laminated bedrock to bands with abundant thin flaky, darker coloured, layers and patches. Some of the rocks stick out at strange angles, which make planning drives more challenging. This past week there has been abundant dark layers interbedded with the more dominant pale coloured rock, both in place and in fragments around the workspace. APXS and MAHLI characterized some of this darker material, for example at “Rio Bio Bio” and “Placilla de Caracoles” and some of the paler material at the brushed targets “La Primavera” and “Los Quemados.” ChemCam also analyzed both types of rocks along the way.

We are busily acquiring Mastcam and ChemCam LD-RMI (“Long Distance Remote Micro Imager”) images of everything even remotely interesting – and there are lots and lots of cool features around here. The wide open landscape here allows us to image features from several different angles and distances, such as “Mira Flores,” a small erosional outlier seen from a distance in this image and closer up here. Another great example is the “Kimsa Chata” trough which shows some amazing sedimentary structures, which may help us to determine if this was a desert or a lake or maybe something in between, such as a desert with some water moving through.

The Environmental Theme Group continues to populate each plan with environmental monitoring activities. Activities varied from dust devil monitoring in Gale crater to looking at levels of dust in the skies overhead. The weekend drive is planned to take us further into that drive distance shown in the cover image, to an area where the contrast between dark and light bedrock is more pronounced, and just beyond that, to an area which looks very smooth, with no jutting out blocks. From where we sit today, its impossible to say what it is but that is the fun of exploring – who knows what we will find? Stay tuned to find out over the coming weeks. 

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:

• Abide International Inc.
• Able Heating and Air Conditioning
• Anderson Burton Construction Inc.
• Anna Lisa Luna Construction
• Barkley Andross Corporation
• Bibro Construction Company Inc.
• CM Construction Services
• CMS Construction Inc.
• FASONE
• G‑1 Lead Builders JV LLC
• Gideon USA
• Good‑men Roofing & Construction Inc.
• Groundlevel Construction Inc.
• IPI Construction Inc.
• Innovative Project Solutions Inc.
• Ironwood Commercial Builders Inc.
• J.I. Garcia Construction Inc.
• JG Contracting
• Lead Builders Inc.
• Martinez Construction Services
• MX Construction Inc.
• OCS Construction Services Inc.
• Patricia I. Romero Inc., doing business as Pacific West Builders
• Gustav Keoni, doing business as Precision Construction
• Prime MIK JV LLC
• Spectrum Builders and Renovations Inc.
• Sea Pac Engineering Inc.
• Sergent Construction
• Souza Construction Inc.
• TLI Construction Inc.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

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

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.

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

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

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