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NASA is moving quickly to define next year’s Artemis III mission in Earth orbit, a crewed flight that will test rendezvous and docking capabilities between the agency’s Orion spacecraft and commercial landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. Since a February announcement adding an Artemis mission ahead of crewed landing missions to the Moon’s South Pole region, engineers have been evaluating mission profile options and operational considerations for Artemis III to ensure the test flight helps the agency and its partners reduce risk ahead of the next Americans landing on the Moon during Artemis IV.
“While this is a mission to Earth orbit, it is an important stepping stone to successfully landing on the Moon with Artemis IV. Artemis III is one of the most highly complex missions NASA has undertaken,” said Jeremy Parsons, Moon to Mars acting assistant deputy administrator, NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in Washington. “For the first time, NASA will coordinate a launch campaign involving multiple spacecraft integrating new capabilities into Artemis operations. We’re integrating more partners and interrelated operations into this mission by design, which will help us learn how Orion, the crew, and ground teams all interact together with hardware and teams from both providers before we send astronauts to the Moon’s surface and build a Moon Base there.”
The mission is planned to carry out a series of objectives designed to demonstrate critical systems needed for a future lunar landing. During the Artemis III mission, the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket will launch the Orion spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with four crew members. Instead of using the interim cryogenic propulsion stage as the upper stage of the rocket, NASA will use a “spacer,” a representation of the mass and overall dimensions of an upper stage but without propulsive capabilities. The spacer will maintain the same overall dimensions and interface connection points as the upper stage between the Orion stage adapter and launch vehicle stage adapter.
Design and fabrication activities for the spacer are progressing rapidly at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Material for the barrel section and the upper and lower rings is currently being machined at Marshall in preparation for upcoming welding operations.
After the rocket delivers Orion to orbit, the spacecraft’s European-built service module will provide propulsion to circularize Orion’s orbit around the planet in low Earth orbit. This orbit increases overall mission success by allowing more launch opportunities for each element as compared to a lunar mission — SLS carrying Orion and its crew, SpaceX’s Starship human landing system pathfinder, and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 human landing system pathfinder.
Informed by Blue Origin and SpaceX capabilities, NASA also is defining the concept of operations for the mission. While some decisions are yet to be determined, astronauts could potentially enter at least one lander test article.
The crew will spend more time aboard Orion than during Artemis II, further advancing the evaluation of life support systems, and for the first time will demonstrate the docking system performance. The mission will inform lander rendezvous and habitation concepts and mission operations in preparation for future surface missions. The agency also plans to test an upgraded heat shield during Orion’s return to Earth to enable more flexible and robust reentry profiles for future missions.
Over the coming weeks, NASA will continue to refine specific plans for the flight, including a timeline for identifying astronauts to train for mission operations, options to evaluate Axiom’s AxEMU spacesuit lander interfaces ahead of lunar surface missions, mission duration, and potential science operations for the flight. NASA has asked for industry input on potential solutions to improve the communications with the ground during the mission since the Deep Space Network will not be used. The agency also is seeking both international and domestic interest in potentially flying CubeSats to deploy in Earth orbit, and may share other opportunities as the concept of operations for the mission is further defined.
As part of the Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
Learn more about NASA’s Artemis program:
2026-05-13 14:45
Expedition 74 astronauts aboard the International Space Station are uncovering how bacteria that causes pneumonia can lead to long-term damage in the heart. Researchers are leveraging the space environment to observe how stem cell derived heart tissues respond to bacterial infections, to discover new methods to manage cardiovascular health and infectious diseases.
In space, bacteria tend to be more severe and have enhanced drug resistance. Scientists are harnessing these traits to exaggerate their effect on heart cells and reveal important cellular responses that would be difficult to detect on Earth. Pinpointing the factors that make bacterial infections more severe in space could reveal targets for treatment. Dr. Palaniappan Sethu, professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham says, “By exacerbating the infection, we anticipate clear separation of the infection and control groups, making it easier to identify subtle factors that promote bacterial virulence”.
The Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria is the leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), an infection which causes millions of deaths each year. More than a quarter of adults hospitalized for CAP develop heart disease and patients that survive severe cases have an increased risk even after the pneumonia has been fully eradicated.
This research is also important as humans venture further into space. For over 25 years, researchers have utilized the space station to study how the human body and microbes respond to space, and deep space missions will require the strategies and knowledge we gain. “Addressing these questions is essential for ensuring human health during long duration space travel and for enabling sustainable habitation beyond Earth. Our experiments are expected to generate new insights into how space specific factors influence disease progression”, says Dr. Carlos J. Orihuela, professor of Microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The space station allows researchers from around the world to address complex human health problems on Earth and in space. Using the unique environmental factors aboard the space station allows for advanced study of disease formation, testing drugs and diagnostic tools, and more.
2026-05-13 14:15
3 min read
NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets — worlds beyond our solar system — identified by the mission as of September 2025 at the end of TESS’s second extended mission.
“Over the last eight years, TESS has become a fire hose of exoplanet science,” said Rebekah Hounsell, a TESS associate project scientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s helped us find planets of all different sizes, from tiny Mercury-like ones to those larger than Jupiter. Some of them are even in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be possible on the surface, an important factor in our search for life beyond Earth.”
The TESS mission scans a wide swath of the sky, called a sector, for about a month at a time using its four cameras. These long stares allow the spacecraft to track the brightness changes of tens of thousands of stars, looking for variations in their light that might come from orbiting planets.
Researchers assembled an all-sky mosaic made of 96 sectors observed between April 2018, when TESS began its work, and September 2025.

The blue dots in the image mark the locations of nearly 700 confirmed planets, as of September 9. This menagerie includes worlds that may be covered by volcanoes, are being destroyed by their stars, or orbit two stars — experiencing double sunrises and sunsets each day. The orange dots represent more than 5,000 candidate planets that are awaiting verification.
To date, scientists have confirmed over 6,270 exoplanets using missions like TESS, NASA’s retired Kepler Space Telescope, and other facilities.
Also captured in the mosaic is the bright plane of our Milky Way galaxy, seen as a glowing arc through the center. The bright white ovals in the lower left are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These satellite galaxies are located 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away, respectively.
“The more we dig into the large TESS dataset, especially using automated algorithms, the more surprises we find,” said Allison Youngblood, the TESS project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In addition to planets, TESS has helped us study rivers of young stars, observe dynamic galactic behavior, and monitor asteroids near Earth. As TESS fills in more of the night sky, there’s no knowing what it might see next.”
You could discover the next exoplanet! Join the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project, and you’ll learn how to read light curves — plots of light data from distant stars — to find telltale signals from orbiting exoplanets.
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
2026-05-13 04:00
In a process that played out over thousands of years, a retreating ice sheet carved, scoured, and shaped the landscape of the present-day Great Lakes. In northern Lake Michigan, this sculpting left distinct ridges and valleys running north-to-south along the lake floor. Some parts of those ridges, made of erosion-resistant rock, have remained above the waves of the big lake, forming the Beaver Archipelago.
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this image of several of the archipelago’s islands on August 2, 2024. These patches of land contain upland forests, dunes, wetlands, and marshes—habitats that support rare plant and bird species and provide spawning grounds for fish. The bright, sandy perimeters of the islands are surrounded by shallow, turquoise waters and deeper, dark blue areas, where depths reach up to about 330 feet (100 meters).
This image centers on Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan at 13 miles (21 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. It is also the only inhabited island of the Beaver Archipelago, and many of its approximately 600 residents are of Irish descent. In the mid-1800s, scores of immigrants from County Donegal, Ireland, and Irish fishermen from nearby islands and ports in Michigan settled on the island, which subsequently took on the moniker of “America’s Emerald Isle.”
The farming and fishing, in particular, were productive for the new arrivals. In the 1880s, Beaver Island became the largest supplier of freshwater fish in the United States. Due to overfishing, however, such abundance would be short-lived.
Ship traffic on the Great Lakes was also increasing during this time. Two lighthouses were constructed on the island to help the growing number of vessels traveling between Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac. The Beaver Head Lighthouse operated from 1852 to 1962 on the southern end of the island. On the northern side, the Beaver Island Harbor Light, pictured below, was first lit in 1870 and remains an active beacon more than 150 years later.
Today, people travel to Beaver Island by boat or plane to explore its history and enjoy activities such as biking, fishing, and kayaking. The island’s remote location and minimal light pollution led to the establishment of the Beaver Island State Wildlife Research Area International Dark Sky Sanctuary in 2024. Sky gazers may be drawn to the sanctuary for a chance to glimpse the aurora borealis and other celestial phenomena.
Neighboring islands in the archipelago are more difficult to access and have remained relatively undisturbed. Perched, or cliff-top, sand dunes are found up to 200 feet (60 meters) above the lake level on the western side of High Island. Unique plant species, including the Pitcher’s thistle and Lake Huron tansy, grow in the island’s dunes. On Hog Island, patches of old-growth northern hardwood forest remain. Wetland communities known as Great Lakes marshes along the shoreline provide spawning grounds for perch and smallmouth bass.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photo by Kelcie Herald/Unsplash. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
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Icy, isolated Peter I Island stirred up a show in the atmosphere off the West Antarctic coast.

The activity of herring around Vancouver Island in British Columbia brightened coastal waters enough to be detectable from space.

Winds blowing past the volcanic landmass near the Korean Peninsula created a trail of spiraling clouds, while murky water churned…
2026-05-12 18:57
At a busy airport, every aircraft in the area shares just a handful of radio frequencies. Spectrum and time are constrained and if multiple people speak at once, both messages can get lost. Communications like “clearance delivery,” which require long transmissions and readbacks, are challenging in high-traffic areas, particularly when weather or other factors require many aircraft to communicate with controllers at once. Going digital clears that channel for urgent, time-critical calls, among other things. And it’s the current practice at some airports, where pilots can confirm clearances with the touch of a button, that the response goes directly to the controller’s screen, and the updated information loads into their flight management system.
Will Cummings-Grande, aerospace engineer with the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate based at NASA’s Langley Research Center, is leading technical work that centers around Communications Architecture and Performance for Digital Clearance in NASA’s Air Traffic Management and Safety (ATMS) project. He’s researching the next layer of digital clearance, extending that same logic down to taxi instructions on the ground, so that pushback timing, routing, and runway assignments could also arrive digitally rather than over the radio.
He sought out the most current, ground-level knowledge about how digital clearance delivery works in practice — not in a research paper, but in a real tower, on real systems, with the people who run them every day. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) offers the training he wanted to air traffic controllers, so he reached out to the FAA Academy “on a hope and a prayer” that they might accept him as a student.
And in early April, Cummings-Grande traveled to the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (MMAC) in Oklahoma City to complete the Tower Data Link Services (TDLS) Application Specialist training — the same two-day, hands-on course required of working controllers at the 72 U.S. airports currently equipped with digital clearance delivery capability.
Cumming-Grande shadowed a working controller during exercises, trading off at the terminal during breaks so both got time on the system. His classmates were application specialists from Seattle, Sacramento, San Jose, and Fort Lauderdale, all controllers with day jobs managing high-traffic airspace who were there to become the designated system maintainers at their home airports. During breaks, Cummings-Grande had a luxury: time to test. “I got to bounce some of my ideas and concepts off of controllers who are out there interacting with the TDLS and all of the tools it touches in the current system,” he said. “It was great to have both — here’s what the controller-in-training gets, and here’s what I get as a researcher — kind of lumped into the same experience.”
The FAA Academy also connected him with the systems engineers responsible for developing, testing, and implementing new TDLS hardware and software versions, and arranged a visit to the OKC tower to observe the system in live operation.
The TDLS runs on fully air-gapped software, completely isolated from standard operating systems — a deliberate cybersecurity design that made the hands-on experience revelatory in ways a research paper couldn’t replicate. “Interacting with the system was just very eye-opening as to how different these systems are from other computers that we commonly interact with,” he said.
The more significant discovery came from the curriculum itself. Reviewing the FAA’s system architecture during training, Cummings-Grande noticed something he didn’t know to look for: a link between the TDLS and the Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM), which does not yet exist operationally. That gap is now the center of his research questions. “I didn’t realize I was missing this piece until I took this course,” he said.
The research Cummings-Grande is pursuing connects to a long thread of NASA work on surface safety and digital communications, including the Terminal Area Productivity program, the Surface Operation Automation Research (SOAR) project, the Low Visibility Landing and Surface Operations (LVLASO) project, and Surface Trajectory Based Operations (STBO) studies. These efforts kicked off in the mid-90s to inform FAA NextGen and demonstrated digital taxi clearances in a series of simulations at multiple facilities and ultimately flight tests at the Atlanta Airport. Those findings showed meaningful workload reductions, but the cost-benefit case wasn’t there yet, and the technology wasn’t ready in the fleet or in the facilities.
What’s changed, in Cummings-Grande’s view, is the convergence of new infrastructure investments, including the rollout of systems derived from Airspace Technology Demonstration (ATD-2) technologies like the Spot and Runway Departure Advisor and the Precision Departure Release Capability through the TFDM, with renewed industry interest from a partner on the aircraft side. “We have all this homework that people have been doing for the last 20-30 years,” he said. “Can we take advantage of the renewed interest from FAA and industry to enable this safety-enhancement?”
His timeline estimate for a fully implemented system leans somewhere in the range of five to ten years. And the payoff, he says, will be tangible to anyone who flies. “This means that your flight will be safer than ever, and that your pilots will be focused on the right things during taxi. Instead of relying on pilots to write down their taxi clearance correctly or be familiar with the airport, the airplane will know and can double-check what the pilot is doing.”
Cummings-Grande isn’t aware of another NASA researcher having taken this FAA course, and he thinks the model is worth repeating. He pointed to terminal procedures design (TERPS) as another area where FAA Academy training could benefit researchers working on urban air mobility and small UAS integration. “Anytime someone needs to do a deep dive into one of the systems — understanding the current state of practice, here are the buttons you push to make this happen — I think it’d be great to have an ongoing partnership with the FAA Academy and make that possible.”
The FAA Academy team was, by all accounts, a willing partner.
Cummings-Grande extends his special thanks to the FAA’s Eric Gandrud and Carol Raiford.

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