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An extreme drought that has gripped the Southeast for months helped fuel two large, destructive, human-caused wildland fires in southern Georgia in April 2026. The Pineland Road and Highway 82 fires together burned more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) as of April 28, according to the Georgia Forestry Commission.

Satellite images of the fires captured by Landsat 8 show charred forests and residential areas in and around Atkinson (above) and Fruitland (below). The images are false color (bands 7-5-4), in which burned areas appear gray and vegetated areas green. The infrared signatures of actively burning fire fronts are orange. By April 25, the fires had destroyed more than 120 homes—the most lost to wildfire in the state’s history, according to news reports.

The Highway 82 blaze started on April 18 with a spark from a welding operation, and the Pineland Road fire ignited three days later after a mylar balloon collided with power lines. Both blazes spread rapidly amid blustery winds in areas that were parched by months of limited rainfall. Fallen trees and limbs left by Hurricane Helene in September 2024 also helped fuel the fires, according to forestry officials.

Heavy rains helped firefighters battle the blazes in recent days, but the Pineland Road fire remained 23 percent contained and the Highway 82 fire 32 percent contained on April 28, the forestry commission reported. Hundreds of firefighting personnel are confronting the fires with equipment in the air and on the ground.

NASA’s satellite and aircraft data are part of a global system of observations used to track fire behavior, analyze emerging trends, and develop technology that operational agencies can use to manage wildfires across the United States. Among the real-time wildfire monitoring tools that NASA makes available are FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), the Worldview browser, and the Fire Event Explorer.

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

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Highway 82 fire: April 23, 2026

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Pineland Road fire: April 23, 2026

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References & Resources

• AP, via U.S. News & World Report (2026, April 23) Debris From Hurricane Helene Is Helping Fuel Georgia’s Wildfires. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• CBS 47 & Fox 30, via Yahoo! News (2026, April 25) Georgia loses most homes in state’s history to wildfires in Brantley, Clinch counties. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• Georgia Forestry Commission (2026, April 28) Current Wildfire Information. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• Highway 82 Fire Information, via Facebook (2026) Posts. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026) Wildfires. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2026, April 7) Drought Parches Florida. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• NASA Intro to FireSense. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• Savannah Morning News (2025, April 27) Update on wildfires in Georgia today. Here is the latest in GA. Accessed April 28, 2026.   
• U.S. Drought Monitor Current Map. Accessed April 28, 2026.
• Wildfire Explorer (2026, April 28) Wildfire Explorer. Accessed April 28, 2026.

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A newly discovered object may be a key to unlocking the true nature of a mysterious class of sources that astronomers have found in the early universe in recent years.

A “X-ray dot” found by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory could explain what the hundreds or potentially thousands of these objects are. A paper describing the results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Shortly after NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope started its science observations, reports of a new class of mysterious objects emerged. Astronomers found small, red objects about 12 billion light-years from Earth or farther, which became known as “little red dots” (LRDs).

Many scientists think LRDs are supermassive black holes embedded in clouds of dense gas, which mask some of the typical signatures in different kinds of light – including X-rays – that astronomers usually use to identify them. This would make them different from typical growing supermassive black holes, which are not embedded in dense gas, allowing bright ultraviolet light and X-rays from material orbiting the black holes to escape.

Because of this and their potential similarities to stellar atmospheres, astronomers have called this the “black hole star” scenario for LRDs.

This new “X-ray dot” (officially known as 3DHST-AEGIS-12014), which is located about 11.8 billion light-years from Earth, may provide a crucial bridge between black hole stars and typical growing supermassive black holes. It exhibits most of the features of an LRD, including being small, red, and located at a vast distance, but it glows in X-ray light, unlike other LRDs.

“Astronomers have been trying to figure out what little red dots are for several years,” said lead author Raphael Hviding of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. “This single X-ray object may be – to use a phrase – what lets us connect all of the dots.”

The team found this one special object after comparing new data from Webb with a deep survey previously performed by Chandra.

“If little red dots are rapidly growing supermassive black holes, why do they not give off X-rays like other such black holes?” said co-author Anna de Graaff of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Finding a little red dot that looks different from the others gives us important new insight into what could power them.”

The researchers suggest that the X-ray dot represents a transition phase from an LRD to a typical growing supermassive black hole. As the black hole star consumes its surrounding gas, patchy holes in the clouds of gas appear. This allows X-rays from material falling onto the black hole to poke through, which are observed by Chandra. Eventually all the gas is consumed, and the black hole star ceases to exist.

There are also hints in the Chandra data of the X-ray dot that there are variations in X-ray brightness, which supports the idea that the black hole is partly obscured. As the cloud of gas rotates, patches of denser and less dense gas can move across the black hole, causing changes in X-ray brightness.

“If we confirm the X-ray dot as a little red dot in transition, not only would it be the first of its kind, but we may be seeing into the heart of a little red dot for the first time,” said co-author Hanpu Liu of Princeton University in New Jersey. “We would also have the strongest piece of evidence yet that the growth of supermassive black holes is at the center of some, if not all, of the little red dot population.”

An alternate idea for the X-ray dot is that it is a more common type of growing supermassive black hole but is veiled in an exotic type of dust that astronomers have not seen before. Future observations are planned that should be able to shed light on the truth.

“The X-ray dot had been sitting in our Chandra survey data for over ten years, but we had no idea how remarkable it was before Webb came along to observe the field,” said co-author Andy Goulding of Princeton. “This is a powerful example of collaboration between two great observatories.”

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

There’s no sign reading “home sweet home” in the hangar where the X‑59 now sits, but the sentiment is unmistakable among those tending to the quiet supersonic aircraft.

Located at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, the X-59 hangar was built in 1968 but looks like new thanks to a full renovation and modernization. While the X-59 was being assembled in Palmdale, California, workers at NASA Armstrong gutted the hangar, adding new electrical wiring, a fire suppression system, office space, air conditioning, and other safety features.

“The whole team is incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished in preparing this new home for the X-59,” said Bryan Watters, the NASA project manager at Armstrong who led the renovation effort. “The fact we could take a 1960s hangar and modernize it for use by a 2020’s X-plane is very special.”

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to enable a new era of commercial supersonic air travel over land by reducing the sound of typically loud sonic booms to a much quieter sonic thump.

Home hunting

When NASA test pilot Nils Larson successfully took the X-59 into the air for the first time on Oct. 28, 2025, he flew from the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works assembly site in Palmdale to nearby NASA Armstrong, from where test flights have continued to make progress.

From the beginning of the program, knowing the X-59 would eventually need a new residence at NASA Armstrong, Quesst managers were on the hunt for somewhere to house the quiet supersonic demonstrator.

Like anyone looking for the ideal place to call home, the team made sure there would be enough space for the airplane and all its support equipment. But with the experimental jet measuring at just under 100 feet long and 30 feet wide, there were few options.

“We had to find a hangar that was long enough so that part of the X-59 wouldn’t hang outside, exposed to the elements,” Watters said.

Building 4826, as the hangar is officially designated, turned out to be the choice spot. “It was basically stripped down and gutted so that essentially it was just structural steel with siding. From that state it was rebuilt,” Watters said.

The feature they are perhaps most proud of is the hangar’s new floor. Covering more than 32,000 square feet, it is coated with epoxy that prevents any spills from seeping into the concrete.

From the hangar’s office windows, the view of the hangar floor can include the F-15 research jets that will be used as chase planes to support X-59 flights in the coming months. The renovation faced challenges along the way, chief among them being supply chain issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. But there were some incredible, unforgettable moments too.

Circa 1990

Nov. 2025

Circa 1990Nov. 2025

Circa 1990

Nov. 2025

past and present

Hangar Updated to Continue Hosting Historic Research

CurtainToggle2-Up

Image Details

This NASA hangar at Armstrong Flight Research Center originally was constructed in 1968 and since then has hosted a number of history-making programs. Compare the two images above to see how the hangar looked during the late 1980s when it hosted an F-15 research aircraft (left), and beginning in 2025 after it had been renovated and modernized to host the X-59 quite supersonic technology demonstrator aircraft.

Moved in

With X-59 now flying regularly and comfortably settled into its new digs, the Quesst team is gauging its performance on the way to quiet supersonic flight.

“This is truly a great time for Quesst and the X-59,” said Cathy Bahm, NASA’s project manager for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. “It’s also still a little surreal to be able to just walk down from your office and see the airplane in our hangar.”

For more than a year, the hangar refurbishment team worked through every detail of the X-59’s new home to make sure it would be safe and sound. But actually seeing the aircraft occupy that space is an adjustment for them, too.

“We’ve looked at X-59 models on our desk for years and then, you know, there’s the real thing right in front of us, in a hangar that we renovated,” Watters said.

A real thing in the hangar – and streaking across the California desert sky. The X-59’s transition from an idea into a working aircraft is a testament to the teams that help build out every aspect of its infrastructure.  

NASA’s X-59 is supported under the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

About the Author

Jim Banke

Managing Editor/Senior Writer

Jim Banke is a veteran aviation and aerospace communicator with more than 40 years of experience as a writer, producer, consultant, and project manager based at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He is part of NASA Aeronautics' Strategic Communications Team and is Managing Editor for the Aeronautics topic on nasa.gov. In 2007 he was recognized with a Distinguished Public Service Medal, NASA's highest honor for a non-government employee.

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For more than 50 years, Landsat has imaged Earth’s land and near-shore surfaces as the satellites descend in midmorning orbit, when daily sunlight is optimal. That’s just what they’ve always done. 

Currently, Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 circle the globe while also making better use of their ascending paths, peering into the darkness for special requests.

The visible spectral bands of Landsat—the same blue, green and red wavelength colors our eyes can see—are typically not that useful when collected on the ascending orbit node (also known as “nighttime imagery”). The exception is twilight or darkness at Earth’s poles, which can provide a surprisingly clear observation in the thermal infrared spectral bands where snow, ice and water temperatures can be retrieved when the sun is at or below the horizon. 

Through the dark, shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands within Landsat’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) instrument can detect intense heat sources such as volcanoes or active fires, while the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) measures surface temperatures that range from geothermal geysers to solid ice. 

There is a growing interest in seeing what Landsat can capture as it ascends over the dark side of Earth, according to Dr. Christopher Crawford, the Landsat Project Scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Crawford leads and oversees Landsat’s long-term Earth data acquisition strategy for the USGS.

“I’ve seen a noticeable uptick in the number of nighttime imaging special requests. That’s a very active and innovative measurement science area for Landsat right now,” Crawford said.

“We have active volcanoes, we’ve got an ice environment that’s changing, and wildfire occurrences are increasingly growing into hazards that threaten human safety, infrastructure and wildlife, among other issues. Nighttime imaging is an all-purpose solution, kind of like Jiffy Baking Mix.”

Keeping an Eye on Volcanoes and Yellowstone

A particular request for nighttime imagery that turned into a “systematic observation,” Crawford said, is Yellowstone National Park. The volcanic area’s 10,000 thermal features, such as geysers or hot springs or steam vents, can get hotter or colder, and they can appear or disappear. 

Crawford is fascinated by volcanoes in general and recognizes the value of imaging them day and night. After Landsat 9 launched in 2021, when two satellites with the same high-quality sensors would together yield an image of each area of land every eight days, it seemed like a good time to start a consistent annual campaign to capture active volcanoes at night, he said. 

R. Greg Vaughan of the USGS Astrogeology Science Center, who researches active volcanoes, gave him a list. Vaughan has used Landsat data and other remote sensing methods to monitor changing thermal features in his role as the remote sensing lead for the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. 

Vaughan also taught Crawford something about imaging Yellowstone’s thermal features at night—that the best season for locating them is during winter. That’s when the contrast between the heated features and the colder surrounding area is greatest.

“The thing that I’ve probably taken away the most is that you have to acquire data to then understand what data to continue to acquire,” Crawford said.

Vaughan spotted an exciting surprise when reviewing Landsat 8 nighttime TIRS data of Yellowstone acquired in April 2017. Comparing warm areas in the imagery to previously mapped thermal features, he found a “big blob of bright, warm pixels” that didn’t match anything on the map.

After ruling out the possibility that it could be a thawing lake next to frozen land, he looked at the secluded area with daytime aerial imagery. The telltale signs of a new and growing thermal feature were there: bright hydrothermal-altered soil and dead and dying trees.

Vaughan discussed his find and his use of Landsat data in a recent Eyes on Earth podcast episode produced by USGS EROS.

“This is why I love Landsat 8 and 9 so much. These instruments acquire data regularly, not just during the day, but they can also be tasked to acquire data at night on a regular basis. And this is really critical for my work,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan has been named a member of the current Landsat Science Team, a group of scientific and technical subject matter experts who provide analysis and advice to the Landsat Program. His research in that capacity will focus on active volcanoes.

Fires, Flares and Urban Areas Among Requests

The fire community in the western United States also finds value in Landsat nighttime imagery, Crawford said—including the energy industry and its infrastructure.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory submits annual special requests for proactive nighttime imaging of seasonal wildfires to support on-the-ground decision making.

“We’ve done it three seasons in a row, and the results are pretty remarkable in terms of what we’re able to see,” especially with the SWIR bands, Crawford said. Those results compare well to airborne infrared sensing taken from low-altitude flights over the same wildfires.

Landsat can also detect gas flares that are useful to oil and gas industry functions. “There are regular special requests submitted to monitor global sites that produce Liquefied Natural Gas, or LNG,” Crawford said. 

In addition, he sees requests for nighttime images over particular cities to map urban temperature, which may be higher than cooler surrounding areas. 

One recent request went beyond the already routine monitoring of active volcanoes in Iceland to encompass the entire country and coastline in a large seasonal campaign to survey overall volcanic activity. 

Crawford weighs this type of request carefully, posing these questions: “Does this advance the science mission? Is it serving the user community?”

For Iceland, that was a yes.

“I look for areas where Landsat imaging data may be underutilized, as well as areas for strategic science mission advancement and societal benefits, and in many ways, these growth areas can be enabled through the data acquisition process,” Crawford said.

A LEAP Forward

A significant advancement in learning about Landsat’s nighttime capabilities came with the effort to monitor polar regions year-round, with leadership from former Landsat Science Team member Dr. Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado Boulder. 

The Landsat Extended Acquisition of the Poles (LEAP) campaign now routinely collects imagery over the polar regions, where few wintertime images had existed in Landsat’s data record before. The visible-to-shortwave infrared and thermal infrared spectral bands allow scientists to track changes in polar ice sheets, measure polar surface temperatures and examine the interaction of ocean water and ice shelves. 

The sun’s low angle is not much of a hindrance to imaging data quality, Crawford said in an Eyes on Earth episode about the LEAP campaign. “Snow and ice are still really bright mediums on the surface, and so even if the illumination is low, you can still see a lot of detail because of the high reflectivity.” 

Fortunately, nighttime imaging does not burden Landsat 8 and Landsat 9. “The instruments are always on, so it’s just a matter of whether we’re recording the data,” Crawford said.

The imagery’s darkness helps keep data volumes much lower than the daytime and allows sufficient time for the satellites to pass off the data to ground stations around the globe whose function is to downlink the recorded data. 

“We’re starting to leverage Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 observatory capabilities to maximum scientific and societal benefit returns,” Crawford said.

“We’re populating the Landsat archive with long-term image data records that are helpful for not only quantifying changes on the Earth’s surface right now, but in the past and in the future.”

Requesting and Accessing Imagery

To learn more about Landsat data acquisitions and to submit a special request for future nighttime imagery, visit the Landsat Acquisitions webpage.

All imagery collected by special requests is made available to the public through the USGS EarthExplorer website. Select the “Landsat Collection 2 Level-1” dataset, and then select “Night” under Additional Criteria. 

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Curiosity Captures a 360-Degree View at ‘Nevado Sajama’

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PIA26696 Figure B

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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree view of a region filled with low ridges called boxwork formations between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025 (the 4,714th to 4,741st Martian days, or sols, of the mission). At 1.5 billion pixels, this is one of the largest panoramas Curiosity has ever taken (the rover’s largest panorama of all time is 1.8 billion pixels). This newer panorama is made up of 1,031 individual images captured by Curiosity’s Mastcam using its right camera, which has a 100-millimeter focal length lens. The images were later sent to Earth and stitched together into the full panorama.

The images were taken at a ridgetop site nicknamed “Nevado Sajama,” where Curiosity collected a rock sample using a drill on the end of its robotic arm. Since May 2025, Curiosity has been exploring a region full of geologic formations called boxwork, which crisscross the surface for miles and look like giant spiderwebs when viewed from space. The new panorama shows them as they really are: low ridges standing roughly 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) tall and about 30 feet (9 meters) across with sandy hollows in between.

Figure A is a high-resolution version of this panorama (1.8 gigabytes).

Figure B is a lower-resolution version of the panorama (276 megabytes) captured by Mastcam’s left camera, which has a 34-millimeter focal length lens. This version includes the rover’s deck, which is often left out of such imagery in order to reduce the amount of data relayed back to Earth.

Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.

To learn more about Curiosity, visit:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

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