HOUSTON — What does NASA’s astronaut training hub look like these days, as the agency aims to bring more commercial space stations into the fold? It’s an interesting mix of government and private companies, of space agency personnel and of contractors, all working together to keep U.S. and international astronauts flying through the end of the ISS — currently expected around 2030 — and the new breed of commercial space stations expected to take its place. Canadian reporters like myself were invited on a tour of Johnson Space Center (JSC)…
Read More‘We Want to Believe’ book explores the reality of UFOs: ‘It’s always going to be more likely that someone is wrong about what they saw’ (interview)
After all these years, we still want to believe. Whether you’re a bona fide believer or a staunch skeptic, we can all agree that UFO legends and lore is a fascinating subject that continues to fuel endless debate. And with pop culture feeding our lizard brains lurid tales of flying saucers and alien invasions, it’s no wonder humanity is always up for a good story of inexplicable aerial sightings or various uncanny encounters of the third kind. In “We Want To Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream And Why It Matters”…
Read MoreThis Week In Space podcast: Episode 224 — The Science of Artemis
The Science of Artemis – What We’ll Do on the Moon – YouTube Watch On On Episode 224 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and guest co-host Rick Jenet are joined by Dr. David Kring to discuss the where, whys, and hows of the Artemis Program’s lunar exploration plans. It has been said that the Moon is a harsh mistress, and nowhere is this more apparent than at the lunar south pole. That is, however, where the Artemis program is headed, and we need to figure out how to…
Read MoreAPOD: 2026 August 22 – Mostly Perseids
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 22… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Mostly Perseids Explanation: Recorded the night of August 12-13, images from four dedicated meteor-monitoring cameras at an astronomical observatory in Czechia were aligned and combined to create this all-night, all-sky view. On that night, the total count came to…
Read MoreWhat happens when a galaxy’s supermassive black hole turns off? These dying radio galaxies could show us
Astronomers have discovered a hitherto unseen population of so-called “radio galaxies” with fading “radio lobes.” The discovery reveals what happens when the supermassive black hole engines that power these vast, blooming outflows of plasma stall. This discovery increases our understanding of the life cycles of galaxies. The team behind this research studied 14 candidates for faded or remnant radio galaxies found in a region of the sky over Earth, studied intensely by the XMM-Newton X-ray spacecraft, called the XMM–Newton Large-Scale Structure (XMM–LSS) field. Radio galaxies are extremely bright in radio…
Read MoreTrump signs new national space policy to enable 1,000 US rocket launches per year
The United States is updating its approach to managing spaceflights that lift off and land within its borders, and aims to expand the nation’s capabilities to support more than 1,000 rocket launches per year by 2030. President Donald Trump just signed a new National Space Transportation Policy that lays out priorities for commercial, civil and national security missions to orbit. The memorandum, published Thursday (Aug. 20), introduces the first update to the policy since 2013, and comes as commercial operators such as SpaceX have driven U.S. launch cadences up more…
Read More‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ cast talks losing sleep, living up to their character’s legacy, and learning to ride a horse for season 4 (interview)
Filming a high-profile episodic TV series like “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is often a Herculean task for any professional cast and crew, but toss in massive spaceship sets, a colorful constellation of costume changes, tone and stylistic shifts, hand-to-hand combat, horseback riding, and puppets, and you’ve got a mad sci-fi circus. We connected with Ethan Peck (Spock), Christina Chong (La’an Noonien-Singh) and Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk) for Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’” penultimate season to hear more about the rigors of shooting, genre-hopping, and character evolution. “Every…
Read MoreNASA Shares Views of August Solar Eclipse from Ground, Air, Space
3 Min Read NASA Shares Views of August Solar Eclipse from Ground, Air, Space This composite image shows the progression of a total solar eclipse as the Sun sets over San Millán de los Caballeros, Spain, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls On Aug. 12, a total solar eclipse darkened skies over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. As the Moon covered the Sun, it briefly revealed the Sun’s wispy outer atmosphere — the corona — to those in the path of totality who were lucky enough to have clear…
Read MoreWebb Opens Treasure Chest
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).
Read MoreTB 26-04 Updates and Modernization of NASA’s Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) Code
For more information, contact Mark K. Leader, Glenn Research Center, mark.leader@nasa.gov Download the PDF version NASA’s Chemical Equilibrium with Applications (CEA) code is a foundational tool for propulsion system analysis. It provides equilibrium chemistry, rocket performance, shock, and detonation calculations used across NASA and the broader aerospace community. NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Activity TI-22-01730 modernized the legacy CEA2 Fortran code into CEA v3, a Fortran 2008, object-oriented software package with expanded interface support, updated thermochemical data, improved maintainability, and substantially improved workflow integration. The modernized code preserves backward…
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