Sols 4471-4472: Marching Through the Canyon

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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read Sols 4471-4472: Marching Through the Canyon NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mast Camera (Mastcam), a close-up of the rover’s Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), an instrument that measures the abundance of…

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The US will ‘plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond,’ Trump tells Congress

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President Donald Trump told lawmakers that U.S. astronauts will one day carry the American flag to Mars and beyond during a speech before the joint session of Congress late Tuesday (March 5). “We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond,” Trump told Congress during his speech to a joint Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday night. “And through it all, we are going to rediscover…

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NASA Sets Coverage for Agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 Launch, Docking

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The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission pictured during an equipment test at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX Editor’s Note: This advisory was updated March 5, 2025, to correct that media may ask questions by phone only during the mission overview teleconference. NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff is targeted for 7:48 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, March 12, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The…

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Touch down on the moon with private Blue Ghost lander in this amazing video

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Blue Ghost had its eyes wide open during its epic moon landing last weekend. On Sunday (March 2), Blue Ghost — built and operated by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace — became just the second private spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon, coming to rest in the near side’s Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) region. We can now relive Blue Ghost’s historic descent, thanks to stunning footage captured by the lander. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured this shot of its own shadow on the moon just after…

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2025 Aviation Weather Mission: Civil Air Patrol Cadets Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere with GLOBE Clouds

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Explore This Section Science Science Activation 2025 Aviation Weather Mission:… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science   2 min read 2025 Aviation Weather Mission: Civil Air Patrol Cadets Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere with GLOBE Clouds The Science Activation Program’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) is working alongside the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to launch the 2025 Aviation Weather Mission. The mission will engage cadets (students ages 11-20) and senior members to collect aviation-relevant observations including airport conditions, Global Learning…

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NASA Awards Launch Service for Mission to Study Storm Formation

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Credit: NASA NASA has selected Firefly Aerospace Inc. of Cedar Park, Texas, to provide the launch service for the agency’s Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) mission, which aims to understand why, when, and where tropical convective storms form, and why some storms produce extreme weather. The mission will launch on the company’s Alpha rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The selection is part of NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract. This contract allows the agency to make fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity awards during VADR’s five-year ordering period,…

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Station Nation: Meet Chris Wade, Visiting Vehicle Integration Manager for SpaceX Vehicles 

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Chris Wade is a visiting vehicle integration manager for SpaceX vehicles in the International Space Station Transportation Integration Office. He plays a key role in ensuring that all vehicle requirements are on track to support SpaceX missions to the space station. Chris also manages a team of real-time mission support personnel who follow launch, docking, undocking, and splashdown operations. Read on to learn about his career with NASA and more!  Where are you from?  I am from Clarksdale, Mississippi.  Tell us about your role at NASA.   I manage horizontal integration…

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‘Stuck’ NASA astronauts on ISS grilled on Earthly politics as long 9-month mission nears end. ‘From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all.’

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Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are getting ready to wrap up their surprisingly long — and unexpectedly controversial — orbital stay. The two NASA astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in June on the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. They were supposed to stay at the station for just a week or so, but Starliner experienced thruster problems on the way up, and NASA extended the mission multiple times to investigate. Finally, in late August, the agency announced that Starliner would come back to Earth uncrewed,…

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Blue Ghost Lands on Moon

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Carrying a suite of NASA science and technology, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully landed at 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2, 2025, near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium, a more than 300-mile-wide basin located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side.

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See Earth shine like a Blue Marble in this stunning photo by Japan’s private Resilience moon lander

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The private Resilience moon lander now has a target touchdown date. The Tokyo-based company ispace, which built and operates Resilience, announced Monday (March 3) that it’s eyeing June 5 for the spacecraft’s lunar touchdown attempt. The current plan calls for Resilience to land that day at 3:24 p.m. EST (2024 GMT) near the center of Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”), a basaltic plain in the moon‘s northern reaches. But that’s not set in stone. An image of Earth taken by the private Resilience lunar lander on Feb. 18, 2025. (Image…

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