The company holds a contract to put NASA astronauts down near the lunar south pole on the Artemis 3 mission, which is expected to launch in 2028, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX will use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built — for this very high-profile job.

Or will it? Last week, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the agency will reopen the Artemis 3 landing contract to competition, citing concerns with the pace of Starship's development. The rocket has flown 11 uncrewed test flights to date, the last two of them completely successful, but has yet to reach Earth orbit or demonstrate key moon-critical milestones such as in-space propellant transfer. (Each Starship vehicle will need to be refueled multiple times in Earth orbit before it can reach the moon.)

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Oct. 20 during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box." (China plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and has been making steady progress toward this goal.)

This announcement did not sit well with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. He attacked Duffy via social media repeatedly over the following few days, calling the acting NASA chief "Sean Dummy" and claiming that he "is trying to kill NASA."

Now, more than a week later, SpaceX has formulated a more substantive response. On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company posted an update called "To the Moon and Beyond," which summarizes the progress that SpaceX has made with Starship to date and lays out the vehicle's potential to make NASA's lunar ambitions a reality.

"Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space," the blog post reads. "One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration."

SpaceX stressed in the update that it's working in parallel along two Starship paths, developing the "core" megarocket (which will help humanity colonize Mars, among other tasks) as well as the Artemis-specific moon-lander upper stage. SpaceX is self-funding the core path, and its contract for the Artemis lander is of the fixed-price variety, "ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company wrote.

According to Thursday's update, SpaceX has already completed 49 such milestones for the Artemis lander, including testing of micrometeoroid and space debris shielding and demonstrations of "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control" systems. And the company plans to make even more progress soon, sending a Starship upper stage to Earth orbit and completing an in-space fueling test with the vehicle in 2026, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX affirmed in the blog post that it shares NASA's goal to return astronauts to the moon "as expeditiously as possible" and wants to be "a core enabler" of the Artemis program's overriding ambition — to establish a permanent and sustained human presence on the moon, rather than mount a flags-and-footprints retread of Apollo. And the company said it's willing to be flexible to help make all of this happen.

"Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis 3 have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities," reads the update, which also features a new render of the interior of a crewed Starship moon lander. "In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the moon while simultaneously improving crew safety."

The current Artemis 3 plan calls for its four astronauts to lift off atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, then ride an Orion capsule to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the Starship upper stage. The astronauts will move into Starship, which will take them to and from the lunar surface.

SpaceX's new blog post doesn't provide any details about the possible "simplified" Artemis 3 architecture. But Musk may have given us a clue on Oct. 20, in one of his many Duffy reaction posts. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the billionaire wrote. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words."

Japan's new HTV-X cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station for the first time ever today (Oct. 28), delivering thousands of pounds of payloads and supplies to astronauts aboard.

The robotic HTV-X was captured by the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm — operated by NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — today at 11:58 p.m. EDT (1558 GMT), as the station flew 260 miles ( kilometers) over the south Atlantic Ocean.

The HTV-X is the successor to Japan's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), which flew nine missions — all of them successful — to the International Space Station (ISS) between September 2009 and May 2020.

Like its predecessor, the HTV-X can carry about 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit. It's hauling about 9,000 pounds (4,080 kg) of food and supplies on this mission, which began with a launch atop an H3 rocket on Saturday (Oct. 25).

Upon its rendezvous with the ISS, HTV-X carried out a series of test maneuvers, including a retreat-from-station procedure and systems checks ahead of spacecraft capture.

The new freighter is expendable, just like the HTV (which was also known as Kounotori, Japanese for "White Stork"). But the HTV-X can stay up for considerably longer stretches.

"HTV-X enhances transportation capabilities and adds the capability to provide various users with on-orbit demonstration opportunities for up to 1.5 years after leaving ISS until reentry," Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which builds the HTV-X for JAXA, wrote in a description of the vehicle.

HTV-X joins three other vehicles in the stable of robotic ISS cargo craft. The other freighters that currently service the station are Russia's Progress vehicle as well as Cygnus and Dragon, which are built by the American companies Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, respectively.

All are expendable except Dragon, which splashes down in the ocean for recovery and reuse. Dragon can therefore also haul scientific experiments and other materials down to Earth from the station.

Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky, both of the federal space corporation Roscosmos, were back in the vacuum of space on Tuesday (Oct. 28) to continue and expand on the work they began during an extravehicular activity (EVA) on Oct. 16. During this most recent outing, they spent 6 hours and 54 minutes mounting, relocating and cleaning hardware on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM).

This EVA, like the one two weeks ago, began with Ryzhikov and Zubritsky opening the hatch on the Poisk Mini-Research Module-2, this time at 10:18 a.m. EDT (1418 GMT). After gathering their tools, the cosmonauts used a telescoping crane, called the Strela boom, to trasverse to their first worksite on the Nauka MLM.

There they tackled their first major task of the day, attaching a two-part apparatus to support a pulse plasma (Impuls) experiment and research into the effect that spacecraft have on Earth's ionosphere (IPI-500, by the NPO IT company in Moscow). The Impuls study will test the potential for jet engines to work in space.

Between running connectors and moving on to the next installation, Ryzhikov also cleaned a window on the Nauka module. Shutters that protect the pane when it's not in use were opened to allow the cleaning. When done, the shutters were closed again.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky then returned to an experiment they installed during the earlier spacewalk two weeks ago. Ekran-M, or the Molecular Beam Epitaxy experiment, is designed to produce very thin materials for use in semiconductors. After discovering a loose gasket in the device's chamber, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky were instructed by mission control to carefully extract it using tweezers.

The spacewalkers then inserted a replacement cassette into the Ekran-M and, despite having to use wire ties to hold it in place, mission control reported getting good data. The older cassette will be returned to Earth for analysis.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky wrapped up their time outside by relocating an exterior control panel for the European Robotic Arm (ERA), a manipulator that is used to access and service different areas of the Russian segment of the space station.

Russian EVAs often save for their final task the jettison of no-longer-needed equipment that has been gathered during the cosmonauts' work. With the pending arrival, however, of Japan's new robotic cargo vehicle, the HTV-X, on Wednesday morning (Oct. 29), it was decided to avoid any risk from the debris.

The spacewalk ended at 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT) with Ryzhikov and Zubritsky safely back inside the Poisk airlock.

Tuesday's EVA was the third for Expedition 73 and the 277th in support of the International Space Station's assembly and maintenance since 1998. It was Zubritsky's second spacewalk, bringing his total time outside to 13 hours and 3 minutes, and the third for Ryzhikov, who now has logged a total of 19 hours and 51 minutes in the vacuum of space.

A pair of cosmonauts will work outside the International Space Station today (Oct. 28), and you can watch the off-Earth action live.

Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, will conduct a roughly six-hour spacewalk today, starting at around 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will begin at 9:45 a.m. EDT (1345 GMT).

The duo "will install experiment hardware on the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module, and relocate a control panel for the European robotic arm attached to Nauka," NASA News Chief Cheryl Warner wrote in an emailed statement on Monday (Oct. 27).

Most of NASA's activities are on hold due to the ongoing government shutdown, but the agency will stream today's spacewalk "and provide minimal technical commentary as this activity relates to excepted mission operations," Warner wrote.

This will be the second spacewalk in less than two weeks for Ryzhikov, who commands the International Space Station's current Expedition 73, and flight engineer Zubritsky. The duo also performed an extravehicular activity on Oct. 16, installing a semiconductor experiment on the orbiting lab and jettisoning an old HDTV camera.

Today's spacewalk will be the third for Ryzhikov, who will wear a spacesuit with red stripes, and the second for for Zubritsky, whose suit will have blue stripes, according to Warner.

It will be the 277th overall spacewalk in the history of the ISS, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since Nov. 2, 2000.

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket being stacked for the Artemis 2 mission has its final piece. Integrity, the Orion spacecraft that will fly NASA's Artemis 2 crew around the moon as early as February 2026, was recently transported across NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and hoisted atop SLS, completing the rocket's assembly ahead of launch.

It's a major milestone for the mission, which has been marked a priority and exempt from NASA's widespread shuttering during the ongoing government shutdown. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced the milestone in a social media post on Monday (Oct. 20), saying, "We are one step closer to mission complete!"

Artemis 2 is NASA's second mission in the Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, and eventually lay the foundation for astronaut trips to Mars. It will be the first crewed mission of the program, and will fly four NASA astronauts on a loop around the moon and back — the first crewed lunar mission since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will fly Integrity on a free-return trajectory, circling once around the lunar far side before heading back to Earth.

Their 10-day mission is currently targeted for as early as Feb. 5, 2026, with launch windows available through the end of April. Its predecessor, Artemis 1, launched in November 2022, and carried several sensors but no life support systems or astronauts. Artemis 2 will be the first crewed test of Orion and will pave the way for Artemis 3, which will land a crew on the moon's surface in 2027 or 2028.

Delays have been a familiar occurrence for the Artemis program, however. Issues with Orion's heat shield during reentry through Earth's atmosphere at the end of Artemis 1 created a more than three year gap between Artemis's first and second launches. Now, as the program is beginning to pick up some momentum, concerns about the readiness of SpaceX's Starship, which is contracted as the Artemis 3 lunar lander, are pushing a lunar landing even further.

NASA was targeting mid-2027 for Artemis 3, though that date appears to be slipping, despite Artemis 2 remaining on track for a launch in early 2026. In an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday, Duffy suggested that Artemis 3 will likely launch sometime in 2028, and the space agency is considering other landing options.

What is it?

Cubesats, compact spacecraft usually no bigger than a shoebox, have helped transform the landscape of space research in the past 20 years. Originally invented in 1999 by professors from Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University, the cubesat format was designed to lower the barriers to space for universities, small organizations and companies.

By following a shared design standard and using off-the-shelf components, teams can build and launch fully functional satellites in months rather than years, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional spacecraft.

Where is it?

This image was taken at the ISS's Kibo module in low-Earth orbit around 248 miles (400 kilometers) above our planet.

Why is it amazing?

While cubesats are used in a variety of space research, the three recently deployed by JAXA are focused specifically on auroral activity and the understanding of space weather. The YOTSUBA-KULOVER cubesat was developed by the Kyushu Institute of Technology, while the e-kagaku-1 was built by students in the e-kagaku Association and BOTAN was constructed by the Chiba Institute of Technology.

All three will look at specific factors around space weather and auroras, including volcanic pumice and solar activity.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about cubesats and the International Space Station.

In April 2021, NASA awarded Elon Musk's company a $2.9 billion contract to provide the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program. That vehicle, a modified upper stage of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, is supposed to land astronauts on the moon for the first time on the upcoming Artemis 3 mission.

But NASA isn't satisfied with the pace of Starship's development and is therefore shaking things up, acting agency chief Sean Duffy announced on Monday (Oct. 20).

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday morning, during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, won an Artemis Human Landing System contract of its own in 2023, an award worth $3.4 billion. The company plans to fulfill that deal with its Blue Moon lander, which was originally expected to make its crewed lunar debut on the Artemis 5 mission.

Musk voiced skepticism that Blue Origin could speed up its timeline enough to be ready for a crewed moon mission before SpaceX.

"Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the moon," the world's richest person said via X on Monday, qualifying that to "useful payload" in a follow-up post. (Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket carried a prototype of the company's Blue Ring spacecraft to Earth orbit on its first — and so far, only — launch this past January.)

Artemis 3's timeline has shifted to the right several times over the past few years, and not just because Starship is still in the testing phase; issues with spacesuits, NASA's Orion capsule and other tech have also played a role. (Orion will carry Artemis astronauts to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the lander that will deliver them to the surface.)

The launch date was originally targeted for late 2024 but was pushed back to 2025, September 2026 and then mid-2027.

And NASA is now apparently eyeing an even later timeline: In Monday's "Squawk Box" interview, Duffy suggests that 2028 is the target for Artemis 3.

The Artemis program has one launch under its belt — that of Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to and from lunar orbit in late 2022.

NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 2, which will launch four people on a 10-day journey around the moon next year. That mission remains on track to launch as early as February, Duffy said on Monday.

SpaceX's Starship, meanwhile, has launched on 11 suborbital test flights to date. The most recent two liftoffs, which took place on Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, respectively, were fully successful.

As Duffy noted, China has moon plans of its own: The nation plans to land astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor by 2030 and is making serious progress toward achieving that goal. No humans have touched the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts did so in December 1972.

Orbital observation

"Isn't this one of the top five stunning views among all the photos taken from the 'Kibo' window? Self-praise here..." wrote Kimiya Yui, an Expedition 73 flight engineer, with a laugh from on board the International Space Station.

"The ISS took on a different posture than usual, so the view from the window changed as well," explained Yui.

That post actually features two shots. In both, a band of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is seen above Earth's horizon, with the space station's solar arrays and the Kibo exposed facility in the foreground. One image also shows dancing green and red auroras, while the other captures a darker night sky.

"[It was a] special view that I wanted everyone to see, so I pushed through my work early to make time and took this photo," said Yui.

Astronaut activity

JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui has spent this week preparing for the arrival and capture of his country's first next-generation HTV-X cargo vehicle. Liftoff is targeted for Monday (Oct. 20).

"I'm waiting for you! I'll catch you gently, so don't worry!" wrote Yui to the resupply ship still on Earth on Friday (Oct. 17).

Yui will use the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to grab hold of the HTV-X1 spacecraft once it is in proximity of the manipulator's reach.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Oct. 17), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 11 months and 15 days.

Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky, both with Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos, marked the end of their first extravehicular activity (EVA) together at 7:19 p.m. EDT (2319 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 16). The two cosmonauts reentered the Poisk module's airlock and closed the hatch behind them, 6 hours and 9 minutes after they began the spacewalk at 1:10 p.m. EDT (1710 GMT).

After configuring their tools, the two crewmates made their way to their first worksite, outside of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Ryzhikov held onto the Ekran-M, or Molecular Beam Epitaxy experiment, while riding at the end of the European Robotic Arm (ERA), which was driven by cosmonaut Oleg Platonov from a workstation inside the space station.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky installed the drum-shaped unit, ran power cables and mounted a swappable cassette. The experiment is intended to demonstrate the ability to produce very thin materials — too thin to be made reliably on Earth — that can go from the microgravity environment of outer space to being used in semiconductors.

Their primary task completed, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky then made their way to the Zvezda service module to remove and dispose of a high-definition television system that was originally a part of a Canadian commercial payload. Zubritsky then stood a the end of the European Robotic Arm and tossed the camera overboard, toward the rear of the space station, ensuring it would not come back in contact with the outpost.

"It is going so well," radioed Zubritsky as the camera disappeared into the shadow of Earth. "Jettison is complete."

Given its relatively small mass (180 pounds, or 82 kilograms) and volume (2 by 4.6 by 2.3 feet, or 0.6 by 1.4 by 0.7 meters), the jettisoned equipment will fall back to Earth and be destroyed during its reentry into the atmosphere.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky also cleaned a window on the service module before heading back to the Poisk module, picking up an exposed material samples experiment to bring back with them into the space station.

Thursday's spacewalk was the second for Expedition 73 and the 276th in support of the International Space Station's assembly and maintenance since 1998. It was Zubritsky's first EVA and the second for Ryzhikov, who now has logged a total of 12 hours and 57 minutes on his two spacewalks.

Two cosmonauts will conduct a spacewalk today (Oct. 16), and you can watch the action live.

Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy of the Russian space agency Roscosmos will venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) today at about 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT), kicking off a spacewalk that's expected to last 5.5 hours.

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will begin at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT).

Ryzhikov, the commander of the ISS's current Expedition 73, and Zubritsky "will install a molecular beam experiment on the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module, remove a mounting platform housing a commercial camera that will be jettisoned and clean windows on the Zvezda Service Module," NASA News Chief Cheryl Warner wrote in an emailed statement on Tuesday (Oct. 14).

"Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will operate the European Robotic Arm on the Russian segment of the station during the spacewalk from inside the station," she added.

Most NASA activities are on hold due to the ongoing government shutdown, which furloughed 80% of the agency's workforce. However, NASA will stream today's spacewalk and "provide minimal technical commentary, as this activity relates to excepted mission operations," Warner wrote.

Other "excepted" agency activities include the operation of weather satellites deemed critical to public safety and work on the Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the moon in 2027.

Today's EVA will be the second for Ryzhikov, who will wear a spacesuit with red stripes, and the first for Zubritsky, whose suit will sport blue stripes, according to Warner.

It will be the 276th spacewalk in the history of the ISS, which has supported rotating astronaut crews on a continuous basis since November 2000.

For 24 hours a day, seven days a week since November 2000, NASA and its international partners have sustained a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit, including at least one American – a streak that will soon reach 25 years.

When viewed in the history of spaceflight, the International Space Station is perhaps one of humanity's most amazing accomplishments, a shining example of cooperation in space among the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia. But all good things must come to an end.

In 2030, the International Space Station will be deorbited: driven into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean.

I'm an aerospace engineer who has helped build a range of hardware and experiments for the ISS. As a member of the spaceflight community for over 30 years and a 17-year member of the NASA community, it will be hard for me to see the ISS come to an end.

Since the first pieces of the International Space Station were launched in 1998, the station has been home to significant research accomplishments across domains that include materials science, biotechnology, astronomy and astrophysics, Earth science, combustion and more.

Astronauts performing research inside the space station and payload experiments attached to the station's exterior have generated many publications in peer-reviewed science journals. Some of them have advanced our understanding of thunderstorms, led to improvements in the crystallization processes of key cancer-fighting drugs, detailed how to grow artificial retinas in space, explored the processing of ultrapure optical fibers and explained how to sequence DNA in orbit.

In total, more than 4,000 experiments have been conducted aboard the ISS, resulting in more than 4,400 research publications dedicated to advancing and improving life on Earth and helping forge a path for future space exploration activities.

The ISS has proven the value of conducting research in the unique environment of spaceflight – which has very low gravity, a vacuum, extreme temperature cycles and radiation – to advance scientists’ understanding of a wide range of important physical, chemical and biological processes.

Keeping a presence in orbit

But in the wake of the station's retirement, NASA and its international partners are not abandoning their outpost in low-Earth orbit. Instead, they are looking for alternatives to continue to take advantage of low Earth orbit's promise as a unique research laboratory and to extend the continuous, 25-year human presence some 250 miles (402 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

In December 2021, NASA announced three awards to help develop privately owned, commercially operated space stations in low-Earth orbit.

For years, NASA has successfully sent supplies to the International Space Station using commercial partners, and the agency recently began similar business arrangements with SpaceX and Boeing for transporting crew aboard the Dragon and Starliner spacecraft, respectively.

Based on the success of these programs, NASA invested more than US$400 million to stimulate the development of commercial space stations and hopefully launch and activate them before the ISS is decommissioned.

Dawn of commercial space stations

In September 2025, NASA issued a draft announcement for Phase 2 partnership proposals for commercial space stations. Companies that are selected will receive funding to support critical design reviews and demonstrate stations with four people in orbit for at least 30 days.

NASA will then move forward with formal design acceptance and certification to ensure that these stations meet NASA's stringent safety requirements. The outcome will allow NASA to purchase missions and other services aboard these stations on a commercial basis – similar to how NASA gets cargo and crew to the ISS today.

Which of these teams will be successful, and on what timescale, remains to be seen.

While these stations are being built, Chinese astronauts will continue to live and work aboard their Tiangong space station, a three-person, permanently crewed facility orbiting approximately 250 miles (402 km) above the Earth's surface. Consequently, if the ISS's occupied streak comes to an end, China and Tiangong will take over as the longest continually inhabited space station in operation: It's been occupied for approximately four years and counting.

In the meantime, enjoy the view

It will be several years before any of these new commercial space stations circle the Earth at around 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour) and several years before the ISS is deorbited in 2030.

So while you have a chance, take a look up and enjoy the view. On most nights when the ISS flies over, it is simply magnificent: a brilliant blue-white point of light, usually the brightest object in the sky, silently executing a graceful arc across the sky.

Our ancestors could hardly have imagined that one day, one of the brightest objects in the night sky would have been conceived by the human mind and built by human hands.

Orbital observation

Expedition 73 flight engineer Kimiya Yui of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) saw not one but two typhoons this week from aboard the International Space Station. (Typhoons are the same weather phenomenon as hurricanes: both are tropical cyclones. This type of powerful storm is called a hurricane in the Atlantic and central and eastern North Pacific regions, and a typhoon in the Northwest Pacific.)

"The eye of Typhoon 22 has become somewhat unclear, but it still appears to be maintaining its strong intensity as before," wrote Yui on social media on Thursday (Oct. 9). "Typhoon 23 is a bit distant, but it is swirling with thick rain clouds on its southern side."

"Stay safe while keeping up with the latest typhoon information!" he said.

Astronaut activity

Yui worked with his Expedition 73 crewmates and ground controllers to check out PROX, a device that will be used when Japan's next-generation cargo vehicle, the HTV-X, approaches the International Space Station for berthing.

"Preparations to welcome HTV-X to the ISS are steadily progressing," wrote Yui in a social media post on Oct. 8, 2025. "Here's the news: just like with Kounotori-kun, I've been assigned to operate the arm and grasp it this time as well. The responsibility is significant, but I'll cooperate with everyone to reliably carry out the mission!"

By the numbers

As of Friday (Oct. 10), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 11 months and 8 days.

An amazing new video shows flashes of sunlight sparkling off a batch of SpaceX satellites, with a green aurora glowing just below.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, an accomplished amateur photographer, captured the stunning "train" of SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites during his recent mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The aurora was produced by solar particles slamming into Earth’s atmosphere.

Despite the natural light show, the Starlink group was "very visible. Many were as bright as Jupiter — they would flash from one to 10 seconds," added Pettit in a comment on X, where he posted the undated video on Tuesday (Oct. 7).

That is indeed quite bright. The peak brightness of Jupiter is roughly -2 magnitude in the night sky. For comparison, the brightest stars range between about magnitude 2 and -2, Venus can get as bright as -4, and the sun is at magnitude -26. (Lower numbers indicate brighter objects on astronomers' magnitude scale.)

Pettit’s latest space mission, a 220-day jaunt, concluded on his 70th birthday on April 20, when the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him and his two crewmates touched down in the steppe of Kazakhstan. Since life gets busy on the ISS, however, Pettit has been steadily uploading a backlog of images and videos ever since coming home.

Starlink current consists of nearly 8,600 operational satellites, according to a tracker maintained by space debris expert Jonathan McDowell. While that’s a boon for remote areas looking for the reliable internet service SpaceX strives to provide, astronomers have concerns.

The brightness Pettit observed is one of the worries, as these Starlink trains — usually most apparent shortly after launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket — can interfere with astronomical observations. Starlinks also have brought up space debris concerns, both in that more satellites raise the risk of collisions and because their reentry could leave traces of metals in Earth’s atmosphere, potentially causing pollution and affecting climate.

In response to these concerns, SpaceX has changed the reflectivity of some of its satellites, and the company continues to emphasize that the Starlinks can be maneuvered in case of trouble. And many more Starlinks will reach orbit over time: SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 42,000 of the satellites aloft.

The Juno probe launched in 2011 and entered orbit around Jupiter in 2016, beginning what was originally planned as a 20-month mission. Nearly a decade later, the spacecraft has delivered unprecedented research of the Jovian system, observing the gas giant, its many moons and faint ring system long past its intended lifespan.

NASA has extended Juno's mission multiple times, most recently in 2021, guaranteeing operations through Sept. 30, 2025. That date has now passed, and with the U.S. government shut down, there is no word yet on whether Juno will come out alive on the other side.

Juno's latest extension broadened its mission from studying Jupiter's interior and magnetosphere to include the planet's rings and observations of its large moons.

"By extending the science goals of this important orbiting observatory, the Juno team will start tackling a breadth of science historically required of flagships," Lori Glaze, NASA's planetary science division director at the time, said in a statement. And Juno has done just that.

Over the past several years, the spacecraft has conducted close flybys of the moons Ganymede, Europa and Io, delivering data on their geology, environments and composition. Juno has also investigated Jupiter's faint ring system, while continuing to map the planet's powerful magnetic and gravitational fields.

These results have contributed to preparations for upcoming missions like Europa Clipper, NASA's next major Jupiter spacecraft. Europa Clipper launched in Oct. 2024, and is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030 to study the moon after which the spacecraft is named. Ending Juno's mission before Europa Clipper's arrival would create a years-long gap in dedicated observations of that part of our solar system, leaving scientists without new data until the end of the decade.

In an email shared with Space.com, NASA Planetary Science Division Media Lead Molly Wasser referenced Juno's 2021 extension saying the "mission was extended to September of 2025. This is the most recent update. Regarding the future of the mission, NASA will abide by the law."

Due to the government shutdown, NASA is currently unable to say whether Juno is still operating or already powered down. At the time of publication, responses from agency officials state that "NASA is currently closed due to a lapse in government funding … Please reach back out after an appropriation or continuing resolution is approved."

Under shutdown rules, only missions that fall under "excepted activities" — those required to protect life, property, or national security — can continue operations or communications. NASA's continuity plans also specify that carryover funding may only be applied to "presidential priorities," which limits what science programs can proceed during a lapse.

Juno does not fall into those protected categories, and was also zeroed-out on the President's fiscal year 2026 budget request — making the mission, presumably, not a priority. So, until normal government operations resume, the spacecraft's future is uncertain.

Floating above Earth, the ISS is a symbol of global cooperation, scientific discovery and the relentless curiosity that drives us to explore the cosmos.

It's not just a home in space — it's a laboratory, a classroom and a proving ground for technologies that may one day take us to Mars and beyond. From growing lettuce in microgravity to studying the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, the ISS is a hub of innovation that's reshaping our understanding of life off Earth.

Whether you're a seasoned space nerd or just dipping your toes into the vacuum of space trivia, this quiz will challenge your knowledge and ignite your imagination about the ISS.

So buckle up, adjust your mental thrusters, and prepare for liftoff, you're about to take a spin through the fascinating world of the International Space Station.

Try it out below and see how well you score!

Orbital observation

Hello from space!

"Today was a busy day as well, but I was able to take some photos in between workouts," wrote Kimiya Yui on social media on Thursday (Oct. 2). "About 25 minutes after taking photos near the Mediterranean, we passed over Japan's Honshu. Those who saw the ISS yesterday evening and waved to it, ended up waving to me while I was doing strength training looking out the window."

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

SHRIMP — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim activated the State-of-the-art Humidity Removal in Microgravity Payload, a device designed to extract moisture from a spacecraft's atmosphere for reuse.

Heat Transfer Host 2 — Mike Fincke, also with NASA, installed the new experiment to study condensation when gas turns to liquid, potentially adding to the development of thermal systems for crewed spacecraft sent on deep-space missions.

ADvanced Space Experiment Processor-4 — NASA flight engineer Zena Cardman installed new sample cassettes for a study supporting the manufacturing of medicines (drugs or pharmaceuticals) in microgravity.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Fluid Science Laboratory — Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim spent time configuring this European Space Agency (ESA) apparatus for researching the physics of fluid in microgravity. They changed out electrical cables, brought together components and mounted foam coarsening samples.

Capture Bag Demo — Fincke also installed the TransAstra Fly Trap Capture Bag Demo into the NanoRacks Bishop airlock, ahead of tests to show its capability to remain open, close and stay airtight in the weightless environment of space. The bag may be a method of capturing and disposing of space debris.

Electrostatic Levitation Furnace — JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui changed out specimen handling hardware and configured cables for this device, which uses lasers to heat materials to ultra-high temperatures while data is collected about the thermo-physical properties of the samples.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Oct. 3), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 11 months and 1 day.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for enhanced cooperation here at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here in Sydney on Wednesday (Oct. 1).

The agreement will allow the agencies to use each others' ground stations for telemetry, tracking and command functions. The MoU also covers future areas of cooperation including space science, exploration, human spaceflight, in-space infrastructure and beyond. There is also an intention to work together on space weather.

"This is an important moment for Europe and Korea, opening up great opportunities for our space interests, and strengthening existing systems through cooperation," ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a statement. "In ESA, we are excited to learn from our colleagues in KASA, and to share our experience to reach complementary goals."

"KASA's objectives include enhancing global space cooperation;" said Youngbin Yoon, KASA's administrator. "Today, we have taken an important step, and we look forward to our shared journey in cooperation in space activities for peaceful purposes."

Support from ESA's Estrack global ground station network could help facilitate South Korea's lunar ambitions, with ESA having played a similar role during the development of China's Chang'e lunar program.

South Korea's moon program already includes the Danuri spacecraft, which is in lunar orbit, capturing stunning images of the moon. But the country is now building toward a robotic lunar lander to be launched by a homegrown rocket, with a grander vision of establishing a moon base by 2045 as part of a long-term exploration road map released by KASA in August. Earlier this year, the agency began converting an abandoned mine to a testing ground for lunar exploration.

The developments come as ESA earlier this year began considering diversifying and deepening global partnerships in the wake of uncertainty over the NASA budget and the future of cooperative programs. ESA also held discussions with India on deepening their cooperation at IAC in Sydney.

Asteroid rideshare with Japan

A day earlier, ESA's Aschbacher celebrated recent milestones in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with agency head Hiroshi Yamakawa. Both men addressed IAC at a Heads of Agencies event on Sept. 29.

Aschbacher celebrated a recent rideshare agreement that will see ESA's Ramses spacecraft and Japan's Destiny+ mission launch together on a Japanese H3 rocket to study the former doomsday asteroid Apophis ahead of its 2029 close encounter with Earth.

"Ramses is not only a scientifically exciting mission and a symbol of two partnerships between Japan and ESA, but it also is a good example of quick project development and implementation," Aschbacher said.

The main objective for Destiny+ is to study the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower. Launch delays have, however, provided the opportunity for the spacecraft to first visit Apophis, and for a serendipitous rideshare for Ramses.

ESA still needs to get a final positive decision on funding for the mission at a key ministerial meeting of member states in November, but the Ramses spacecraft is already advancing along its development path. Aschbacher also highlighted recent cooperation with JAXA on the EarthCare mission, which launched last year.

NASA's search for evidence of past life on Mars just produced an exciting update. On Sept. 10, 2025, a team of scientists published a paper detailing the Perseverance rover's investigation of a distinctive rock outcrop called Bright Angel on the edge of Mars' Jezero Crater. This outcrop is notable for its light-toned rocks with striking mineral nodules and multicolored, leopard print-like splotches.

By combining data from five scientific instruments, the team determined that these nodules formed through processes that could have involved microorganisms. While this finding is not direct evidence of life, it's a compelling discovery that planetary scientists hope to look into more closely.

To appreciate how discoveries like this one come about, it's helpful to understand how scientists engage with rover data — that is, how planetary scientists like me use robots like Perseverance on Mars as extensions of our own senses.

Experiencing Mars through data

When you strap on a virtual reality headset, you suddenly lose your orientation to the immediate surroundings, and your awareness is transported by light and sound to a fabricated environment. For Mars scientists working on rover mission teams, something very similar occurs when rovers send back their daily downlinks of data.

Several developers, including MarsVR, Planetary Visor and Access Mars, have actually worked to build virtual Mars environments for viewing with a virtual reality headset. However, much of Mars scientists' daily work instead involves analyzing numerical data visualized in graphs and plots. These datasets, produced by state-of-the-art sensors on Mars rovers, extend far beyond human vision and hearing.

Developing an intuition for interpreting these complex datasets takes years, if not entire careers. It is through this "mind-data connection" that scientists build mental models of Martian landscapes – models they then communicate to the world through scientific publications.

The robots' tool kit: Sensors and instruments

Five primary instruments on Perseverance, aided by machine learning algorithms, helped describe the unusual rock formations at a site called Beaver Falls and the past they record.

Robotic hands: Mounted on the rover's robotic arm are tools for blowing dust aside and abrading rock surfaces. These ensure the rover analyzes clean samples.

Cameras: Perseverance hosts 19 cameras for navigation, self-inspection and science. Five science-focused cameras played a key role in this study. These cameras captured details unseeable by human eyes, including magnified mineral textures and light in infrared wavelengths. Their images revealed that Bright Angel is a mudstone, a type of sedimentary rock formed from fine sediments deposited in water.

Spectrometers: Instruments such as SuperCam and SHERLOC – scanning habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for organics and chemicals – analyze how rocks reflect or emit light across a range of wavelengths. Think of this as taking hundreds of flash photographs of the same tiny spot, all in different "colors." These datasets, called spectra, revealed signs of water integrated into mineral structures in the rock and traces of organic molecules: the basic building blocks of life.

Subsurface radar: RIMFAX, the radar imager for Mars subsurface experiment, uses radio waves to peer beneath Mars' surface and map rock layers. At Beaver Falls, this showed the rocks were layered over other ancient terrains, likely due to the activity of a flowing river. Areas with persistently present water are better habitats for microbes than dry or intermittently wet locations.

X-ray chemistry: PIXL, the planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry, bombards rock surfaces with X-rays and observes how the rock glows or reflects them. This technique can tell researchers which elements and minerals the rock contains at a fine scale. PIXL revealed that the leopard-like spots found at Beaver Falls differed chemically from the surrounding rock. The spots resembled patterns on Earth formed by chemical reactions that are mediated by microbes underwater.

Together, these instruments produce a multifaceted picture of the Martian environment. Some datasets require significant processing, and refined machine learning algorithms help the mission teams turn that information into a more intuitive description of the Jezero Crater’s setting, past and present.

The challenge of uncertainty

Despite Perseverance's remarkable tools and processing software, uncertainty remains in the results. Science, especially when conducted remotely on another planet, is rarely black and white. In this case, the chemical signatures and mineral formations at Beaver Falls are suggestive – but not conclusive – of past life on Mars.

There actually are tools, such as mass spectrometers, that can show definitively whether a rock sample contains evidence of biological activity. However, these instruments are currently too fragile, heavy and power-intensive for Mars missions.

Fortunately, Perseverance has collected and sealed rock core samples from Beaver Falls and other promising sites in Jezero Crater with the goal of sending them back to Earth. If the current Mars sample return plan can retrieve these samples, laboratories on Earth can scrutinize them far more thoroughly than the rover was able to.

Investing in our robotic senses

This discovery is a testament to decades of NASA's sustained investment in Mars exploration and the work of engineering teams that developed these instruments. Yet these investments face an uncertain future.

The White House's budget office recently proposed cutting 47% of NASA’s science funding. Such reductions could curtail ongoing missions, including Perseverance's continued operations, which are targeted for a 23% cut, and jeopardize future plans such as the Mars sample return campaign, among many other missions.

Perseverance represents more than a machine. It is a proxy extending humanity’s senses across millions of miles to an alien world. These robotic explorers and the NASA science programs behind them are a key part of the United States' collective quest to answer profound questions about the universe and life beyond Earth.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

"We now have experimental validation that tumbleweed rovers could indeed operate and collect scientific data on Mars," James Kingsnorth of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and head of science at Team Tumbleweed said in a statement.

The idea behind the Tumbleweed project is to design large-scale, low-cost robotic rovers that can cover great swathes of the Martian surface while driven purely by the breeze.

Whereas the final planned tumbleweed rovers would be 16 feet (five meter) across, in April 2025, Team Tumbleweed tested a half-size prototype called the Tumbleweed Science Testbed in a disused quarry in the Netherlands. The team proved that even off-the-shelf instruments could collect environmental data while the rover tumbled roughly across the terrain.

Then, in July 2025, Team Tumbleweed headed to Aarhus University's Planetary Environment Facility in Denmark to test small 11.8-, 15.7- and 19.7-inch (30-, 40- and 50-centimeter) prototypes in a wind tunnel.

The prototypes were spherical wire frames containing sails; in the wind tunnel, they were put through their paces on different surfaces, including rough and smooth terrain, sand, pebbles and boulder fields. They were then blown by different wind speeds and all under a low surface pressure of 17 millibars to mimic conditions on the Red Planet.

The tests showed that wind speeds as low as 30 to 33 feet per second (9 to 10 meters per second) were sufficient to push the tumbleweed rovers, while onboard sensors were successful in capturing data as the rovers tumbled. The prototypes were even able to ascend slopes of 11.5 degrees pushed only by the wind. While this does not sound terribly steep, this was in Earth's gravity — in the lower gravity of Mars, this would be equivalent to a 30 degree slope.

"Experiments with the prototypes in the Aarhus wind tunnel have provided big insights into how tumbleweed rovers would operate on Mars," Mário João Carvalho de Pinto Balsemão, who is Team Tumbleweed's mission scientist at Universidad de Lisboa (Lisbon) in Portugal, said in the statement. "The results are conservative, as the weights of the scaled prototypes used in the experiments are exaggerated compared to the real thing, so the threshold wind speeds for setting the rovers rolling could be even less."

That's good news for the potential success of real tumbleweed rovers on Mars. Although measurements of near-surface wind speeds on Mars are sketchy, NASA's InSight lander was frequently shaken by winds stronger than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) per second, while the Ingenuity helicopter also measured winds of similar strength.

“The results from Aarhus support our modeling, which shows that an average tumbleweed rover – following the daily shifts and day–night cycles of the wind — could travel about 422 kilometers [262 miles] over 100 Martian sols, with an average overall speed of about 0.36 kilometers [0.22 miles] per hour," said Balsemão. "In favorable conditions, the maximum range could be as much as 2,800 kilometers."

Swarms of tumbleweed rovers could transform our exploration of the Red Planet, capable of taking environmental data simultaneously from myriad locations to create wide maps of atmospheric and surface processes. At the end of their roving missions they can even collapse to form stationary platforms that can continue taking data for many years.

The team's next step is to head to the Atacama Desert in Chile in November to test the prototypes with more sensitive instruments to see if they can collect precision data while the rovers tumble over the terrain. Although currently the tumbleweed rover has not been adopted as a mission by any space agencies, by developing the technology it puts the project in prime position in the future to be selected to go to Mars.

The latest tumbleweed update was presented by Kingsnorth at the joint Europlanet Science Congress–AAS Division of Planetary Science meeting in Helsinki in September.

On Monday (Sept. 22), NASA named its next class of astronaut candidates during a ceremony held at Johnson Space Center in Houston. In addition to recording a message to the new trainees, members of the Expedition 73 crew also shared a photo (below) of them watching Group 24 being introduced.

"To the newest astronaut class, from the crew of Expedition 73 onboard the International Space Station, congratulations and welcome to the Astronaut Corps!" wrote Jonny Kim, a fellow NASA astronaut.

The "ascans" will become eligible for flight assignments after about two years of basic training.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

Voyager DNA Decryption — NASA's Jonny Kim sequenced DNA samples as part of a study into using the polymer to securely store and transmit data in space. The results of this research could help enable longer duration missions into deep space by replacing more bulky data storage techniques.

VIRTUAL —The Spatial Orientation and Interaction of Eisodic Systems Under Conditions of Weightlessness (Virtual) investigation collects data on crew members' vestibular functions "on the disposition of gaze and visual tracking during the course of a long-duration space mission." Cosmonaut Oleg Platonov wore virtual reality glasses and "responded to computer-generated visual stimuli as his eye movements and other physiological reactions were recorded," according to NASA.

SPLANKH — Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, both Roscosmos cosmonauts, scanned each other’s bellies with an ultrasound device after breakfast on Friday (Sept. 26) to gather data on their digestion, metabolism and nutrient delivery as they adjust to the microgravity environment of space.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

NG-23 Cygnus — Mike Fincke and Kimiya Yui on Friday (Sept. 26) continued to unload new science and supplies delivered aboard the S.S. William C. "Willie" McCool, an uncrewed cargo vehicle.

Cubesat — Mike Fincke installed a small satellite (cubesat) on the NanoRacks external platform that will soon be placed outside the space station.

Dragon reboost —A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft fired its thrusters for 15 minutes on Friday (Sept. 26), reboosting the station’s orbit. The maneuver came a day after a first attempt at the reboost was aborted after it was noticed a change of fuel tanks did not take place as expected.

Astronaut activity

Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim spoke with the leader of the Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"I believe that the words that you share with us today will be meaningful guidance and inspiration for our future generations who dream of space," said Yoon Youngbin, KASA administrator.

"There is so much to learn about space, and I am very inspired by what Korea is doing to push forward that envelope," said Kim.

The two spoke for about 20 minutes, which you can watch above.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Sep. 26), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 10 months and 24 days.

Enceladus is one of the most intriguing moons in the solar system due to the discovery by NASA's Cassini probe of plumes of water ice erupting from the moon's south polar region. The find indicates geological activity on Enceladus, along with a subsurface ocean of liquid water — and perhaps even an environment capable of sustaining life.

ESA is now targeting a mission to study enigmatic Enceladus as part of its Voyage 2050, the agency's long-term plan for space science activities, according to ESA officials at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) joint meeting, which was held in Helsinki in early September.

The Enceladus mission, though in its earliest stages, will need both an orbiter and a lander to answer major science questions, with the orbiter to be designed to sample material in the plumes emanating from the "tiger stripes" at the south pole.

An early mission configuration following first industrial studies calls for two launches of the largest variant of the Ariane 6 rocket, with spacecraft to dock in Earth orbit. Next, approval is needed at the ESA ministerial meeting in Bremen, Germany, in November, allowing a mission definition phase, leading to mission adoption in 2034 and a launch around 2042. The spacecraft would then arrive in the Saturn system in 2053, starting a tour of Enceladus and other moons, collection of plume material and preparation for a landing around 2058.

Jörn Helbert of ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) stated in a presentation at EPSC-DPS that, since March of this year, the ESA study team has been working with a newly selected payload working group and an expert committee to refine the science requirements and identify key technologies.

The Enceladus mission aims to advance European expertise in several scientific and technological fields, including in-orbit assembly, operating in extreme environments, landing technologies and novel scientific instrumentation, according to Helbert. He added that the development of these technologies will have wide-ranging applications beyond ESA's space science program.

Helbert noted that Enceladus has three necessary conditions for supporting life as we know it: the presence of liquid water, a source of energy and a specific set of chemical elements. An answer to the question of whether or not life exists below Enceladus's icy shell may, however, require decades of efforts in terms of planning, resources and innovation.

NASA's space shuttle orbiters were instrumental in building the ISS, and in keeping it operational for its first decade; these reusable spacecraft ferried astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost until the fleet was fully retired in 2011. Five years later, the agency opened the door to more space plane meetups, signing a cargo deal with Sierra Space, the Colorado-based company behind the robotic Dream Chaser vehicle.

That 2016 contract awarded Sierra Space a minimum of seven ISS resupply flights with Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star. Nine years later, however, Dream Chaser has still not reached space — and its cargo deal has just been changed.

"After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract, as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration," they added. "NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions; however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract."

The timeline is getting a bit tight for possible Dream Chaser ISS missions, given the orbiting lab is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030. However, NASA is encouraging the development of commercial stations in low Earth orbit to fill the void left by the ISS' impending departure, and it's possible that Dream Chaser could visit one or more of those in the coming years.

In a different statement released on Thursday, Sierra Space (which spun off from the aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corp. in 2021) invoked that and other potential use cases for Dream Chaser. Company officials stressed the space plane could still fly a variety of missions down the road, even if the vehicle never makes it to the ISS.

"Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility," Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, said in the statement.

"This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market," Ozmen added. "Together with NASA, we are seeking to preserve the exceptional potential of Dream Chaser as a national asset, ensuring its readiness for the next era of space innovation."

Two private American companies currently fly robotic resupply missions to the ISS for NASA — SpaceX, with its Dragon capsules, and Northrop Grumman, which uses a spacecraft called Cygnus. The agency also tapped SpaceX to deorbit the ISS in a controlled fashion in 2030, using a modified version of Dragon.

Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies has scored a contract to raise the altitude of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been hunting for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from low Earth orbit (LEO) for more than two decades.

Sparse molecules in the wispy outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere have been dragging Swift down over the years, and this process has ramped up recently thanks to increased solar activity (which causes the atmosphere to expand). So NASA tapped Katalyst to build a boosting spacecraft to remedy the situation. It's expected to launch toward Swift in the spring of 2026, rendezvous with the observatory, and raise its altitude.

Success would be historic: No private spacecraft has ever captured a U.S. government satellite that's uncrewed, or that wasn't designed to be serviced in the final frontier, according to NASA.

"Given how quickly Swift's orbit is decaying, we are in a race against the clock, but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development, we are meeting this challenge head-on," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. said in a Sept. 24 statement that announced the new plan.

"This is a forward-leaning, risk-tolerant approach for NASA," he added. "But attempting an orbit boost is both more affordable than replacing Swift's capabilities with a new mission, and beneficial to the nation — expanding the use of satellite servicing to a new and broader class of spacecraft."

Swift launched to LEO in 2004. It detects GRBs, which are intense blasts of radiation that result from some of the most energetic events in the universe — the deaths of massive stars, for example, or mergers between two black holes.

"When a rapid, sudden event takes place in the cosmos, Swift serves as a 'dispatcher,' providing critical information that allows other 'first responder' missions to follow up to learn more about how the universe works," NASA officials said in the same statement.

"For more than two decades, Swift has led NASA's missions in providing new insights on these events, together broadening our understanding of everything from exploding stars, stellar flares, and eruptions in active galaxies, to comets and asteroids in our own solar system and high-energy lightning events on Earth," they added.

Katalyst got $30 million to build the new spacecraft via NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The company was already an SBIR participant, which helped enable the accelerated timeline that NASA and Katalyst are targeting with the Swift boost, agency officials said.

And there may be more deals like this one coming down the road, they added.

"America's space economy is brimming with cutting-edge solutions, and opportunities like this allow NASA to tap into them for real-world challenges," said Clayton Turner, associate administrator for the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate. "Orbital decay is a common, natural occurrence for satellites, and this collaboration may open the door to extending the life of more spacecraft in the future."

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, who could launch on their trip around the moon as early as Feb. 5, announced today (Sept. 24) that they have named their Orion capsule "Integrity."

"The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners and dreamers required for mission success," NASA officials said in a statement today.

"The name is also a nod to the extensive integrated effort — from the more than 300,000 spacecraft components to the thousands of people across the world — that must come together to venture to the moon and back, inspire the world and set course for a long-term presence at the moon," they added.

The Artemis 2 crew consists of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The first three are all NASA astronauts, while Hansen represents the Canadian Space Agency.

The quartet will launch atop a Space Launch System rocket during a window that extends from Feb. 5 to April 26 of next year. The astronauts will fly Integrity on a loop around the moon and back home again, on a mission that will last about 10 Earth days.

Artemis 2 won't land on or orbit the moon. But it will be the first crewed mission to reach the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in December 1972. And it will pave the way for Artemis 3, which will put astronauts down near the moon's south pole in 2027, if all goes according to plan.

And things are designed to accelerate from there: The Artemis program aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the moon, and to use the lessons learned via this effort to send astronauts to Mars.

The Artemis 2 crew didn't just pick "Integrity" out of a hat; arriving at the name was a long and drawn-out process, Wiseman said today during a press event at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We got the four of us together and our backups, Jenny Gibbons from the Canadian Space Agency and Andre Douglas from NASA, and we went over to the quarantine facility here," Wiseman said. "We basically locked ourselves in there until we came up with a name."

They started with a lot of candidate monikers, he added.

"As we worked our way through this, we went big to small, which this crew does so well," Wiseman said. "And we started with the NASA core values, and then we looked at the Canadian Space Agency core values. And then we talked about what matters to us most in our core values. And then we looked out at what is going on with Artemis 2. What do we want this to be?"

In the end, he said, the crew determined that their chief goal for the mission is to help provide some "peace and hope for all humankind."

"So, we are bringing together the world," Wiseman said. "We are bringing together an amazing workforce, and they are bringing together an amazing vehicle. And at the end of all that, when you squeeze it all down, it created magic. So we're going to fly around the moon in the spacecraft Integrity."

It's a tradition in the human spaceflight world for a new spacecraft to be named by the first astronauts to fly it. For example, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule made its debut this past June, on the private Ax-4 astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The Ax-4 crew gave that Dragon its name: Grace.

The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission to the moon, which could launch as early as Feb. 5 of next year, are deep in training for the first crewed lunar flight in over 50 years. They'll launch atop NASA's giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket aboard an Orion spacecraft, whose name was revealed on Wednesday (Sept. 24) — "Integrity."

"We're going to launch when this vehicle is ready, when this team is ready, and we're going to go execute this mission to the best of our abilities," Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman told reporters here at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) during a press conference on Wednesday.

"We might go to the moon — that's where we want to go — but it is a test mission, and we are ready for every scenario as we ride this amazing Space Launch System on the Orion spacecraft, 250,000 miles away," he added. "It's going to be amazing."

Joining Wiseman on Artemis 2 — a 10-day trip around the moon and back to Earth — are pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch (both of NASA), as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, also a mission specialist. The mission, decades in the making since NASA first unveiled a planned crewed return to the moon in 2004, will set the stage for an even more ambitious flight: Artemis 3, the first astronaut landing on the moon of NASA's Artemis program.

Artemis 2 will mark a number of firsts: The first crewed moon flight since NASA's famed Apollo program. The first woman and person of color to visit lunar realms. The first astronaut flight of NASA's Artemis program, which seeks not only to land humans on the moon but also to conduct sustained crewed exploration of the lunar south pole and beyond to prepare for an eventual trip to Mars.

The flight will also mark the farthest trip by humans into deep space, potentially going up to 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) beyond the moon — farther than NASA's Apollo 13 astronauts flew during their harrowing, near-disastrous flight in 1970.

Glover said he tries not to think "about all of these grand things," however.

"That's a distraction," he said during Wednesday's event. "If we want to live up to the standards that we owe the American and Canadian [public] and humanity in general, we have to be able to focus and know what the next right thing is to do. And so I actually spend a lot of time clearing that out of my head so I can focus on my job."

Koch voiced similar sentiments, invoking a conversation she had recently with Fred Haise, Apollo 13's lunar module pilot.

"I met Fred Haise at a recent event here at JSC. He said 'Hi,' and then he said, 'I heard you're going to beat our record.' It made me realize maybe he's paying attention to it more than we are," Koch said. "I think that sometimes when we talk about superlatives, we may inadvertently ignore the real story of what's going on in our mission."That story, she added, is the push to return to the moon, observe the lunar surface and conduct 21st-century science on how the human body copes with deep-space travel to help prepare for eventual trips to Mars. "It's about the teamwork and the work that went into that, and the dedication that it took to take on those big challenges," Koch said.

The trip to the moon may seem like a short one for some of the Artemis 2 crew. In 2019, Koch shattered the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Glover spent 168 days on the station during a previous flight, and Wiseman, NASA's former chief astronaut, spent 165 days in space on his own ISS flight. But for Hansen, Artemis 2's moon shot will be his first trip to space.

"It truly is an absolute privilege," Hansen said. "For us, Artemis 2 is about much more than just going back to the moon. It is about the pursuit of excellence."

Signs here at JSC, home of the agency's Mission Control centers and astronaut training, tout the flight's looming launch. "20 weeks away!" reads one sign at a training center.

NASA hopes to launch Artemis 2, a mission that has seen several delays since the successful Artemis 1 uncrewed test flight to lunar orbit in November 2022, between early February and April 26. The agency had hoped to fly sooner, but concerns about how Orion's heat shield performed during Artemis 1's reentry to Earth atmosphere have caused some delays.

NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy has said repeatedly that the agency's Artemis program is pivotal to the United States' ability to remain competitive on the international stage, particularly against China. The U.S., Duffy has said, is in a new space race with China to send astronauts to the moon.

"I'll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA, or beat America, back to the moon," Duffy said as he announced NASA's newest astronaut class here on Monday (Sept. 22). "We love competition, and we are going to win the second space race back to the moon."

Hansen said that he understands the perception of a race but feels that the international collaboration of Artemis 2 is a benefit.

"We're just going to pursue excellence," Hansen said. "That's how you win a space race, and that's just how you move our countries forward. More importantly, that's how you create an environment where you might encourage others to collaborate."

Glover said that he's focused on a different kind of race.

"The race that I think the most about is the relay race that we're in," he said. "We are going together, and our mission success is built on handing off, starting off with Artemis 3 — that sets up our country and our partners to go back to the surface of the moon."

HOUSTON — NASA's ambitious mission to return astronauts to the moon for the first time this century is on track to launch no later than April 2026, but it just might fly sooner if all goes well.

The 10-day-long Artemis 2 mission, which will fly four astronauts around the moon on NASA's Orion spacecraft, could lift off as early as Feb. 5, mission managers said today (Sept. 23) during an event here at the agency's Johnson Space Center (JSC).

"We together have a front-row seat to history: We're returning to the moon after over 50 years," Lakiesha Hawkins, NASA acting deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, told reporters in a press conference today.

If Artemis 2 does lift off on Feb. 5, it will be at night, NASA officials said. The space agency has about five days apiece in February, March and April to launch the flight. The latest possible date is April 26, according to NASA.

NASA will aim to hit the earlier part of that launch window, Hawkins said, but she stressed that crew safety will drive the timeline.

"We want to emphasize that safety is our top priority," she said. "And so, as we work through these operational preparations, as we finish stacking the rocket, we're continuing to assess to make sure that we do things in a safe way."

Artemis 2, the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program, will launch to the moon atop the agency's towering Space Launch System megarocket (known as SLS), as the vanguard flight for a crewed U.S. return to the moon. The mission will be commanded by NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, with fellow agency spaceflyer Victor Glover as pilot. NASA's Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen round out the crew as mission specialists.

The mission will fly on a "free-return" trajectory, sending the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon on a path that ensures their return to Earth without entering lunar orbit, let alone touching down on the surface.

"They're going at least 5,000 nautical miles [9,260 kilometers] past the moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone," said Jeff Radigan of JSC, the lead Artemis 2 flight director. "So, the moon's going to look a little bit smaller."

Artemis 2 follows the first Artemis test flight: the uncrewed Artemis 1, which launched an Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit in November 2022 and successfully brought it back to Earth about four weeks later. Artemis 2 was initially expected to launch this year, but NASA pushed the mission into 2026 after the Artemis 1 Orion capsule's heat shield charred more severely than expected during its reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

The Artemis 2 team has studied this issue extensively and taken measures to minimize the chances of heat shield problems during reentry on the upcoming mission, said Rick Henfling of JSC, lead Artemis 2 entry flight director.

"We had a number of tests, and they all helped back up this understanding of what was going on in the char," Henfling said of the Artemis 1 heat shield data. "And so the Artemis 2 trajectory that we're going to fly is going to be one that is not going to replicate that temperature environment, which was conducive to that increased gas generation rate."

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA's launch director for Artemis 2, further explained the liquid hydrogen leaks that delayed the Artemis 1 launch (it lifted off on its third try) should also be solved at this point. The launch team has made modifications at the launch pad and adjusted the fueling process to reduce the risk of such leaks, she said.

"We learned an awful lot during Artemis 1," Blackwell-Thompson said. "We learned the relationship between the flow rates, the pressures and how those manifest, or could manifest, into leaks."

Artemis 2's Boeing-built SLS rocket is nearly complete at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida, with its Northrop Grumman-built solid rocket boosters attached, Blackwell-Thompson said. In the coming weeks, the Orion capsule for the flight and its adapter will be added. NASA expects to show off the fully complete Artemis 2 rocket in October.

Blackwell-Thompson and the other NASA officials who spoke today repeatedly stressed that Artemis 2, though crewed, is still a test flight. Thus, the agency will learn a lot from it while working hard to keep the astronauts safe and check off as many mission goals as possible.

"A test flight doesn't have one singular objective; it's got many of them," Radigan said. "To call this mission fully successful, we need to go fly by the moon, bring the crew home safely and welcome them back with open arms."

The Space Launch System (SLS) and the Lunar Gateway are just a few of the technological marvels driving this mission forward. Each component represents years of innovation, collaboration, and ambition.

But Artemis isn't just about rockets and rendezvous, it's about reigniting global excitement for space exploration. It's a call to dream bigger, reach farther, and explore deeper. This quiz will test your knowledge of all things Artemis.

Whether you're a seasoned space buff or just curious about NASA’s next giant leap, this quiz will challenge your knowledge and spark your imagination.

Try it out below and see how well you score!

HOUSTON — NASA has introduced its new class of astronaut candidates, some of whom may be among the first people to set foot on Mars.

The cadre — the 24th astronaut class in NASA's history, and the first new one since 2021 — was announced today (Sept. 22) during a ceremony here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

The newly unveiled astronaut candidates — five men and five women — were selected from a pool of more than 8,000 applicants. NASA's call for applications opened for about a month last year, just as the previous class graduated.

"This selection was challenging, competitive and very difficult, but what we have for you here today is a group of individuals who are not only exceptional but who will be inspirational for the United States of America, and for our planet," Norm Knight, NASA flight operations director, said during today's ceremony.

The group now waits for their training to begin. They'll soon report back to JSC, to take on lessons in spaceflight, spacewalks, engineering and every other skill an astronaut needs to survive in space.

They'll graduate in about two years, just as NASA aims to land astronauts on the moon as a part of the Artemis 3 mission. This new class will be too green for selection on Artemis 3, but if NASA's Artemis program continues under its current design, Artemis 3 will help lead to the establishment of a sustained presence on the lunar surface, as a proving ground for future crewed missions to Mars.

While some of these astronaut candidates (or ASCANs for short) may in fact stamp the first human boot prints in the Red Planet's rusty regolith, others may become the first NASA astronauts to live and work aboard a commercial space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

The International Space Station (ISS) is heading for retirement in late 2030 or early 2031. NASA hopes to continue its LEO research operations once the ISS is gone but is preparing to shed the financial burden of ongoing station maintenance and management.

Instead, NASA plans to turn to commercial LEO destinations. Several companies are currently developing their own stations, including Blue Origin, Axiom Space and Vast Space. Depending on these projects' development timelines, there's a good chance that these new ASCANs will be the first NASA astronauts to live in space aboard a commercial outpost.

Here's a brief rundown of the newly announced astronaut candidates, with biographical details provided by NASA:

Meet the astronauts

NASA has high hopes for the new class, which could take part in some historic missions over the coming years.

"You are America's best and brightest, and we're going to need America's best and brightest, because we have a bold exploration plan for the future," acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said during today's event.

"We are going back to the moon," he added. "This time, we're going to stay, and from what we learn on our mission to the moon, we're going to go to Mars, and we're going to go beyond, into the unknown."

And the U.S. is going to notch that moon goal before China does, Duffy stressed.

"I'll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA, or beat America, back to the moon," he said. "We are going to win."

What is it?

With a proposed launch date in early 2026, Artemis 2 will build on the accomplishments of Artemis 1, which launched in November 2022. However, unlike Artemis 1, which sent an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit and back, Artemis 2 will include four astronauts, who will fly by the moon on a roughly 10-day space mission.

The astronauts are NASA Commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover, NASA mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.

Where is it?

This photo was taken at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where part of the Artemis 2 crew training is taking place.

Why is it amazing?

As part of their training, the four Artemis 2 crew members run through a series of protocols to practice observing and photographing the moon from their mockup Orion capsule. While Orion is equipped with advanced navigation and guidance systems, the astronauts must also be ready to rely on their training as a backup.

By rehearsing in a full-scale capsule mockup, the crew learns how the moon and Earth will appear through Orion's windows, how to position themselves for the best visibility, and how to record observations under the same spatial and lighting constraints they will face during their flight.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about the upcoming Artemis 2 launch and the goals of the mission.

Orbital observation

Alongside the tons of supplies and science equipment that were delivered to the ISS by Northrop Grumman's first Cygnus XL cargo craft this week were sweet treats for the Expedition 73 crew.

"Best part of cargo vehicles docking to the International Space Station is the care packages our loved ones send," wrote NASA astronaut Jonny Kim on social media."

Kim, who is seen in the photo below holding kimchi and Korean BBQ pork, was joined by his crew mates Mike Fincke (holding gummy bears and Mike & Ike candies), Zena Cardman and Kimiya Yui (with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey candies).

"Thanks to [everyone] at NASA who ensures these are packaged with love," wrote Kim.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

MVP Cell-07 and Multi-use Variable-g Platform — Jonny Kim of NASA and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) contributed to the study of bioprinted liver tissues, observing how their blood vessels responded to being in microgravity. "Results may advance the manufacture of high-quality vascularized tissues and organs improving long-term health for astronauts and quality of life for patients on Earth," said NASA.

Microgravity Associated Bone Loss-B — NASA astronaut Zena Cardman prepared bone stem cell samples to be held in storage for their later return to Earth. The research is aimed at protecting astronauts' skeletal systems and "possibly treat aging conditions and bone diseases on Earth."

BioNutrients-3 — Mike Fincke of NASA continued a study begun last week that involved yeast, yogurt and fermented milk samples as a source of producing vitamins and nutrients for future long-duration space missions.

Plasma Kristall-4 — Oleg Platonov, a cosmonaut with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, prepared the hardware needed to observe complex plasmas and photographed glaciers and mountains throughout South America and Africa to record natural and human-made conditions on Earth.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Progress M-32 (93P) — Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky devoted part of their week to unloading and transferring fluids to and from the newly arrived Russian Progress 93 resupply ship.

Cygnus XL "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool" — Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman of NASA captured Northrop Grumman's first "extra-large" cargo vehicle using the International Space Station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. Ground controllers then took over control of the arm to install the resupply ship on the side of the Unity node.

Astronaut activity

Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman discussed life and work aboard the International Space Station during an interview with attendees of the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York.

"It's a dream come true to be here," said Cardman. "It takes years of preparation, a lot of teams of instructors and classmates teaching us and preparing us on the ground. It is such an honor to finally be up here, carrying out this mission, that we spent so long dreaming about."

"It's been an extra-special treat to be up here with a classmate. Jonny and I were hired at the same time," Cardman added. "It is really amazing to have a friend up here with me."

By the numbers

As of Friday (Sep. 19), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are four docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and Progress M-32 (93P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2 and Northrop Grumman's NG-23 Cygnus XL, the "SS William C. 'Willie' McCool," berthed to the Unity node.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 10 months and 17 days.

One of the studies, led by Dr. Aleksandra Sokołowska of Brown University and Imperial College London, has identified 258 rockfalls around the Oxia Planum region using high-resolution imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

The rockfalls may expose material from beneath the Martian surface. Additionally, tracks carved by falling rocks or sliding debris could bring subsurface dirt into more accessible positions for rover samples.

"The discovery of rockfalls in Oxia Planum opens up the exciting possibility for the rover to increase the diversity of its samples with material that would otherwise be inaccessible," Sokołowska said in a statement.

Because the rocks were previously embedded in geological features, such as crater walls and cliff faces, some of their recently revealed surfaces might have been shielded from harsh radiation. That protection could increase the odds that organic molecules still exist intact here.

The second study, led by Ananya Srivastava of the University of Western Ontario, highlights layered clay deposits at Oxia Planum — clays are well noted for their ability to preserve organic materials.

Spectral and compositional data from MRO and ESA's Mars Express mission show alternating orange and blue layers in the clay in various thicknesses, suggesting the clays were transported from other areas of Mars via rivers and flood events.

"The clays could record a far wider range of ancient Martian climatic conditions than previously believed if they came in multiple pulses from various source regions," said Srivastava. "This diversity of environments improves the prospect that organic molecules were preserved under favourable conditions, strengthening the chances of uncovering the most thrilling discovery — clues for life beyond Earth."

The Rosalind Franklin rover, named after the pioneering British chemist whose photographic research was critical in revealing the double helix structure of DNA, is well-equipped to search for organic compounds at Oxia Planum. It houses a drill capable of reaching a depth of more than six feet (two meters) — deeper than any previous drill attempts on Mars.

Currently, the Rosalind Franklin rover — part of ESA's ExoMars program — is scheduled to launch in 2028 after facing years of setbacks. In the early 2000s, NASA agreed to provide ESA with crucial technologies for the rover, but the partnership ended in 2012 after former President Barack Obama cut funding for the mission.

Russia's Roscosmos filled the gap, and the rover was set to launch in 2022. Then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which ended Roscosmos' involvement in the project and pushed the launch date back.

NASA returned to the mission in 2024, but the partnership still faces an uncertain future. Proposed budget cuts under the Trump administration may see NASA pull out of the mission yet again. Hopefully, studies like the ones presented at EPSC-DPS will emphasize the importance of the Rosalind Franklin rover — and urge policymakers to keep NASA's participation intact.

What is it?

This photo, taken by Curiosity's Left Navigation Camera, shows the difference in texture of the Martian landscape, with Curiosity's mast shadow also visible.

Since landing on Mars in August 2012, one of Curiosity's major missions has been to understand the history recorded in the layers of Martian dirt. Sediments, minerals and textures all tell a story of changing environments: water, wind and possible ancient life. The "boxwork pattern" has become of particular interest to NASA scientists, as Gale Crater hosted rivers and streams in Mars' early history.

Where is it?

This photo was taken near Mount Sharp, which has an elevation of 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater.

Why is it amazing?

The boxwork pattern refers to an area of low-lying ridges of bedrock that resemble a spiderweb shape from space. Orbiting spacecraft flagged these ridges as possibly being created by mineral-rich fluids long ago, which hardened some portions more than others. Then, over deep time, erosion removed the softer rock in between, leaving behind ridges that stand out.

By studying how the ridges, hollows and nodules differ in texture, chemistry, and structure, NASA scientists hope to better understand what early Mars was like and whether it could have hosted ancient life.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about Curiosity's mission and the continued hunt for clues to possible life on Mars.

The Virginia-based company's first "Cygnus XL" freighter arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) early this morning (Sept. 18), after a one-day delay.

The key moment came at 7:24 a.m. EDT (1124 GMT), when NASA astronaut Jonny Kim used the orbiting lab's Canadarm2 robotic arm to grapple the Cygnus as the ISS flew about 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Cygnus XL lifted off Sunday evening (Sept. 14), riding a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into the skies from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch kicked off the 23rd cargo mission that Northrop Grumman has flown to the ISS for NASA, which explains its name — NG-23.

Not everything went smoothly. The Cygnus XL was supposed to reach the ISS on Wednesday morning (Sept. 17), but that plan was scuttled by a thruster issue. The Cygnus team overcame that problem, however, and got the freighter on track for a one-day-late rendezvous.

"It's a very intricate planning exercise that we have to go through to arrive at Space Station and rendezvous in a very specific point in space," Bill Spetch, NASA ISS operations integration manager, during the Thursday morning docking broadcast. "When we had a couple of issues with a couple of burns getting cut short, that caused that trajectory to be off, and so it takes some time to go replan that and make sure that we could arrive at station safely."

NG-23 is special for several reasons. For starters, it's the first mission of the Cygnus XL, which can carry considerably more cargo than previous Cygnus iterations. NG-23 just hauled about 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) to the ISS, compared to roughly 8,500 pounds (3,855 kg) on earlier Cygnus flights.

The current mission is also the first Cygnus delivery in more than a year, since NG-21 reached the ISS in August 2024. The delay resulted from problems with NG-22: That mission was supposed to lift off in January but was pushed back to June due to avionics issues, then canceled altogether after the NG-22 Cygnus was damaged during transport to the launch site.

The NG-23 Cygnus honors a fallen NASA astronaut. The freighter is named the S.S. William "Willie" McCool, after one of the seven crew members who died in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident.

"His life continues to inspire us." Kim said after spacecraft capture. "To see a ship bearing his name safely arrive at the station is a reminder that his courage and kindness are still circling our beautiful planet Earth."

The cargo that NG-23 just delivered to the ISS is a diverse lot, according to NASA.

"Highlights of space station research and technology demonstrations, facilitated by delivery aboard this Cygnus XL, include materials to produce semiconductor crystals in space and equipment to develop improvements for cryogenic fuel tanks," agency officials wrote in a mission description. "The spacecraft also will deliver a specialized UV light system to prevent the growth of microbe communities that form in water systems and supplies to produce pharmaceutical crystals that could treat cancer and other diseases."

The S.S. William "Willie" McCool was berthed to the Earth-facing port on the station's Unity module at 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT), where it remain until March 2026, when it will depart and deorbit to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

The second installment of NASA's Artemis program to return to the moon and establish a sustained human presence in deep space is set to be the first crewed flight test of its Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The four-person crew is tasked with putting the vessel through its paces in the cislunar environment, and performing several science experiments during their mission.

Some of that research involves the astronauts themselves, who will turn into a quartet of biomedical subjects to help NASA gather in-flight data on the human body beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in more than 50 years. As they have with hundreds of physiological tests conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA will add the research to its growing understanding of the biological repercussions of life in microgravity, according to a recent release.

Standard measures

One of the experiments the Artemis 2 astronauts will undertake will see them join a long-running NASA effort to build a comprehensive understanding of how spaceflight affects human health. Samples of blood, urine and saliva are being collected in the months before launch, and the astronauts will undergo regular checks during their 10-day mission and follow-ups after their return.

NASA hopes to use the samples to track changes in cardiovascular health, nutrition, immunity and stress across multiple stages of training, flight and recovery.

ARCHeR: Sleep and stress tracking

The Artemis Research for Crew Health and Readiness (ARCHeR) project will investigate how crew performance might be affected by time spent as such a far distance from Earth while inside Orion's confined space, combined with the astronauts' demanding schedule.

Each Artemis 2 astronaut will wear wrist sensors to log movement and sleep throughout the mission. Pre- and post-mission evaluations will be compared to in-flight data to better understand how the deep space mission influences the crew's alertness, stress and ability to work together cohesively.

Immune system monitoring

Samples provided by the crew before, during and after their mission will also be used to study their immune systems. In this case, immune system markers in their saliva samples will help researchers evaluate how the body reacts to space radiation.

To save space and power aboard Orion during their mission, the crew is foregoing refrigeration of their in-flight saliva samples, and will instead make their deposits on specially designed dab papers, which will absorb the samples for simpler storage. Once they return, scientists will test the papers for dormant viruses triggered by the microgravity environment — a phenomenon seen aboard the ISS, where stress has been documented as a trigger to reactivate illnesses like chickenpox and shingles.

AVATAR organ-on-a-chip study

Artemis 2 astronauts will also be accompanied by thumb-sized "avatars" of themselves, in the form of blood samples grown to simulate bone marrow on organ-on-a-chip devices.

These chips will ride inside Orion as it passes through the Van Allen belts — zones of charged particles between the Earth and moon — testing how marrow responds to deep space radiation and microgravity. Results will be compared to ISS experiments to see if the chip technology can accurately predict how tissues react outside Earth's radiation-hardened magnetosphere.

Radiation

During Artemis 1, Orion carried 5,600 passive and 34 active radiation sensors. For Artemis 2, the spacecraft has been reduced to a modest six active sensors inside the cabin. Additionally, astronauts will wear personal dosimeters.

The devices will measure the consistent radiation exposure experienced throughout the mission, and detect sudden spikes from things like solar storms. If readings reach dangerous levels, astronauts can construct a makeshift radiation shield inside Orion, fortifying themselves between the spacecraft's heatshield and water storage canisters, both of which are better at absorbing penetrating radiation than other onboard materials.

NASA has selected Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen as the crew for the Artemis 2 mission. They are scheduled to launch no earlier than Feb. 2026, with a launch window that extends through April.

Spending time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) induced aging-like changes in a group of cells key for the health of blood and the immune system, known as hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), a new study in the peer-reviewed Cell Stem Cell journal reports.

"The findings show that the cells lost some of their ability to make healthy new cells, became more prone to DNA damage and showed signs of faster aging at the ends of their chromosomes after spaceflight — all signs of accelerated aging," representatives of the University of California San Diego said in a statement about the study. (The paper's first author is UC San Diego's Jessica Pham.)

According to the statement, radiation and microgravity were likely the chief stressors on the HSPCs, which were made up of four sets sent on SpaceX commercial resupply missions to the orbiting complex aboard the company's Dragon spacecraft.

"Understanding these changes not only informs how we protect astronauts during long-duration missions but also helps us model human aging and diseases like cancer here on Earth," study co-author Catriona Jamieson, director of the Sanford Stem Cell Institute and a professor of medicine at UC San Diego, added in the same statement.

The research is one of many follow-ons to a study on now-retired NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly, who are identical twins. Scott spent nearly a year in space on the ISS from 2015 to 2016, while Mark remained on the ground during the same period. The Twins Study, as NASA termed the collection of research, "helped scientists better understand the impacts of spaceflight on a human body through the study of identical twins," according to an agency description of the research.

NASA's Twins Study site emphasizes that the human body shows "resilience and robustness" to spaceflight conditions. For example, 91.3% of Scott's gene expression levels returned to normal in the first half-year after his mission concluded.

Some novel findings were observed, however, such as what happened to Scott's telomeres. NASA has said that telomeres, or the ends of DNA strands, protect chromosomes the way that plastic handles protect jump ropes.

"Without telomeres, DNA becomes 'frayed' and damaged, and cells don't work properly," NASA officials wrote. "One of the most striking discoveries from the NASA Twins Study was that Scott experienced a change in telomere length dynamics during his flight. These changes may help evaluate general health and potential long-term risks."

Of the telomeres that lengthened during Scott's flight, NASA stated, most of them returned to normal in just 48 hours after returning to Earth. The new UC San Diego statement stresses, however, that studying telomeres and gene expression changes "could be relevant for longer space missions."

For the new study, which was published on Sept. 4, the researchers created an ISS platform that allowed the human stem cells to be "cultured in space, and monitored with AI-powered imaging tools," according to UC San Diego. The study included HSPCs that were in space for between 32 days and 45 days. (For comparison, a typical ISS mission is six months, or roughly 180 days.)

The research team observed some changes, as well as signs that at least some of the damage could be reversed. Some cells, after weeks in space, began to recover when put in a "young, healthy environment" here on Earth, UC San Diego representatives wrote.

While the statement did not specify what that environment was, the study notes that the cells were placed either into bone marrow layers from the same individual from which they were cultured, or a connective-tissue-promoting cell line from a 30-year-old male donor.

As for the observed HSPC changes, the researchers saw more activity, less ability for cells to recover and regenerate and (inside the cells' mitochondria, the heart of energy production) more stress and inflammation that led to normally inactive genome sections being activated.

The exposed spaceflight cells also had decreased ability to manufacture new and healthy cells. Simultaneously, "signs of molecular wear and tear, like DNA damage and shorter chromosome ends … became more pronounced," the new statement noted.

The university has now concluded 17 missions overall to the ISS, and more launches focused on HSPCs may be coming. UC San Diego plans ISS missions and astronaut studies, including "real-time monitoring of molecular changes" as well as countermeasures.

They issued NASA a $400 citation for littering. The debt went unpaid.

It was technically a humorous jab, and in 2009, a California radio host raised the funds to pay off the debt. But it highlights how Skylab's fate became something of a joke in the 1970s and how we let a space station fall to Earth without having a replacement waiting in the wings.

And here we are again, nearly half a century later, facing the potential demise of another space station, without having a replacement ready.

At least this time around, however, NASA has something approaching a plan: get someone else to build it.

Since the first modules of the International Space Station (ISS) went up in 1998, over 4,000 scientific experiments have been conducted there. They have investigated everything from the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body to the development of novel materials that can only be designed in microgravity.

Most importantly, we've learned how to operate in space for extended missions — what protocols and procedures we need in place, what kinds of systems tend to go wrong and when, and all the other institutional know-how that it will take to make us a true spacefaring species.

NASA plans to send the ISS into Earth's atmosphere in 2030, and it has no plans for a replacement — at least, not directly.

Currently filling NASA's time and budget is the design of the Lunar Gateway, a smaller version of the ISS designed to orbit the moon and serve as a waystation for extended surface missions. While the Lunar Gateway continues to receive congressional backing, its political future remains uncertain because it's a part of the overall Artemis program, which may not make all of its intended goals.

Either way, NASA is largely leaving behind operations in low Earth orbit. Instead, the space agency has developed a competitive system, called the Commercial LEO Destinations program, to help spur private investment in a space station. The idea is that NASA will fund private companies to create their own stations and then become one of many customers that will rent out time and space on those stations. That way, NASA will not have to do the heavy lifting of creating another iteration of the ISS.

There are several competitors in this area, including Orbital Reef, a joint venture led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space; and Starlab, a joint venture between Voyager Technologies and Airbus. But the clear front-runner is Axiom Space, which is nearly finished with the first module of its Axiom Station.

Axiom plans to launch that module on board a Falcon Heavy rocket and attach it to the ISS in 2027, when the company will begin getting accustomed to the world of space station care and maintenance. Then, presumably before 2030, Axiom will detach that module from the ISS and continue building it out, with a goal of reaching twice the usable volume of the current station.

Axiom already flew private astronauts to the ISS in June, for a practice run of handling ground-crew communication and the operation of scientific experiments.

If Axiom Space or any of its competitors succeed, then we will indeed have another torchbearer for our continuous presence in low Earth orbit, although this time, it will involve many more partners than the venerable ISS. And hopefully, this early public investment will pay off big time as private companies find many commercial uses for low Earth orbit, such as zero-gravity hotels for space tourism or mini-factories for producing specialty materials.

NASA has already seen success with a similar program, the Commercial Crew Program, which spurred and financed the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, both of which now serve both private and government projects. With a little luck, they will avoid the fate of Skylab and the decades-long gap between that station's ignominious end and the launch of the ISS.

The debut mission of Northrop Grumman's new jumbo cargo spacecraft didn't go off without a hitch.

The company's first "Cygnus XL" freighter suffered a thruster issue in orbit early Tuesday morning (Sept. 16), two days after launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

As a result, "the Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review," NASA officials announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.

The Cygnus XL's "main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA," agency officials added in the update. "All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally."

Cygnus XL is the latest version of Virginia-based Northrop Grumman's Cygnus freighter. Previous iterations hauled about 8,500 pounds (3,856 kg) to the ISS.

The current mission is known as NG-23, because it was supposed to be the 23rd cargo effort that Northrop Grumman flies to the ISS for NASA. But the 22nd was canceled after the Cygnus was damaged during transport to the launch site.

Cygnus is one of three freighters that resupply the ISS, along with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Russia's Progress vehicle.

Cygnus and Progress are expendable, while Dragon is reusable. The NG-23 Cygnus XL — named S.S. William "Willie" McCool, after one of the astronauts who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster — is slated to stay attached to the ISS until March 2026, when it will depart to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Those comments were delivered during a virtual Artemis 4 landing site science workshop on Sept. 10 by Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA. Bleacher, a planetary geologist by training, has a mandate from NASA for "technology and architecture development to enable human exploration of the moon and Mars," his agency biography states.

Bleacher said the greater Artemis program will eventually be aiming for far longer stays on the moon than the short two- or three-day Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s achieved. "We have learned from going to the moon in the past with Apollo, but we're really on a different trajectory here," he said. "We want to begin to learn how to live away from the Earth."

The workshop was meant to ask scientists and other community participants for "science figures of merit" to help "evaluate and prioritize candidate landing sites with the highest science potential," the agency added. Some of the factors being considered include learning about evolution of planets, the processes that influence lunar regolith or dust, as well as objectives in fields like sun science or physical sciences.

NASA didn't conduct the workshop in isolation. Over the last decade, scientists have gained a better understanding of the South Pole-Aitken basin in which Artemis astronauts will land. That science was said to be one of the highest priorities of both the 2013 and 2023 planetary decadal surveys, which are essentially agreements by that community about which space missions to prioritize for science objectives, among other documents.

Artemis 4 is officially slated to launch no earlier than 2028, although that is pending progress of other missions of the Artemis program. (For perspective, NASA has not yet launched any astronauts on the program, although one crew — for the moon-circling Artemis 2 mission — is readying for a launch as soon as April 2026.)

Artemis 4 astronauts will spend six days on the moon's surface, return lunar soil samples to Earth, collect data using astronaut observations and mission instruments, and execute up to four extravehicular activities (moonwalks) ranging as far as 1.2 miles (2 km) from the mission's lander, NASA materials state.

Picking an exact landing site will take some time, although NASA will place the mission in the south pole region of the moon where ice and other critical minerals may be available for astronauts to use for future excursions.

And part of what Bleacher would like to see is not only infrastructure for longer lunar missions, but incentive for commercial industry to work alongside the agency for the long haul. He emphasized that the expense and complication of lunar missions means NASA will continue to seek partners, meaning both U.S. commercial partners and international agencies.

"What we're trying to understand is, what do we — NASA, the United States government — need to put in place that welcomes and encourages that partnership so that we really can develop that longer term presence on the moon, maybe even permanent presence on the moon? And what really drives the development of that lunar economy? Who wants to be there, who wants to be working there, and what can we provide to get that foothold?"

As the name implies, Artemis 4 will be the fourth mission of the larger Artemis program, including dozens of other nations working together under the Artemis Accords, that seeks to put astronaut boots on the moon again while establishing an American-led framework for deep space exploration.

An uncrewed mission called Artemis 1 flew around the moon and back again in 2022. Four astronauts aim to do the same next year aboard Artemis 2: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The next mission would be Artemis 3, currently aiming for a moon landing. NASA's official schedule has a target date of 2027, but that is pending readiness of SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to carry humans for a landing. Artemis 4 would be the next mission after that.

Even though they're far from home, astronauts on the ISS still have normal routines — including getting regular haircuts.

What is it?

Living aboard the ISS means living in microgravity, a state where everything is in continuous free fall. To astronauts, this feels like weightlessness, making everything just a bit more complicated, including basic hygiene.

There are no showers on the orbital lab. Instead, astronauts take a sort of "sponge bath" with no-rinse shampoo. Something as simple as trimming nails or cutting hair also takes on new challenges, as without gravity, every tiny clipping would drift around, potentially clogging equipment or entering astronauts' eyes or lungs.

Where is it?

The ISS is located at an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

Why is it amazing?

During long stays aboard the ISS, astronauts' hair grows just as it does on Earth. This means regular haircuts are essential for multiple reasons. Here, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui uses a razor with a vacuum hose to shave NASA astronaut Mike Fincke's hair, with the hose collecting the hair.

Regular haircuts are beneficial for an astronaut's overall health (it can be uncomfortable or a safety hazard if it's too long) and for the crew's morale (bringing people together for a common goal).

Want to learn more?

You can read more about the International Space Station and astronauts living on the ISS.

Russia's robotic Progress 93 spacecraft docked with the orbiting lab's Zvezda module at 1:23 p.m. EDT (1723 GMT) today (Sept. 13), two days after launching atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The meetup occurred today as the two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) over northeastern Kazakhstan.

Progress is loaded with 2.8 tons of food, fuel and other cargo for the astronauts of the ISS' current Expedition 73 mission, according to NASA officials.

The freighter will remain at the ISS for about six months, after which it will undock, head back down toward Earth and die a fiery death in our planet's atmosphere.

Progress 93 joins four other spacecraft at the ISS. Two of them are fellow freighters (another Progress and a robotic SpaceX Dragon capsule) and two are crew-carrying spacecraft (a Russian Soyuz and Endeavour, the Dragon that's flying SpaceX's Crew-11 astronaut mission for NASA).

And yet another vehicle will head up soon — Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch on Sunday (Sept. 14) and arrive at the ISS on Wednesday (Sept. 17).

There are seven people living aboard the ISS at the moment: Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim of NASA; Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); and Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Ryzhikov commands Expedition 73. His six crewmates are all flight engineers.

Orbital observation

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui, an Expedition 73 flight engineer, hammed it up with kids from his home country this week aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"I was able to talk with the children of Takacho in Hyogo Prefecture via HAM! This is the first time talking with Japanese children during a mission!" said Yui in a social media post on Thursday (Sept. 11).

Amateur radio has been used in Earth orbit since the early 1980s aboard the U.S. space shuttle. Crew members can use it to connect with people all around the world without interfering with other communications between Earth and the space station.

"I gained energy from interacting with the children, and it helped me get through the subsequent work smoothly! Thank you very much!" said Yui.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

CIPHER — NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman and Jonny Kim focused on studies relating to eyesight and balance, using VR goggles, electrodes and other specialized optical equipment to gauge how spaceflight affects their sense of balance and the shape of the retina, among other changes to the ability to see and steady themselves.

Cardman also used a ultrasound to monitor signs of arterial stiffness and changes in her cardiac function, while Kim processed bone stem cell samples for their later return to Earth as part of a study into bone density loss during long-duration space missions.

Plant Cell Division and Cell Biology Experiment Facility — Yui prepared and placed under study tobacco plant and algae cell samples to add to the experience and knowledge base of growing crops on future missions to the moon and Mars.

BioNutrients-3 — Fincke used a research incubator to test ways to use yeast, yogurt and samples of the fermented milk drink kefir to produce additional vitamins and nutrients to benefit future crews' health. The astronaut showed off a tray of purple kefir used in the experiment; you can see a photo of it above.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Progress MS-30 (91P) — Having completed repacking the Russian cargo craft with refuse last week, the crew saw the departure of Progress MS-30 on Tuesday (Sept. 9).

Progress M-32 (93P) — Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky trained for the arrival and docking of Progress M-32, which is scheduled to dock to the aft port of the station's Zvezda service module on Saturday (Sept. 13).

NG-23 "S.S. Willie McCool" — The crew also began preparations for the arrival of Northrop Grumman's first "XL" Cygnus cargo craft, which is scheduled to be captured with the Canadarm2 robotic arm and berthed to the Earth-facing port on the Unity node on Wednesday (Sept. 17).

Astronaut activity

Expedition 73 flight engineer Mike Fincke, a NASA astronaut, discussed life on orbit with MIT’s Technology Review Magazine during an interview on Tuesday (Sept. 9).

"I I think me and my crewmates on board Expedition 73 here are very focused and dedicated to science," said Fincke. "We're supporting the scientists on the ground, so we go above and beyond to give them best results that we can. I take great pride in that."

You can watch the full interview above.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Sep. 12), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module and SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft is docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 10 months and 10 days.

UPDATE for 11 am ET: NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered sediment formations that could be signs of possible biosignatures on Mars, but they could also have a non-biological source. Read our developing story on the discovery.

NASA officials will unveil details about a new finding connected to a unique sample the Perseverance rover found on Mars today (Sept. 10) and you can watch it live online.

The conference will stream on the agency's website at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and is expected to include some "visuals" during the discussion. You'll also be able to tune in right here on Space.com, as our homepage will carry the stream as well.

An official press release about the conference fosters some suspense, only offering a sparse explanation about the discovery. What it does say, however, is that Perseverance collected the rock at hand in July of 2024 from Jezero Crater — a location on Mars the rover has been exploring since February 2021 and which NASA believes could have once hosted life as we know it.

More specifically, the release says the rock is named "Sapphire Canyon" and comes from a place called "Neretva Vallis," which it explains as a "river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago."

And we do know some things about Sapphire Canyon in general.

For instance, NASA has previously described it as an arrowhead-shaped rock that was extracted from another "vein-filled rock" named "Cheyava Falls." Cheyava Falls is iconic for its "poppy seeds" and "leopard spots," patterns the Perseverance team noticed adorning the specimen when first observing it.

But Cheyava Falls is most well-known for something else. In a video about Sapphire Canyon, posted by NASA on April 10, 2025, Morgan Cable, a research scientist for Perseverance, says Cheyava Falls is "the only place we've found on Mars so far where we have chemical evidence that chemical reactions associated with life could have been happening, as well as organic molecules."

It is also of note that Sapphire Canyon is one of many samples the Perseverance team has been collecting with the hopes of bringing pieces of the Red Planet back to Earth one day. It's the 25th sample, to be exact. That sample-retrieval process was originally meant to be achieved with NASA's Mars Sample Return program — but due to budget constraints, a rather complex launch blueprint and priority shifts since the Trump administration took office, the fate of MSR hangs in doubt.

It is yet to be known whether the particular sample NASA will be talking about tomorrow will call for Earth-based analysis to follow, but based on the opinions of scientists who support MSR, it would be unsurprising if that turns out to be the case.

"I would describe the Sapphire Canyon sample as mysterious," Cable says in that April 10 video. "Could life have been involved? Or, something that didn't involve life at all? We're not going to know until we bring that sample back and do some more measurements."

According to the agency's release, a paper will be eventually be released to detail the finding; tomorrow's conference will be attended by the following agency officials:

• Sean Duffy, NASA's acting administrator
• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
• Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
• Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York

Flyby reconnaissance of interstellar objects is "feasible and affordable," scientists with the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), who led the study, said in a statement on Wednesday (Sept. 3).

"The trajectory of 3I/ATLAS is within the interceptable range of the mission we designed," Matthew Freeman, the study project manager and director of space instrumentation at SWRI, said in the statement.

Unfortunately, however, getting a probe into orbit around objects like 3I/ATLAS for more detailed study isn't currently possible, given how fast such visitors move relative to bodies native to our solar system. Interstellar objects are on "hyperbolic" trajectories, meaning that they are entering and exiting the neighborhood instead of circling our sun.

SWRI's newly publicized mission idea is a proposal and does not imply that such a spacecraft will be funded by NASA or any other entity. But SWRI argues that laying the groundwork now would allow for scientists to one day access comets from other solar systems with relative ease — without leaving our neighborhood.

Flybys of interstellar objects would "give unprecedented insights into the composition, structure and properties of these objects, and it would significantly expand our understanding of solid body formation processes in other star systems," Alan Stern, SWRI associate vice president and leader of the study project, said in the same statement.

Stern is perhaps best known for being the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which was the first to fly by Pluto in 2015 before venturing on to do studies of other small bodies in the Kuiper Belt. (Stern also flew to suborbital space himself with Virgin Galactic in 2023, on a research-focused mission.)

Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object to pass through our solar system, following the discovery of 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. (The "I" in each of these names stands for "interstellar", while each of the numbers preceding their names indicates the order of discovery.)

Interstellar visitors have been hard to spot so far, but more capabilities are coming online quickly. SWRI said that newer all-sky surveyors such as the National Science Foundation's Vera C. Rubin Observatory may make interstellar finds more common within a decade.

The new SWRI statement said that "numerous" interstellar objects safely pass inside the orbit of Earth every year, while "as many as 10,000" come within the orbit of Neptune, which is roughly 30 times farther from the sun than our own planet. (Earth's distance is roughly 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers, from the sun.)

Given these parameters, SWRI created software that made a representative but artificial population of interstellar objects. The software then calculated how much energy it would take a spacecraft to leave Earth and approach each object.

Flybys are not only feasible, the study showed, but "in many cases, would require less launch and in-flight velocity change resources than many other solar system missions," the statement noted. Costs and payloads were then estimated, with the notion that a mission concept "could be later proposed to NASA." (The SWRI statement did not provide details about likely mission costs, and the study is internal to the organization; it apparently has not been submitted for publication in a journal.)

A future spacecraft could be tasked with a science agenda such as looking at the interstellar body's physical properties to learn more about how it formed and evolved, or examining the object's composition to learn more about where it came from. Another investigation could look at the coma, or the loose "exosphere" of material sublimating from interstellar comets as they get closer to the heat and pressure of the sun.

The recent arrival of 3I/ATLAS "further strengthens the case" for visiting interstellar objects, according to Mark Tapely, an orbital mechanics specialist at SWRI. "We demonstrated that it doesn't take anything harder than the technologies and launch performance [for] missions that NASA has already flown," Tapley said.

Orbital observation

Students from the Computer School in New York had a chance to record questions for Expedition 73 crewmates Jonny Kim of NASA and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) to answer during a live broadcast from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday (Sept. 5). Among the topics that the middle school students asked about was why we explore.

"Personally I think humankind is always in need of a frontier in order to live happily, so that's why you keep doing exploration," said Yui.

"I think exploring that frontier is so important to inspiring the next generation," added Kim.

Another student asked if, given a choice between living in space or on Earth, which would they choose?

"I have a lot of fun up here in space," said Kim. "We enjoy the views of Earth together, sharing stories over dinner, and the work we do is very rewarding. But Earth is still my favorite place to be. It's my home, and it's where everyone I love is still there. And so of course for me, I'd rather live on Earth."

You can watch the entire Q&A below.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

Cardiobreath — Flight engineer Mike Fincke helped collect data to improve future crews' exercise regimes by wearing a headband and vest connected to sensors while he rode a stationary bike in the U.S. Destiny laboratory.

Microgravity Associated Bone Loss-B — Jonny Kim prepared bone stem cell samples that were being treated with a therapeutic agent. The study may improve our understanding why astronauts' skeletal systems undergo changes over the course of their missions.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crewmates also took part in activities to maintain the space station's systems and prepare for future research.

Multi-use Variable-g Platform — Kimiya Yui of JAXA swapped out the moisture-absorbing cassettes for this microwave-size device that can be used to spin up scientific samples to up to twice the force of Earth's gravity.

European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device — Yui also gave a the 34D a good look over for its ability to support bicycling, rowing and resistive capabilities, as well as train with rope pulling and climbing.

CRS-33 — Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman worked on unloading science and logistical supplies from the Dragon cargo spacecraft that arrived at the space station last week.

Ground controllers also reoriented the station and tested the new Dragon reboost kit to increase the orbiting complex's altitude above Earth. This was the one of the first times a SpaceX spacecraft had been used to reboost the station.

Astronaut activity

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim used a spacesuit to demonstrate the difference between being weightless and having mass in the microgravity environment of space.

"How do we translate large heavy objects in space? Carefully and with the slightest of inputs," he posted on his social media accounts.

By the numbers

As of Friday (Aug. 15), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos; fellow cosmonauts Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA; and Kimiya Yui of JAXA, all flight engineers.

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endeavour" attached to the zenith port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are three docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-30 (91P) attached to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, and Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module. SpaceX's CRS-33 Dragon spacecraft is docked to the forward port of Harmony Node 2.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years and 10 months and 3 days.

SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft successfully finished a test reboost of the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday (Sept. 3), according to NASA. The freighter fired two of its Draco engines for 5 minutes and 3 seconds during the maneuver, agency officials wrote in a Wednesday statement.

The ISS orbits roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth on average but naturally falls back to our planet due to atmospheric drag. (There isn't much atmosphere up that high, but the few stray molecules make a difference over time.) Visiting cargo spacecraft therefore take on the job of lifting the orbiting complex higher every few months.

This job has historically been done primarily by Russian Progress spacecraft, but Russia may withdraw from the ISS program as soon as 2028. (The ISS is expected to keep operating until late 2030 or early 2031.)

NASA has therefore been asking the current U.S. ISS resupply craft — SpaceX’s Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle — to perform reboost demonstrations in recent years. SpaceX’s first such test happened on Nov. 8, 2024.

And on Wednesday, Dragon's efforts got the station to an orbit of 260.9 by 256.3 miles (419.9 by 412 km), according to NASA.

"The new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025," agency officials added in the statement.

NASA has said these tests will also be important for another SpaceX job down the road: deorbiting the ISS itself. SpaceX was tasked in July 2024 to bring the ISS down in a controlled fashion when it is time, using a monster Dragon to fulfill the duty.

This particular Dragon arrived at the ISS on Aug. 25, bearing 5,000 pounds (2,270 kilograms) of supplies and science for the orbiting complex and its crew of astronauts. The mission is part of SpaceX's 33rd mission for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program, also known as CRS-33.

Dragon is expected to stay at the space station until late December or early January, at which point it will head back to Earth loaded with science and discarded items from the ISS. The splashdown zone will be near coastal California.

The next astronauts to travel around the moon seem plenty fit to make the trip.

The four astronauts who will fly on NASA's Artemis 2 mission recently passed the "Bobby and Pete Challenge," performing 50 pull-ups and 100 pushups in less than 10 minutes.

The quartet — NASA's Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — chronicled their achievement in a 50-second video, which NASA posted on X on Aug. 29.

The Bobby and Pete Challenge takes its name from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who popularized the viral fitness test in an Aug. 18 video.

Toward the end of that video, Kennedy passes the challenge along to Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, who's also the Secretary of Transportation, as well as a former champion lumberjack and reality TV star. And it was Duffy who got the Artemis 2 astronauts involved.

"Secretary Duffy, your Artemis 2 crew accepts the challenge," Wiseman says at the beginning of the Aug. 29 X video, with his three crewmates joining on the final three words. (Wiseman is the Artemis 2 commander, Glover is the pilot, and Koch and Hansen are mission specialists.)

We then see clips of the four astronauts doing pushups and pull-ups, powering through the challenge sweaty and out of breath, but ultimately triumphant. And they end by paying the pain forward.

"We want Zena [Cardman], Mike [Fincke] and Jonny Kim on the International Space Station to compete and crush our times," Wiseman says in the video, referring to the three NASA astronauts currently living on the ISS. (We don't know what those times are; the video doesn't give that information.)

As its name makes clear, Artemis 2 will be the second mission in NASA's Artemis program of moon exploration. Artemis 1 launched in November 2022, successfully sending an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back to Earth.

The roughly 10-day Artemis 2 is expected to launch between February and April of 2026, sending Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen on a slingshot trip around the moon. They won't land on Earth's nearest neighbor, but Artemis 3, targeted for 2027, will do so, if all goes to plan.

Fitness is a big part of the training regimen for all astronauts, whether they're bound for Earth orbit, the moon or beyond. And the work continues off planet as well; astronauts living on the ISS exercise hard every day to stave off the bone loss and muscle wasting that long stays in microgravity induce.

Recently, the rover captured a remarkable image from the summit of an outcrop named Soroya Ridge using its onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam).

What is it?

NASA's Perseverance rover launched in July 2020 and landed in Jezero Crater in 2021. The car-sized robot has since become a key tool in studying our planetary neighbor. Perseverance was built upon previous rover designs like Opportunity and Curiosity, but with a sharper focus on astrobiology and the long-term goal of returning Martian samples to Earth.

Where is it?

This photo was taken at the Soroya Ridge, southeast of the Jezero crater.

Why is it amazing?

Perseverance's primary mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to collect samples of rock and soil that could one day be analyzed on Earth. To do this, it carries a suite of instruments for precise sample collection. These samples will eventually be retrieved by a proposed future mission, although its current status is in jeopardy.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about Mars rovers and looking for life on Mars.

Despite these constraints, astronauts on the ISS use their creativity to prepare some familiar and favorite dishes, making them feel more at home.

What is it?

Recently, the crew aboard the ISS made space sushi using everyday station ingredients: rice, spam, fish, crackers and condiments. One plate included shrimp with wheat crackers, which was held down on the plate thanks to the weight of the condiments.

The other plate included sushi with seaweed, rice, tuna and spam that adhered to the plate thanks to its moisture creating surface tension, according to NASA. Both plates were attached to the table using Velcro strips.

Where is it?

The space sushi was served inside the galley of the International Space Station's Unity module.

Why is it amazing?

Space sushi has been a popular choice aboard the ISS for more than a decade. In February 2010, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi brought raw seafood and shared with his crewmates, introducing the cuisine into orbit. In the isolating and highly regimented life aboard the ISS, a shared meal-making experience can help boost morale, foster community and remind crews of home.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about food on the ISS and cultural cuisines in space.

When you're on a camping trip, you might have to pack your own food and maybe something to filter or treat water that you find. But imagine your campsite is in space, where there's no water, and packing jugs of water would take up room when every inch of cargo space counts. That's a key challenge engineers faced when designing the International Space Station.

Before NASA developed an advanced water recycling system, water made up nearly half the payload of shuttles traveling to the ISS. I am an environmental engineer and have conducted research at Kennedy Space Center's Space Life Sciences Laboratory. As part of this work, I helped to develop a closed-loop water recovery system.

Today, NASA recovers over 90% of the water used in space. Clean water keeps an astronaut crew hydrated, hygienic and fed, as it can use it to rehydrate food. Recovering used water is a cornerstone of closed-loop life support, which is essential for future lunar bases, Mars missions and even potential space settlements.

NASA's environmental control and life support system is a set of equipment and processes that perform several functions to manage air and water quality, waste, atmospheric pressure and emergency response systems such as fire detection and suppression. The water recovery system − one component of environmental control and life support − supports the astronauts aboard the ISS and plays a central role in water recycling.

Water systems built for microgravity

In microgravity environments like the ISS, every form of water available is valuable. The water recovery systems on the ISS collect water from several sources, including urine, moisture in cabin air, and hygiene – meaning from activities such as brushing teeth.

On Earth, wastewater includes various types of water: residential wastewater from sinks, showers and toilets; industrial wastewater from factories and manufacturing processes; and agricultural runoff, which contains fertilizers and pesticides.

In space, astronaut wastewater is much more concentrated than Earth-based wastewater. It contains significantly higher levels of urea – a compound from urine – salts, and surfactants from soaps and materials used for hygiene. To make the water safe to drink, the system needs to remove all of these quickly and effectively.

The water recovery systems used in space employ some of the same principles as Earth-based water treatment. However, they are specifically engineered to function in microgravity with minimal maintenance. These systems also must operate for months or even years without the need for replacement parts or hands-on intervention.

NASA's water recovery system captures and recycles nearly all forms of water used or generated aboard the space station. It routes the collected wastewater to a system called the water processor assembly, where it is purified into safe, potable water that exceeds many Earth-based drinking water standards.

The water recovery and treatment system on the ISS consists of several subsystems.

Recovering water from urine and sweat

The urine processor assembly recovers about 75% of the water from urine by heating and vacuum compression. The recovered water is sent to the water processor assembly for further treatment. The remaining liquid, called brine, still contains a significant amount of water. So, NASA developed a brine processor assembly system to extract the final fraction of water from this urine brine.

In the brine processor assembly, warm, dry air evaporates water from the leftover brine. A filter separates the contaminants from the water vapor, and the water vapor is collected to become drinking water. This innovation pushed the water recovery system's overall water recovery rate to an impressive 98%. The remaining 2% is combined with the other waste generated.

The air revitalization system condenses moisture from the cabin air – primarily water vapor from sweat and exhalation – into liquid water. It directs the recovered water to the water processor assembly, which treats all the collected water.

Treating recovered water

The water processor assembly's treatment process includes several steps.

First, all the recovered water goes through filters to remove suspended particles such as dust. Then, a series of filters removes salts and some of the organic contaminants, followed by a chemical process called catalytic oxidation that uses heat and oxygen to break down the remaining organic compounds. The final step is adding iodine to the water to prevent microbial growth while it is stored.

The output is potable water — often cleaner than municipal tap water on Earth.

Getting to Mars and beyond

To make human missions to Mars possible, NASA has estimated that spacecraft must reclaim at least 98% of the water used on board. While self-sustaining travel to Mars is still a few years away, the new brine processor on the ISS has increased the water recovery rate enough that this 98% goal is now in reach. However, more work is needed to develop a compact system that can be used in a space ship.

The journey to Mars is complex, not just because of the distance involved, but because Mars and Earth are constantly moving in their respective orbits around the Sun.

The distance between the two planets varies depending on their positions. On average, they’re about 140 million miles (225 million km) apart, with the shortest theoretical approach, when the two planets' orbits bring them close together, taking 33.9 million miles (54.6 million km).

A typical crewed mission is expected to take about nine months one way. A round-trip mission to Mars, including surface operations and return trajectory planning, could take around three years. In addition, launch windows occur only every 26 months, when Earth and Mars align favorably.

As NASA prepares to send humans on multiyear expeditions to the red planet, space agencies around the world continue to focus on improving propulsion and perfecting life support systems. Advances in closed-loop systems, robotic support and autonomous operations are all inching the dream of putting humans on Mars closer to reality.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At the U.S. Army National Guard's High-Altitude Army Aviation Training Site (HAATS) in Gypsum, Colorado, astronauts are flying in military helicopters with Guard instructors to simulate the disorienting challenges of landing on the moon's complex surface, where deep craters, steep slopes and harsh lighting make navigation difficult.

That's because the Rocky Mountains provide a close match for lunar descent conditions. At altitudes between 6,500 and 14,200 feet (1,981 and 4,328 meters), helicopters are forced to operate at the edge of their limits, demanding precise control and quick decision-making. Snow, glare and dust-like whiteouts add to the difficulty, training pilots and astronauts to rely on their instruments, teamwork and communication — just as they will when landing near the moon's south pole, according to a statement from NASA.

“Over the last few years, NASA and the Army National Guard have worked closely to evaluate training procedures and landing zone areas, incorporating accounts from Apollo astronauts," NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock, who helped coordinate the training program, said in the statement. "During training flights at HAATS, astronauts can experience the visual illusions, cross-cockpit communication, and degraded visibility they may experience navigating to their landing zone near the lunar south pole. Flight training opportunities like this are vital to mission success and crew safety."

Since 2021, 22 NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut have completed the HAATS program. Pilots Bob Hines and Raja Chari are among those who practiced managing low-visibility approaches and honing cross-cockpit communication.

The NASA-specific course, which is expected to be finalized this month, blends Apollo-era lessons with the expertise of National Guard instructors who specialize in high-altitude helicopter operations. This mountain-based training is one part of NASA's broader Artemis preparation that also includes full-motion simulators and dedicated lunar lander mockups.

"NASA is using a three-pronged approach with motion-based simulation, in-flight lunar landing analog training, and in-flight lunar simulation to build out its foundational training for Artemis moon landings," Wheelock, who helped coordinate the training program, said.

However, at HAATS, astronauts get first-hand exposure to extreme flying and landing conditions, and learn in real-time how to manage uncertainty, power limits and rapidly changing visuals during descent.

For each mission simulation, one astronaut pilots the aircraft while another charts the landing area, marking key landmarks, identifying potential hazards and helping to track the flight path. The landing zones and situations become more challenging throughout the week-long course, pushing crews to strengthen communication and practice decision-making skills they will need to land on the moon.

The first crewed Artemis lunar landing, Artemis III, is now targeted for no earlier than 2027. Until then, the rocky slopes of Colorado will continue to serve as a training ground, preparing astronauts for the daunting descent to the moon.