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On July 20, 1969, humans took their first steps on the Moon. In this episode streamed on July 18, 2019, we talk about this historic achievement and our future plans to go to the Moon and on to Mars. Source link
Astronauts on the International Space Station have been conducting experiments to grow food, including peppers and radishes. Christina Johnson, aNASA postdoc fellow at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, has been working on a variety of techniques to grow food in space. Learn what she thinks about the future of growing food beyond our planet, including on Mars. Jim Green:For humans to live, we need food. So how are we going to survive when we begin to live and work in faraway places in space? Christina Johnson:It’s really fun to see all these leafy greens that we’ve been growing…
July 20, 1969. The day that changed our place in space… forever. [ARCHIVAL: And the Moon is there, boy, in all its splendor…] When Neil Armstrong took his small step and our giant leap, the whole world was watching… [“It was kind of like.. Hard to believe that this was really happening in front of our eyes.” “I remember that my parents were huddled around the television…] [ARCHIVAL: Lift off! We have a lift off! Thirty-two minutes past the hour, lift off on Apollo 11] The astronauts are the names we know, but they’re not the only heroes of…
[Música: Small Wonders por Tom Kane] Benjamín Idini: Estamos recién rasgando la superficie de lo que significa entender la vida: cómo surge, cómo se mantiene, cómo evoluciona la vida como proceso, de la cual nosotros somos una pequeña parte, quizás, los seres humanos. Y para esa vida tenemos solo un ejemplo, que es el terrestre. La habitabilidad de Europa abriría una posibilidad de encontrar vida un segundo ejemplo de la vida. Y esto tendría tremendas implicancias para entender de dónde venimos, cuál es nuestra historia de origen, y si acaso nuestra historia de origen se puede replicar en otros…
Transcript (music) Narrator: On a cold and wind-swept December day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew a powered, controlled aircraft for 12 seconds – the first such flight in the history of the world. sound effect: aircraft flight Narrator: More than a hundred years later, in April 2021, another world saw its first powered, controlled aircraft flight when NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter lifted up into the skies of Mars. sound effect: helicopter rise Narrator: Teddy Tzanetos, team lead for the Ingenuity mission, says the trickier nature of helicopters made the first flight…
From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible. On episode 398, acting vehicle integration office manager for NASA’s Orion Program Chris Edelen discusses the spacecraft that will carry astronauts around the Moon on Artemis II. This episode was recorded August 6, 2025. Transcript Kenna Pell Houston, We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 398:…
NASA, along with leaders from global space agencies and government representatives worldwide, convened on Monday to further the implementation of the Artemis Accords — practical principles designed to guide the responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The meeting was held during the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) taking place in Sydney. In opening remarks, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy highlighted the five-year anniversary of the Artemis Accords next month. “When President Trump launched the Artemis Accords in his first term, he made sure American values would lead the way – bringing together a coalition of nations to…
Golden sunglint highlights Lake Balkhash in this May 31, 2016, photo taken from the International Space Station. The large lake in Kazakhstan is one of the largest lakes in Asia and is the 15th largest lake in the world. Since the space station became operational in November 2000, crew members have produced hundreds of thousands of images of the land, oceans, and atmosphere of Earth, and even of the Moon through Crew Earth Observations. Their photographs of Earth record how the planet changes over time due to human activity and natural events. This allows scientists to monitor disasters and direct…
Acting NASA Administrator Sean P. Duffy Wednesday named Amit Kshatriya as the new associate administrator of NASA, the agency’s top civil service role. A 20-year NASA veteran, Kshatriya was most recently the deputy in charge of the Moon to Mars Program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In this role, Kshatriya was responsible for program planning and implementation for crewed missions to the Moon through the Artemis campaign in preparation for humanity’s first mission to Mars. Promoting Kshatriya to NASA’s top ranks puts America’s return to the Moon through Artemis at the…
At the edge of Las Cruces, New Mexico, surrounded by miles of sunbaked earth, NASA’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) is quietly shaping the future. There is no flash, no fanfare — the self-contained facility operates as it has since 1962, humbly and in relative obscurity. Yet as New Mexico’s space industry skyrockets amid intensifying commercial spaceflight efforts across the state, WSTF feels a new urgency to connect with the community. With the facility’s latest Test and Evaluation Support Team (TEST3) contract now in its third year, Program Manager Michelle Meerscheidt is determined to make a mark. “I think…
NASA’s C-130 Hercules, fondly known as the Herc, went wheels up at 9:45 a.m., Friday, April 18, as it departed from its decade-long home at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, for the final time. The aircraft is embarking on a new adventure to serve and protect in the state of California where it is now under the ownership of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). The transition of the C-130 to CAL FIRE is part of a long-running, NASA-wide aircraft enterprise-management activity to consolidate the aircraft fleet and achieve greater operational efficiencies while reducing the…
“Good education contains something for the mind, the body, and the spirit,” declared Abe Silverstein, director of NASA’s Lewis Research Center in August 1967. The center had just commenced a three-week training program to prepare young African American men for local apprenticeships in the construction trades. Reflecting Silverstein’s philosophy, this Pre-Apprentice Program provided not only technical instruction, but also mentoring, career guidance, and physical activities. The Pre-Apprentice Program was sponsored by the Cleveland Federal Executive Board, which Silverstein chaired at the time. It was one of several center partnerships with local community action groups following the passage of the…
NASA has selected Nova Space Solutions, LLC of Anchorage, Alaska, to provide operations, services, maintenance, and infrastructure support for NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The Combined Operations, Services, Maintenance, and Infrastructure Contract is a cost-plus-incentive-fee, firm-fixed-price, and indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract that has a value of approximately $822.7 million. The performance period begins July 1, 2025, and extends eight years and three months, with a 15-month base period, followed by a one-year option period and three two-year option periods. Under the contract, Nova Space Solutions will be responsible for…
On Aug. 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Katherine Johnson, a future hero to American space travel and exploration was born. She was the youngest of four children. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father a lumberman, handyman, and farmer who also worked at West Virginia’s Greenbrier Hotel. Katherine’s aptitude for math and science was evident early and her parents arranged for her and her siblings’ education to be a priority. She graduated high school at only 14 and attended West Virginia State College, a historically Black college. When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its…
As any urban dweller who has lived through a heat wave knows, a shady tree can make all the difference. But what happens when there’s no shade available? A recent study in Nature Communications used NASA satellite data to identify a major gap in global resilience to climate change: cities in the Global South have far less green space — and therefore less cooling capacity — than cities in the Global North. The terms Global North and Global South were used in the study to distinguish developed countries (mostly in the Northern Hemisphere) from developing nations (mostly in the…
When NASA’s Artemis II mission launches in 2026, it will inspire the world through discovery in a new Golden Age of innovation and exploration. It will be another inspiring NASA moment Patricia White can add to her growing list. White supports the Artemis program to send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars as a contracting officer at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. White takes special pride in the test operations contract she helped draft. The contract provides support to the Fred Haise Test Stand, which tests the RS-25 engines…
NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket poised to send four astronauts from Earth on a journey around the Moon next year may appear identical to the Artemis I SLS rocket. On closer inspection, though, engineers have upgraded the agency’s Moon rocket inside and out to improve performance, reliability, and safety. SLS flew a picture perfect first mission on the Artemis I test flight, meeting or exceeding parameters for performance, attitude control, and structural stability to an accuracy of tenths or hundredths of a percent as it sent an uncrewed Orion thousands of miles beyond the Moon. It…
Editor’s note: As of Oct. 1, 2025, this news conference was cancelled due to a lapse in government funding. NASA will host a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 1, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to highlight the upcoming mission of astronaut Chris Williams to the International Space Station. The news conference will stream live on NASA’s website and YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media. The Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, targeted to launch Nov. 27 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will carry Williams on…
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the duration of the Sun’s quiet period beginning in 1645. It looked like the Sun was heading toward a historic lull in activity. That trend flipped in 2008, according to new research. The Sun has become increasingly active since 2008, a new NASA study shows. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are longer-term variations that can last decades. Case in point: Since the 1980s, the amount of solar activity had been steadily decreasing all the way up to 2008, when solar activity was the…
Editor’s Note: This release was updated on Sept. 26, 2025, to reflect a change to NASA astronaut candidates’ next media availability. That opportunity now will take place on Friday, Oct. 3. Lee este comunicado de prensa en español aquí. NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates were introduced Monday following a competitive selection process of more than 8,000 applicants from across the United States. The class now will complete nearly two years of training before becoming eligible for flight assignments supporting future science and exploration missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy welcomed the all-American…
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the first direct measurements of the chemical and physical properties of a potential moon-forming disk encircling a large exoplanet. The carbon-rich disk surrounding the world called CT Cha b, which is located 625 light-years away from Earth, is a possible construction yard for moons, although no moons are detected in the Webb data. The results published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The young star the planet orbits is only 2 million years old and still accreting circumstellar material. However, the circumplanetary disk discovered by Webb is not part of the larger…
NASA has selected Troy Sierra JV, LLC of Huntsville, Alabama, to provide engineering, research, and scientific support at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The Test Facility Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering Services III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $388.3 million. The performance period begins Jan. 1, 2026, with a three-year base period followed by a two-year option, and a potential six-month extension through June 2031. This contract will provide and manage the engineering, technical, manufacturing, development, operations, maintenance, inspection, and certification support services needed to conduct aerospace testing in…
The parachute of the Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy, or EPIC, test experiment deploys following an air launch from an Alta X drone on June 4, 2025, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASA researchers are developing technology to make supersonic parachutes safer and more reliable for delivering instruments and payloads to Mars. The flight tests were a first step toward filling gaps in computer models to improve supersonic parachutes. This work could also open the door to future partnerships, including with the aerospace and auto racing industries. Image Credit: NASA/Christopher LC Clark Source link
Derrol Nail: After a 300 million mile journey through space, the Mars Perseverance Rover is ready to begin the most challenging part of the trip, landing on the red planet. If successful, it will embark on the most advanced mission ever sent here, to discover if life ever existed on Mars. The rocket ranch welcomes Dr. Moogega Cooper, NASA JPL’s planetary protection lead for Mars Perseverance. She’ll tell us how she and her team are actually protecting Mars and she’ll describe the incredibly complex maneuvers needed to land on the red planet. Plus, she’ll tell us about the most…
