Curiosity Shakes Loose a Pesky Rock

After NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drilled a sample from this rock on April 25, 2026, it withdrew its robotic arm and pulled the entire rock off the surface with it. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try and get the rock loose. When it finally detached on May 1, the rock broke into pieces.

This close-up image of the rock was produced by Curiosity’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on May 6. Nicknamed “Atacama,” the rock is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity’s drill is visible in the rock.

See Atacama stuck on Curiosity’s drill.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Hubble Sights Galaxy in Transition

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals an enigmatic galaxy with a bright center and a face that hints at spiral structure, yet it holds no obvious spiral arms. Reddish-brown clumps and filaments of dust partially obscure the galaxy’s full face, while red, blue, and orange light from distant galaxies shines through its diffuse outer regions and dots the inky-black background.

NGC 1266 is a lenticular galaxy located some 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus (the Celestial River). Astronomers classify lenticulars as transitional galaxies that represent an evolutionary bridge between spirals and ellipticals. Lenticulars are “lens-shaped” and have a bright central bulge and flattened disk like spirals, but they have no spiral arms and little to no star formation like ellipticals.

As interesting as this galaxy’s structure and lenticular classification are, those traits aren’t its most intriguing features. NGC 1266 is a rare post-starburst galaxy that is in transition between a galaxy that experienced a major burst of star formation and a quieter elliptical galaxy. Post-starburst galaxies have a young population of stars but few star-forming regions. Roughly one percent of the local galaxy population is a post-starburst galaxy.

Astronomers think that NGC 1266 had a minor merger with another galaxy some 500 million years ago. The merger spurred the formation of new stars and increased the mass of the galaxy’s central bulge while funneling gas into its supermassive black hole. The additional matter made the black hole much more active, creating an active galactic nucleus or AGN. The black hole’s increased activity would have generated powerful winds and jets of gas along its axis of rotation. Over time, the burst of new stars and the black hole’s powerful jets would deplete the galaxy’s reservoir of star-forming gas, while the turbulence generated in these processes suppressed new stars from forming in the gas that remained.

Observations by Hubble and other observatories reveal a strong outflow of gas from the galaxy and that the space between its stars is shocked or highly disturbed. Researchers found that any remaining stellar nurseries are in the core of the galaxy, and that very little to no star formation happens beyond that core. These observations suggest the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s heart may be suppressing star birth by stripping or ejecting star-forming gas from the galaxy. The shockwaves from this process would create turbulence that disturbs the gas and dust between stars enough to stop any remaining matter from gravitationally condensing into infant stars.

Post-starburst galaxies like NGC 1266 are ideal subjects for astronomers to study the complex physical processes that suppress star formation. They help us better understand the evolution of galaxies and how supermassive black holes interact with their hosts.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Picturing Earth in a New Light

Maps can show more than just where things are—they can also show how things change. New maps of artificial light reveal a planet that has been reshaping its nights through patterns of brightening and dimming.

The maps are based on a recent analysis of NASA’s Black Marble data, which found that instead of a gradual increase in artificial light at night over the course of nearly a decade, the patterns are much more nuanced. The analysis portrays a world flickering with industrial booms and busts, construction, and blackouts, as well as more gradual shifts, such as policy-driven retrofits.

NASA’s Black Marble product uses observations from the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) sensors on the Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites to produce records of nighttime lights at daily, monthly, and yearly time scales. The VIIRS day-night band detects nighttime light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, reflected moonlight, and auroras.

The map above shows changes in brightness across most of the inhabited world (between 60 degrees south and 70 degrees north). Yellow and gold areas are where there has been more brightening during the study period, from 2014 to 2022, and purple areas are where there has been more dimming.  

The visualization below shows the same data for the Eastern Hemisphere. Note that this version includes some artistic touches, such as simulated sunlight and shadows, while the nighttime lights data overlaid on the globe remain grounded in the scientific analysis. The image was featured on the cover of Nature, where the study was published in April 2026.

Overall, the researchers found that global radiance increased by 34 percent during the study period, but that surge masks large areas of dimming. Such “bidirectional changes” often happen side by side. In the U.S., for example, West Coast cities grew brighter as their populations increased, while much of the East Coast showed dimming, which the team attributed to the increased use of energy-efficient LEDs and broader economic restructuring.

The authors concluded that internationally, nighttime light surged in China and northern India along with urban development, while LEDs and energy conservation measures coincided with reduced light pollution in Paris and throughout France (a 33 percent dimming), the UK (22 percent dimming), and the Netherlands (21 percent dimming). European nights dimmed sharply in 2022 during a regional energy crisis that followed the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Large versions of the maps on this page can be downloaded below. Animations showing annual changes in nighttime lights throughout the study period are available from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using data from Li, T., et al. (2026). Story by Sally Younger adapted for Earth Observatory by Kathryn Hansen.

Downloads

Global map: 2014-2022

JPEG (1.90 MB)

Eastern Hemisphere: 2014-2022

JPEG (3.51 MB)

References & Resources

• Li, T., et al. (2026) Satellite imagery reveals increasing volatility in human night-time activity. Nature, 652, 379–386.
• NASA (2026, April 13) NASA Night-light Imagery Tracks US Energy Transition, Global Volatility. Accessed May 14, 2026.
• NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (2026, April 8) Global Nighttime Lights Change (2014–2022). Accessed May 14, 2026.

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