Please fill out the form below to request registration for the 2026 Moon to Mars Architecture workshops. A request to register does not guarantee participation in the event.
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Danny Baird
Educators, join our free two-part webinar, and learn about bringing coding and citizen science to your learners!
The Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program is a science and education program that focuses on advancing Earth systems science through data collection and analysis by citizen scientists. These webinars introduce GLOBE Mission Mosquito—a global program where students and community members collect environmental data—and EMERGE, a Florida-based but widely adaptable project that turns those data into insights about mosquito-borne disease risk.
Session 1 (Sept 17 at 6 PM ET): Introduction to EMERGE and GLOBE. You’ll learn how students can collect mosquito habitat and land cover data with the free GLOBE Observer app, then complete a guided coding assignment to visualize those observations on maps and explore connections with NASA satellite data. It’s a friendly environment for people who haven’t coded before!
Session 2 (Sept 24 at 6 PM ET): We’ll regroup to review the coding assignment—troubleshoot issues, share sample outputs, and discuss strategies for adapting the lesson in classrooms, afterschool programs, and libraries.
Learn more about EMERGE
Learn more about GLOBE Mosquito Habitat Mapper
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Westerlund 1, the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth, dazzles in this image released on July 23, 2025. This view combines x-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (in pink, blue, purple, and orange), infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (in yellow, gold, and blue), and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (in cyan, grey, and light yellow).
Data from Chandra and other telescopes is helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced. Observations from Chandra have uncovered thousands of individual stars pumping out X-ray emission into the cluster.
This image is part of a compilation of images featuring data from Chandra along with a host of other telescopes.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare
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Monika Luabeya
Expedition 73 awaits over 11,000 pounds of new science and supplies packed inside Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo craft and orbiting Earth toward the International Space Station. NASA Flight Engineers Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman will be on duty in the cupola to capture Cygnus at 6:35 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. The pair spent Tuesday studying rendezvous procedures and practicing Canadarm2 robotic arm maneuvers they will use when Cygnus reaches a point about 10 meters away from the orbital outpost. Kim will be in the cupola commanding Canadarm2 with Cardman backing him up and monitoring the activities.
At the beginning of Tuesday, the duo joined Flight Engineers Mike Fincke of NASA and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and reviewed Cygnus’ mission profile and the cargo it is delivering. They will soon be unloading new science experiments to explore manufacturing semiconductor crystals, disinfecting spacecraft with ultraviolet light, producing cancer-treating pharmaceuticals, and developing cryogenic fluid tanks. The quartet also called down to mission controllers at the end of Tuesday’s shift and discussed the upcoming cargo operations.
Another cargo craft, the Progress 93 from Roscosmos, arrived at the orbital outpost on Saturday when it docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port packed with three tons of food, fuel, and supplies. Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky spent Tuesday unpacking Progress and transferring fluids to and from the new resupply ship. The station commander and flight engineer also continued configuring the spacecraft for six months of cargo transfers and docked operations.
Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Platonov worked on a pair of different science experiments on Tuesday. He first set up physics research hardware to observe complex plasmas potentially advancing spacecraft designs and industrial processes on Earth. Next, he photographed glaciers and mountains throughout South America and Africa to analyze natural and man-made conditions on Earth.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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Mark A. Garcia
The IAU (International Astronomical Union), an international non-governmental research organization and global naming authority for celestial objects, has approved official names for features on Donaldjohanson, an asteroid NASA’s Lucy spacecraft visited on April 20. In a nod to the fossilized inspiration for the names of the asteroid and spacecraft, the IAU’s selections recognize significant sites and discoveries on Earth that further our understanding of humanity’s origins.
The asteroid was named in 2015 after paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, discoverer of one of the most famous fossils ever found of a female hominin, or ancient human ancestor, nicknamed Lucy. Just as the Lucy fossil revolutionized our understanding of human evolution, NASA’s Lucy mission aims to revolutionize our understanding of solar system evolution by studying at least eight Trojan asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter.
Donaldjohanson, located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was a target for Lucy because it offered an opportunity for a comprehensive “dress rehearsal” for Lucy’s main mission, with all three of its science instruments carrying out observation sequences very similar to the ones that will occur at the Trojans.
After exploring the asteroid and getting to see its features up close, the Lucy science and engineering team proposed to name the asteroid’s surface features in recognition of significant paleoanthropological sites and discoveries, which the IAU accepted.
The smaller lobe is called Afar Lobus, after the Ethiopian region where Lucy and other hominin fossils were found. The larger lobe is named Olduvai Lobus, after the Tanzanian river gorge that has also yielded many important hominin discoveries.
The asteroid’s neck, Windover Collum, which joins those two lobes, is named after the Windover Archeological Site near Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida — where NASA’s Lucy mission launched in 2021. Human remains and artifacts recovered from that site revolutionized our understanding of the people who lived in Florida around 7,300 years ago.
Two smooth areas on the asteroid’s neck are named Hadar Regio, marking the specific site of Johanson’s discovery of the Lucy fossil, and Minatogawa Regio, after the location where the oldest known hominins in Japan were found. Select boulders and craters on Donaldjohanson are named after notable fossils ranging from pre-Homo sapiens hominins to ancient modern humans. The IAU also approved a coordinate system for mapping features on this uniquely shaped small world.
As of Sept. 9, the Lucy spacecraft was nearly 300 million miles (480 million km) from the Sun en route to its August 2027 encounter with its first Trojan asteroid called Eurybates. This places Lucy about three quarters of the way through the main asteroid belt. Since its encounter with Donaldjohanson, Lucy has been cruising without passing close to any other asteroids, and without requiring any trajectory correction maneuvers.
The team continues to carefully monitor the instruments and spacecraft as it travels farther from the Sun into a cooler environment.
Stay tuned at nasa.gov/lucy for more updates as Lucy continues its journey toward the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
By Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute
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