Justin Hall, left, controls a subscale aircraft as Justin Link holds the aircraft in place during preliminary engine tests on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, at NASA’s Armstong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Hall is chief pilot at the center’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory and Link is a pilot for small uncrewed aircraft systems.
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Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. student at Purdue University
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is currently trekking towards exciting new terrain. After roughly four months of climbing up and over the rim of Jezero crater, the rover is taking a charming tour of the plains just beyond the western crater rim, fittingly named “Lac de Charmes.” This area just beyond Jezero’s rim will be the prime place to search for pre-Jezero ancient bedrock and Jezero impactites — rocks produced or affected by the impact event that created Jezero crater.
The formation of a complex crater like Jezero is, well… complex. Scientists who study impact craters like to split the formation process into three stages: contact & compression (when the impactor hits), excavation (when materials are thrown out of the crater), and modification (when gravity causes everything to collapse). This process happens incredibly fast, fracturing the impacted rock and even melting some of the target material. Sometimes on Earth, the classic “bowl” shaped crater has been completely weathered and unrecognizable, so geologists are able to identify craters by the remnants of their impactites. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more complicated — Jezero crater’s rim is located on the rim of another, even bigger basin called Isidis. That means there is an opportunity to have impactites from both cratering events exposed in and just around the rim — some of which could be several billions of years old! We may have already encountered one of these blocks on our trek towards Lac de Charmes. In the foreground of this image taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on the rover, there is a potential impactite called a “megablock” that the team has named “Hyha.” We can actually see this block from orbit, it is that large! The team is excited to continue exploring these ancient rocks as we take our next steps off Jezero’s rim.
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Exercise and physics research were the top scientific duties aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday advancing human health and industries both on the ground and in space. The Expedition 74 crew members also continued working on spacesuits and practiced an emergency drill.
Doctors continuously monitor astronauts’ health using sensors, tests, and sample collections to understand the long-term effects of spaceflight, helping to keep crews fit for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond while also advancing medical treatments on Earth. A key part of this effort is exercise to prevent space-caused muscle and bone loss. During workouts and daily activities, astronauts periodically wear the sensor-packed Bio-Monitor vest and headband that monitors heart health, respiratory health, and more for up to 48 hours. The data can be monitored by doctors on Earth in real-time or downloaded to the ground for later review.
NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams put on the Bio-Monitor wearables early Wednesday beginning a two-day health monitoring session. Afterward, he exercised on the advanced resistive exercise device (ARED)—that mimics free weights on Earth—then jogged on the COLBERT treadmill helping counter the effects of microgravity and providing doctors insight into his heart, lung, muscle, and bone health in weightlessness. The Bio-Monitor, a Canadian Space Agency-designed biomedical device, has been in operational use aboard the station since January 2019.
Williams later assisted NASA Flight Engineer Zena Cardman inside the Quest airlock as she installed charged lithium-ion batteries into a pair of spacesuits.
Station Commander Mike Fincke worked throughout Wednesday servicing a variety of exercise gear and science hardware. He first installed kinematics hardware on the ARED that monitors the muscle and bone forces crews experience when exercising in space. Researchers use the visual data to adjust workout programs to maximize crew fitness in microgravity. Next, he swapped a pair of hard drives and injected gas into the experimental Zero Boil-Off Tank being tested for its ability to preserve cryogenic fluids in spacecraft fuel tanks.
Flight Engineer Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) started his shift inside the Kibo laboratory module checking for gas leaks inside combustion research hardware. Next, he powered on a fluorescence microscope to observe changes in the formation of flat liquid crystal films in microgravity. Results from the study may advance screen displays for touchpads and instrumentation panels benefitting both Earth and space hardware.
At the end of their shift, all four astronauts joined the cosmonauts from Roscosmos—Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev, and Oleg Platonov—and conducted an emergency drill. The orbital septet practiced their responses to unlikely events such as a depressurization, a chemical leak, or a fire onboard the orbital outpost. The seven crewmates used computer tablets and reviewed the procedures and communication protocols they would use in coordination with mission controllers on the ground.
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
After nearly five years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has traveled almost 25 miles (40 kilometers), and the mission team has been busy testing the rover’s durability and gathering new science findings on the way to a new region nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” where it will be searching for rocks to sample in the coming year.
Like its predecessor Curiosity, which has been exploring a different region of Mars since 2012, Perseverance was made for the long haul. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built Perseverance and leads the mission, has continued testing the rover’s parts here on Earth to make sure the six-wheeled scientist will be strong for years to come. This past summer, JPL certified that the rotary actuators that turn the rover’s wheels can perform optimally for at least another 37 miles (60 kilometers); comparable brake testing is underway as well.
Over the past two years, engineers have extensively evaluated nearly all the vehicle’s subsystems in this way, concluding that they can operate until at least 2031.
“These tests show the rover is in excellent shape,” said Perseverance’s deputy project manager, Steve Lee of JPL, who presented the results on Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, the largest gathering of planetary scientists in the United States. “All the systems are fully capable of supporting a very long-term mission to extensively explore this fascinating region of Mars.”
Perseverance has been driving through Mars’ Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river system, where it has been collecting scientifically compelling rock core samples. In fact, in September, the team announced that a sample from a rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” contains a potential fingerprint of past microbial life.
In addition to a hefty suite of six science instruments, Perseverance packs more autonomous capabilities than past rovers. A paper published recently in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics highlights an autonomous planning tool called Enhanced Autonomous Navigation, or ENav. The software looks up to 50 feet (15 meters) ahead for potential hazards, then chooses a path without obstacles and tells Perseverance’s wheels how to steer there.
Engineers at JPL meticulously plan each day of the rover’s activities on Mars. But once the rover starts driving, it’s on its own and sometimes has to react to unexpected obstacles in the terrain. Past rovers could do this to some degree, but not if these obstacles were clustered near each other. They also couldn’t react as far in advance, resulting in the vehicles driving slower while approaching sand pits, rocks, and ledges. In contrast, ENav’s algorithm evaluates each rover wheel independently against the elevation of terrain, trade-offs between different routes, and “keep-in” or “keep-out” areas marked by human operators for the path ahead.
“More than 90% of Perseverance’s journey has relied on autonomous driving, making it possible to quickly collect a diverse range of samples,” said JPL autonomy researcher Hiro Ono, a paper lead author. “As humans go to the Moon and even Mars in the future, long-range autonomous driving will become more critical to exploring these worlds.”
A paper published Wednesday in Science details what Perseverance discovered in the “Margin Unit,” a geologic area at the margin, or inner edge, of Jezero Crater. The rover collected three samples from that region. Scientists think these samples may be particularly useful for showing how ancient rocks from Mars’ deep interior interacted with water and the atmosphere, helping create conditions supportive for life.
From September 2023 to November 2024, Perseverance ascended 1,312 feet (400 meters) of the Margin Unit, studying rocks along the way — especially those containing the mineral olivine. Scientists use minerals as timekeepers because crystals within them can record details about the precise moment and conditions in which they formed.
Jezero Crater and the surrounding area holds large reserves of olivine, which forms at high temperatures, typically deep within a planet, and offers a snapshot of what was going on in the planet’s interior. Scientists think the Margin Unit’s olivine was made in an intrusion, a process where magma pushes into underground layers and cools into igneous rock. In this case, erosion later exposed that rock to the surface, where it could interact with water from the crater’s ancient lake and carbon dioxide, which was abundant in the planet’s early atmosphere.
Those interactions form new minerals called carbonates, which can preserve signs of past life, along with clues as to how Mars’ atmosphere changed over time.
“This combination of olivine and carbonate was a major factor in the choice to land at Jezero Crater,” said the new paper’s lead author, Perseverance science team member Ken Williford of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle. “These minerals are powerful recorders of planetary evolution and the potential for life.”
Together, the olivine and carbonates record the interplay between rock, water, and atmosphere inside the crater, including how each changed over time. The Margin Unit’s olivine appeared to have been altered by water at the base of the unit, where it would have been submerged. But the higher Perseverance went, the more the olivine bore textures associated with magma chambers, like crystallization, and fewer signs of water alteration.
As Perseverance leaves the Margin Unit behind for Lac de Charmes, the team will have the chance to collect new olivine-rich samples and compare the differences between the two areas.
Managed for NASA by Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
To learn more about Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good / DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433 / 818-393-9011
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov / agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Naomi Hartono
The future of flight, space exploration, and science starts at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where we have been advancing innovation for more than 100 years. Join us as we look back at NASA Langley’s achievements in 2025 that continued our storied legacy of pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
As NASA returns astronauts to the Moon through the agency’s Artemis campaign in advance of human exploration of Mars, researchers at Langley are exploring technology that could significantly reduce travel time to the Red Planet. Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, would use robots for in-space assembly of elements needed to enable nuclear electric propulsion of future spacecraft, which could transform travel to deep space.
The Moon was ready for its close-up in March, when cameras developed by a Langley team captured first-of-its-kind imagery of a lunar lander’s engine plumes interacting with the Moon’s surface during Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1. Information gathered from images like this is critical in helping NASA prepare for future crewed and uncrewed lunar landings.
In April, planetary scientists at Langley led an international team of astronomers during a cosmic alignment three decades in the making: a rare opportunity to study Uranus. The one-hour event gave them a glimpse into the planet’s atmosphere, information that could enable future Uranus exploration efforts.
Severe or extreme weather can strike in a moment’s notice, and having the tools to accurately predict weather events can help save lives and property. Scientists at Langley have developed and are testing an instrument that uses laser technology to gather precise wind measurements, data that is a crucial element for accurate weather forecasting.
Gravity can create issues when testing materials for space, but Langley researchers have found a way to successfully use gravity and height when testing long composite booms. Testing these composite booms is important because they could support space exploration in a variety of ways, including being used to build structures that could support humans living and working on the Moon.
A Langley team that specializes in capturing imagery-based engineering datasets from spacecraft during launch and reentry continued its work in 2025, including support of a European aerospace company’s test flight in June. Not only does the team support a variety of missions to advance the agency’s work, but they also collaborate with the private sector as NASA works to open space to more science, people, and opportunities.
One of the most challenging tasks in remote sensing from space is achieving required instrument calibration on-orbit. Langley scientists are addressing the challenge head on through the Arcstone mission, an instrument that launched in June and aims to establish the Moon as a cost-efficient, high-accuracy calibration reference. Once established, the new standard can be applied to past, present, and future spaceborne sensors and satellite constellations. Arcstone uses a spectrometer, a scientific instrument that measures and analyzes light, to measure lunar spectral reflectance.
The success of NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution mission, or TEMPO, earned the mission an extension, meaning the work to monitor Earth’s air quality from 22,000 miles above the ground will continue through at least September 2026. The Langley-led mission launched in 2023 and is NASA’s first to use a spectrometer, a scientific instrument that measures and analyzes light, to gather hourly air quality data continuously over North America during daytime hours. The data gathered is distributed freely to the public, giving air quality forecasters, scientists, researchers, and your next-door neighbor access to quality information about the air we breathe down to the neighborhood level.
NASA’s Athena Economical Payload Integration Cost mission, or Athena EPIC, launched in July with the goal to shape a future path to launch that saves taxpayers money and expedites access to space. Athena EPIC was the first NASA-led mission led to utilize HISat technology, small satellites engineered to aggregate, share resources, and conform to different sizes and shapes. Langley’s scientists designed and built the Athena sensor with spare parts from NASA’s CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) mission to gather top of atmosphere measurements. Athena EPIC demonstrates a novel way to launch Earth-observing instruments into orbit quicker and more economically.
The future of air travel includes the safe integration of drones and air taxis into our airspace for passenger transport, cargo delivery, and public service capabilities. That is why NASA is investigating and testing potential air taxi materials and designs to help the aviation industry better understand how those materials behave under impact. Data collected from a drop test at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility in June will help in the development of safety regulations for advanced air mobility aircraft, leading to safer designs.
NASA advanced the future of air taxis and autonomous cargo drones by testing a 7-foot wing model in Langley’s 14-by-22-Foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel. This effort produced data on critical propeller-wing interactions, as well as data relevant to cruise, hover, and transition conditions for advanced air mobility aircraft. The results will help validate next-generation design tools and accelerate safe, reliable development across the advanced air mobility industry.
The lack of publicly available engineering and flight data to help address technical barriers in the design and development of new electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is a challenge for researchers and engineers. That is why Langley researchers are using a research aircraft that provides real-world data, obtained through wind tunnel and flight tests, to help fill the information gap and check the accuracy of computer models for flight dynamics and controls. Making this data available to all is a key step in transforming the way we fly and safely integrating new aircraft into our nation’s airspace.
A material from NASA Langley is riding high as it orbits the Earth aboard a United States Space Force test vehicle, giving researchers a better understanding of how the material responds to long-duration exposure to the harsh vacuum of space. The strap material is a part of a Langley-developed aeroshell to protect spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere or to ensure their safe landing on other celestial bodies, such as Mars. Understanding how extended exposure to space affects the material is important as NASA prepares to send humans beyond the Moon.
Data gathered during a Langley-led airborne science campaign late this summer could help protect air travelers on Earth and future space travelers to the Moon, Mars, and beyond from the health risks associated with radiation exposure. NASA’s Space Weather Aviation Radiation (SWXRAD) aircraft flight campaign took place in Greenland and measured the radiation dose level to air travelers from cosmic radiation. Researchers are using the information to enhance a modeling system that offers real-time global maps of the hazardous radiation in the atmosphere and creates exposure predictions for aircraft and spacecraft.
As NASA returns astronauts to the Moon through the Artemis campaign in preparation for human exploration of Mars, the agency also has its sights set on Saturn, specifically Saturn’s moon Titan. NASA’s Dragonfly, a car-sized rotorcraft set to launch no earlier than 2028, will explore Titan and try to discover how life began. This fall, engineers placed a full-scale test model representing half of the Dragonfly lander in Langley’s Transonic Dynamics Tunnel to evaluate how its rotor system performed in Titan-like conditions. The data will be integral in developing the rotorcraft’s flight plans and navigation software as it investigates multiple landing sites on Titan.
In response to severe weather that impacted more than 10 states in November, the NASA Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS) activated to support national partners. The DRCS is headquartered at Langley. NASA worked closely with the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency serving the central and southeastern U.S. to provide satellite data and expertise that help communities better prepare, respond, and recover.
In October, NASA’s Quesst mission celebrated a major milestone – the X-59 quiet supersonic one-of-a-kind research aircraft flew for the first time, a historic moment for aviation. The hard work, talent, and innovation of NASA engineers and project team members, including many based at NASA Langley, made this achievement possible. One of the notable traits of the X-59 is the eXternal Vision System (XVS) which allows the test pilots to safely maneuver the skies without a forward-facing window. This unique supersonic design feature was developed and tested at NASA Langley.
The X-59’s first flight was a major step toward quiet supersonic flight over land, which could revolutionize air travel.
A team at NASA Langley is firing engine plumes into simulated lunar soil because as the United States returns to the Moon, both through NASA’s Artemis campaign and the commercialization of space, researchers need to understand the hazards that may occur when a lander’s engines blast away at the lunar dust, soil, and rocks.
Langley connected with communities across Virginia and beyond to share the center’s work and impact, and inspire the next generation of explorers, scientists, and researchers. Thousands of spectators enjoyed hands-on activities and exhibits during the Air Power over Hampton Roads air show at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Virginia, where NASA Langley’s aviation past, present, and future were on full display. More than 2,300 students from across the nation eagerly participated in Langley’s 2025 Student Art Contest, and shared their artistic spin on the theme, “Our Wonder Changes the World.” Langley and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University announced an agreement in September that will leverage Langley’s aerospace expertise and Embry-Riddle’s specialized educational programs and research to drive innovation in aerospace, research, education, and technology, while simultaneously developing a highly skilled workforce for the future of space exploration and advanced air mobility.
Langley looks forward to another year of successes and advancements in 2026, as we continue to make the seemingly impossible, possible.
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NASA
