NASA Invites Media to Albania Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony
Credit: NASA
The Republic of Albania will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 12 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 21, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 73rd country signatory.
NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Albania’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ferit Hoxha and Ambassador of the Republic of Albania to the United States Ervin Bushati for the ceremony, together with U.S. Department of State officials.
In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.
The Artemis Accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’
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NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’
Using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star’s outflow, called a stellar wind, being captured by its compact companion and providing the power source for strong X-ray flares. The research is part of NASA’s exploration of the extreme universe to better understand how the cosmos works.
“We’ve never before seen clear indications of wind plasma falling onto a compact object,” said Roi Rahin, a researcher at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now test our understanding of these processes in much greater detail.”
A paper describing the findings published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
The target system is BP Crucis, a high-mass X-ray binary located about 13,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Crux. The primary star, known as Wray 977, is a blue hypergiant about 40 times the Sun’s mass and 60 times its size. It’s so big, hot, and luminous that ionized gas constantly streams away from it, a phenomenon astronomers call a stellar wind.
This artist’s concept of the BP Crucis system follows the pulsar on a passage through the dense stream of plasma flowing from its companion, a blue hypergiant 40 times the Sun’s mass. During each four-day passage, the pulsar’s X-ray brightness flares as it pulls in some of the gas. At first, the gas forms a messy, turbulent accretion disk around the pulsar, and plasma spirals down to it. But as the pulsar moves deeper into the stream, there’s not enough angular momentum to support the disk, and it breaks up. At this point, plasma falls straight onto the pulsar. Later, as the pulsar near the end of its passage, a messy accretion disk rebuilds, this time spinning in the opposite direction of the earlier disk due to the stream’s flow. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Laboratory
The supergiant’s companion is a tiny-but-mighty neutron star called GX 301-2. The crushed core of a star that long ago exploded as a supernova, it packs more than the Sun’s mass into a ball roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. Rotating every 11 minutes, it sweeps an X-ray beam toward Earth, which classifies it as a pulsar.
Twice during the pulsar’s 41.5-day orbit, near its closest and farthest points from the primary star, strong X-ray flares occur for several days. Astronomers think the pulsar’s gravitational influence on the star creates an especially dense stream of plasma. Flares occur when the pulsar traverses this stream and captures some of its matter. The strongest eruptions happen closer to the star, where the stream is denser.
The researchers targeted the system with XRISM on Feb. 1, 2025, observing it for about 16 hours near the end of one of these stronger flares. The observatory’s Resolve instrument, jointly developed by NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), captured highly detailed X-ray spectra, revealing rapidly changing emission and absorption lines. In particular, absorption lines from highly ionized iron revealed the speed and direction of plasma relatively close to the pulsar.
Watch to learn about spectroscopy, the dance between matter and light, and how NASA missions using it help scientists answer big questions about our universe. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
When Rahin first saw these spectra, he realized he hadn’t seen anything like them before. He scoured the scientific literature for similar observations and came up empty-handed.
“It was clear that these observations were groundbreaking, but at the same time this meant the analysis had to be especially detailed,” said Nazma Islam, a co-author formerly at UMBC and NASA Goddard and now an assistant professor at Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, India. “We could see how the dense stream of plasma acts very close to the neutron star.”
The Resolve instrument aboard the NASA-JAXA XRISM observatory captured this high-resolution X-ray spectrum of BP Crucis. Prominent iron absorption lines (dashed) have shifted to lower energies (red lines), which indicates both the direction and velocity of the gas. The observations indicate the gas is moving toward the pulsar at about 335,000 mph (540,000 kph). Data and error bars are shown in gray, with a model spectrum in light blue. Roman numerals indicate the ionization state of iron atoms (the number of electrons they’ve lost to produce each spectral line).
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, JAXA/NASA, Rahin et al. 2026
Rahin and his team show that the iron absorption lines they observed are displaced to lower energies than they would be if measured in a laboratory. This displacement, called a redshift, indicates motion away from the observer, which means the gas is flowing toward the pulsar. The extent of the redshift indicates the plasma’s velocity. The team’s analysis indicates gas is racing toward the pulsar at speeds of around 335,000 mph (540,000 kph).
Here’s what the researchers think is going on: As the pulsar enters the stream, it sweeps up gas into a thick, messy, turbulent disk. This gas spirals down to the pulsar, heats up, and emits X-rays to power the flares.
As the pulsar pushes farther into the stream, the turbulent disk breaks down. Astronomers suspect that as the pulsar moves more directly into the flow, the stream no longer has the angular momentum required to maintain the disk. Once the disk dissipates, plasma flows directly onto the neutron star. Observations with XRISM occurred near the end of this phase.
Then, as the pulsar nears the end of the stream, a messy disk briefly returns, this time spinning in the opposite direction. And then it, too, disappears as the pulsar exits. In all, the pulsar takes about four days to transit the stream.
“The BP Crucis system is an ideal laboratory for studying wind-fed pulsar accretion, and XRISM’s sensitive, high-resolution Resolve spectrometer is an ideal instrument for advancing our understanding of the processes involved,” said Brian Williams, the mission’s project scientist at NASA Goddard.
Week Ends With Soldering, Lunar Simulations, and Cargo Mission Preps
Chicago, Illinois (bottom center), appears prominently in this nighttime view of the United States—dotted with city lights including Detroit, Michigan; Cincinnati, Ohio; and New York City–taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Earth.
NASA/Jessica Meir
Expedition 75 wrapped up its week completing a lead-free soldering experiment, simulating a lunar landing, and exercising for research, among other advanced science activities. The International Space Station residents are also preparing for the arrival of a cargo mission and continuing housekeeping duties.
NASA flight engineer Anil Menon conducted the last run of the MIYOKA investigation that uses a lead-free soldering technique to demonstrate the safe manufacturing and repairing of electronics in microgravity. He worked in the Harmony module to solder components on a circuit board that will be returned to Earth and compared to identical ground-soldered samples. Afterward, NASA flight engineer Jack Hathaway placed the cooled-down soldering iron, the completed circuit board, and experiment tools in storage containers then cleaned Harmony’s maintenance work area returning it to its normal configuration.
Menon and Hathway also joined each other in the cupola and carefully cleaned its seven windows. The duo used gentle wiping techniques and specialized materials to prevent scratches on the windows then taped up gaps between the panes to prevent dust buildup.
Station commander Jessica Meir began her day in the cupola for a lunar landing simulation. Working with hand controllers, a laptop computer, and audio signals, Meir practiced a lunar descent while adjusting speed and controlling orientation. The Manual Piloting study may help researchers understand how microgravity can affect cognitive function potentially leading to disorientation while operating a spacecraft. At the end of her shift, she partnered with Menon for ultrasonic inspections inside the Zarya module.
Flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) began her shift working out on the new European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D). The E4D’s controller software tracked her performance helping researchers evaluate its effectiveness for use on future long-duration missions. She later downloaded biomedical data collected from her smart watch to a computer tablet then held a conference with doctors on the ground for the RelaxPro experiment that seeks to reduce crew stress and improve sleep quality.
Flight engineer Andrey Fedyaev worked throughout Friday in the orbital outpost’s Roscosmos segment inspecting and cleaning laptop computers, power supply units, and ventilation systems.
A Progress 96 cargo spacecraft from Roscosmos is orbiting Earth toward the International Space Station for a docking on Saturday. Flight engineers Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina will be on duty monitoring Progress during its automated rendezvous and docking to Poisk module scheduled for 9:46 a.m. EDT. After about two hours of leak and pressure checks, Dubrov and Kikina will open the spacecraft’s hatch to begin unpacking nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies. Live coverage begins at 9 a.m. on NASA+ and a variety of other platforms. Learn where to watch online: https://www.nasa.gov/live
NASA Awards SpaceX Three Crew Flights to Space Station
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft launches NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station on March 14, 2025.
NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
To continue regular crew transportation to the International Space Station, NASA has awarded SpaceX three additional missions through a contract modification.
As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, this change brings the total missions for SpaceX to 17 and helps NASA to maintain access to the space station with two unique commercial crew industry partners.
This is a firm fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification for the Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17. The value of this modification for all three missions and related mission services is $946 million. The amount includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station. The period of performance runs through 2030 and brings the total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $5.92 billion.
The award follows the agency issuing a notice of intent in May to purchase the additional missions. The current sole source modification does not preclude NASA from seeking future contract modifications for additional transportation services, as needed.
In 2014, NASA awarded the CCtCap contracts to Boeing and SpaceX through a public-private partnership as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Under CCtCap, NASA certifies that a provider’s space transportation system meets the agency’s requirements prior to flying missions with astronauts.
SpaceX was certified by NASA for crew transportation in November 2020. The company’s twelfth crew rotation mission for the agency, the Crew-12 mission, is currently in orbit docked to the space station. As part of the missions, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket transport up to four astronauts, along with critical cargo, to the space station.
For information about NASA’s Commercial Crew Office, visit:
UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch as the COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) detector assembly is slowly raised from a table in this July 8, 2026, image. The four pieces of silver material on the top of the detector box cover the flex circuits, which carry signals from the detectors to the readout electronics.
COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope that will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. The mission is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory; the University of California, San Diego; the Naval Research Laboratory; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Northrop Grumman; Space Dynamics Laboratory; the Italian Space Agency; and a number of research institutions.
