Progress 95 Cargo Craft Approaches Station for Docking on NASA+
The Progress 93 resupply ship is pictured on Sept. 13, 2025, approaching the International Space Station for an automated docking to the Zvezda service module’s rear port.
NASA
NASA’s live coverage of rendezvous and docking is now underway on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.
The unpiloted Roscosmos Progress 95 spacecraft is continuing toward its planned 8 p.m. EDT autonomous docking to the aft port of the International Space Station’s Zvezda module. It launched at 6:21 p.m. April 25 (3:21 a.m. Baikonur time April 26) on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Crew Awaits Space Cargo Delivery and Works Advanced Life Science
The Progress 94 cargo spacecraft from Roscosmos, packed with about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 74 crew, approaches the International Space Station for a docking on March 16, 2026.
Station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev, both from Roscosmos, called down to mission controllers on Monday for a final cargo mission preparation conference. They will be inside Zvezda tracking Progress 95 during its automated approach and rendezvous with the orbital outpost. The duo also later took turns wearing a virtual reality headset for a study observing how a crew member’s balance and orientation adjusts in weightlessness.
Eye checks and vein scans were also on the schedule Monday helping doctors continuously assess crew health during a long-term spaceflight. NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir led a pair of eye tests examining NASA flight engineer Chris Williams’ retinas. She first attached electrodes around Williams’ eyes and used electroretinography to stimulate his retinas using flashes or patterns of light. For the second test, Williams’ peered into medical imaging hardware operated by Meir to scan his retinas. Doctors on the ground remotely assisted the eye checks to gain insight into how microgravity affects vision and the eye’s physical condition.
Earlier, NASA flight engineer Jack Hathaway scanned the neck, shoulder, and leg veins of Meir using the Ultrasound 3 biomedical device and collected her blood pressure measurements. Flight surgeons constantly monitor a crew member’s circulatory system to reduce the risk of space-caused blood clots—also called thrombosis.
Flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) explored using the space station’s potable water to produce medical grade intravenous fluids, or saline solutions, to treat medical conditions in space. The Intravenous Fluid Generation – Mini technology demonstration seeks to reduce a crew’s dependence on cargo missions and avoid expiration of medical supplies on a spacecraft.
Roscosmos flight engineer Andrey Fedyaev started his shift replacing orbital plumbing components in the Nauka science module that separate air from water. Next, Fedyaev took part in another blood pressure study wearing a series of cuffs on his arm, wrist, and thumb. Doctors collected the cardiac data to understand how living in space affects blood flow regulation, clot prevention, and inflammation responses.
The X-59’s tail and jet engine feature a new marking — a Freedom 250 logo celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026.
NASA/Carla Thomas
NASA’s X-59 is helping the nation celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence with an update to its livery – its official paint job and insignia.
The one-of-a-kind research aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to demonstrate technology to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, without generating loud sonic booms.
NASA’s Perseverance, Curiosity Panoramas Capture Two Sides of Mars
Learn how NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers are exploring different chapters of the Red Planet’s ancient history. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/ESA/University of Arizona/JHUAPL/USGS Astrogeology Science Center
NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have captured two 360-degree landscapes that highlight how the missions are revealing details of the Red Planet’s formation, watery past, and potential for life. Located 2,345 miles (3,775 kilometers) apart from each other on Mars — about the distance from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. — both rovers are exploring areas that are billions of years old. But as the nearly 15-year-old Curiosity reaches ever-younger terrain in the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 5-year-old Perseverance is venturing into some of the oldest landscapes in the entire solar system. By time-traveling in opposite directions, the rovers are filling in missing details about the planet’s history.
Stitched together from 1,031 images taken between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025, Curiosity’s 360-degree panorama offers a detailed look into a region filled with a vast network of boxwork formations: Resembling giant spiderwebs in orbiter images, the low ridges were created by groundwater that once flowed through large fractures in the bedrock. The minerals left behind hardened the rock along the fractures, resulting in erosion-resistant ridges.
Perseverance’s panorama focuses on a place nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” which sits outside the rim of Jezero Crater. Taken between Dec. 18, 2025, and Jan. 25, 2026, 980 images were stitched together for a 360-degree view capturing the Jezero rim and ancient rocks around the crater.
Driven by Curiosity
Today, both of these landscapes are frigid deserts, but evidence of a more dynamic past hides within. When Curiosity landed on the floor of Gale Crater in 2012, it set out to determine whether Mars once had the conditions to support life. Within a year, a sample drilled from an ancient lakebed confirmed those conditions had been present, including the right chemistry and potential nutrients for microbes.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree view of a region filled with low ridges called boxwork formations between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025. At 1.5 billion pixels, this is one of the largest panoramas Curiosity has ever taken.
Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp. Towering 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor, the mountain first began forming when layers of sediment were deposited in a series of lakes. Long after those lakes dried up, ponds and streams returned several times, leaving a record in the mountain’s layers that formed in drier eras. Because the lowest layers are oldest and higher layers are youngest, Curiosity is essentially progressing back through geological time as it slowly climbs the mountain.
Last year, Curiosity’s team documented how they found that the mineral siderite might be storing carbon dioxide that once was part of a thicker, early atmosphere. Scientists had long suspected that carbonate minerals such as siderite formed when carbon dioxide dissolved into ancient lakes, but such deposits had only rarely been found.
The mission also announced the detection of three of the largest organic molecules ever found on Mars in a sample it had drilled in 2013. The discovery of these long-chain hydrocarbons — possibly the remnants of fatty acids — are a milestone in the search for more complex, prebiotic chemistry on the Red Planet.
And this year, they announced that a rock Curiosity drilled and analyzed in 2020 includes the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet. Of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample, seven of them were detected for the first time on Mars.
Persevering for science
Perseverance landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater in 2021 to study the origin of ancient rocks within the crater and to hunt for evidence that microbial life once existed. Billions of years ago, molten rock cooled to form the floor of Jezero Crater. A river then fed a lake in the crater, leaving behind sediments where traces of microbes could have been preserved. In 2024, the mission discovered a rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” that was dotted with “leopard spots,” a pattern formed by chemical reactions that microbes are known to create in rocks here on Earth.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this 360-degree panorama of a region nicknamed “Crocodile Bridge” on the rim of Jezero Crater. This region holds some of the oldest rocks anywhere in the solar system.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
While Curiosity pulverizes its rock samples for analysis, Perseverance collects samples as intact rock cores, each about the size of a piece of blackboard chalk, and stores them in metal tubes. Aside from a backup set of 10 tubes Perseverance deposited in a sample depot, the rover keeps all its samples (23 so far) on board in its interior. Scientists hope to get these samples into labs on Earth where they can investigate them more fully with instruments far bigger and more complicated than those that can be sent to Mars.
Meanwhile, Perseverance continues to investigate other aspects of the Red Planet. For instance, this past fall, mission scientists shared the first recordings of electrical sparks in passing dust devils — a phenomenon that had only been theorized before Perseverance’s microphones caught them. A separate study detailed how one of Perseverance’s sensitive cameras was able to capture the first visible light auroras from the surface of another planet.
Both missions are looking forward to the next discoveries as they continue to unravel the secrets of Mars. Curiosity has left the boxwork region behind as it continues to explore a mountain layer enriched in salty minerals called sulfates; Perseverance will keep heading toward locations that hold exceptionally old terrain, including one called “Singing Canyon.”
Managed for NASA by Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of both Curiosity and Perseverance on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
To learn more about NASA’s exploration of Mars, visit:
The second Artemis mission took four astronauts around the moon and back – the first crewed deep-space flight since 1972. Not everyone gets a chance to put on a space suit, but you can still be an important part of NASA’s human space exploration story by doing NASA science!
Volunteers with NASA’s citizen science projects have tested chili pepper plant varieties to grow in space, monitored active regions on the Sun, and analyzed data from experiments on how life adapts to the low-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Participation does not require citizenship in any particular country – you only need a love of science and a desire to help. Join one of the projects below and help NASA make space travel safer and healthier.
Only a few minutes to spare?Space Umbrella is a great project for you. The brief online project tutorial will teach you how to read data collected by NASA’s Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) mission, which has been flying back and forth across Earth’s magnetosphere since 2015. By sorting data into in-magnetosphere and out-of-magnetosphere readings, you will help scientists learn more about how solar storms interact with our magnetosphere. Solar storms can pose a serious threat to astronauts, so this work can help missions minimize risks from radiation in space.
Are you aclassroom teacher for students in grades 6-12? Through Growing Beyond Earth, middle and high school students and their teachers collaborate with Fairchild Botanical Garden scientists to grow candidate plants that are being evaluated as astronaut food. Today, on the International Space Station, astronauts tend to some of the same experimental leafy greens and hot pepper plants to unlock the secrets of how best to space farm terrestrial species. On really long missions, it won’t just be a question of easing the monotony of packaged/prepared foods – astronauts will have to grow their own food to supplement their diets. Sign up here to learn more.
Do you have some experience with data analysis? The Open Science Data Repository Analysis Working Groups need you to help analyze data from experiments about life in space. Join this international community of scientists, students, and everyone in between to help us understand how terrestrial life – from plants to mice and microbes to astronauts – responds to the space environment.
Into ham radio? Join the team called Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) and use your ham radio skills to deploy your own personal space weather station! These stations are designed to be relatively low cost and easy to build and deploy by science professionals, educational institutions, and citizen scientists (you!). Your observations will be aggregated into a central database to help answer questions about how the ionosphere responds to the Sun and the neutral atmosphere.
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