How NASA Science and Artemis Are Shaping the 2026 FIFA World Cup 

As the FIFA World Cup approaches, NASA is bringing space science and engineering to soccer fans worldwide. From June 11 to July 19, 2026, NASA will host an exhibit at FIFA Fan Festival™ Houston where visitors can learn how research aboard the International Space Station benefits life on Earth and experience missions in low Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond through the Artemis program. 

On June 11, as the FIFA World Cup begins, NASA’s exhibit at Fan Festival Houston will open to the public. The event is free to attend and open for every match of the tournament in East Downtown, Houston. On June 20, Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche will introduce select Artemis II crew members following their historic mission around the Moon. The crew will participate in World Cup activities ahead of the Netherlands-Sweden match in Houston and will appear on the Fan Festival Houston main stage to share their experience with fans. 

The connection between NASA and the World Cup goes beyond the exhibit floor, reaching all the way to orbit. NASA spinoff technologies are innovations developed for space exploration that go on to shape commercial products and everyday life – even on the soccer field. 

For more than 25 years, research aboard the International Space Station has enabled breakthroughs in science, technology, and human health while advancing innovations that benefit people on Earth. That work includes studies that improve understanding of the aerodynamics and physics involved in soccer ball flight. 

In partnership with the ISS National Laboratory in 2019, researchers used the station’s microgravity environment to study how a soccer ball’s internal mass affects its motion, stability, and rotation. The findings have improved understanding of how embedded technologies, including match-ball sensors, can influence performance during play. The research contributed to studies used in the development and evaluation of soccer balls for major international tournaments, including FIFA World Cup competition. 

Understanding the relationship between an object’s center of mass and its geometric center is key to predicting how free-flying objects move, including spacecraft, satellites, and aircraft. 

Since 2022, Adidas has embedded electronics inside official match balls used in major tournaments. The sensors track speed, position, and contact in real time to support officiating and broadcast technology. But those sensors also add mass in specific locations inside the ball, and uneven mass distribution can affect how a ball moves through the air. 

The space-based research has helped improve understanding of how internal mass, including embedded sensors, can influence stability and rotation in real-world playing conditions. 

This work builds on earlier research into how spinning objects behave in microgravity. 

Engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California tested Adidas’ Brazuca ball, developed for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, in wind tunnel conditions at the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory. Researchers studied aerodynamic behavior, including how low-spin kicks can produce “knuckling,” where the ball moves unpredictably due to unstable airflow across the seams. NASA engineers measured the speeds and flow conditions where this effect was most pronounced. 

Adjustments in panel shape, seam depth, and surface texture can influence flight consistency, helping determine whether a ball curves, dips, or holds its line during play. 

Now, NASA and Adidas are presenting that science through a STEMonstration that compares how differently balanced soccer balls spin and move in microgravity. The experiment shows how the same physics that governs motion in space also shape the game millions watch on Earth. 

Through research aboard the International Space Station and technology developed for exploration, NASA continues to demonstrate how discoveries made for space can benefit people on Earth—including athletes and fans participating in the world’s most popular sport. 

Watch the soccer ball STEMonstration video: 

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Supersonic!

On June 5, 2026, NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year. NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph). The flight lasted 81 minutes, with the team focusing on flying qualities at both subsonic and then supersonic speeds.

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight and help enable commercial supersonic flight over land worldwide. These advancements will help travelers reach their preferred destinations faster, spending less time in the air.

Learn more about the milestone and Quesst.

Image credit: NASA/Lori Losey

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Digging Back in Time in the UAE

About an hour’s drive east of Dubai’s gleaming towers and artificial islands, a quieter, more natural landscape takes shape. At the far northern edge of the Rub’ al Khali, a saffron-colored sand sea laps against the Al-Hajar Mountains. A series of pale ridges rises finlike from the desert plain, with the largest—Jabal al Fāyah—standing 412 meters (1,352 feet) above sea level.  

The Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of the ridges cutting across the Emirate of Sharjah in the northern part of the United Arab Emirates on October 23, 2025. To geologists, the limestone ridges are a reminder of the region’s watery past, signs that this land lay underwater tens of millions of years ago when the sedimentary rock layers were deposited.

Jabal al Fāyah functions as a barrier, trapping windblown sand in dune fields to its west. The weathering of iron-bearing minerals in the sand grains gives the dune fields their orange hue. To the east, the branching channels of overlapping alluvial fans extending from the Al-Hajar Mountains carry gravels and eroded sediments from basalts and other dark mafic rocks. 

The dark rocks to the east—part of the Samail Ophiolite—are known to geologists for being among the world’s largest, best-preserved, and most accessible exposures of ancient oceanic lithosphere, the rigid outer layer of Earth that includes both the crust and upper mantle. Oceanic lithosphere like this is normally subducted and recycled back into the mantle when tectonic plates collide. But in this area, a large section from beneath the Tethys Sea was scraped off and thrust onto the Arabian plate in a process called obduction.  

The Jabal al Fāyah ridges themselves are made up of marine limestone that was deposited on top of the ophiolite over tens of millions of years spanning the late Cretaceous through the early to mid-Paleocene. Limestone typically forms along continental margins in warm, shallow oceans, often in lagoons and coral reefs, out of the calcium carbonate found in the shells and skeletons of marine life. In many parts of the ridges, coral fragments and marine invertebrate fossils are visible embedded in the rock. A feature called Fossil Rock sits a few kilometers north of Jabal al Fāyah and adjacent to the limestone ridge Jabal Mulayḩah. It contains an abundance of snail, clam, and sea urchin remains. 

For archaeologists, the ridges are at the center of a much more recent tale of human adaptation and survival that has played out in just the past few hundred thousand years. The ridges and parts of the surrounding landscape—inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2025—are dotted with dozens of archaeological sites that trace human occupation on the Arabian Peninsula back to between 210,000 and 120,000 years ago, to the Middle Paleolithic. That was a period when waves of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) migrated out of Africa and shared the planet with other groups such as Neanderthals.   

Many of the sites contain stone flakes, blades, scrapers, hand axes, and other stone tools. The archaeological treasure trove offers early evidence of modern humans surviving in a harsh desert environment and raises questions about the routes modern Homo sapiens may have taken on their journey out of Africa.  

Geological evidence indicates that lakes periodically formed on the east side of the ridge, providing critical food and water resources that would have supported early inhabitants in this unforgiving climate. Rocky overhangs along the ridge would have provided shelter from the heat and wind. Some of the sites show evidence of intermittent occupation beginning as early as 210,000 years ago, making this one of the earliest signs of human habitation on the Arabian Peninsula.   

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

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October 23, 2025

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References & Resources

• Armitage, S., et al. (2011) The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia. Science, 331(6016), 453-456.
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2025) Archaeology, chronology, and sedimentological context of the youngest Middle Palaeolithic assemblage from Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 17(60). 
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2022) Multiple phases of human occupation in Southeast Arabia between 210,000 and 120,000 years ago. Scientific Reports, 12, 1600. 
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2013) The environmental context of Paleolithic settlement at Jebel Faya, Emirate Sharjah, UAE. Quaternary International, 300, 83-93. 
• Condé Nast Traveller (2025, July 15) This new UNESCO World Heritage site in the UAE preserves the Middle East’s earliest evidence of modern humans. Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Kamran, K., via Substack (2025, February 18) The Stone Blades of Jebel Faya: Rewriting the Story of Early Humans in Arabia. Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Phys.org (2022, February 1) Early human settlement on the Arabian Peninsula less influenced by climate than previously thought. Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Smithsonian (2025) What does it mean to be human? Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• UNESCO (2025) Faya Palaeolandscape. Accessed June 4, 2026.  
• Visit Sharjah (2025) Fossil Rock. Accessed June 4, 2026. 

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NASA’s X-59 Aircraft Flies Supersonic for First Time

NASA’s experimental X-59 aircraft marked a major milestone Friday, June 5, when it flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time, setting the stage for demonstrating its quiet supersonic capabilities later this year. 

NASA test pilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, reaching a top speed of approximately Mach 1.1 (713 mph) and altitude of 43,400 feet. The X-59’s flight began at 11:08 a.m. PDT and lasted 81 minutes, with the team focusing on flying qualities at both subsonic and then supersonic speeds.  

In the coming days, we expect to take the next step and push to Mach 1.4

jared isaacman

NASA Administrator

”X-59 is getting ready for its quiet supersonic debut. Since the aircraft’s first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, the team has made tremendous progress, flying 16 times in the last 90 days and getting into a steady test rhythm. In the coming days, we expect to take the next step and push to Mach 1.4,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman “I’m grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA’s X-plane portfolio.” 

The X-59 is designed to fly at supersonic speeds while creating only a quiet thump instead of a loud sonic boom. For this flight, a NASA F‑15 chase plane flew nearby to monitor the X‑59. The loud sonic booms from the F-15 obscured any sound made by the X-59.  

“The X-59’s first supersonic flight is a testament to America’s enduring leadership in science, engineering, and aerospace innovation,” said Michael Kratsios, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “This achievement comes as the Trump Administration continues work to unleash supersonic flight and enable American ingenuity.” 

This first supersonic flight is a significant milestone, but an event even more critical to the mission is upcoming. In just days, the aircraft is expected to make its first “mission conditions” flight, reaching a cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 mph) and altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. The X-59 also will be accompanied by a chase plane for this flight.  

This speed and altitude are the base conditions for the X-59 when it will eventually fly over several U.S. communities enabling NASA to gather data about how people may perceive its quiet thump. NASA will share this data with U.S. and international regulators to help establish new data-driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land. 

For the last several months, the X-59 has been participating in an ongoing series of flights where the plane has been flying at a wide range of speeds and altitudes – a process known as envelope expansion. These tests are the first phase of the X-59’s flight testing. They are focused on performance and involve chase plane monitoring. When the aircraft completes this phase it will enter another, focused on its sound profile in order to verify its quiet thump capability.  

The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight and help enable commercial supersonic flight over land worldwide. These advancements will help travelers reach their preferred destinations faster, spending less time in the air. 

Through Quesst’s development of the X-59, NASA also will deliver design tools and technology for quiet supersonic airliners that will achieve the high speeds desired by commercial operators without disturbing people on the ground. NASA will validate design tools through ground and flight testing, providing U.S. aircraft manufacturers the ability to explore new quiet supersonic concepts, and provide them with confidence that their resulting designs will meet quiet flight requirements.  

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