NASA Astronaut Jonny Kim Departs Agency to Continue Military Service

After nearly a decade of service to NASA, including an eight-month science expedition aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Jonny Kim’s last day at the agency is Thursday. He will continue serving as lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy.

Kim launched to the space station in April 2025 aboard the Soyuz MS‑27 spacecraft to conduct scientific research as a flight engineer during Expeditions 72/73. During the mission, he orbited Earth 3,920 times, traveled nearly 104 million miles, and contributed to a broad range of scientific investigations spanning technology development, Earth science, biology, and human research critical for future exploration.

“Jonny Kim represents the very best of NASA, a person who continually pushed the boundaries of exploration while inspiring countless others,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “His contributions aboard the International Space Station advanced critical science that will shape NASA’s future missions for decades to come. We are grateful for his dedication to our nation and to the pursuit of knowledge, and we wish him success as he continues his service in the U.S. Navy.”

Serving as the U.S. Operating Segment lead for the second half of Expedition 73, Kim oversaw operations across the station’s international modules. During the expedition, the station achieved a historic milestone when every available docking port was occupied for the first time in 25 years. He also commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm during the first capture of Northrop Grumman’s new Cygnus XL spacecraft, securing 11,000 pounds of supplies for the station. Kim and his Roscosmos crewmates landed safely in Kazakhstan in December 2025.

“Jonny has been an integral part of the agency, and his immeasurable impact will be felt for generations to come,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “From advancing groundbreaking science to inspiring the next generation, Jonny has been an incredible source of inspiration to our nation. His exceptional talent, determination, and grit will leave a lasting legacy at NASA.”

Kim was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017 and completed two years of astronaut candidate training, which included instruction in space station systems, Russian language, robotics, T‑38 flight operations, geology, survival training, and spacewalk preparation.

He later supported station operations as a capsule communicator, or capcom, in NASA’s Mission Control Center at Johnson. Kim also contributed to Artemis program development through his work in the astronaut exploration branch, leading the astronaut crew operations branch, and serving as increment lead for Expedition 65. His experiences as a Navy SEAL, physician, and naval aviator provided unique perspectives in mission operations and crew support.

“Jonny approached every assignment with humility, precision, and steadfast commitment to the mission,” said Scott Tingle, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA Johnson. “His combination of medical training, operational experience, and engineering insight strengthened our team and contributed to advancements in exploration and space station operations.”

Born in Los Angeles, Kim enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduating high school in 2002. He trained as a hospital corpsman and completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training before joining SEAL Team Three. Over the course of more than 100 combat operations, he served as a medic, sniper, navigator, and point man, earning the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat “V,” and numerous additional commendations.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of San Diego and a doctor of medicine from Harvard Medical School. He completed his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Kim became a dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon, completing flight training at Naval Air Stations Corpus Christi in Texas and Whiting Field in Florida, and aerospace medical training at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute at Naval Air Station Pensacola.

Kim is returning to active duty to finish out the remainder of his military career within naval aviation training.

“Contributing to space exploration and serving NASA has been the honor of a lifetime,” said Kim. “Throughout my career, I’ve learned that beyond the missions, the training, and the hardware, success always comes down to the people. They are our greatest asset, and leading with love and empathy is how we achieve the impossible. I look forward to carrying my commitment to service, my enduring love for space and technology, and the hard-earned lessons of this past decade into my next chapter to make a meaningful impact on humanity’s future.”

To learn more about NASA’s astronauts and human space exploration, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts

-end-

Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

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Jessica Taveau

APOD: 2026 August 27 – Colorful Aurora over an Icelandic Waterfall

APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Colorful Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall

Explanation: What a sight to behold, when a night sky became filled with colors that appeared to rain over the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. This image was taken in a single 5 second exposure by the photographer in April 2025. Seeing an aurora is on many people’s bucket lists. But it is not easy. It requires high solar activity, dark and clear skies, and usually a viewing location at high latitude. That makes the northern lights more easily seen than the corresponding southern lights, simply because there is less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, especially around the Antarctic Circle. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind that are captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere and guided by the magnetic field to a region close to one of the poles, where they collide with gas particles in the atmosphere. Different colors indicate interactions with different gases at different altitudes, like oxygen (red and green) and nitrogen (blue and pink).

APOD’s main NASA site is moving : From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod
Tomorrow’s picture: What’s next?

Date	August 27, 2026
Credit & Copyright	Victor Lima
Authors & editors:	Cecilia Chirenti, Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Keighley Rockcliffe
A service of:	ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

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Building Foresight for Earth Science, featuring Lindsey Jacobson

NASA’s Earth-observing satellite missions track dozens of features of a changing planet — aerosols, sea levels, land cover, cloud cover — over years and decades. Sustaining that record for the scientific and operational communities who depend on it requires more than engineering talent. It requires planning for an uncertain future: anticipating where a mission delay or on-orbit event might create a gap in the data those communities rely on.

Lindsey Jacobson’s work helps NASA anticipate those disruptions before they happen and gives senior leaders options for managing them.
A Pathways intern in engineering, Jacobson supports NASA’s Earth Science Division through the NASA Earth Science Strategic Integration Environment (NESSIE) team within the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

NASA’s Pathways program connects undergraduate and graduate students with NASA centers through internships that, with satisfactory performance, can lead to full-time civil service positions. Jacobson has returned to NASA Langley every summer since 2022, splitting her time between the center and finishing her mechanical engineering dissertation at North Carolina State University.

“The way we do Earth science is changing.“

The Problem Space

Jacobson and the NESSIE team support the Earth science satellite portfolio — dozens of missions, each measuring specific features of the planet, from clouds to sea surface temperature to land use. The goal is providing end user communities with the data products they depend on. The challenge is the unknown.

“There’s uncertainty about mission lifetimes and what could happen on orbit, and about schedules,” Jacobson explains. The team’s work gives NASA’s senior leadership a way to navigate that uncertainty: understanding where a gap in coverage might emerge and identifying options to mitigate or hedge against it. By providing alternative pathways for meeting end-user needs, this work supports senior leaders in managing a complex, interdependent portfolio.

Writing the Code

Within that effort, Jacobson’s focus is building analysis tools that give the team what she calls a “foresight ability.”

“It’s the ability to anticipate different things that might happen — changes that might occur across the portfolio of Earth-observing missions — and to have strategies in mind for how to respond, so we can keep delivering data to end users,” she says.

Not every change is bad news. Missions sometimes operate well beyond their planned lifespan, creating room to extend their value. But whether an adjustment is welcome or not, the principle is the same: know the options before anything happens.

Jacobson compares it to preparing for hurricane season. “You get the storm shutters, you buy the sandbags, and you have them pre-positioned,” she says. “Then when the warning comes, you’re not scrambling, and you’re not at risk of the store selling out. You already have what you need in place.” NESSIE’s work follows the same logic for the Earth-observing portfolio by understanding ahead of time what a disruption might mean and having a set of responses ready before anything happens.

“We proactively suggest the strategies and alternatives that could be enacted if there’s a change,” Jacobson says. “We do that ahead of time, so people understand what options might exist.”

Her approach carries echoes of her graduate research, which examines how complex systems — infrastructure that can’t simply be torn down and rebuilt, like the electric grid — must evolve deliberately instead. “We designed a grid, and now we live with that grid forever,” she says. “We can’t tear it down and build a new one. What we can do is modify, expand, and improve upon what we have.” It’s the same instinct for working with what exists, rather than starting from scratch, that shapes how she approaches her work at NASA.

Keeping Pace

Engineers arriving at NASA for the first time might expect the hardest part of the job to be technical. Jacobson found something else: the landscape itself is what demands the most adaptability.

“The way we do Earth science is changing,” she says. Commercial companies are increasingly contributing data alongside government agencies. New space agencies are entering the field. Innovative technologies and architectures are emerging all the time. Keeping pace with that shift — understanding how NASA’s own capabilities are evolving and how to best serve the communities that depend on the data — is as much a part of the job as any calculation.

Some of that adaptability shows up in smaller ways too, like the growing role of AI tools in her team’s own workflow. “Langley has done a lot of firsts,” Jacobson says, echoing something she heard recently from Trina Dyal, NASA Langley’s director, at an intern event. “And we want to continue to be the first. That means learning new things and figuring out how to bring them into how we work.”

On Jacobson’s Sci-Fi Shelf

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

Jacobson received this novel in high school, let it sit on her shelf for years, and finally picked it up during the pandemic.

“It was very special. It touches a lot on the meaning of life, and that connects to some of the reasons I was motivated by space in the first place. The idea that space exploration can bring humanity together. That cosmic perspective.”

Part of the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Learn more about our work by visiting our website.

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Sondra Woodward

Roman Space Telescope Travels to SpaceX Hangar

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Roman’s science instruments are designed to help researchers understand dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the universe’s expansion. The observatory also will map how galaxies form, cluster, and evolve by tracing the influence of dark matter. Liftoff from NASA Kennedy is targeted no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.

Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)

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HQ Web Team