Artemis III Crew Visits NASA Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building
NASA/Kim Shiflett
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik (left) and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano view progress on the solid rocket booster integration in High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026.
Bresnik, Parmitano, and NASA astronauts Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and Bob Hines made the first visit to Kennedy by the entire crew and backup crew members of the Artemis III mission. Artemis III will launch four crew members aboard the Orion spacecraft to carry out a series of objectives in low Earth orbit designed to demonstrate critical systems needed for future lunar landings, beginning with Artemis IV.
NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation
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NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently observed IC 348, a star-forming region just 1,000 light-years away from Earth. Webb’s sharp vision revealed tiny brown dwarfs, some just twice Jupiter’s mass, and young stars ejecting powerful jets crashing into surrounding gas and dust.
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects into a new mass range and revealing new insights about the star formation process.
The star-forming region IC 348 is located just 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. In regions like IC 348, cold clouds of molecular hydrogen gas collapse to form new stars, creating glowing, sculpted scenes like this one. The star-formation process can create widely varied objects, from massive stars that expire after only a few million years in core-collapse supernova explosions to the smallest and most common stars, which are long lived and produce powerful stellar storms.
IC 348 (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently observed IC 348, a star-forming region just 1,000 light-years away from Earth. Webb’s sharp vision revealed tiny brown dwarfs, some just twice Jupiter’s mass, and young stars ejecting powerful jets crashing into surrounding gas and dust.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
The smallest stars weigh in at around 8 percent of the Sun’s mass. Below this mass lies a strange class of objects called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs form in the same way stars do, through the collapse of molecular clouds. However, unlike stars, the cores of brown dwarfs never become hot enough to fuse ordinary hydrogen into helium (though many briefly fuse deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, early in their lives).
What’s still not clear, and what researchers hoped to learn by using Webb’s sensitive instruments to study IC 348, is how small the smallest objects created by the star-formation process are. In other words, how small is the smallest brown dwarf?
The team used Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) in 2024 to capture the warm glow of young brown dwarfs and newborn stars seen in this new image of IC 348. After selecting candidate brown dwarfs based on their colors and brightness, they followed up with Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) in 2025 to conduct spectroscopic observations to study the masses of the brown dwarfs.
These deep Webb observations revealed something remarkable to the researchers: brown dwarfs with masses as low as just twice the mass of Jupiter or only 0.19 percent of the Sun’s mass — far smaller than theory predicts brown dwarfs should be. These are the least massive brown dwarfs known and their existence poses a challenge to models of how stars form.
In addition to the discovery of these unexpectedly lightweight brown dwarfs, the Webb observations contained even more surprises. One of the lightest newfound brown dwarfs showed signs of a disk, suggesting that small planets could be forming around an object that is itself only the mass of a planet.
While inspecting the spectra of IC 348’s brown dwarfs, the research team also found a feature they attributed to an unidentified hydrocarbon — molecules made only of hydrogen and carbon atoms. This specific feature has only been seen in the atmospheres of the lowest-mass brown dwarfs, suggesting that these extreme objects might exist in a spectral class of their own.
The stars and brown dwarfs of IC 348 aren’t the only attractions in this image. A brilliantly detailed collection of protostars occupies the upper right corner. Several of these protostars are accompanied by Herbig-Haro objects, which are luminous regions that form when jets from growing newborn stars crash into the gas and dust around the star.
The long, narrow feature that is oriented horizontally in this corner is the Herbig-Haro object HH 797. Upon close inspection, this source is revealed to be two protostars with nearly parallel outflows. Just to the right of HH 797 is the propeller-shaped source HH 211, which features both narrow jets and broader outflows.
IC 348 Collage
This collage features a collection of insets from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s image of star-forming region IC 348: embedded stars, a central star cluster, faint outflows, Herbig-Haro objects, gravitational lensing, and spiral galaxies.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
The data used to create this image comes from the Webb General Observer Program 4866. In addition to studying the lowest-mass objects created through the star-formation process, this program also seeks to understand how the populations of planetary-mass objects like brown dwarfs vary between star-forming regions, as well as the origins of the hydrocarbon feature in the lowest-mass brown dwarfs.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
IC 348 (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently observed IC 348, a star-forming region just 1,000 light-years away from Earth. Webb’s sharp vision revealed tiny brown dwarfs, some just twice Jupiter’s mass, and young stars ejecting powerful jets crashing into surrounding gas and dust.
IC 348 Collage
This collage features a collection of insets from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s image of star-forming region IC 348: embedded stars, a central star cluster, faint outflows, Herbig-Haro objects, gravitational lensing, and spiral galaxies.
APOD: 2026 September 15 – A Daytime Eclipse: Moon Occults Venus
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.
A Daytime Eclipse: Moon Occults Venus
There was something behind the clouds. Upon close inspection, it was the Moon, which was hard to see yesterday around noon above the small village of Cessy, France. But soon, it was not only the Moon. As expected, a bright dot suddenly appeared from behind the Moon — the planet Venus far in the distance. Captured in the single featured exposure, both appeared to show a crescent phase. The Moon’s crescent was quite slight — with only about 10 percent of its face illuminated by the Sun. In contrast, Venus’s crescent was more full — showing about 25 percent illumination. Venus appeared brighter because it is nearer the Sun and because its clouds are more reflective than the dark lunar surface. An occultation of Venus by the Moon is visible to only about 10 percent of the Earth, but in yesterday’s event even most of that was experiencing daytime.
NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program is a science‑enabling program that provides licensed access to high‑quality commercial Earth observation data, strengthens data quality through calibration/validation (cal/val) partnerships and transparent evaluations, and funds the development of science and application use cases to help turn commercial data into actionable research and applied solutions.
The program augments NASA’s gold standard fleet of freely and openly available Earth observing satellite observations and data products with high-resolution, high-frequency, and taskable commercial datasets.
During this webinar, speakers will provide an overview of the CSDA program’s activities and progress. Topics will include data modalities available through the program, updates to the evaluation process, the new cal/val initiative, and the status of existing task orders with CSDA data providers. In addition, presenters will cover the types of end-user licensing agreements, data availability and access, new data archive and tasking capabilities available through the Satellite Data Explorer, user engagement opportunities, and new learning resources.
New Crops, Health Research Proposals to Help NASA Advance Exploration
NASA has selected 12 new investigations to help support human explorers in space. Six will help advance the ability to produce food off-planet, while another six advance the understanding of how unique conditions associated with space exploration can impact the health and physiology of astronauts.
The six food-focused investigations, supported by the agency’s Space Crops grants, advance NASA’s goal of harnessing the power of plants to enhance quality of life for humans in space, as well as to enable lunar and Mars exploration. Four of the space crops proposals focus on studies of edible plants and how their growth, physiology, and associated microbial communities are affected by environmental conditions in space or on other planetary bodies.
Another proposal involves understanding mechanisms by which certain plant species, called resurrection plants, can withstand extreme, dry conditions. The last space crops proposal builds on previous studies on the International Space Station to uncover functions of algal genes, segments of DNA controlling algae survival, whose expression is modified by spaceflight. Such studies can help scientists integrate biological-based solutions into space life-support systems.
The second set of six proposals fall under the agency’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division’s focus on precision health, which seeks to unravel the mechanisms by which space exploration affects health and well-being. One proposal studies how lunar dust exposure impacts respiratory, immune, and inflammation responses. A second proposal identifies repurposed drugs that can mitigate the effects space travel has on health and physiology.
Two more of the research proposals look at how radiation combined with other stressors affects age-relevant characteristics seen in various organ and physiological systems. The final two proposals assess molecular and cellular changes induced by stressors in space that can alter gene expression or protein function. The research will identify ways to mitigate health issues and develop early-warning detection systems to notify crew of potential concerns.
The principal investigators who conduct the space biology studies come from 10 institutions across eight states. Nine of the awards are for investigators who are receiving funding from the Space Biology Program for the first time.
Selected Space Crops Investigations
Jannell Bazurto, University of Minnesota Cultivating the Cosmos: Investigating Plant-Microbe Dynamics for Sustainable Space Farming
Miranda Haus, Michigan State University Investigating Legume Crop Rotations and Microbial Interactions in Regolith Simulants
Andrew Settles, NASA Ames Research Center Genetic Mitigation of Spaceflight Stressors on Production of Chlamydomonas
Christopher Taylor, Ohio State University Hydroponic Microbes in a Low Carbon, High-Radiation Environment; Identifying the Genetic Determinants of Water- and Plant-Associated Microbial Survival in Extraterrestrial Environments
Robert VanBuren, Michigan State University Leveraging the Natural Resilience of Resurrection Plants for Space Bioregenerative Systems
Shuyang Zhen, Texas A&M AgriLife Research Environmental Optimization and Cultivar Selection to Enhance Dwarf Tomato Growth and Stress Tolerance for Space Agriculture
Selected Precision Health Investigations
Archana Dhasarathy, University of North Dakota Epigenetic Memory as an Adaptive Mechanism to Microgravity and Radiation Exposure
Andrij Holian, University of Montana Contribution of Aging to Particle-Induced Chronic Inflammation
Mert Gur, University of Pittsburgh Probing Pathogenic Mutations Under Spaceflight-Relevant Stressors Via All-Atom Molecular Dynamics Simulations
Grace O’Connell, University of California Persistent Spine Health Impacts of Microgravity and Radiation Following Recovery
Satoshi Okawa, University of Pittsburgh Investigating Space Flight-Induced Brain-Heart Axis Aging and Identifying Repurposed Drugs to Mitigate Its Effects
Sanghee Yun, Ph.D., The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Spaceflight-Relevant Hypercapnia Effects on Space Radiation- and Social Isolation-Induced Biological Aging: A Systems Biology Analysis of Multiple Aging Hallmarks
When fully implemented, more than $7 million in grant money will be awarded throughout fiscal years 2026-2030. These awards were made in response to research proposals submitted to ROSES-2024: Program Element E.9: Space Biology Research Studies (NNH24ZDA001N-SBR).
NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomenon under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefitting life on Earth.
