NASA and industry partners will fly and operate a commercial robotic arm in low Earth orbit through the Fly Foundational Robots mission set to launch in late 2027. This mission aims to revolutionize in-space operations, a critical capability for sustainably living and working on other planets. By enabling this technology demonstration, NASA is fostering the […]
Category: Space Technology Mission Directorate
NASA’s Fly Foundational Robots Demo to Bolster In-Space Infrastructure
NASA and industry partners will fly and operate a commercial robotic arm in low Earth orbit through the Fly Foundational Robots mission set to launch in late 2027. This mission aims to revolutionize in-space operations, a critical capability for sustainably living and working on other planets. By enabling this technology demonstration, NASA is fostering the […]
Lunar Challenge Winner Tests Technology in NASA Thermal Vacuum Chamber
By Savannah Bullard One year after winning second place in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business Starpath visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber. The […]
NASA Awards Company to Attempt Swift Spacecraft Orbit Boost
Driving rapid innovation in the American space industry, NASA has awarded Katalyst Space Technologies of Flagstaff, Arizona, a contract to raise a spacecraft’s orbit. Katalyst’s robotic servicing spacecraft will rendezvous with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and raise it to a higher altitude, demonstrating a key capability for the future of space exploration and extending […]
NASA Lab Builds New Aircraft to Support Complex Flight Research
NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is building a new subscale aircraft to support increasingly complex flight research, offering a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to crewed missions. The aircraft is being built by Justin Hall, chief pilot at NASA Armstrong’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory, and Justin Link, a small uncrewed […]
NASA’s Deep Space Communications Demo Exceeds Project Expectations
The project has exceeded all of its technical goals after two years, setting up the foundations of high-speed communications for NASA’s future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology successfully showed that data encoded in lasers could be reliably transmitted, received, and decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth at distances […]
NSTGRO 2025
NSTGRO Homepage Andrew ArendsUniversity of California, DavisAstronaut-Powered Laundry Machine Allan AttiaStanford UniversityComputational Modeling of Lithium Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Michael AuthUniversity of California, Santa BarbaraNon-Contact, Real-Time Diagnostics of Battery Aging in 18650 Cells During the Lunar Night Using Acoustic Spectroscopy Nicholas BrennanCornell UniversitySpin Wave-Based Neuromorphic Coprocessor for Advanced AI Applications John CarterPurdue UniversitySpectroscopic […]
Acting NASA Administrator Duffy Selects Exploration-Focused Associate Administrator
Acting NASA Administrator Sean P. Duffy Wednesday named Amit Kshatriya as the new associate administrator of NASA, the agency’s top civil service role. A 20-year NASA veteran, Kshatriya was most recently the deputy in charge of the Moon to Mars Program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. In […]
Advancing Single-Photon Sensing Image Sensors to Enable the Search for Life Beyond Earth
Advancing Single-Photon Sensing Image Sensors to Enable the Search for Life Beyond Earth A NASA-sponsored team is advancing single-photon sensing Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) detector technology that will enable future NASA astrophysics space missions to search for life on other planets. As part of their detector maturation program, the team is characterizing sensors before, during, and […]
Strap In! NASA Aeroshell Material Takes Extended Space Trip
Components of a NASA technology that could one day help crew and cargo enter harsh planetary environments, like that of Mars, are taking an extended trip to space courtesy of the United States Space Force. On Aug. 21, several pieces of webbing material, known as Zylon, which comprise the straps of the HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable […]