Category: Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA’s IXPE May Have Proven 90-Year-Old Theory

A first of its kind measurement of a magnetar may have captured empty space behaving in a way physicists have predicted for 90 years, but never directly observed. The results published Wednesday in Nature. Fast facts Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E […]

NASA Provides Updates on Moon Base Cargo Landers, Tech Demonstrations

NASA is making progress in building the Moon Base, which will become a resilient outpost near the Moon’s South Pole for science, technology, and eventual human operations. To advance lunar surface infrastructure development, commercial partners such as Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, and Voyager Lunar Systems are working toward delivering landers by 2028. These […]

NASA Provides Updates on Moon Base Cargo Landers, Tech Demonstrations

NASA is making progress in building the Moon Base, which will become a resilient outpost near the Moon’s South Pole for science, technology, and eventual human operations. To advance lunar surface infrastructure development, commercial partners such as Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, and Voyager Lunar Systems are working toward delivering landers by 2028. These […]

NASA, SpaceX Advance Wind Tunnel Tests for Starship Rocket 

NASA and its industry partners are preparing for next year’s Artemis III demonstration mission by completing new wind tunnel tests on SpaceX’s Super Heavy Version 3 rocket booster. The tests, conducted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, focused on better understanding the extreme aerodynamic forces the rocket can experience during re-entry. The […]

How NASA’s Artemis III Lander Test Will Pave Way for Moon Landings

Before Artemis astronauts land on the Moon’s surface in 2028, NASA will conduct the Artemis III demonstration mission in 2027, allowing teams on Earth and in orbit to practice rendezvous and docking operations between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft. Data from that mission, along with future uncrewed demonstration missions at the Moon, […]

NASA Space Telescope Maps Magnetic Fields of ‘Lighthouse’ Pulsar

For the first time, scientists have used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) to directly measure the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the Lighthouse Nebula. The results provide new insight into the structure of some of the most extreme objects in the cosmos, as NASA […]

NASA’s Chandra Examines Milky Way at Arms’ Length

A new result using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows that the outer spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy may reach wider than previously thought. This finding may lead astronomers to adjust their understanding of our home galaxy’s structure. A team of astronomers made this discovery by making precise measurements of distances to dust clouds […]

NASA Announces Winners for 2026 Human Lander Challenge

NASA has announced the top student-developed solutions for environmental control and life support systems in future crewed lunar landers from participants in the 2026 Human Lander Challenge. The announcement marks the culmination of months of research by university teams working to advance technologies supporting the agency’s Artemis program that will return American astronauts to the […]