Science

A collection of 703 posts

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NASA opens HBISS seminar series to public and OSDR-AWG in April 2025

NASA’s HBISS (Horizons in Biosciences & Informatics Seminar Series) is a monthly seminar series that ran internally from March 2022 through February 2025 and was opened to the public and the broader Open Science Data Repository’s Analysis Working Group (OSDR-AWG) beginning in April 2025. The series is intended

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Expedition 74 installs CubeSats, photographs Earth aboard the ISS

Expedition 74 crewmembers aboard the International Space Station on Thursday focused on installing CubeSats and photographing Earth, with a three-person team from NASA and Roscosmos maintaining ongoing research and routine station upkeep. NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams spent his shift inside the Kibo laboratory module loading a small satellite orbital

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Svalbard polar bears gaining weight as sea ice recedes, study finds

A study published on Jan. 29, 2026, in the journal Scientific Reports found that polar bears in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago have gained weight over the past 27 years even as surrounding sea ice has declined. Researchers compared a body condition index — a measurement of weight and fat content — with

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Galileo data reveal ammonia-bearing compounds on Europa

A recent reanalysis of data from NASA’s Galileo mission has identified ammonia-bearing compounds on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, a new paper reports. The results come from Galileo’s Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer observations made between 1995 and 2003 and were reported by researcher Al Emran of NASA’

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Total lunar eclipse will redden the Moon on March 3, 2026

A total lunar eclipse will redden the Moon on March 3, 2026. Totality will be visible in the evening from eastern Asia and Australia, throughout the night in the Pacific, and in the early morning in North and Central America and far western South America; the eclipse will be partial

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NASA: La Niña limited global sea level rise in 2025

According to a NASA analysis, a mild La Niña limited the rise in global mean sea level in 2025, with the average ocean height increasing 0.03 inches (0.08 centimeters) in 2025, down from 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) in 2024. The analysis says La Niña brought greater

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Endangered guthega skink Omeo due to give birth after release in Victoria

Eleven endangered guthega skinks released into a gated enclosure in Victoria’s Alpine National Park could soon become 13, with a female known as Omeo due to give birth in March, the conservation project says. One of Australia’s only alpine lizards, guthega skinks live on "sky islands"

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Waxing Gibbous on Jan. 29, 2025 — 85% of the Moon illuminated

As of Thursday, Jan. 29, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous; according to NASA's Daily Moon Guide, 85% of the Moon will be lit tonight. We're only days away from the Full Moon now, so when we look up there is plenty to see. You don&

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NASA completes assembly of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Technicians completed construction of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope when they joined the observatory’s two major segments on November 25, 2025. The mission is slated to launch no later than May 2027, with teams working toward a launch as early as fall 2026, and the observatory will

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West faces snow drought as January snow cover hits record low

NASA Earth Observatory reported that mountains across the western United States had unusually low snowpack in early 2026: a MODIS/Terra image from January 15 showed snow covering 142,700 square miles (369,700 square kilometers), the lowest coverage for that date in the MODIS record (since 2001) and less

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Robotics, AI and launch opportunities highlight research aboard International Space Station

Robotics and artificial intelligence were back on the research schedule Wednesday aboard the International Space Station, where Expedition 74 crew members ran student robotics challenges, conducted Earth observations and performed life-support maintenance. NASA said the earliest opportunity for the SpaceX Crew-12 launch to the station is 6 a.m. EST

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NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 begins two-week quarantine ahead of Feb. launch window

The four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission began a routine two-week quarantine Wednesday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston ahead of their upcoming launch to the International Space Station. The earliest opportunity for Crew-12 to launch is 6 a.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 11, from

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Craig R. Ferguson serves as NASA Earth Science hydrosphere program manager

Dr. Craig R. Ferguson serves as program manager for NASA’s Earth Science Division Research Element Hydrosphere program and holds several additional NASA roles; he joined NASA in March 2024. He is project scientist for the Integrated Modeling Virtual Institute Scientific Computing program and Earth Science Division co-lead for High-End

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I watched the Challenger disaster from Mission Control

Steven Vaughan-Nichols says he was inside Mission Control at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for the Challenger launch on Jan. 28, 1986, working in data communications to keep telemetry links between the shuttle and NASA's ground system operational. He recalls that telemetry indicators were all green

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Wan Wu, NASA Langley researcher in atmospheric remote sensing

Dr. Wan Wu received his PhD of Physics from the University of Florida in 2007 and has been with NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) since then, first as a contractor engineer/scientist and later as a civil servant in the Science Directorate, the NASA page says. The NASA biography

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NASA’s Arcstone Completes Technology Demonstration, Begins Extended Operations

NASA’s Arcstone instrument successfully completed its technology demonstration and now begins extended operations. Arcstone launched June 23 on a SpaceX Transporter-14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a six-month mission to measure light reflected by the Moon. The mission is led by NASA’s Langley Research Center

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Scientists ready to drill on Thwaites Glacier as fierce winds delay work

On Tuesday, a week after scientists from Britain and South Korea pitched tents on Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, the 10-member team said they were ready to begin a multiday drilling operation into the half-mile-deep ice, the culmination of an eight-week voyage of the icebreaker Araon that, if successful, would allow

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Networks keeping NASA’s Artemis II mission connected around the Moon

NASA’s Artemis II mission will carry four astronauts around the Moon, and the agency is relying on its Near Space Network and Deep Space Network to carry voice, images, video and mission data during launch, translunar cruise, lunar orbit and return, under oversight by the agency’s SCaN (Space

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DeepMind unveils AlphaGenome to predict effects across thousands of genes

Google DeepMind researchers on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, published AlphaGenome in the journal Nature, saying the A.I. was trained on a vast set of molecular data to make predictions about thousands of genes, including whether mutations can shut genes off or turn them on at the wrong time. The

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Webb confirms galaxy MoM-z14 280 million years after Big Bang

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed a bright galaxy named MoM-z14 as it appeared about 280 million years after the big bang, measuring a cosmological redshift of 14.44 with Webb’s NIRSpec instrument. The result is described in a paper led by Rohan Naidu of MIT published

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Scientists warn online isopod trade is driving poaching of rare species

Scientists are warning that a robust, largely unregulated online trade in isopods — small crustaceans often kept as pets — is driving poaching of rare species, according to a New York Times report published Jan. 28, 2026. Collectors at a pet expo in White Plains, N.Y., paid hundreds of dollars for

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NASA posts Widely Attended Gatherings determinations listing events and dates

NASA published Widely Attended Gatherings (WAGs) determinations that list specific events and dates, including Leaders for a Better Louisiana at Adams and Reese (1.28.26), California Manufacturers and Technology Association Reception (1.23.26), Goddard Memorial Dinner (3.13.26) and the ISS 25th Anniversary (1.19.26). The

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Pillbug trade online fuels poaching of rare isopods, scientists warn

Researchers warn that a robust, largely unregulated online trade in isopods — small terrestrial crustaceans also called pillbugs or roly-polies — is driving poaching and could threaten vulnerable species, the New York Times reported Jan. 28, 2026. At a recent pet expo in White Plains, N.Y., collectors were selling Cuban Spiky

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How to view NASA’s Artemis II moon launch from Florida’s Space Coast

NASA is preparing to send four astronauts on the Artemis II lunar flyby, the first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years, from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; the mission could launch as early as Feb. 6, according to The New York

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Webb data used to map dark matter across a 0.54 sq. degree field in Sextans

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed a 0.54 square degree region in the constellation Sextans and, using those data, researchers produced a dark matter map overlaid on an image containing nearly 800,000 galaxies. The map shows dark matter in blue, with brighter blue indicating higher dark matter