| In this week’s newsletter, get all the details on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts return to Earth from the International Space Station; find out how the Euclid space telescope will investigate our universe’s accelerated expansion rate; and dive into one of the most detailed maps yet of the ocean floor. Plus, more stories you might have missed. |
| HUMANS IN SPACE NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Back on Earth  |
| NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, splashed down off the coast of Florida, near Tallahassee, at 5:57 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, March 18. Hague and Gorbunov lifted off at 1:17 p.m. Sept. 28, 2024, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Williams and Wilmore launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5, 2024, from Space Launch Complex 41 as part of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. In August, NASA announced the uncrewed return of Starliner to Earth and integrated Wilmore and Williams as part of the space station’s Expedition 71/72 for a return on Crew-9. The crew of four undocked at 1:05 a.m. Tuesday to begin the trip home. Williams and Wilmore traveled 121,347,491 miles during their mission, spent 286 days in space, and completed 4,576 orbits around Earth. Hague and Gorbunov traveled 72,553,920 miles during their mission, spent 171 days in space, and completed 2,736 orbits around Earth. MISSION BLOG |
 | HUMANS IN SPACE NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Scientific Milestones As orbital residents of Expedition 72, Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore completed more than 900 hours of research on more than 150 scientific experiments. From pharmaceutical manufacturingto advanced life support systems, and genetic sequencing in microgravity to safe and nutritious food production and more, see how the crew’s efforts benefit humans on and off the Earth. MISSION SCIENCE |
| THE UNIVERSE Looking Back in Time The Euclid space telescope—a mission led by the European Space Agency with contributions from NASA—aims to find out why our universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. BENDING AND WARPING |  |
 COMMERCIAL SPACEBlue Ghost Mission 1 Concludes After landing on the Moon Sunday, March 2, with NASA science and technology onboard, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 concluded its mission on Sunday, March 16. All 10 NASA technologies successfully activated, collected data, and performed operations on the Moon. The data captured will provide insights into the lunar environment, as well as how space weather and other cosmic forces may impact Earth. LEARN MORE |  EARTHExploring Sun-Earth Interaction Launched Friday, March 14, the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer mission’s trio of small satellites will fly approximately 260-370 miles above Earth’s surface to map auroral electrojets—powerful electric currents that flow through Earth’s upper atmosphere in the polar regions where auroras glow in the sky. Each spacecraft will map the electrojets, advancing our understanding of the physics of how Earth interacts with its surrounding space. LEARN MORE |
| More NASA News |
 | Although the Lucy spacecraft’s upcoming encounter with the asteroid Donaldjohanson is primarily a mission rehearsal for later asteroid encounters, new research published in The Planetary Science Journal suggests that this small, main belt asteroid may have some surprises of its own. |
 | NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Wānaka, New Zealand, for two scheduled flights to test and qualify the agency’s super-pressure balloon technology. These stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloons will travel the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes for planned missions of 100 days. |
 | The James Webb Space Telescope has provided the clearest look yet at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. The observations detected carbon dioxide in each of the planets, providing strong evidence that the system’s four giant planets formed by slowly building solid cores that attract gas from within a protoplanetary disk. |
 | Do you know there are better maps of the Moon’s surface than of the bottom of Earth’s ocean? Researchers have been working for decades to change that. As part of the ongoing effort, a NASA-supported team recently published one of the most detailed maps yet of the ocean floor, using data from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite, a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales. |
 | Where California’s towering Sierra Nevada mountain range surrenders to the sprawling San Joaquin Valley, a high-stakes detective story is unfolding. The culprit isn’t a person but a process: the mysterious journey of snowmelt as it travels underground to replenish depleted groundwater reserves. The investigator is a NASA jet with radar technology that could unlock solutions to one of the American West’s most pressing water challenges—preventing groundwater supplies from running dry. |
| Do You Know? |
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| This weekend, NASA celebrates the 60th anniversary of Gemini III, the mission where astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young flew the Gemini spacecraft to space for the first time. The Gemini missions were vital to build the knowledge and hardware needed to send the first humans to the Moon in 1969. One of the notable incidents of the Gemini III mission was that pilot John Young brought an unsanctioned food item with him in the pocket of his spacesuit. |
| What was in John Young’s pocket during the Gemini III launch on March 23, 1965? A. A chocolate bar B. A corned beef sandwich C. A few slices of pot roast D. A peanut butter sandwich |
| Find out the answer in next week’s edition of the NASA newsletter! |
 | Last week we asked, what did Linda Morabito, an astronomer and navigation engineer, notice in one of the images returned by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in March of 1979. The answer? A volcanic plume erupting on Io! Three days after Voyager 1’s closest encounter with Jupiter, this image it took of Io—one of Jupiter’s moons—caught Morabito’s attention. In the image, a volcanic plume extends in a crescent shape 150 miles above the moon’s surface, marking the first time active volcanism was detected on a world other than Earth. |
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| Do you have a telescope? Would you like to see some of the same night sky objects from the ground that Hubble has from space? We invite you to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th anniversary by accepting our yearlong stargazing challenge! New challenge objects will be featured weekly. This week’s object is Messier 67, a collection of over 500 stars that are loosely gravitationally bound, a grouping known as an open cluster. Messier 67 is home to approximately 30 “blue stragglers”— odd stars that are brighter and bluer than the population from which they formed, perhaps as the result of pulling material from a binary companion. M67 was first recorded by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779, then rediscovered and identified as a collection of stars by Charles Messier a year later. It resides about 2,800 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. JOIN THE CELEBRATION |
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