| In this week’s newsletter, explore when and where to watch NASA’s integrated SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission as they make their multi‑hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; discover how to take part in the Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, a new global competition inviting chefs, innovators, culinary experts, higher‑education students, and citizen scientists to design a complete, Earth‑independent food system for long‑duration space missions; and get updates on the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew‑11, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), and the Pandora space telescope satellite. Plus, more stories you might have missed. |
| ARTEMIS Artemis II Rollout: How to Watch  |
| NASA’s integrated SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission are inching closer to launch. The agency is targeting no earlier than 7 a.m. EST, Saturday, Jan. 17, to begin the multi-hour trek from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 will carry the 11-million-pound stack at about one mile per hour along the four-mile route from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B, on a journey that will take up to 12 hours. Rollout to the pad marks another milestone leading up to the Artemis II mission. In the coming weeks, NASA will complete final preparations of the rocket and, if needed, roll back SLS and Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building for additional work. While the Artemis II launch window opens as early as Friday, Feb. 6, the mission management team will assess flight readiness after the wet dress rehearsal across the spacecraft, launch infrastructure, and the crew and operations teams before selecting a launch date. COVERAGE DETAILS |
 | TECHNOLOGY Mars to Table NASA is launching the Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, a new global competition inviting chefs, innovators, culinary experts, higher-education students, and citizen scientists to design a complete, Earth-independent food system for long-duration space missions. DEEP SPACE FOOD CHALLENGE |
| THE UNIVERSE The Heart of Circinus The Circinus Galaxy, located about 13 million light‑years away, hosts an active supermassive black hole that continues to shape its evolution. Scientists once believed that the strongest source of infrared light near the black hole came from outflows—streams of superheated matter blasting outward. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope challenge that view, revealing that most of the hot, dusty material is actually flowing inward and feeding the central black hole. AN UNPRECEDENTED LOOK |  |
 THE UNIVERSE Stars Flaring to Life As part of an effort to better understand the gas-and-dust envelopes surrounding protostars, scientists are using new Hubble Space Telescope images to study protostellar envelopes—the gas and dust around a developing star. LEARN MORE |  EARTH Fire on Ice Wildland fires in the Arctic are becoming more frequent, and they are burning larger, hotter, and longer than in previous decades, according to NASA researchers. These changes are closely linked to the region’s rapidly warming climate, which is heating nearly four times faster than the global average, directly impacting rainfall and snowfall patterns and reducing soil moisture—conditions that make the landscape more prone to burning. LEARN MORE |
| More NASA News |
 | NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission safely splashed down early Thursday morning in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, concluding a more than five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. During their 167-day mission, the four crew members traveled nearly 71 million miles and completed more than 2,670 orbits around Earth. |
 | On Tuesday, NASA, along with the U.S. Department of Energy, announced a renewed commitment to their longstanding partnership to support the research and development of a fission surface power system for use on the Moon under the Artemis campaign and future NASA missions to Mars. |
 | Portugal is the latest nation to sign the Artemis Accords alongside 59 other countries in a commitment to advancing principles for the responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond with NASA. Portugal’s Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, Helena Canhão, signed the accords on behalf of the country on Jan. 11. |
 | On Jan. 10, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, reached its destination at Lagrange point 1—a gravitationally stable spot approximately one million miles from Earth toward the Sun. IMAP will explore and map the very boundaries of our heliosphere—the protective bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our entire solar system—and study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond. |
 | The Pandora space telescope satellite and NASA-sponsored BlackCAT and SPARCS missions lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 8:44 a.m. EST on Jan. 11, with mission controllers receiving full acquisition of signal from the small satellite on the first ground pass after liftoff. Pandora is designed to characterize exoplanet atmospheres and their host stars and is slated to observe at least 20 different planets. |
| Do You Know? |
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| Twenty years ago on Jan. 19, 2006, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft launched into space to begin its journey to Pluto. That same year on Aug. 24, Pluto was reclassified by the International Astronomical Union as a dwarf planet. |
| Find out the answer in next week’s NASA newsletter! |
 | Last week, we asked what gave the space shuttle’s external tank its distinctive orange color. The answer? It was covered with an orange spray-on foam insulation to keep its cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants cold. For the first two Shuttle missions, white paint was applied on top of the foam. After STS-2, NASA left the external tank unpainted, cutting down the weight of the shuttle by about 600 pounds. Bonus trivia: the core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System that will launch the Artemis II mission to the Moon is covered with a similar orange spray-on insulation. |
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| This year, four astronauts will fly around the Moon and back—and NASA’s Curious Universe podcast is taking you along for the journey. In the first episode of our Artemis II series, Meet the Moonbound Astronauts, get to know the crew daring to forge new frontiers in space on behalf of all of humanity: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Four astronauts will venture around the Moon on Artemis II, the first crewed mission on NASA’s path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration through Artemis. The 10-day flight will help confirm systems and hardware needed for early human lunar exploration missions. RETURN TO THE MOON |
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