| In this week’s newsletter, learn more about the scientific investigations being conducted by NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission during their long-duration expedition aboard the International Space Station; discover how NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may reveal around 100,000 celestial blasts; and register for the annual International Space Apps Challenge—a two-day hackathon where participants can address challenges authored by NASA experts and submit projects for the chance to win one of ten global awards. Plus, more stories you might have missed. |
| HUMANS IN SPACE NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 Science  |
| A host of scientific investigations await the crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission during their long-duration expedition aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, are set to study plant cell division and microgravity’s effects on bacteria-killing viruses, as well as perform experiments to produce a higher volume of human stem cells and generate on-demand nutrients. For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA’s Artemis campaign is underway at the Moon, where the agency is preparing for future human exploration of Mars. BENEFITS FOR HUMANITY |
 | PODCAST Meet the Crew On the latest episode of Houston We Have a Podcast, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 quartet each dive into their paths to space and what lies ahead aboard the International Space Station. LISTEN |
| SCIENCE NASA Space Apps Challenge 2025 Innovators of all ages are invited to register for the NASA Space Apps Challenge, to be held on Oct. 4-5. Over the course of this two-day hackathon, participants will address challenges authored by NASA experts and submit their projects for the chance to win one of the ten global awards. REGISTER |  |
 THE UNIVERSE 100,000 Cosmic Explosions Scientists predict one of the major surveys by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may reveal around 100,000 celestial blasts, ranging from exploding stars to feeding black holes. Roman may even find evidence of some of the universe’s first stars, which are thought to completely self-destruct without leaving any remnant behind. Scheduled to launch by May 2027, Roman will look at billions of cosmic objects to explore how planets, stars, and galaxies form and develop over time LEARN MORE |  SOLAR SYSTEM Mysteries of a Rare Pulsar An international team of astronomers has uncovered new evidence to explain how pulsing remnants of exploded stars interact with surrounding matter deep in the cosmos, using observations from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer and other telescopes. The mysterious cosmic duo is rare and valuable to study because the pulsar transitions clearly between its active state, in which it feeds offits companion star, and a more dormant state, when it emits detectable pulsations as radio waves. LEARN MORE |
| More NASA News |
 | As NASA continues its transition toward a commercial low Earth orbit marketplace, an agency-supported commercial space station, Starlab, recently completed five development and design milestones. |
 | TRACERS, or the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, will fly in low Earth orbit through the polar cusps – funnel-shaped openings in the magnetic field–to study magnetic reconnection and its effects in Earth’s atmosphere. |
 | A baby planet is shrinking from the size of Jupiter with a thick atmosphere to a small, barren world, according to a new study from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. This transformation is happening as the host star unleashes a barrage of X-rays that is tearing the young planet’s atmosphere away at an enormous rate. |
| Do You Know? |
 |
| This weekend we celebrate National Moon Day, commemorating the historic achievement of the first Moon landing on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moonwalk lasted just 2 hours and 31 minutes, during which the astronauts made observations, collected rock samples, took photographs, and deployed scientific experiments. They also left commemorative items on the Moon. |
| Which of these memorial items did the Apollo 11 astronauts NOT leave on the Moon? A. An American flag B. A gold olive branch C. An Apollo 1 mission patch D. A glow-in-the-dark toy car E. A coin-sized disc with goodwill messages from 73 countries |
| Find out the answer in next week’s NASA newsletter! |
 | Last week, we asked what was the first spacecraft to take close-up photos of another planet. The answer? The Mariner 4 spacecraft, which flew by Mars on July 4, 1965. Mariner 4’s 21 grainy black-and-white images—plus a portion of a 22nd—of Mars revealed a barren, cratered terrain, quashing widespread ideas about the presence of vegetation or lost civilizations. It did, however, mark the beginning of NASA’s legacy of Mars exploration, now 60 years old. With orbiters, landers, and rovers, the agency’s understanding of Mars has grown and is paving the way for the first astronauts to set foot on the Red Planet. |
 |
| Do you have a telescope? Would you like to see some of the same night sky objects from the ground that Hubble has seen 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 92 (M92), a globular cluster of stars first discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1777. M92 is one of the brightest globular clusters in the Milky Way—containing roughly 330,000 tightly packed stars—and is visible to the unaided eye under good observing conditions from a dark-sky site. JOIN THE CELEBRATION |
NOTE: This is a NASA publication. Used with permission and formatted to fit this screen.