| In this week’s newsletter, discover the Moon Mascot designs that could fly with the Artemis II mission’s crew around the Moon and back in 2026; find out where and when to watch this weekend’s launch of NASA’s SpaceX CRS-33 commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station; and hear how scientists are turning space data into sounds. Plus, more stories you might have missed. |
| ARTEMIS Moon Mascot Finalists Announced  |
| NASA is down to 25 finalists for the Artemis II zero gravity indicator set to fly with the mission’s crew around the Moon and back next year. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch of NASA, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will soon select one of the finalist designs to join them inside the Orion spacecraft as their Moon mascot. A zero gravity indicator is a small plush item that typically rides with a crew to visually indicate when they are in space. Artemis II will mark the first time that the public has had a hand in creating the crew’s mascot. These designs—ideas spanning from Moon-related twists on earthy creatures to creative visions of exploration and discovery—were selected from more than 2,600 submissions from over 50 countries, including from K-12 students. The finalists represent 10 countries, including the United States, Canada, Colombia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Peru, Singapore, and Wales. VIEW FINALISTS |
 | HUMANS IN SPACE Science Launching NASA and SpaceX are targeting 2:45 a.m. EDT, Sunday, Aug. 24, for the next launch to deliver science investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. In addition to food, supplies, and equipment for the crew, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will deliver several experiments, including bone-forming stem cells for studying bone loss prevention and materials to 3D print medical implants that could advance treatments for nerve damage on Earth. Live launch and arrival coverage will stream on NASA+, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. LIVE COVERAGE SCHEDULE |
| HUMANS IN SPACE 2025 Astronaut Candidates After evaluating more than 8,000 applications, NASA will debut its 2025 class of astronaut candidates during a ceremony at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 22. The selected candidates will undergo nearly two years of training before they graduate as flight-eligible astronauts for agency missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and ultimately, Mars. LIVE COVERAGE SCHEDULE |  |
 SCIENCE Complex Origins Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2020, is a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment. These insights come from a trio of newly published papers based on the analysis of Bennu samples by scientists at NASA and other institutions. LEARN MORE |  THE UNIVERSE Hand in Hand In 2009, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory released a captivating image: a pulsar and its surrounding nebula that is shaped like a hand. Since then, astronomers have used Chandra and other telescopes to continue to observe this object. Now, new radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array has been combined with Chandra’s X-ray data to provide a fresh view of this exploded star and its environment to help understand its peculiar properties and shape. LEARN MORE |
| More NASA News |
 | The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past. |
 | From black holes to star clusters, scientists are turning space data into sounds with a process called sonification. In the latest episode of the Small Steps, Giant Leaps podcast, Dr. Kimberly Arcand, a visual scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explains how data sonification lets more people experience the cosmos and provides researchers a new way to interpret science. |
 | NASA is turning up the heat in solar science with the launch of the Surya Heliophysics Foundational Model, an artificial intelligence model trained on nine years of observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Developed by the agency in partnership with IBM and others, Surya uses advances in AI to analyze vast amounts of solar data, helping scientists better understand solar eruptions and predict space weather that threatens satellites, power grids, and communication systems. |
 | Headed for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche spacecraft recently looked back toward home and captured images of Earth and our Moon from about 180 million miles away. On July 20 and 23, the spacecraft’s twin cameras captured multiple long-exposure pictures of the two bodies, which appear as dots sparkling with reflected sunlight amid a starfield in the constellation Aries. |
 | Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by the Southwest Research Institute has identified a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet’s known satellite family to 29. |
| ARTEMIS Flight Training for Moon Landing In the mountains of northern Colorado, NASA and the U.S. Army National Guard are using military helicopters to develop a foundational lunar lander simulated flight training course to help astronauts practice flight and landing procedures for the Moon. “NASA is using a three-pronged approach with motion-based simulation, in-flight lunar landing analog training, and in-flight lunar simulation to build out its foundational training for Artemis Moon landings,” said NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock, who helped coordinate the training program. “Helicopters at or above 10,000 feet are not really efficient in the thin air, forcing us into operating with very thin power margins similar to the Apollo astronauts having to manage energy and momentum to land safely. |  The operations along with the terrain at the HAATS (High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site) in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains provide a valuable, real-world opportunity for Artemis astronauts to practice flying and landing in conditions similar to maneuvering a lander in the lunar environment.”LEARN MORE |
| Do You Know? |
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| 36 years ago this week, Voyager 2 became the first—and only—spacecraft to visit the most distant major planet in our solar system, Neptune. |
| Which of these did Voyager 2 not get images of during its flyby of Neptune? A. The moon Larissa B. Auroras C. Rings D. The Great Dark Spot E. Active geysers on the moon Triton |
| Find out the answer in next week’s NASA newsletter! |
 | Last week, we asked what the name of NASA’s first mission to land a spacecraft on Mars was. The answer? Viking 1. The Viking 1 lander lifted off from Cape Canaveral on August 20, 1975, and entered into Mars orbit 10 months later. On July 20, 1976—the 7th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing—the lander successfully made a soft landing on Mars and transmitted the first photo from the planet’s surface. |
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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 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 11 (M11), one of the few open star clusters in the Messier catalog that has been observed by Hubble. Also known as the Wild Duck Cluster for the roughly V-shaped arrangement of its brightest stars, M11 was discovered by the German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1681. It is located 6,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scutum. Containing over 2,900 stars, it appears as a triangular patch of light through a pair of binoculars. JOIN THE CELEBRATION |
NOTE: This is a NASA publication. Used with permission and formatted to fit this screen.
Look at that! Finally newly published posts and articles are now once again showing up here in the Recent section of the reader. It’s been about a month a half of no posts from me here due to a major hardware and software migration I performed which at the end uncovered all the band aids put in place to have my LAMP stack play nice with the WordPress.Com Reader site.. It was a month long battle with shots fired on both sides (I’m a systems engineer with lots of virtual ammo) but finally things are working the way they should. This may be overstating it but it’s a little slice of heaven to finally see my articles and posts back in here as it’s the first section I visit daily to put in my likes, respond to replies, reply to various posts, and just give general shouts out. A huge thank you to the Jetpack folks as well for doing some of the heavy lifting diagnostic wise on their end to feed me accurate information which I could translate to fixes on my side. I’m pretty happy right now. 😉
Dear Zetta ,
My whole day’s drudgery is forgotten when I read your post.
Thanks for liking my post ‘SilenceTwo’. 🙏
Same, I’m always happy to see your posts as well. Thanks again friend.