Artemis Moon Tree Dedicated in Honor of Mary W. Jackson
Sign installed next to the planted Artemis Moon Tree.
Credit: NASA
On March 18, 2026, students, staff, and members of NASA’s Langley Research Center gathered at Mary W. Jackson Elementary School in Hampton to celebrate the dedication of a remarkable addition to the campus – an Artemis Moon Tree. Although formally dedicated on this day, the loblolly pine had already taken root months earlier, having been planted on November 21st, 2025, by students and staff.
NASA eClips educators from the National Institute of Aerospace’s Center for Integrative STEM Education (NIA-CISE) applied for and received the Artemis Moon Tree through NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement. NASA eClips, part of NASA’s Science Activation Program, strives to deepen science literacy by engaging learners and educators in experiences and standards-aligned resources grounded in NASA science.
The tree’s journey is as extraordinary as its setting. The seed orbited the Moon in 2022 as part of the Artemis I before returning to Earth, where it was nurtured into a sapling by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. In late spring 2025, it arrived in Hampton and was cared for by NASA eClips educators at NIA-CISE until it could be planted by third- through fifth-grade students at Mary W. Jackson Elementary School. The planting site was chosen to honor the legacy of Mary W. Jackson, NASA’s first Black female engineer.
In addition to recognizing current and former members of NASA Langley Research Center in attendance, the ceremony highlighted the collaboration that brought the project to life. A short video showcased the teamwork behind the tree’s planting, reflecting the coordination essential to NASA missions. Students worked in groups – Earth Excavators, Compost Crew, Mulch Movers, and Water Brigade – to carefully plant the tree. Fifth-grader Caiden captured the experience best: “My job was putting soil around the tree, and at first, it seemed like a small task, but I realized it was actually one of the most important parts. The soil is what helps the tree stand strong and grow over time. It made me think about how, in life, the little things we do – like helping others, staying consistent, and doing our part – can make a big difference. Just like this tree came from a seed that traveled around the moon, we all have the potential to go far and do amazing things, but we need a strong foundation to grow…I’m proud that I helped give this tree its start, and I’ll always remember that even small actions can lead to something big.” The ceremony concluded at the planting site with an official ribbon cutting, marking the beginning of the tree’s life as a centerpiece of the school community.
Mary W. Jackson Elementary School’s Artemis Moon Tree also serves as a “bookend” to an Apollo Moon Tree, a sycamore tree that was planted on April 30, 1976, at Albert W. Patrick Elementary School (formerly Booker Elementary School). Together, these trees represent generations of exploration, linking past and present NASA missions in a living timeline of discovery. Their presence in Hampton is especially meaningful, as the city was home to NASA’s earliest research efforts and to the astronauts of Project Mercury, as well as pioneering mathematicians and engineers including Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Christine Darden – trailblazers who, like Mary W. Jackson, helped shape the nation’s journey into space.
The Artemis Moon Tree stands as a living symbol of exploration, curiosity, and scientific discovery – hallmarks of NASA. Entrusted to the care of the students and staff at Mary W. Jackson Elementary, who represent the next generation of thinkers, innovators, and explorers, it will continue to serve as a source of learning and inspiration for years to come.
NASA has selected Jennifer Lyons as acting program manager for the agency’s Launch Services Program (LSP) based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pictured here is Lyons participating in rehearsal launch operations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) mission inside SpaceX’s Hangar X at NASA’s Kennedy in June 2024.
SpaceX
NASA has selected Jennifer Lyons as acting program manager for the agency’s Launch Services Program (LSP) based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In this role, Lyons will lead NASA’s acquisition and management of domestic commercial launch services for science and robotic exploration missions beginning Wednesday, April 1.
Lyons will oversee mission planning, launch vehicle selection, spacecraft integration, launch processing, launch campaigns, and postlaunch activities. The program matches spacecraft with the most suitable commercial rockets and ensures mission requirements are met from early planning through launch and mission completion. It supports NASA missions that observe Earth, explore the solar system, and expand understanding of the universe.
“Jenny brings the kind of flight-readiness discipline and mission-assurance expertise that have defined the program’s 25‑year record of more than 100 successful flights across 15 commercial rocket types,” said Bradley Smith, director of NASA’s Launch Services Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “In addition to being the transportation cornerstone of NASA’s science and robotic exploration missions, commercial launch is also critically important to NASA’s Artemis architecture. Jenny’s experience in having worked across many NASA projects — from space shuttle to the International Space Station, to Commercial Crew, and partnering with commercial providers — will enable LSP to continue bringing its core launch vehicle capabilities to bear, ensuring successful outcomes.”
Lyons brings nearly four decades of technical, operational, and program leadership experience to the role. She served as the launch services deputy program manager since March 2024 and previously was deputy manager for the Gateway Program’s Deep Space Logistics project. She has worked with launch services for nearly 20 years and led the Fleet and Systems Management Division for more than a decade, overseeing NASA insight and approval activities related to launch vehicle readiness, certification, and mission assurance across a diverse fleet of commercial rockets.
“I am honored to take on this important role supporting NASA’s science and exploration missions,” said Lyons. “I am confident our team will remain focused on delivering safe, reliable launch services while strengthening a healthy commercial market that enables discoveries across the solar system and beyond.”
Lyons has received numerous individual achievement, group, and leadership awards. She holds degrees in aerospace and ocean engineering, space technology, and engineering management. Her career includes a wide range of experiences, including serving as the first woman to act as NASA convoy commander for a space shuttle landing to chairing the source evaluation board for NASA Launch Services II, under which NASA has awarded multiple contracts that support many of the agency’s high-priority missions.
Albert Sierra, program manager for NASA’s Launch Services Program who led LSP since March 2024 is retiring after 36 years of service with NASA. Pictured here is Sierra participating in rehearsal launch operations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) mission inside SpaceX’s Hangar X at NASA’s Kennedy in June 2024.
SpaceX
She succeeds Albert Sierra, who led the program since March 2024 and is retiring after 36 years of service with NASA. Sierra guided the program through five primary missions and numerous venture‑class launches that provided a steady cadence of flights for the agency. These missions ranged from major weather and Earth‑observing satellites to deep‑space probes, astrophysics and solar‑monitoring observatories, and many CubeSats.
“Leading LSP has been one of the greatest privileges of my career, especially knowing the missions we’ve launched will fuel discovery for years to come,” said Sierra. “While it’s never easy to step away, I’m confident the program will continue its strong record of mission success under Jenny’s leadership.”
NASA Webb, Hubble Share Most Comprehensive View of Saturn to Date
Complementary views of Saturn from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope show a dynamic planet with atmospheric features, orbiting moons, and bright rings.
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Observing in complementary wavelengths of light, the two space observatories provide scientists with a richer, more layered understanding of the gas giant’s atmosphere.
Both sense sunlight reflected from Saturn’s banded clouds and hazes, but where Hubble reveals subtle color variations across the planet, Webb’s infrared view senses clouds and chemicals at many different depths in the atmosphere, from the deep clouds to the tenuous upper atmosphere.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam and Hubble WFC3/UVIS)
Complementary views of Saturn from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope show a dynamic planet with atmospheric features, orbiting moons, and bright rings.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Together, scientists can effectively ‘slice’ through Saturn’s atmosphere at multiple altitudes, like peeling back the layers of an onion. Each telescope tells a different part of Saturn’s story, and the observations together help researchers understand how Saturn’s atmosphere works as a connected three-dimensional system. Both complement previous observations done by NASA’s Cassini orbiter during its time studying the Saturnian system from 1997 to 2017.
The Hubble image seen here was captured as part of a more than a decade long monitoring program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) in August 2024, while the Webb image was captured a few months later using Director’s Discretionary Time.
The newly released images highlight features from Saturn’s busy atmosphere.
In the Webb image, a long-lived jet stream known as the “ribbon wave” meanders across the northern mid-latitudes, influenced by otherwise undetectable atmospheric waves. Just below that, a small spot represents a lingering remnant from the “Great Springtime Storm” of 2010 to 2012. Several other storms dotting the southern hemisphere of Saturn are visible in Webb’s image, as well.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam Image)
Captured Nov. 29, 2024 by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this infrared view of Saturn shows its glowing icy rings and layered atmosphere. Several moons are visible, including Janus, Dione, and Enceladus.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Image: Saturn (WFC3/UVIS)
Captured Aug. 22, 2024 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this visible-light view of Saturn reveals the planet’s softly banded atmosphere and iconic rings. Several moons are also visible, labeled Janus, Mimas, and Epimetheus.
Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
All these features are shaped by powerful winds and waves beneath the visible cloud deck, making Saturn a natural laboratory for studying fluid dynamics under extreme conditions.
Several of the pointed edges of Saturn’s iconic hexagon-shaped jet stream at its north pole, discovered by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1981, are also faintly visible in both images. It remains one of the solar system’s most intriguing weather patterns. Its persistence over decades highlights the stability of certain large-scale atmospheric processes on giant planets. These are likely the last high-resolution looks we’ll see of the famous hexagon until the 2040’s, as the northern pole enters winter and will shift into darkness for 15 years.
In Webb’s infrared observations, Saturn’s poles appear distinctly grey-green, indicating light emitting at wavelengths around 4.3 microns. This distinct feature could come from a layer of high-altitude aerosols in Saturn’s atmosphere that scatters light differently at those latitudes. Another possible explanation is auroral activity, as charged molecules interacting with the planet’s magnetic field can produce glowing emissions near the poles.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam Wide Image)
A wider view of Saturn from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows six of Saturn’s larger moons, including the largest, Titan, at far left.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA’s Hubble and Webb have already explored Saturn’s auroras, provided insights into Jupiter’s spectacular auroras also seen with Hubble, confirmed the auroras of Uranus glimpsed in 2011 by Hubble, and detected Neptune’s auroras for the first time with Webb.
In Webb’s infrared image, the rings are extremely bright because they are made of highly reflective water ice. In both images, we’re seeing the sunlit face of the rings, a little less so in the Hubble image, hence the shadows visible underneath on the planet.
There are also subtle ring features such as spokes and structure in the B ring (the thick central region of the rings) that appear differently between the two observatories. The F ring, the outermost ring, looks thin and crisp in the Webb image, while it only slightly glows in the Hubble image.
Saturn’s orbit around the Sun, combined with the position of Earth in its annual orbit, determines our changing viewing angle of Saturn’s face and ring.
These 2024 observations, taken 14 weeks apart, show the planet moving from northern summer toward the 2025 equinox. As Saturn transitions into southern spring, and later southern summer in the 2030’s, Hubble and Webb will have progressively better views of that hemisphere.
Hubble’s observations of Saturn for decades have built a record of its evolving atmosphere. Programs like OPAL, with its annual monitoring, are allowing scientists to track storms, banding patterns, and seasonal shifts over time. Webb now adds powerful infrared capabilities to this ongoing record, extending what researchers can measure about Saturn’s atmospheric structure and dynamic processes.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
Related Images & Videos
Saturn (Webb NIRCam and Hubble WFC3/UVIS)
Complementary views of Saturn from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope show a dynamic planet with atmospheric features, orbiting moons, and bright rings.
Saturn (Webb NIRCam Image)
Captured Nov. 29, 2024 by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this infrared view of Saturn shows its glowing icy rings and layered atmosphere. Several moons are visible, including Janus, Dione, and Enceladus.
Saturn (WFC3/UVIS)
Captured Aug. 22, 2024 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this visible-light view of Saturn reveals the planet’s softly banded atmosphere and iconic rings. Several moons are also visible, labeled Janus, Mimas, and Epimetheus.
Saturn (Webb NIRCam Wide Image)
A wider view of Saturn from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows six of Saturn’s larger moons, including the largest, Titan, at far left.
Saturn (Webb NIRCam and Hubble WFC3/UVIS Compass Image)
These images of Saturn, captured by NASA’s James Webb and Hubble Spaces Telescopes, shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.
NASA’s IXPE observed the outer rim of the supernova remnant highlighted in purple in the inset. Data from IXPE is combined with data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. The yellow represents low-energy X-rays, while blue shows high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra and XMM-Newton. The starfield in the image comes from the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOILab).
NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission has taken a new observation of a supernova, RCW 86, helping fill in a fuller picture of what other telescopes have observed.
When astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory previously targeted RCW 86, they discovered that a large “cavity” region around the system led the supernova to expand more rapidly than expected. The low-density cavity region could have led to RCW 86’s unique shape as well. Now, IXPE has observed the outer rim of this supernova, where its expansion is suspected to have halted at the edge of the “cavity,” creating the reflected shock effect highlighted in purple.
The full image combines IXPE’s data with legacy observations from two other X-ray telescopes: NASA’s Chandra and the ESA (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton telescope. The yellow represents low-energy X-rays, while blue shows high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra and XMM-Newton. The starfield in the image comes from the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).
More about IXPE
The IXPE mission, which continues to provide unprecedented data enabling groundbreaking discoveries about celestial objects across the universe, is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. It is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, Inc., headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, manages spacecraft operations together with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. Learn more about IXPE’s ongoing mission here:
