Thursday, 16 April 2026

Eyeing the Richat Structure

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The Richat Structure appears as a giant “bull’s eye” on a plateau in Mauritania in this mosaic, composed of images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 and Landsat 8 on March 5 and March 6, 2026, respectively.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

In a remote part of northern Mauritania on the Adrar Plateau lies a desert landscape rich in human history. This region of northwestern Africa is sprinkled with Paleolithic stone tools, Neolithic cave paintings, and the remains of medieval towns once used by caravans crossing the Sahara Desert.

When viewed from space, the landscape appears to be shaped most prominently by natural forces. Wind sculpted the seas of colorful sand dunes and scoured plateaus capped with dark desert pavement, while ancient flowing water carved valleys and networks of dried river channels.

But the region’s most eye-catching feature when seen from above is the Richat Structure—a large geologic formation made of concentric ridges on the eastern side of the plateau. French geographers first described the feature in the 1930s, calling it the Richat “buttonhole.” NASA astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt helped bring wider global attention to what became known as “The Eye of the Sahara” after photographing it during their history-making Gemini IV mission.

The 40-kilometer-wide (25-mile-wide) structure was initially thought to be an impact crater because large meteors can produce circular features on Earth’s surface. However, researchers later showed that it is actually a deeply eroded geologic dome formed by the uplift of rock above an underground intrusion of igneous material. Over time, differing erosion rates among rock types in the exposed upper dome led to the development of circular ridges known as cuestas. The orange and gray colors reflect differences in sedimentary and igneous rock types across the structure and the surrounding landscape.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

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March 5 and March 6, 2026

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NASA Launches Six CubeSats to International Space Station

Image shows a rocket launching vertically in a morning blue sky with white clouds at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday, April 11, 2026. The launch reflects in a nearby body of water and shrubs. Photo credit: SpaceX

Experiments and supplies bound for the International Space Station launched on April 11 as part of the agency’s Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services 24 mission.

As part of the approximately 11,000 pounds cargo that lifted off inside the company’s Cygnus XL spacecraft, NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) launched six CubeSats built by U.S. educational institutions and non-profit organizations. These CubeSats are Coconut, Harvard Undergraduate CubeSat (HUCSat), Low Earth Orbit Platform for Aerospace Research and Development Satellite 1 (LEOPARDSat-1), and three Pleiades Rapid Orbital Verification Experiment System (PROVES) CubeSats: PROVES – Alcyone, PROVES – Atlas, and PROVES – Electra.

Each CubeSat is a small satellite that will deploy into orbit from the space station to conduct its experiments. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages CSLI and manifested these CubeSats on the mission as part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 58 launch grouping.

Photo credit: SpaceX



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Wednesday, 15 April 2026

Curiosity Blog, Sols 4859-4866: One Small Crater and Thousands of Polygons

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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4859-4866: One Small Crater and Thousands of Polygons

A black-and-white photograph taken from the deck of the Mars Curiosity rover. The foreground shows a close-up of the rover's complex mechanical components, including structural panels, wiring, and various instruments; a dark, flat panel bearing the letters
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image showing faint tracks behind the rover on April 9, 2026. The mission team used autonomous navigation during the end of this drive, so Curiosity herself made the decision to take the turns visible in the images. The rover captured this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Sol 4861, or Martian day 4,861 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, at 19:03:01 UTC.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Earth planning date: Friday, April 10, 2026

Curiosity spent the past week driving towards a small crater, about 10 meters (32 feet) in diameter. Today the team informally named this crater “Antofagasta,” after a region and major city in Chile next to the Atacama. Craters are very cool for many reasons, one of which is that they act as “nature’s drill,” exposing material to the surface through their walls and ejecta that would have otherwise been buried. From orbit, Antofagasta looks like it might be a relatively young crater (less than 50 million years old, which is young on a Martian geologic scale!), so there may be material in and around the crater that was only exposed to the harsh, organic-molecule destroying radiation environment on Mars’ surface in the very recent past. Curiosity has already found many hardy organic molecules that survived billions of years, but could there be an even bigger treasure trove of complex chemistry deep below the surface? Antofagasta could help us answer this question… but only if the crater is big enough to have excavated deep rocks, if it really is relatively young, and if we are able to find a rock we are confident was excavated from depth that also meets the physical requirements for Curiosity’s drill. That’s a lot of “ifs,” but also too exciting of an opportunity to drive by! We’ll be able to answer all these “ifs” and decide what to do once we get a much closer look at the crater from the ground next week.

In the meantime, the journey to Antofagasta has been extremely interesting. Many of the rocks we’ve driven over have these incredible textures — thousands of honeycomb-shaped polygons crisscross their surface. Here’s one example, and here’s another example, both from Sol 4859. We’ve seen polygon-patterned rocks like these before, but they didn’t seem quite this dramatically abundant, stretching across the ground for meters and meters in our Mastcam mosaics. This week we continued to collect lots of images and chemical data that will help us distinguish between different hypotheses for how the honeycomb textures formed. We also continued to monitor Mars’ environment, with lots of dust-devil searches and images toward the horizon to characterize the Martian atmosphere as it grows predictably dustier approaching the warm summer months.

I’m looking forward to seeing the data that should arrive on Earth by Tuesday morning. If all goes well, Curiosity will be perched on the edge of Antofagasta, sending images that will allow us humans to see the crater rim and into the interior for the first time from the ground.

A rover sits on the hilly, orange Martian surface beneath a flat grey sky, surrounded by chunks of rock.
NASA’s Curiosity rover at the base of Mount Sharp
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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NASA Finds Young Stars Dim in X-rays Surprisingly Quickly

The images of Trumpler 3, NGC 2353 & NGC 2301 represent a Chandra study that shows how young Sun-like stars are dimmer in X-rays than previously thought. Trumpler 3, NGC 2353 and NGC 2301 are open clusters that contains hundreds of young stars that are gravitationally bound together because they formed from the same gas cloud. Many of these stars have masses that are similar to our Sun but are much younger. In this composite image of the three clusters, X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). This result has implications for the prospects of life developing and surviving on planets in orbit around these stars.
Trumpler 3 and NGC 2353 (Labeled).
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ/K. Getman; Optical/IR: PanSTARRS; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Scientists have found that young stellar cousins of our Sun are calming down and dimming more quickly in their X-ray output than previously thought, according to a new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. A paper describing the results published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal.

Unlike in the new movie “Project Hail Mary,” this quieting of young stars is a benefit for the prospects for life on orbiting planets around these stars — not a threat.

Astronomers used Chandra and other telescopes to monitor how powerful radiation from young stars — often in the form of dangerous X-rays — can pummel planets surrounding them. They did not know, however, how long this high-energy barrage continued.

This latest study looked at eight clusters of stars between the ages of 45 million and 750 million years old. The researchers found that Sun-like stars in these clusters unleashed only about a quarter to a third of the X-rays they expected.

“While science fiction – like the microbes in Project Hail Mary – imagines alien life that dims stellar output by consuming its energy, our real observations reveal a natural ‘quieting’ of young Sun-like stars in X-rays,” said Konstantin Getman, the lead author of the new study from Penn State University. “This is not because an outside force is consuming their light, but because their internal generation of magnetic fields becomes less efficient.”

In fact, this calming could be a boon to the formation of life on planets around stars that are younger versions of our own Sun. (Our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old, so significantly older than the stellar cousins in this study.) This is because large amounts of X-rays can erode a planet’s atmosphere and prevent formation of molecules necessary for organic life as we know it. On average, three-million-year-old stars with a mass equal to the Sun produce about a thousand times more X-rays than today’s Sun. Meanwhile, 100-million-year-old solar-mass stars are about 40 times brighter in X-rays than the present Sun.

Illustration of X-rays and Other Radiation Eroding the Atmosphere of an Orbiting Planet.
Illustration of a young Sun-like star eroding some of the atmosphere of an orbiting planet.
NASA/SAO/CXC/M. Weiss

“It’s possible that we owe our existence to our Sun doing the same thing, several billion years ago, that we see these young stars doing now,” said co-author Vladimir Airapetian of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This real-world dimming echoes the dramatic stellar change in fiction, but it may be even more fascinating because it highlights our own Sun’s actual history.”

The researchers found that stars with about the same mass as the Sun quieted down relatively rapidly — after a few hundred million years — while ones with less mass kept up their high levels of X-ray emission for longer. Combined with a decrease in the energy of the X-rays and the disappearance of energetic particles, the Sun-sized stars are apparently better suited to host planets with robust atmospheres and possibly blossoming life than previously thought.

The research team also used data from ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Gaia satellite and X-ray data from the ROSAT (ROentgen SATellite) mission. This data allowed them to identify the stars that were members of the clusters (not foreground or background stars). To measure the X-ray output from the stars, they made new Chandra observations of five clusters with ages between 45 million and 100 million years, in addition to using Chandra and ROSAT data from archives to study three older clusters with ages between 220 and 750 million years.

Astronomers have not been able to study the X-ray output of stars in this age range well before. Most astronomers have relied on sparse data and a derived relation that predicts the X-ray emission young stars should produce based on their ages and rates of spin. Older and more slowly rotating stars are usually fainter in X-rays, but the team found that X-ray output drops off about 15 times more rapidly than the derived relation predicts during this specific adolescent phase.

“We can only see our Sun at this current snapshot in time, so to really understand its past we must look to other stars with about the same mass,” said co-author Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State University. “By studying X-rays from stars that are hundreds of millions of years old, we have filled in a large gap in our understanding of their evolution.”

While they are still investigating the cause of this slower-than-expected activity, scientists think the process that generates magnetic fields in these stars may become less efficient. This would lead to the stars becoming quieter in X-rays more quickly, as they age. The researchers will continue to look at this and other potential causes for the rapid dimming of young Sun-like stars.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov



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NASA Receives 7 Nominations for the 30th Annual Webby Awards

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

NASA/Keegan Barber

Since it began in 1958, NASA has been charged by law with spreading the word about its work to the widest extent practicable. From typewritten press releases to analog photos and film, the agency has effectively moved into social media and other online communications. NASA’s broad reach across digital platforms has been recognized by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), with 7 nominations across multiple categories for the academy’s 30th annual Webby Awards.

Public Voting Opportunities

Voting for the Webby People’s Voice Awards—chosen by the public—is open now through Thursday, April 16. Voting links for each category are listed below.

30th Annual Webby Award Nominees

AI, Immersive & Games

Hearing Hubble
NASA Goddard
Immersive Content: Science & Education

Social

NASA’s Webb Telescope and the Universe: Using social media to connect us all 
NASA Goddard
Social Campaigns: Education & Science

Nerdy Words 
NASA Marshall
Social Video Short Form: Education & Science

NASA Astronauts Posts from Space 
NASA 
General Social: Education & Science 


Video & Film

Cosmic Dawn (NASA+ Original Documentary)
NASA
General Video and Film: Documentary: Longform

Podcasts 

Houston We Have a Podcast: Artemis II: The Mission
NASA Johnson
Individual Episodes: Science & Education

NASA’s Curious Universe: The Earth Series 
NASA
Limited-Series & Specials: Health, Science, & Education

About the Webby Awards

Established in 1996 during the web’s infancy, The Webbys is presented by the IADAS—a 3000+ member judging body. The Academy is comprised of Executive Members—leading Internet experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries, and creative celebrities—and associate members who are former Webby winners, nominees and other internet professionals.

The Webby Awards presents two honors in every category—the Webby Award and the Webby People’s Voice Award. Members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) select the nominees for both awards in each category, as well as the winners of the Webby Awards. In the spirit of the open web, the Webby People’s Voice is chosen by the voting public, and garners millions of votes from all over the world.



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2025-2026 Dream with Us Design Challenge Winners

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

Dream with Us graphic, showing a female African American dreaming up aeronautics ideas.

2025-2026 Dream with Us Winners

Congratulation to our 2025-2026 Dream with Us Design Challenge Winners! We are pleased to share this year’s winning projects: 

Middle School

2025-2026 Dream with Us Winners Graphics from some of the competition entries.

1st Place: Scout Farm

(Varenya D., Aashritha P., and Alvitha P., NJ)

2nd Place: AgriTech

(Charlotte W. and Richard F., CA)

3rd Place: AgriDrone

(Hasini B. and Kanishka A, TX and CA)

High School

Graphics from some of the high school competition entries.

1st Place: SkySeekers

(Monta Vista High School and Foothill High School, CA)

Team SkySeekers Engineering Notebook

2nd Place: AeroForge

(Adrian Wilcox High School, CA)

Team AeroForge Engineering Notebook

3rd Place: Flight Fusion Team

(Eastern Technical High School, Damascus High School, Dulaney High School, and Thomas Wooten High School, MD)

Team Flight Fusion Engineering Notebook

Dream with Us

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Apr 14, 2026
Editor
Lillian Gipson
Contact
Jim Banke

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Tuesday, 14 April 2026

NASA Awards Data Engineering, Informatics Support Contract

Official insignia of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Credit: NASA

NASA has selected Development Seed of Washington to provide research and development services to the Office of Data Science and Informatics (ODSI) at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The award is a performance-based, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of $76 million. A phase-in period begins on May 15, 2026, followed by a two-year base ordering period, with three one-year options to extend services through June 2031.

Under the contract, Development Seed will provide scientific research and development support services for ODSI projects, including system architecture expertise, operations and maintenance of ODSI-developed tools and platforms, and systematic approaches to data curation, management, and stewardship. The contractor also will provide subject matter expertise in informatics, data science, and information management, as well as develop and deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions to advance science data systems.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Jennifer Dooren / Jessica Taveau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
jennifer.m.dooren@nasa.gov / jessica.c.taveau@nasa.gov

Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov

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Apr 13, 2026
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4845-4851: Bye-Bye Boxwork, Bye-Bye

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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4845-4851: Bye-Bye Boxwork, Bye-Bye

A grayscale photo from the Martian surface shows very rocky terrain in front of the rover. What looks like sandy, wind-scalloped sand in medium to dark gray is covered everywhere in a variety of jagged rocks of many shapes and sizes, some flat on the ground and others sticking out above it, but all sharing markings that make them look like they’re covered in fish scales. A small portion of the rover is visible at the bottom of the frame.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image, showing the polygonal sulfate unit currently being investigated by the rover after leaving the boxwork terrain. Curiosity captured the image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 27, 2026 — Sol 4848, or Martian day 4,848 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 10:43:16 UTC.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Lucy Thompson, APXS Strategic Planner and Planetary Geologist at the University of New Brunswick, Canada

Earth planning date: Friday, March 27, 2026

Last weekend’s drive took us just over the southernmost contact of the boxwork terrain with the surrounding layered sulfate unit. This was our third time crossing this contact, providing an excellent opportunity to look for any changes across it. We have acquired multiple observations (chemistry and imaging for textures) of the boxwork-bearing bedrock close to the contact. We are also interested in determining whether the layered sulfate unit to the south of the boxwork terrain has the same depositional setting as that encountered to the north. Is the composition the same as the typical layered sulfate unit we encountered prior to the boxwork, or could there be a change associated with a different depositional environment, source sediment, or potential alteration along the contact with the boxwork?

Unfortunately, although the weekend drive was successful, Curiosity was not on stable enough ground coming into planning Monday to brush the dusty bedrock, although we were able to get MAHLI imaging of a block within the workspace. The rover engineers repositioned the rover so that we could safely unstow the arm, brush, image with MAHLI, and analyze with APXS the layered sulfate unit bedrock just across the contact (“Santa Rosa”) in Wednesday’s plan. We also looked at a concentration of granules with APXS and MAHLI (“Piedra Colgada”). They appear to be a collection of fine nodules that eroded from the bedrock, thereby allowing us to obtain chemical and textural data on these nodules.

The drive planned on Wednesday took us another 50 meters (about 164 feet) away from the boxwork, to a stunning sulfate unit workspace. The bedrock contained abundant resistant ridges forming a polygonal pattern. We wanted to compare these current exposures with polygonal textures observed previously, for example, within the boxwork, the sulfate unit before the boxwork, and the clay-sulfate transition. We are brushing two spots on the bedrock in front of us (“Ocharaza” and “Nevado Tres Cruces”) and analyzing them both with APXS and MAHLI for chemistry and texture.

Across the three plans, Mastcam imaging was acquired of the boxwork terrain behind, the sulfate unit ahead, and the rocks immediately in front of us. In particular, this weekend’s plan was jam-packed full of mosaics to capture the amazing polygonal textures surrounding the rover. The planned 30-meter drive (about 98 feet) should keep us in this same terrain.

The environmental group has also been busy planning multiple observations to monitor atmospheric opacity, optical depth and aerosol scattering properties, clouds, wind direction, and potential dust-devil activity. Navcam and Mastcam are utilized to make these observations. As usual, our plans this week included the standard DAN, REMS and RAD activities.

A rover sits on the hilly, orange Martian surface beneath a flat grey sky, surrounded by chunks of rock.
NASA’s Curiosity rover at the base of Mount Sharp
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Eyeing the Richat Structure

Science Earth Observatory Eyeing the Richat Structure Earth Earth Observatory Image of the Day EO Explorer All Topics ...