Saturday, 6 June 2026

NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth

5 min read

NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth

Dressed in a white space suit—with hands gloved, feet booted and head in a helmet with a clear visor—Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a wide green treadmill. His suit is harnessed to a black machine that is taking the weight off Glover such that, while in the suit, he experiences forces equivalent to lunar gravity. Two people wearing casual clothes and blue hard hats stand in the background, waiting to support Glover and the experiment, should the need arise.  Behind Glover are crisscrossing blue iron beams that stretch to a high ceiling in this industrial building at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a treadmill while in a space suit harnessed to NASA’s Active Response Gravity Offload System at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Glover is simulating a walk on a planetary surface while in a suit that has been offloaded to lunar gravity. Artemis II astronauts completed this and other suited tasks before their mission launched and within a few days of landing, giving researchers a chance to assess how quickly upon landing crews’ bodies adapt to a different gravity. Results will help scientists better understand how soon after landing crews can complete mission-critical tasks on the surface of the Moon or Mars.
NASA/Robert Markowitz

Since NASA’s Artemis II crew members safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 after their record-setting mission around the Moon, science teams have been busy collecting more data and combing through observations collected on the test flight. Results from these science investigations will help support safe human exploration of deep space and provide a blueprint for how future missions will conduct science on the lunar surface as NASA builds a Moon Base and develops an enduring human presence there.

Postflight crew health, performance data

In the hours, days, and weeks after landing, the Artemis II crew members, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, contributed critical data to help the agency understand how the human body reacts to spaceflight. Collecting this data as soon as possible after landing was important to understand how the body adapts from microgravity to Earth’s gravity. The data will inform NASA’s understanding of how quickly crews can complete mission-critical tasks after landing on a planetary surface like the Moon or Mars, where there won’t be landing support personnel to assist.  

Within a day of splashdown, researchers collected a suite of data for the Artemis II Spaceflight Standard Measures study, which is part of a larger effort across the astronaut corps to gather a baseline set of health measurements on blood pressure, heart rate, eye health, and motor control. Crew members also completed a mini obstacle course, which included lying down, standing up, unfurling a rope ladder, ladder climbing, and more, to assess how their bodies were adapting to Earth’s gravity.

Once the crew returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, researchers guided them through further medical check-ups and tests of motor control. Over the next several days, the crew completed obstacle courses wearing spacesuits offloaded to lunar gravity, which is roughly one-sixth the force of Earth’s gravity. Researchers are now analyzing this data to gain insight into how crews may perform as they adapt to the gravity of a planetary surface.

As part of the Immune Biomarkers study, researchers are comparing blood and saliva samples collected after the Artemis II splashdown with samples collected preflight and during the mission. Among other topics, the study investigates whether and how dormant viruses reawaken in astronauts’ bodies while in space.

Some crew members completed postflight cognition tests and a simulated manual spacecraft docking task to assess motor control for the ARCHeR (Artemis Research for Crew Health & Readiness) study. This, combined with data collected through a wrist-worn device while crew members were in space, is used to understand the effect of space hazards on well-being and performance.

Initial data collections for Artemis II health studies concluded 45 days after splashdown. However, medical teams will continually monitor astronaut health throughout the Artemis II crew members’ lifetimes.

Once this data is processed and anonymized, information will be available for scientists to study the effects of spaceflight via a request to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Archive. The results from this work could lead to new technologies and studies that help predict the adaptability of crews on future missions to the Moon and Mars.

Analyzing astronaut-derived organ chips flown around Moon

A person wearing blue gloves holds a small cylindrical organ chip.
A scientist handles AVATAR organ chips following their journey around the Moon aboard Orion. The chips contain cells from each astronaut and are being prepared for detailed analysis.
NASA

Organ chips from NASA’s AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation are being analyzed at chip developer Emulate’s laboratory in Boston. The organ chips included bone marrow cells from each Artemis II astronaut. They flew around the Moon with the astronauts, and now researchers are studying these organ chips to determine how deep space radiation and microgravity affect human health at the molecular level.

Scientists are comparing the chips flown aboard the spacecraft to ground controls and crew blood samples using advanced techniques, including single-cell RNA sequencing. The analysis will characterize how organ chips model individual responses to spaceflight, which is data that could allow NASA to send future astronauts’ AVATAR chips ahead on missions to develop personalized medical kits. The researchers plan to share early findings at scientific conferences while full analysis continues.

Lunar imagery, audio for data release

A large operations room filled with about two dozen staff members seated at computer workstations. Rows of desks with multiple monitors face a central area where a person sitting at a glass-topped desk appears to be speaking to the group. Large screens mounted on the walls display space-related imagery and data. Several people are looking towards a large screen hanging on a wall on the right of the image, while others work at their computers. The room is brightly lit, with blue accents along the walls, creating the atmosphere of a space operations or flight control center.
In this April 3, 2026, image, the Artemis II lunar science team is shown working in the Science Evaluation Room in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The team is putting together a plan of science observations for the Artemis II crew, which was headed toward the Moon aboard Orion. As they passed the Moon at closest approach on April 6, the crew applied the geology skills they learned in the classroom and in Moon-like environments on Earth as they photographed and described nuances of geologic features such as impact craters, ancient lava flows, and surface cracks and ridges. The crew noted differences in color, brightness, and texture — details that provide clues to surface composition and history.
NASA/Bill Stafford

On April 6, the Artemis II crew members studied features on and around the Moon for nearly seven hours during Orion’s closest approach to the lunar surface. Their work was guided by a minute-by-minute observation plan developed by the Artemis II lunar science team.

Scientists are reviewing the data collected from the mission, which includes images, video, and audio files, to release a report of their initial data interpretations later this year. The report will cover observations of impact flashes, variations in color on the lunar surface, and the shape and texture of faults and ridges. The team also will publish a report on how Artemis II lunar science observations were planned, organized, and executed for the benefit of future Artemis missions.

NASA will publish more than 100 science-related audio recordings with transcripts, as well as approximately 11,500 Earth and Moon image and video files from the mission science campaign, with accompanying data. While many of these images already are public, these records will be available through NASA’s Planetary Data System, a public archive of data from all of NASA’s planetary missions. To get the data ready, the team is converting files into standard formats that anyone can easily open and add information to make the data searchable in NASA’s archive for generations to come.

For more information on NASA’s Artemis II science efforts, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis-ii-science/

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser

Headquarters, Washington

240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732

karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov



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NASA Satellites Uncover Large-Scale Ocean Nutrient Stress 

A flat map of the world shows regions in the ocean colored red to indeicate elevated levels of stress on plankton due to a lack of nutrients.
Warming waters decrease upwelling and lead to stress on marine microorganisms due to limited availability of vital nutrients. Red indicates the regions of highest nutrient-related stress.
Kel Elkins/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

As Earth’s oceans warm, microscopic marine organisms are experiencing increasing stress due to a lack of vital nutrients. A new study combining NASA satellite observations, ocean surveys, and genetic testing on marine microorganisms suggests that warming ocean waters are limiting nutrient availability across much of the global ocean, with the potential to reshape marine ecosystems. 

The research, published June 5 in Science Advances, tracked the condition of phytoplankton, which form the base of ocean food webs. Rather than measuring nutrients like nitrogen, iron, and phosphorus directly, the researchers inferred stress by tracking subtle shifts in the ratio of carbon to chlorophyll in phytoplankton observed from space. When the amount of chlorophyll decreases relative to carbon as seen in satellite data, it’s an indication that the plankton are stressed. 

“As our ocean continues to change, the ability to observe and track its health through sustained, high quality remote sensing observations has never been more important,” said Laura Lorenzoni, Program Scientist for NASA’s Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This is fundamental, as plankton communities are the base of the marine food web on which important economic activities rely.” 

The research team combined two decades of data from NASA’s Aqua satellite’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor with plankton samples collected on research cruises around the world. The approach linked large-scale satellite observations with genetic markers in Prochlorococcus, a tiny but abundant marine microbe that shows signs of nutrient stress in its DNA. The result is a global map revealing where phytoplankton are thriving and where they’re struggling. 

Ocean chlorophyll, as observed with NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument between January 2010 through May 2016.
Marit Jentoft-Nilsen/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The strongest indications of nutrient stress on plankton appeared in the subtropical gyres, which are vast, relatively calm regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. In these areas, a layer of warm surface water stifles the flow of colder water from deeper in the ocean.  

“When the surface of the ocean warms, it generates this very stable situation where a layer of low-density water sits on top of higher-density cold water,” said study coauthor Adam Martiny, an oceanographer at the University of California, Irvine. “You’ve probably experienced that if you’ve ever been to a lake in the summertime—it’s super warm right on the surface, and very cold deeper down when you stick your legs in.” 

This layering blocks the upward flow of nutrient-rich water, limiting the availability of ocean surface nutrients that are crucial for plankton. In the South Pacific, one of the most nutrient-poor regions, a layer of warm surface water contributed to nitrogen and iron shortages, producing the most severe nutrient-related stress that the team discovered. 

But the researchers were surprised to find that parts of the North Atlantic experience less nutrient stress than expected. Although there was evidence of a lack of phosphorus, the impact on microorganisms was comparatively mild. 

That difference may reflect the biology of the organisms themselves. Phytoplankton can partially compensate for phosphorus shortages by recycling phosphorus more efficiently or replacing phosphorus-rich molecules inside their cells. Nitrogen shortages are harder to overcome because nitrogen is crucial for the proteins and cellular machinery required for photosynthesis and nutrient uptake. 

The study revealed that nutrient stress is strongly correlated with seasons and major weather cycles such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which lead to warming waters in the Pacific Ocean. During La Niña events, which cool water over a large part of the Pacific, stronger upwelling brought more nutrients to surface waters and reduced stress in some regions. Superimposed on those multi-year cycles, however, was a longer-term trend. 

From 2002 through 2021, average sea-surface temperatures increased across nearly 90% of the ocean area examined in the study. Over the same period, nutrient stress generally intensified, supporting long-standing concerns that warming oceans may become increasingly stratified and less able to replenish surface nutrients. 

In many nutrient-poor regions of the Southern Hemisphere, however, the researchers found evidence that nutrient stress had not increased as much as expected despite significant warming. They suspect that microbes capable of capturing nitrogen from the air may partially offset the effects of reduced nutrient mixing. 

That finding hints that marine ecosystems may possess more resilience to warming climates than some models predict. It also underscores the complexity of forecasting how ocean biology will respond to continued warming. 

“We have two really powerful tools,” said study coauthor Michael Behrenfeld, a biochemist with Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. The tools include satellite observations and cellular studies. “Both produce big data sets, but they are kind of opposites. We have very detailed data about microscopic phytoplankton … and then we have global coverage with satellites.”   

By combining satellites that monitor the entire ocean with genetic clues carried inside microscopic plankton, the researchers say they are gaining a new way to watch the biological effects of a warming climate unfold across the planet in near real time. 

By James Riordon
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters

About the Author

James Riordon

James Riordon

Senior Science Writer



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Friday, 5 June 2026

First Steps: America’s Grueling Second Spacewalk

Gemini IX-A astronaut Gene Cernan is backdropped by the blackness of space during America’s second spacewalk on June 5, 1966. His umbilical drifts across the foreground, partially obscuring the view of the astronaut.
A year after America’s first spacewalk, Gemini IX-A Eugene Cernan stepped outside his spacecraft for an ambitious extravehicular activity scheduled for 167 minutes. The challenges he faced led NASA to reevaluate plans, equipment, and training for future spacewalks.
NASA

One year after Gemini IV astronaut Edward H. White completed NASA’s first spacewalk the agency prepared for a demanding second excursion. Originally scheduled for Gemini VIII, the extravehicular activity (EVA) was reassigned to Gemini IX-A after that mission ended early, with Gene Cernan taking on the task.

On June 5, 1966—the mission’s third day—Cernan exited the spacecraft and quickly found himself fighting his own equipment. His spacesuit was so rigid that even simple movements required intense effort. He struggled to complete the simplest maneuvers.

Within minutes, Cernan was exhausted and sweating profusely. His spacesuit was cooled only through the circulation of oxygen and as he worked to complete the goals of the EVA, his helmet fogged over completely, obstructing his view and his heart rate rose to about 180 beats per minute. As concerns grew that he might lose consciousness, the EVA was called off and Cernan’s spacewalk ended after two hours and eight minutes.

When Gemini IX-A returned to Earth, doctors found that Cernan had lost 13 pounds during the three-day mission, most of it water lost during his EVA.

The challenges Cernan faced that day reshaped NASA’s approach to spacewalking. His experience directly influenced improved training methods, refined EVA procedures, and precipitated advances in spacesuit design—key steps in preparing astronauts for lunar surface missions just a few years later.

Credit: NASA



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Fighting Fire With Fire

Several gray smoke plumes are visible drifting over a green landscape.
Smoke streams from fires in Australia’s Northern Territory in an image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 28, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

In May and June of most years, NASA satellites typically begin to detect large numbers of wildland fires throughout the Top End and Arnhem Land regions of Australia’s Northern Territory. On some days, especially in the afternoon, the blazes can resemble sizable wildfires in satellite imagery, spreading widely and producing expansive smoke plumes.

That was the case when NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of smoke and fires on the afternoon of May 28, 2026. Often, however, fires burning in this area look smaller and less imposing. In the mornings just a few days earlier and later, for instance, NASA satellites detected little smoke despite observing many thermal anomalies, or hotspots, that indicated fire activity.

The pattern of burning, location, and timing are consistent with prescribed fires lit intentionally to manage the landscape. Land managers tend to light fires in the morning, and smoke builds over the course of the day. The process sometimes creates sizable plumes when there are updrafts and winds of moderate strength that carry smoke away from the fires, as happened on May 28 and again on June 2. The fires typically burn through the fire-adapted grasses, underbrush, and scattered trees in the region’s tropical savanna ecosystems.

Over the past few decades, the region’s land managers have combined deep-rooted Indigenous land management practices and modern technologies to establish large-scale landscape management programs such as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project and Arnhem Land Fire Abatement. The goal of such efforts is to intentionally burn some of the savanna underbrush to create firebreaks and reduce fuel loads early in the dry season, reducing more destructive and emissions-intensive fires later in the season. The dry season generally begins in May and extends through September, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

While research is ongoing, there are signs that the prescribed burning efforts are having the intended effect. Analysis of satellite observations of the fires suggests that prescribed burning efforts have shifted fire activity from late to early in the dry season, leading to a reduction in high-intensity fires and emissions.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

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Several gray smoke plumes are visible drifting over a green landscape.

May 28, 2026

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NASA Hosts 2026 Review on Advanced Composite Manufacturing

2 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

Large aircraft fuselage section under assembly inside a manufacturing facility as part of composite aircraft production work.
Boeing assembles a composite aircraft fuselage section in one of its production facilities. Composite materials are used in major portions of modern aircraft, including sections of the fuselage and wings on aircraft such as the Boeing 787. NASA’s HiCAM project aims to help accelerate manufacturing processes for future composite aircraft.
Boeing

NASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project brought together its full team of Advanced Composites Consortium partners for a 2026 spring review at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.  

The meeting took place May 5-7, bringing together about 150 people from the consortium, a 22-member public-private partnership.  

The review gave NASA and industry partners a chance to look at recent progress and plan for the work ahead. NASA announced recent portfolio decisions, selecting technologies that can have the greatest impact on manufacturing rate for the next airplane program.   

During the meeting, teams reviewed the latest results from the project’s Development Phase and discussed early progress under Phase 2, known as the Demonstration Phase. This phase will scale up key manufacturing technologies in the coming years.  

A major part of the event included full-day workshops focused on assembly demonstrations of two large aircraft structures: the wing and fuselage. These sessions brought together NASA researchers, industry engineers, and partners to share updates, exchange ideas, and discuss long-term plans. Many teams said they noticed stronger collaboration and coordination across the group this year.  

That collaboration supports HiCAM’s goal of large-scale manufacturing demonstrations of a composite fuselage barrel and wing box in 2028 and 2029. These demonstrations represent major project milestones and will help show how advanced composite materials and processes could support faster, lower cost aircraft production.  

NASA and its partners continue to make steady progress toward the project’s goals. The project’s work could help pave the way for new manufacturing methods for lightweight composite structures that make future aircraft easier to build and more efficient to operate. 

Kimiko Booker
NASA Langley Research Center

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Jun 04, 2026


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NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll

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NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll

Canadian wildfire smoke carried carbon monoxide — a building block of ground-level ozone — thousands of miles downwind in June 2023.
Credits:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Wildfire smoke is stoking a new challenge for cleaner air. A NASA-supported study published Thursday found that, over the last decade, wildfires have worsened ground-level ozone pollution across much of the contiguous United States, creating unhealthy air far from active flames.

Wildfires have become an increasingly important contributor to ground-level ozone, or smog, across much of the United States, researchers report June 4 in the journal Science. Nationally, fires offset nearly four years’ worth of ozone-control gains, with larger setbacks in the West and Midwest.

Smoke often is associated with the soot, ash, and other fine particles that make the air look hazy. But wildfires also emit gases such as carbon monoxide, which can help form surface ozone in sunlight when other pollutants are present. Surface ozone is an invisible pollutant harmful to human health, plants, and crops. As smoke plumes travel and mix with other pollution, those reactions can drive ozone increases hundreds or even thousands of miles from active fires.

“NASA Earth observations, along with ground monitoring networks, help reveal air quality risks from wildfires that can cross state lines, giving air quality managers better decision-making information as wildfire smoke affects more communities,” said John Haynes, manager of NASA Earth Action’s Health and Air Quality program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “This is a strong example of NASA science serving communities here in the U.S.”

Building a clearer ozone picture

High in the atmosphere, ozone shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Near the ground, however, ozone can irritate lungs, worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases, and increase health risks for children, older adults, outdoor workers, and people with existing health conditions.

To track surface ozone changes, researchers turned to deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that finds patterns across large datasets. They used it to build a first-of-its-kind dataset estimating daily surface ozone from 2003 to 2024 on a kilometer-by-kilometer grid — about 0.6 miles on each side — across the contiguous U.S. The work received support from NASA’s Health and Air Quality program and other NASA grants.

The scientists combined data from about 1,000 ground-based air quality stations with atmospheric model data, weather information, wildfire pollution data, and satellite-derived information, including products from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments.

Smoke from Canada’s 2023 wildfires spread across North America. Tan to deep red colors show smoke intensity, estimated from black carbon in NASA’s GEOS-FP model.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) and NASA’s Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO)

Their analysis revealed two distinct periods. From 2003 to 2015, U.S. ground-level ozone generally declined as emissions of ozone-forming pollutants decreased. After 2015, however, those gains slowed or reversed in many places. By comparing estimated ozone levels with scenarios that removed wildfire influence, the researchers found that pollution from wildfires was a main factor in that shift.

Without the wildfire contribution, ground-level ozone in the Midwest, for example, would likely have continued to decline. Instead, wildfires erased about 5.3 years’ worth of ozone-control progress since 2015.

“People in the Midwest may think fires burning far away will not affect them,” said the study’s corresponding author Jun Wang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “But once wildfire pollution is in the air, it can move across regions. Pollution from one place can affect air quality in another.”

Measuring the health toll

The study also found that wildfire-driven ozone increased exposure to unhealthy air and likely contributed to premature deaths. Premature deaths associated with long-term wildfire-related ozone exposure in the U.S. increased by an estimated 318 deaths per year after 2013, with the post-2013 average 46% higher than in the previous decade. The researchers calculated premature deaths using average lifespan, ozone exposure estimates, and population density.

The 2023 Canadian wildfires showed how widely those risks can spread, with smoke-driven ozone increases stretching across the Midwest and into parts of the Northeast and South. Overall, from 2022 to 2024, wildfires exposed an additional 43 million people in the U.S. to conditions that did not meet current federal air quality standards for ozone, the researchers estimated.

Capturing that national picture is difficult from ground monitors alone. Ground monitors remain the backbone of U.S. air quality tracking, but they do not cover every community. NASA’s scientifically validated satellite observations and models help researchers and agencies see air quality patterns across states, regions, and fire seasons.

That broader air quality work includes newer missions such as TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution). Launched in 2023, TEMPO is NASA’s first mission to use a space-based spectrometer to provide hourly daytime measurements of air quality over North America. Its view is sharp enough to distinguish pollution patterns, including surface ozone, across areas only a few square miles wide, a major improvement over earlier satellites.

Together, these capabilities help researchers and agencies see smoke-related ozone patterns that might otherwise be harder to detect, especially in rural and remote areas.

The work also points toward a practical use of NASA science during fire season. Wang’s team has used NASA support to develop FireAQ, a decision-support system that brings satellite observations, model forecasts, and fire and aerosol products into weekly briefings with state and local air quality officials. The goal is to help officials see where smoke-related pollution may move next and give communities better information.

About the Author

Emily DeMarco

Emily DeMarco

Writer/Editor (IV), Earth Science Division

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Jun 04, 2026
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NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth

5 min read NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Research Continues on Earth Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover walks on a treadmill wh...