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.
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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.
NASA’s Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, shared brief remarks with friends, family, and colleagues after they landed at Ellington Airport near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday, April 11, 2026, after a nearly 10-day journey around the Moon and back to Earth.
Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas
Fresh off their return to Earth, the Artemis II astronauts will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 16, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss their historic mission around the Moon.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will answer questions about their mission. The crew returned to Earth on April 10, splashing down off the coast of San Diego, and arrived in Houston on April 11, where they are undergoing standard postflight reconditioning, evaluations, and lunar science debriefs.
NASA will provide live coverage of the news conference on the agency’s YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of additional online platforms, including social media.
Media are invited to attend in person or by phone.
In-person attendance is limited to media previously credentialed by NASA Johnson for the Artemis II mission. To attend in person, contact the NASA Johnson newsroom by 5 p.m. CDT Tuesday, April 14, at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov.
Media joining by phone must RSVP to the NASA Johnson newsroom via email by 5 p.m. CDT Wednesday, April 15. Those participating by phone must dial in no later than 10 minutes before the start of the event.
The Artemis II mission launched April 1 on NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the nearly 10‑day test flight, the crew achieved the mission’s primary objectives, including testing its life support systems; manually piloting the Orion spacecraft; performing maneuvers to propel Orion to the Moon and adjust its course; conducting a lunar flyby with unprecedented views of the Moon’s far side; and completing a safe re-entry and recovery. The astronauts also set a record for the farthest distance traveled by humans away from Earth.
As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly challenging missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and lay the groundwork for sending the first astronauts – American astronauts – to Mars.
The first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century are back on Earth after a record-setting mission aboard NASA’s Artemis II test flight.
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Christina Koch (mission specialist), Victor Glover (pilot), and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen (mission specialist) pose for a group photo in the well deck of the USS John P. Murtha after inspecting the Orion spacecraft on Saturday, April 11, 2026.
The crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Friday, April 10, at 5:07 p.m. PDT (8:07 p.m. EDT), marking the completion of their Artemis II mission.
After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts were met by a combined NASA and U.S. military team that assisted them out of the spacecraft in open water and transported them via helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha for initial medical checkouts.
Artemis II is the first crewed flight aboard NASA’s human deep space capabilities, paving the way for future lunar surface missions.
NASA Night-light Imagery Tracks US Energy Transition, Global Volatility
This data visualization shows how nighttime light changed between 2014 and 2022 around the globe. For each date range, we see how much night lights changed during that period. Derived from satellite imagery taken daily over the past decade, golden areas feature brightening, purple areas feature dimming, and white areas show both kinds of changes. See full video.
Credits: Kel Elkins/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
New nighttime maps based on NASA satellite imagery are upending assumptions, revealing a world where artificial brightening and dimming have intensified over the past decade. The findings show intense flaring over major oil and gas fields in the United States, while factors such as rural electrification and energy conservation are changing how billions around the world experience the night.
Scientists analyzed 1.6 million satellite images collected every night for nine years to picture Earth in a new light. Their findings reveal a world flickering with change.
Data image by Michala Garrison/ NASA Earth Observatory
“Unlocking energy sector insights is just one way NASA data is advancing national security interests at a critical time,” said Miguel Román, deputy director for atmospheres and data systems at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Earth at night has so much to teach us.”
The study team, led by Tian Li and Zhe Zhu at the University of Connecticut, used a new algorithm to analyze 1.16 million satellite images collected at approximately 1:30 a.m. local time every day for nine years by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The refrigerator-size sensors, orbiting Earth at over 16,000 mph, can resolve light sources down to the scale of a toll booth on a dark highway. They fly aboard Earth science satellites that were launched and operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The analysis, reported April 8 in Nature, covered most of the inhabited world, from latitudes between 60 degrees south and 70 degrees north. During the time frame analyzed—2014 to 2022—domestic production of oil and natural gas reached record levels, driven by technological developments and horizontal drilling. Satellite imagery revealed cycles of intense gas flaring over central U.S. regions, particularly the Permian Basin in Texas and North Dakota’s Bakken Formation. Flaring occurs at oil wellheads when excess gas—mostly methane—is burned off. The process releases carbon dioxide and soot, among other byproducts.
Flared gas is money burned, said Deborah Gordon, a methane expert at the non-profit Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) who was not involved in the study. “Letting operators, investors, and insurers know that this is happening is a huge value proposition, both privately and publicly to the world. And it all starts with taxpayer dollars and NASA.”
Scientists, such as Gordon, and analysts across industries, use NASA night-light data to understand how energy moves through grids, pipelines, and supply chains in near real time. The data is free to access via the agency’s Black Marble product suite.
“Understanding where gas is being wasted around the globe and to have this data be public is huge for energy, and economic and environmental security,” Gordon said. “The Black Marble product provides free, openly validated flaring data that are critical inputs into RMI’s suite of public tools.”
City of Light saves energy, global shocks revealed
The latest nighttime maps also challenge some long-held assumptions.
Instead of a planet that simply glows brighter over time due to development—the prevailing view among researchers for decades—the new analysis portrays a world flickering with industrial booms and busts, construction, and blackouts, as well as more gradual shifts, such as policy-driven retrofits.
The study team was able to detect changes in night lights continuously, pixel by pixel, using methods that filter out interference from moonlight, clouds, and atmospheric effects. Their approach acts like giving satellites “smart glasses,” allowing them to focus on real changes.
Overall, the researchers found that global radiance increased by 34% during the study period, but that surge masks large areas of dimming. Such “bidirectional changes” often happen side by side. In the U.S., for example, West Coast cities grew brighter as their populations increased, while much of the East Coast showed dimming, which the team attributed to the use of energy-efficient LEDs and broader economic restructuring.
The authors concluded that internationally, nighttime light surged in China and northern India along with urban development, while LEDs and energy conservation measures coincided with reduced light pollution in Paris and throughout France (a 33% dimming), the UK (22% dimming), and the Netherlands (21% dimming). European nights dimmed sharply in 2022 during a regional energy crisis that followed the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Tracking such dips and flares night after night “is like watching the heartbeat of the planet,” said coauthor Zhe Zhu, director of the Global Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Connecticut.
Flying since 2011, VIIRS sensors now are carried aboard three satellite platforms: Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21. The instruments can sense light spanning visible to thermal infrared wavelengths. Their unique day-night band is ultrasensitive in low-light conditions, achieving finer resolution compared to previous night-light imagery provided by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
IC 486 lies right on the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), around 380 million light-years from Earth. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, it features a bright central bar-shaped structure from which its spiral arms unfurl, wrapping around the core in a smooth, almost ring-like pattern.
Hubble’s keen eye reveals subtle variations in color across the galaxy. The pale, luminous center is dominated by older stars, while faint bluish regions in the surrounding disk trace pockets of more recent star formation. Wisps of dust thread through the galaxy’s structure, gently obscuring light and tracing regions of increased molecular gas where new stars are likely to form.
The barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
At the galaxy’s center a noticeable white glow outshines the starlight around it. This is light from IC 486’s active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is powered by a supermassive black hole more than 100 million times the mass of the Sun. Every sufficiently large galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole at its center, but some of these black holes are particularly ravenous, assembling vast amounts of gas and dust into swirling accretion disks from which they feed. The intense heat generated by the orbiting disk of material generates intense radiation, including X-rays, which can outshine the entire rest of the galaxy. In these cases, the galaxy is known as an active galaxy, with an AGN at its center.
The data used to make this image comes from two separate observing programs — #17310 (PI: M. J. Koss) and #15444 (PI: A. J. Barth) — with similar aims: to survey nearby active galaxies like IC 486 and record detailed, high-quality images of their central black holes and the stars near the core of the galaxy. By combining Hubble’s sharp imaging capabilities with large comprehensive samples, these programs enable detailed comparisons of how stars, gas, dust, and black holes interact in galaxy centers.
This wide-field view of the spiral galaxy IC 486 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope features a vibrant scene of distant background galaxies and foreground stars. Some stars appear with characteristic diffraction spikes. However, much of the field is dominated by the more diffuse, orange-red smudges of far more distant galaxies.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. J. Koss, A. J. Barth
A key goal of this work is to understand how galaxies grow by linking their large-scale structures, such as bars and spiral arms, to activity in their nuclei. To achieve this, the research teams leverage both expert classifications and citizen science through Galaxy Zoo, with datasets they will ultimately release to the public. In parallel, researchers are using the same images to test how well large language models and other machine learning techniques can reproduce or extend human classifications, offering a new way to scale galaxy morphology studies to the largest surveys that telescopes like Euclid and the Vera Rubin Observatory are preforming, and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will perform.
Beyond IC 486, distant background galaxies and foreground stars pepper the image. Some stars appear with characteristic diffraction spikes, while the more diffuse, reddish smudges are far more distant galaxies scattered across the cosmos.
Though it may appear calm and orderly, IC 486 is a dynamic system shaped by gravity and stellar evolution. Over millions of years, its structure will continue to evolve as stars are born, age, and fade, contributing to the ongoing story of galactic life in the universe.
