Thursday, 9 July 2026

NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

A collage of four vertical aerial photographs showing different views of sea ice. From left to right: 1) A vibrant orange and red sunset glowing just above the horizon over a vast expanse of dark blue, shadowed sea ice. 2) A view from an aircraft window showing a section of the plane's wing in the foreground, overlooking a sprawling plain of blue-tinted ice beneath a clear sky that fades to pink at the horizon. 3) A view looking past an airplane's dark engine cowling and propeller blade, showing bright white sea ice fractured by a network of dark, branching cracks under a bright, hazy sun. 4) A downward aerial view of heavily textured, bright white sea ice split by a wide, jagged, dark crack (a lead) exposing the open water beneath.
These four views were captured from a World War II-era aircraft in April 2026, when scientists used instruments aboard the plane to study Arctic sea ice. Their flights were timed to coincide with satellites passing overhead so the airborne and orbital data could be combined.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And while that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists started preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness.

Researchers spent two weeks in April flying above the Arctic Ocean, often watching sunrise from an altitude of 1,500 feet (457 meters) in a World War II-era plane. A variety of cutting-edge sensors used to measure the thickness of sea ice and snow were aboard the plane, including a stand-in for the microwave radiometer now undergoing testing at JPL. Measuring sea ice thickness is tricky, requiring a number of precise figures, including how high the sea ice rises above water, the depth of snow on top of that ice, and microwave emissions from the surface.

Flights were timed to the passage of satellites overhead so coordinated observations could be taken of the same features. Combining the airborne and satellite data will improve scientists’ ability to measure sea ice and understand how climate conditions are evolving across the Arctic.

In recent decades, the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice have changed. Improving measurements of those changes helps scientists better understand the Arctic system while supporting navigation, weather and ocean research, and future satellite observations. As Arctic shipping activity increases, the region is also becoming strategically and economically more significant.

According to Sahra Kacimi of JPL, who served as the field campaign’s science lead, ongoing warming in the Arctic could potentially impact public safety and economic interests.

Find out what Arctic sea ice looked like as scientists studied it from the air — and using space-based instruments — during a field campaign this past April.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Frequent flyers

Kacimi has spent years studying sea ice using satellite data, but the top-down view she gets from space is different than peering out a plane’s window.

The bewildering diversity of sea ice creates otherworldly landscapes. The ice can be attached to land or adrift in the ocean; it can be rough or smooth. Driven by winds and ocean currents, the ice is constantly shifting, breaking apart, and deforming. Cracks can open into long stretches of exposed ocean, and collisions between floes can push ice rubble into massive ridges that extend for miles.

Some sea ice lasts only one season, while thicker ice can survive for several years (though multiyear sea ice is becoming less common in many parts of the Arctic). Entire ecosystems are affected by these changes, down to the arctic foxes and hares the scientists spotted throughout the trip.

Improving estimates of sea ice thickness helps scientists better understand how the region is changing and supports long-term observations of the Arctic environment. The NASA team logged about 50 hours in the air over the two-week campaign, conducting flights over drifting ice near the town of Inuvik before studying ice fixed to the shore of another location, a hamlet called Cambridge Bay.

For the Inuvik portion of the campaign, the team coordinated with the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a satellite jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), with JPL leading the United States component of the mission. Though it was designed to map the height of the globe’s sea and fresh water, SWOT can also measure the amount of sea ice above the waterline.

In Cambridge Bay, the NASA team joined researchers from ESA (European Space Agency), Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, and Canada’s University of Calgary. During this part of the campaign, coordinated flights soared over a field camp and under the tracks of satellite missions such as NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) and ESA’s CryoSat-2.

To improve sea ice thickness estimates, ESA is developing, with cooperation from NASA, a new polar mission called Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter (CRISTAL). During the April airborne campaign, scientists flew instruments similar to what CRISTAL will carry, including the microwave radiometer now being tested at JPL.

“Combining observations from space, air, and ground surface instruments is essential for developing and validating algorithms for current and future missions,” Kacimi said.

For the scientists, it was also a chance to meet locals who see the Arctic’s changes up close. Kacimi spoke to community leaders and students at a STEM camp about how disappearing ice is affecting their communities.

“I’m used to looking at sea ice from space and thinking about its role in the global climate, but for people living in the Arctic, it carries a much deeper meaning,” Kacimi said.

Media Contacts

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Liz Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov

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NASA Awards Contracts for Mars Advanced Surface Mobility Technology

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NASA Awards Contracts for Mars Advanced Surface Mobility Technology

July 8, 2026

C.13

NASA Awards Contracts for Mars Advanced Surface Mobility Technology

NASA has selected seven companies for contract awards under the Mars Exploration Program’s Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration, or STRIDE, initiative to advance next-generation commercial robotic surface mobility for future Mars exploration.

The STRIDE awards will support the development of innovative robotic mobility systems that may enable future Mars missions to access more challenging terrain, travel greater distances, and investigate scientifically valuable regions that are difficult to reach with current mobility systems.

The STRIDE awards have a total potential value of approximately $17 million with a period of work targeted to begin in Fall of 2026.

Contract awardees are:

  • AeroVironment, Arlington, Virginia
  • Astrobotic, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Venturi Astrolab (Astrolab), Hawthorne, California
  • Ground Control Robotics, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Honeybee Robotics, Longmont, Colorado
  • Intuitive Machines, Houston, Texas
  • MEI Technologies, Webster, Texas

STRIDE demonstrates NASA’s commitment to strong public-private partnerships, allowing the agency to explore new approaches for Mars surface exploration while identifying key capability gaps and development needs for commercial systems that could operate and traverse realistic Martian environments.

For more information about NASA’s Mars Exploration, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/mars-exploration

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Jul 08, 2026


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Students Connect NASA Science With Indigenous Knowledge to Study Coastal Erosion

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Students Connect NASA Science With Indigenous Knowledge to Study Coastal Erosion

Story by Keri Moskowitz, Gulf of Maine Research Institute

Three students sitting around a classroom table looking at NASA satellite images.
Students return from fieldwork and sit together in the classroom, examining NASA satellite images to learn about the changes to their community’s coastline.

For the Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Reservation, or Sipayik, the ocean has always been a teacher. Situated in what is known as Downeast Maine, along the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay, generations of Indigenous people have lived along the coast, learning from the tides, the land, and their elders. But today, the shoreline is changing more rapidly. Coastal erosion is slowly taking land away. Land that already holds a history of loss.

In the summer of 2023, inspired by a trip to Fairbanks, AK to attend Climate Change in My Community  – a workshop organized by the NASA Science Activation (SciAct) program’s Arctic and Earth Signs project – SciAct’s Learning Ecosystems Northeast (LENE) team began working with partners, including Indigenous leaders and scientists, to ask an important question: What does coastal erosion mean to people who have already lost land?

By November 2024, planning was underway at Sipayik Elementary School. The goal was to bring together Western science and Indigenous knowledge so students could understand the changes happening in their own community.

The lessons began in March 2025. For five weeks, nine 5th-grade students explored erosion in many ways. They visited local field sites and listened to elders share stories about how the coastline used to look. Learners used these accounts to measure the changes, both on the coast and via maps back in the classroom. They built erosion trays from simple materials to test how waves shape the land. They measured current high tide lines and compared them to historical ones. They studied old photographs and aerial images from 1942 to 2023 to see how much the shoreline had moved. They even compared 300-year-old tribal maps with future flood projections.

Students learned that science does not only live in textbooks. As one observer shared, “Our people were scientists without having to go to school.”

The students were curious, engaged, and proud. They saw that resilience is part of who they are. They have always adapted while holding on to culture. 

In June of 2026, the students were invited to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to present their work to scientists, staff, and REU (Research Experience for Undergraduate) interns. They traveled 3.5 hours for this opportunity, and the journey proved worthwhile. During the Q&A portion following their slideshow, someone asked whether learning to read the various maps was difficult. One student responded with a reminder: these were not merely maps but NASA satellite images.

Future goals for the project include inviting more elders and adding more field sites in the work, strengthening language and cultural connections, sharing student learning with other Native youth, and planning resilience strategies like marsh restoration in coordination with tribal leadership. When the students were asked if they planned to continue their studies and work on this cause after their time in the classroom ended, they all resoundingly stated “YES”.

In Sipayik, the story of erosion is not just about land washing away. It is about memory, knowledge, identity, and the strength of a community that continues to learn from the shore.

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Wednesday, 8 July 2026

Hubble Captures Star-Studded Cluster

A packed, roughly spherical cluster of red, white and blue stars shines against the black background of space. The stars are clustered most densely toward the center of the cluster.
This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 3, a densely packed cluster of stars whose origins may be a merger between globular clusters in the early universe.
NASA, ESA, and A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases Messier 3 (M3), one of the Milky Way galaxy’s most massive globular clusters, or spherical collections of gravitationally bound stars. Globular clusters are made up of ancient stars that formed at roughly the same time from the same cloud of gas, giving those stars similar ages. Around 150 known globular clusters are sprinkled around the outer regions of the Milky Way.

Learn more about M3.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)



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Cottonwood Fire Chars Utah

June 5
June 29

Mountainous landscapes appear green and untouched by fire in a satellite image acquired on June 5, 2026.
Mountainous landscapes appear green and untouched by fire in a satellite image acquired on June 5, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

An image of the same area shows a large brown patch spanning much of the image in an image acquired after the fire on June 29, 2026.
An image of the same area shows a large brown patch spanning much of the image in an image acquired after the fire on June 29, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Mountainous landscapes appear green and untouched by fire in a satellite image acquired on June 5, 2026.
Mountainous landscapes appear green and untouched by fire in a satellite image acquired on June 5, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
An image of the same area shows a large brown patch spanning much of the image in an image acquired after the fire on June 29, 2026.
An image of the same area shows a large brown patch spanning much of the image in an image acquired after the fire on June 29, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

June 5

June 29


A burned landscape spans more than 150 square miles (390 square kilometers) of rugged terrain northwest of Junction, Utah, as seen in this pair of images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 on June 5, 2026 (left) and June 29, 2026 (right). NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison.

After a winter of below-average snowpack and an unusually warm and dry start to summer, the National Interagency Fire Center warned that the Great Basin and parts of the Rockies faced an elevated risk of wildfires in July 2026.

The warning proved accurate. By July 7, firefighters labored to contain nearly three dozen large, early-season wildland fires that raced through forests in several parts of the western U.S. Utah was among the most active states, with fires having charred 558 square miles (1,445 square kilometers) and four major fires that were not fully contained still burning.

The Cottonwood fire ranked as one of Utah’s—and the country’s—largest and most destructive fires of the year so far. As of July 7, it had burned 150 square miles (390 square kilometers), just shy of the Babylon fire in eastern Utah. Landsat 9 captured the false-color image (bands 7-5-4) above (right) on June 29, 2026, when blackened vegetation spanned a large patch of rugged terrain along the Beaver River. The image on the left shows the same area on June 5, a few weeks before the fire ignited. In this band combination of shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible light, unburned vegetation appears bright green, snow is blue, and clouds are white.

Ponderosa pine, oak, sagebrush, and grasses were among the vegetation types that burned. Officials with the state’s forestry division told news media that the Cottonwood fire had destroyed up to 150 structures. Eagle Point Ski Resort, which lost more than 100 condos and 30 cabins, also reported damage to four of its five chairlifts.

The damage to forests was extensive, though isolated patches survived largely unscathed, remaining as green oases within the broader burned area. Among them were the forests around Tushar Campground, the site of a 4-H summer camp. Beaver County officials credited years of forest treatments, such as clearing brush and trimming branches, with helping save the campground and surrounding forests.

The fire spreads especially rapidly on June 23 and June 26. The fire perimeters in this visualization are based on data from NASA’s Fire Events Data Suite.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

As the fire spread, NASA’s Fire Events Data Suite (FEDS) tracked its progression and rate of growth. The visualization above, based on the FEDS system, shows the fire surging on June 23 and tripling in size over 12 hours that day as it spread to the north, east, and south. It also grew rapidly on June 26, when it made a run to the north. FEDS draws on data from the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) sensors aboard the Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites, which detect active fires day and night by their thermal infrared signature.

FEDS is one of several tools available to firefighters and emergency management officials when responding to fires. First responders often rely on higher-resolution airborne imagers or on firefighters walking fire edges to map perimeters. FEDS offers a different advantage: consistent, easily accessible data that do not need to be specially requested, according to Tempest McCabe, a University of Maryland scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who helped develop the tool. As a result, FEDS often detects a fire’s start earlier than other sources and tracks blazes for their full duration. To capitalize on strengths like these, the FEDS team is working closely with operational fire behavior analysts, with support from NASA’s FireSense program, to better understand and anticipate periods of rapid fire spread.

A total of 1,289 firefighters have been deployed to the Cottonwood fire, according to InciWeb, a website managed by the National Interagency Fire Center. As of July 7, the fire was 56 percent contained, but forecasters expect a hot, dry weather pattern to persist in the coming days, with fire behavior likely to be “very active to extreme” over the next 72 hours.

Government satellite data are part of a global system of observations used to track fire behavior and analyze emerging trends. Among the real-time wildfire monitoring tools that NASA makes available are FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), the Worldview browser, and the Fire Event Explorer.

As of July 7, 2026, fires had burned 5,265 square miles (13,636 square kilometers) across the United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That’s 46 percent more than the 10-year average (2016-2025) for that point in the season.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and fire perimeter data from the Fire Events Data Suite. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

Mountainous landscapes appear green and untouched by fire in a satellite image acquired on June 5, 2026.

June 5, 2026

JPEG (1.39 MB)

An image of the same area shows a large brown patch spanning much of the image in an image acquired after the fire on June 29, 2026.

June 29, 2026

JPEG (1.41 MB)

An animation shows the expansion of the fire between June 23 and July 7, with the burned area from the fire beginning as a small patch near Beaver, Utah, and then spreading north, east, and south.

FEDS fire perimeter (June 23-July 7)

JPEG (1.80 MB)

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NASA Transfers ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ to Patuxent Research Refuge

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NASA Transfers ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ to Patuxent Research Refuge

a small crowd holds up a triangular pennant flag with "250" on it, with a field and trees in the background
Following a ceremony on July 7, 2026, officials hold up a U.S. 250th pennant at “Area 400,” a 105-acre parcel previously part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and now part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Patuxent Research Refuge.

NASA ceremonially transferred ownership of about 105 acres of wooded land at its Goddard Space Flight Center’s Greenbelt, Maryland, campus Tuesday to the adjoining Patuxent Research Refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The property, formerly known as NASA Goddard’s Area 400, is now part of the largest block of unfragmented forest between Washington and Baltimore. The nearly 13,000-acre woodland is the nation’s only refuge specifically established to support wildlife research. The refuge also supports recreational uses, such as walking, biking, horseback riding, fishing, and hunting.

two men sign certificates on a table with black tablecloth
At a ceremony on July 7, 2026, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik (left) and Jamie Dunn, center director, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., sign certificates that ceremonially transfer a 105-acre parcel of property known as “Area 400” from NASA Goddard to the Service.
NASA

“For over six decades, NASA Goddard has helped shape humanity’s understanding of Earth,” said Jamie Dunn, center director, NASA Goddard. “We’re glad to present this land to our colleagues in the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose conservation and research helps do the real legwork in preserving our Blue Marble for future generations.”

NASA Goddard had used Area 400 for propellant research beginning in the 1960s. That work has largely since shifted to NASA facilities in other states or to commercial providers, and the property had long been a candidate for divestment. NASA and the Service began discussing a potential transfer in 2021.

a Monarch butterfly rests on a man's hand
Following remarks from attending dignitaries and the signing ceremony, assembled guests participated in a monarch butterfly release and milkweed seed dispersal.
NASA

Prior to the transfer, Area 400 was still almost entirely wooded aside from a two-and-a-half-acre clearing with 11 small structures. The interagency transfer was effective on Feb. 23, and NASA recently completed its final closeout activities at the property, deconstructing the buildings, roadway, and utility service.

This aerial photograph shows Area 400’s appearance in 1984. The surrounding forest has remained largely unchanged since NASA Goddard occupied the property in the 1960s.
NASA

“Through working with partners on the best use of land, as exemplified with this land transfer, we can continue to conserve America’s natural beauty and expand outdoor recreation opportunities for future generations,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik.

Media contacts:

Rob Garner
News Chief, Office of Communications
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Keith Shannon
Regional Communications Lead – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region
U.S. Department of the Interior



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NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice

5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) These four views were captured from a World War II-era airc...