Curiosity Blog, Sols 4798-4803: Back for More Science
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image showing the side-by-side drill holes “Nevado Sajama” (right) and “Nevado Sajama2” (left). Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture the image on Jan. 31, 2026 — Sol 4795, or Martian day 4,795 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 22:55:27 UTC.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator
Earth planning date: Friday, Feb. 6, 2026
The results from our first visit to the “Nevado Sajama” drill location were intriguing enough to motivate our return to do a deeper dive into the minerals and compounds locked in this rock with SAM (the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite). As explained in the last blog, that deeper dive involves using the second of two vials of a chemical reagent, tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), that helps makes molecules detectable to SAM that would otherwise be undetectable. This week was focused on completing the many carefully-coordinated steps to apply the TMAH reagent to the rock powder from a drill hole and then analyze the treated sample. As you can see in the image above, we know the drilling necessary to collect the sample was successful, as was delivery of the sample to SAM. We are awaiting word about the first part of the SAM analysis, and are running the second part in the weekend plan.
As you can imagine, running a mass spectrometer and chemistry experiment remotely on another planet takes a lot of energy, but throughout the week, the team took advantage of whatever spare power there was to include additional science observations. ChemCam planned two attempts at targeting the Nevado Sajama2 drill-hole interior, analyzed “Tiquipaya,” one of the family of rocks broken by the rover wheels that expose bright white material, and measured the chemistry of the atmosphere with a passive sky observation. They also planned an RMI mosaic of layers near the base of the “Mishe Mokwa” butte to our east. MAHLI and APXS paired up to image and analyze the ground-up tailings around the drill hole for the most direct measure of chemistry of what SAM analyzes. As Mastcam acquired a full 360-degree mosaic the first time we were at Nevado Sajama, they did not have many rock observations to plan. Instead, they turned their eyes toward the sky to measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Navcam made complementary measurements of atmospheric dust and planned movies and imaging surveys of clouds and dust devils. Ever watchful, RAD and REMS made their regular measurements of the Martian environment while DAN regularly monitored the Martian subsurface.
The broadest planned survey by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will reveal hundreds of millions of galaxies scattered across the cosmos. After Roman launches as soon as this fall, scientists will use these sparkly beacons to study the universe’s shadowy underpinnings: dark matter and dark energy.
“We set out to build the ultimate wide-area infrared survey, and I think we accomplished that,” said Ryan Hickox, a professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and co-chair of the committee that shaped the survey’s design. “We’ll use Roman’s enormous, deep 3D images to explore the fundamental nature of the universe, including its dark side.”
This infographic describes the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observation program will cover more than 5,000 square degrees (about 12 percent of the sky) in just under a year and a half. Scientists will use the survey to analyze hundreds of millions of galaxies scattered across the cosmos that reveal clues about the universe’s shadowy underpinnings — dark matter and dark energy — as well as a wealth of other science topics.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Roman’s High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey is one of the mission’s three core observation programs. It will cover more than 5,000 square degrees (about 12 percent of the sky) in just under a year and a half. Roman will look far from the dusty plane of our Milky Way galaxy (that’s what the “high-latitude” part of the survey name means), looking up and out of the galaxy rather than through it to get the clearest view of the distant cosmos.
“This survey is going to be a spectacular map of the cosmos, the first time we have Hubble-quality imaging over a large area of the sky,” said David Weinberg, an astronomy professor at Ohio State University in Columbus, who played a major role in devising the survey. “Even a single pointing with Roman needs a whole wall of 4K televisions to display at full resolution. Displaying the whole high-latitude survey at once would take half a million 4K TVs, enough to cover 200 football fields or the cliff face of El Capitan.”
The survey will combine the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil a goldmine of galaxies strewn across cosmic time. Astronomers will use the survey’s data to explore invisible dark matter, detectable only via its gravitational effects on other objects, and the nature of dark energy — a pressure that seems to be speeding up the universe’s expansion.
“Cosmic acceleration is the biggest mystery in cosmology and maybe in all of physics,” Weinberg said. “Somehow, when we get to scales of billions of light years, gravity pushes rather than pulls. The Roman wide area survey will provide critical new clues to help us solve this mystery, because it allows us to measure the history of cosmic structure and the early expansion rate much more accurately than we can today.”
Weighing shadows
Anything that has mass warps space-time, the underlying fabric of the universe. Extremely massive things like clusters of galaxies warp space-time so much that they distort the appearance of background objects — a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
“It’s like looking through a cosmic funhouse mirror,” Hickox said. “It can smear or duplicate distant galaxies, or if the alignment is just right, it can magnify them like a natural telescope.”
This simulation shows the type of science astronomers will be able to do with future observations from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The sequence demonstrates how the gravity of intervening galaxy clusters and dark matter can distort the light from farther objects, warping their appearance. More intervening material creates stronger distortions. By analyzing these features, astronomers can study elusive dark matter, which can only be measured indirectly through its gravitational effects on visible matter. As a bonus, the distortion acts like a telescope, enabling observations of extremely distant galaxies. Simulations like this one help astronomers understand what Roman’s future observations could tell us about the universe, and provide useful data to validate data analysis techniques.
Caltech/IPAC/R. Hurt
Roman’s view will be large and sharp enough to study this lensing effect on a small scale to see how clumps of dark matter warp the appearance of distant galaxies. Astronomers will create a detailed map of the large-scale distribution of matter — both seen and unseen — throughout the universe and fill in more of the gaps in our understanding of dark matter. Studying how structures grow over time will also help astronomers explore dark energy’s strength at various cosmic stages.
While NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes both also study gravitational lensing, the breakthrough with Roman is its large field of view.
“Weak lensing distorts galaxy shapes too subtly to see in any single galaxy — it’s invisible until you do a statistical analysis,” Hickox said. “Roman will see more than a billion galaxies in this survey, and we estimate about 600 million of them will be detailed enough for Roman to study these effects. So Roman will trace the growth of structure in the universe in 3D from shortly after the big bang to today, mapping dark matter more precisely than we’ve ever done before.”
Sounding out dark energy
Roman’s wide-area survey will also gather spectra from around 20 million galaxies. Analyzing spectra helps show how the universe expanded during different cosmic eras because when an object recedes, all of the light waves we receive from it are stretched out and shifted toward redder wavelengths — a phenomenon called redshift.
By determining how quickly galaxies are receding from us, carried by the relentless expansion of space, astronomers can find out how far away they are — the more a galaxy’s spectrum is redshifted, the farther away it is. Astronomers will use this phenomenon to make a 3D map of all the galaxies measured within the survey area out to about 11.5 billion light-years away.
That will reveal frozen echoes of ancient sound waves that once rippled through the primordial cosmic sea. For most of the universe’s first half-million years, the cosmos was a dense, almost uniform sea of plasma (charged particles).
Rare, tiny clumps attracted more matter toward themselves gravitationally. But it was too hot for the material to stick together, so it rebounded. This push and pull created waves of pressure—sound — that propagated through the plasma.
This animation illustrates how small particles (in this case, sand) behave when exposed to different sound frequencies. In the very early universe, a cosmic “hum” created ripples in the primordial soup that filled space. Since the ripples were places where more matter was collected, like the rings of sand shown here, slightly more galaxies formed along them than elsewhere. As the universe expanded over billions of years, so did these structures. By comparing their size during different cosmic epochs, astronomers can trace the universe’s expansion.
Nigel Stanford (used with permission)
Over time, the universe cooled and the waves ceased, essentially freezing the ripples (called baryon acoustic oscillations) in place. Since the ripples were places where more matter was collected, slightly more galaxies formed along them than elsewhere. As the universe expanded over billions of years, so did these structures.
These rings act like a ruler for the universe. Today, they are about 500 million light-years wide. Roman will precisely measure their size across cosmic time, revealing how dark energy may have evolved.
Recent results from other telescopes hint that dark energy may be shifting in strength over cosmic time. “Roman will be able to make high precision tests that should tell us whether these hints are real deviations from our current standard model or not,” said Risa Wechsler, director of Stanford University’s KIPAC (Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology) in California and co-chair of the committee that shaped the survey’s design. “Roman’s imaging survey combined with its redshift survey give us new information about the evolution of the universe — both how it expands and how structures grow with time — that will help us understand what dark energy and gravity are doing at unprecedented precision.”
Altogether, Roman will help us understand the effects of dark energy 10 times more precisely than current measurements, helping discern between the leading theories that attempt to explain why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.
Because of the way Roman will survey the universe, it will reveal everything from small, rocky objects in our outer solar system and individual stars in nearby galaxies to galaxy mergers and black holes at the cosmic frontier over 13 billion years ago.
“Roman is exciting because it covers such a wide area with the image quality only available in space,” Wechsler said. “This enables a broad range of science, from things we can anticipate studying to discoveries that we haven’t thought of yet.”
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Northern Japan, especially the island of Hokkaido, is home to some of the snowiest cities in the world. Sapporo, the island’s largest city and host of an annual snow festival, typically sees more than 140 days of snowfall, with nearly 6 meters (20 feet) accumulating on average each year. The ski resorts surrounding the city delight in the relatively dry, powdery “sea-effect” snow that often falls when frigid air from Siberia flows across the relatively warm waters of the Sea of Japan.
However, despite the region’s familiarity with heavy snowfall, winter 2026 got off to a disruptive start. A series of intense storms in January and February repeatedly paralyzed transportation systems, closing airports, snarling roadways, and suspending trains. Following storms that dropped more than 2 meters (7 feet) of snow in Aomori, a city on the island of Honshu just south of Hokkaido (out of frame), authorities deployed troops to help clear roofs, according to news reports. The snow has caused dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, according to Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency.
On February 5, 2026, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image of snow-covered landscapes across Hokkaido. With more than 31 active volcanoes, the island features several large caldera lakes, including at least five that are visible in the image. (Calderas are large depressions formed by volcanic eruptions.) In the east, forested windbreaks around Nakashibetsu form a checkerboard pattern, while to the north, swirls of drifting sea ice adorn the Sea of Okhotsk.
The Sea of Okhotsk is the southernmost sea that routinely hosts large amounts of sea ice. Although this winter brought unusually cold weather, long-term observations indicate that the amount of ice observed there each year has declined significantly in recent decades. One 2026 analysis noted a 3.4 percent per decade decline in the maximum extent of its winter sea ice since the 1970s. These changes could have implications for the region’s marine ecosystems, which are known for being highly productive and producing massive phytoplankton blooms each spring after the ice melts.
Disruptive snowstorms are also striking elsewhere in Japan. In February, a storm blanketed western Japan in snow, leading to more travel disruptions and the early closure of some polling stations during national elections.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.
jsc2026e004045 (Oct. 17, 2025) — The four members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station pose together for an official crew portrait. From left are, Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Commander and Pilot respectively, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and Mission Specialist Sophie Adenot.
NASA
Four crew members are set to launch to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission, where they will conduct research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The crew will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft named Freedom. The spacecraft previously flew NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 and Crew-9 missions, as well as private astronaut missions Axiom Mission 2 and 3.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. They will be joined by ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who will serve as mission specialists. Crew-12 will join Expedition 74 crew members already aboard the space station.
During their eight-month mission, Crew-12 will conduct a variety of science experiments to advance research and technology for future Moon and Mars missions and benefit humanity back on Earth. This research includes studies of pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve treatments, on-demand intravenous fluid generation for future space missions, automated plant health monitoring, investigations of plant and nitrogen-fixing microbe interactions to enhance food production in space, and research on how physical characteristics may affect blood flow during spaceflight.
Meanwhile, support teams are progressing through Dragon preflight milestones for Crew-12, they also are preparing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster for its second flight. After system checkouts are complete and all components are certified, teams will mate Dragon to Falcon 9 in SpaceX’s hangar at the launch site. The integrated spacecraft and rocket then will roll to the pad for a dry dress rehearsal with the crew and an integrated static fire test before launch.
This flight is the 12th crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the space station as part of NASA’sCommercial Crew Program.
Meet Crew-12
jsc2026e004033 (Jan. 21, 2026) — The four members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station pose together for a crew portrait in their pressure suits at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. From left are, Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, Pilot and Commander respectively, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and Mission Specialist Sophie Adenot.
SpaceX
This will be the second flight to the space station for Meir, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013. The Caribou, Maine, native earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Brown University, a master’s degree in space studies from the International Space University, and a doctorate in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. On her first spaceflight, Meir spent 205 days as a flight engineer during Expedition 61/62, and she completed the first three all-woman spacewalks with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch, totaling 21 hours and 44 minutes outside of the station. Since then, she has served in various roles, including assistant to the chief astronaut for commercial crew (SpaceX), deputy for the Flight Integration Division, and assistant to the chief astronaut for the human landing system. Follow @Astro_Jessica on X and Instagram.
A commander in the United States Navy, Hathaway was selected as part of the 2021 astronaut candidate class. This will be Hathaway’s first spaceflight. The South Windsor, Connecticut, native holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and history from the U.S. Naval Academy and master’s degrees in flight dynamics from Cranfield University and national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. Hathaway also is a graduate of the Empire Test Pilot’s School, Fixed Wing Class 70 in 2011. At the time of his selection, Hathaway was deployed aboard the USS Truman, serving as Strike Fighter Squadron 81’s prospective executive officer. He has accumulated more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 different aircraft, including more than 500 carrier arrested landings and 39 combat missions. Follow @astro_hathaway on X and Instagram.
This will be Fedyaev’s second long-duration stay aboard the orbiting laboratory. He graduated from the Krasnodar Military Aviation Institute in 2004, specializing in aircraft operations and air traffic organization, and earned qualifications as a pilot engineer. Prior to his selection as a cosmonaut, he served as deputy commander of an Ilyushin-38 aircraft unit in the Kamchatka Region, logging more than 600 flight hours and achieving the rank of second-class military pilot. Fedyaev was selected for the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center Cosmonaut Corps in 2012 and has served as a test cosmonaut since 2014. In 2023, he flew to the space station as a mission specialist during NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission, spending 186 days in orbit as an Expedition 69 flight engineer. For his achievements, Fedyaev was awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation and received the Yuri Gagarin Medal.
Mission Overview
jsc2026e004030 (Jan. 23, 2026) — The four members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station pose together for a crew portrait in their blue flight suits at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. From left are, Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, Pilot and Commander respectively, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut and Mission Specialist Sophie Adenot.
SpaceX
Following liftoff, Falcon 9 will accelerate Dragon to approximately 17,500 mph. Once in orbit, the crew, along with NASA and SpaceX mission control, will monitor a series of maneuvers to guide Dragon to the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew can pilot it manually if necessary.
After docking, Crew-12 will be welcomed aboard the station by the three-member Expedition 74 crew, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev.
While aboard the space station, Crew-12 will welcome a Soyuz spacecraft in July carrying three new crew members: NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. They also will bid farewell to the Soyuz carrying Williams, Kud-Sverchkov, and Mikaev. The crew also is expected to see the arrival of Dragon, Roscosmos Progress, and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL spacecraft for station resupply.
For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies concentrate on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA is focusing its resources on deep space missions to the Moon as part of the Artemis campaign in preparation for future human missions to Mars.
Learn more about the space station, its research, and crew, at:
A composite image shows the International Space Station as it transits the Moon. Photo Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
NASA/Joel Kowsky
Have you ever heard the saying, “You have to learn how to walk before you can run?” The same can be true in human space exploration. To push capabilities further and ensure safe, successful missions, NASA must test ideas and solve challenges ahead of time. While Earth-based research and engineering helps NASA progress through various challenges, it can’t fully replicate the space environment. That’s where the International Space Station comes in — an out-of-this-world laboratory where astronauts help prepare for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
(From left) Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency); Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli, both from NASA; and Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), showing off crew active dosimeters used for radiation monitoring. Credit: NASA
NASA
Since 2000, NASA and its partners have used the orbiting laboratory to conduct groundbreaking research and collaborate to advance human exploration to the depths of our solar system. Research aboard the space station helped lay the foundation for the Orion spacecraft’s life support and safety systems, which will carry four astronauts around the Moon during the Artemis II mission. These systems include radiation sensing equipment, carbon dioxide removal systems, a water-based portable fire extinguisher, emergency fire masks, the toilet, a heat exchanger, and a backup emergency navigation system.
Artemis II also includes a set of science objectives, many rooted in research and methods pioneered aboard the space station. One example is Spaceflight Standard Measures, an experiment that tracks psychological and physiological data points. This research will branch off to collect astronaut information beyond low Earth orbit, deepening our understanding of how the body adapts to living and working far from Earth.
Organ-chip experiments use small devices containing cells to model how tissues and organs respond to space stressors and therapeutic treatments. These devices and their related hardware have been used in several experiments aboard the space station and will continue their legacy in the lunar environment to study the effects of deep space stressors on human health using cells from Artemis II astronauts. Organ-chip research could be used to develop improved prevention and personalized medical treatments for people on Earth and in space.
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim takes a photo of Earth landmarks from the International Space Station’s cupola. Credit: NASA.
NASA
Methods proven through Crew Earth Observations aboard space station are informing Crew Lunar Observations in support of Artemis II science and handheld imaging of the Moon. The crew will analyze and photograph geologic features on the lunar far side, providing critical information for Artemis III surface exploration. Frameworks from Earth observations, including target planning, visualization software, and scripts, have been adapted for lunar observations, shaping operations and preparing for future exploration missions.
Small, cost-effective satellites called CubeSats are deployed from space station and other spacecraft to test new technologies and conduct scientific research in low Earth orbit. Building on this success, NASA is partnering with international agencies to deploy CubeSats aboard Artemis II for technology demonstrations and studies in high Earth orbit.
The space station remains a critical testbed for optimizing communications, robotics, and other technologies for missions to the Moon and Mars. Researchers also study the effects of spaceflight on people, develop tools to monitor crew health, and enhance plant growth to support astronaut safety and wellbeing.
As humans prepare to venture beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time in more than 50 years, we celebrate the space station and other NASA programs that walked so Artemis could run.
