As NASA pushes the boundaries of exploration and innovation for the benefit of humanity, the agency is looking for partners to share mission stories covering Artemis Moon missions, nuclear propulsion, aeronautics, and more.
NASA published an Announcement for Proposals on May 21 asking filmmakers, documentarians, songwriters, storytellers, poets, and others to submit proposals to partner with the agency by Tuesday, June 30.
In this initial round, NASA is seeking up to 10 partners for unfunded Space Act Agreements to share the stories behind, and insights into, multiple NASA missions, including, but not limited to, the following:
Artemis program, including the recently added Artemis III mission in 2027, and Artemis IV lunar landing in 2028, as well as plans for the agency to develop a Moon Base. Learn more about Artemis on the agency’s website.
NASA’s advancement of nuclear propulsion, including the Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission to Mars in 2028 carrying the Skyfall payload.
NASA’s cutting-edge aviation work through flight tests and other efforts.
While this opportunity is focused on U.S. creators, the agency will consider proposals with a minority of international participants. Proposals should detail which area of focus is desired, funding and distribution arrangements, and any specifics needs from NASA to move forward (access to facilities, personnel, etc.).
Full requirements and other details are available online:
Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov is pictured at the end of the European robotic arm as he works on a high‑resolution camera during a six‑hour, nine‑minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Oct. 16, 2025.
Credit: NASA
NASA will provide live coverage on Wednesday, May 27, as two Roscosmos cosmonauts conduct a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at approximately 10:15 a.m. EDT and last roughly five hours.
Watch NASA’s live coverage beginning at 9:45 a.m. on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of online platforms, including social media.
International Space Station Expedition 74 commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev will install a solar radiation experiment on the Zvezda service module and remove other science hardware from the Poisk and Nauka modules of the orbiting complex’s Roscosmos segment. If time allows, the duo also will photograph one of the Progress 94 cargo spacecraft’s Kurs rendezvous antennas, which failed to deploy in March following its launch to the space station.
This Roscosmos spacewalk will be the second for Kud-Sverchkov and the first for Mikaev. Kud-Sverchkov will wear a spacesuit with red stripes, and Mikaev will wear a spacesuit with blue stripes. It will be the 279th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.
To learn more about International Space Station research, operations, and its crews, visit:
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
This near-infrared image released on May 6, 2026, shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51). M51 is one of four nearby galaxies observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in a study of nearly 9,000 star clusters.
Data from the study shows that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in. Learning about star formation helps us understand galactic evolution, the dynamics within a galaxy, as well as how and where planets form.
Representatives of the Artemis Accords signatories including the United States, led by NASA and the U.S. Department of State, met May 13–14, 2026, in Lima for the fourth annual Artemis Accords workshop.
Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru and Peruvian Space Agency (CONIDA)
The United States participated in an Artemis Accords workshop in Lima, Peru, last week, following a new wave of nations committing to safe and responsible exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Leading up to the event, six countries, including Latvia, Jordan, Morocco, Malta, Ireland, and Paraguay, joined the growing coalition of Artemis Accords signatories during ceremonies held at NASA Headquarters and abroad. This brings the total number of Artemis Accords signatories to 67 like-minded nations.
“This gathering showcases the remarkable global momentum behind the Artemis Accords and our Artemis program,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “The Artemis Accords were created in President Trump’s first term and, as we execute his National Space Policy, we are putting these principles into practice. By aligning our capabilities, acting with urgency, and moving forward as partners, these signatory countries will help shape the future, not from the sidelines, but as essential contributors to humanity’s first permanent outpost on the Moon. Each and every Artemis Accords signatory has the opportunity to play a meaningful role with NASA as we work together to build a sustained human presence on the surface of the Moon.”
On May 13-14, representatives from NASA and the U.S. Department of State joined dozens of counterparts from 30 countries, including several of the newest signatories, for technical discussions and a tabletop exercise focused on operating in complex lunar environments.
Peru hosted the fourth annual workshop, marking the first time the gathering has taken place in South America.
“One of our objectives in hosting this edition of the workshops in our country was to increase regional participation,” said Maj. Gen. Roberto Melgar Sheen, director of Peruvian Space Agency (CONIDA). “I am pleased to say that we have achieved this: All South American signatory countries are taking part in this event, with 90% participating in person and 10% virtually.”
The Artemis Accords community reviewed planned lunar landing and orbiting missions from all the signatories in attendance. With more than a dozen lunar landing missions expected over the next 18 months, last week’s discussions and tabletop exercises focused on non-interference, interoperability, release of scientific data, orbital debris and mitigation. These conversations included a presentation on NASA’s exploration plan, which accelerates the agency’s missions to the Moon. Artemis Accords signatories now have expanded opportunities to support NASA’s Moon Base and deepen their participation in the broader Artemis program, following the agency’s Ignition event on March 24.
“Peru joined the Artemis Accords in 2024, aiming to participate in a cutting-edge dialogue mechanism that addresses global trends in space exploration. We aspire to forge cooperative ties with the signatories of the Artemis Accords that contribute to the scientific and aerospace development of our country,” said Peru’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Felix Denegri about the workshop.
During the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the U.S. State Department, joined with seven other founding nations in 2020 to establish the Artemis Accords in response to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. Today, countries representing every region of the world have committed to responsible principles for exploration.
Signing the Artemis Accords means a commitment to the peaceful and transparent exploration of space; rendering aid to those in need; enabling access to scientific data; ensuring activities do not interfere with those of others; and preserving historically significant sites and artifacts by developing best practices.
More countries are expected to sign the Artemis Accords in the months and years ahead, as NASA continues its work to establish a safe, peaceful, and prosperous future in space.
For more information about the Artemis Accords, visit:
Two of the Artemis II CubeSats can be seen in the lower portion of the Orion stage adapter on the right side of the image.
NASA
Organizations interested in launching CubeSats on future Artemis missions should respond to NASA’s request for information (RFI) by Monday, June 1, for initial consideration.
“The SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and the Artemis missions provide great opportunities for teams to conduct important, science and technology investigations that contribute to the expansion of human space exploration,” said Courtney Ryals, acting manager, SLS payload integration, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The RFI will inform potential future opportunities for CubeSats to fly on Artemis III, IV and V. While NASA is reviewing specific mission profiles, the agency expects to accommodate 6U and 12U-sized CubeSats that would deploy in Earth orbit or on a heliocentric disposal trajectory following the separation of the Orion spacecraft from the rocket, as the nanosatellites would deploy from a ring on the upper stage of the rocket. Opportunities may also exist for CubeSats deployed on a reentry trajectory from Earth orbit.
CubeSat sizes are measured in “one unit” or “1U” increments, each measuring 10x10x10 centimeters.
NASA flew 10 CubeSats on the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022 and four on the crewed Artemis II mission, deploying each after the upper stage detached from the spacecraft and Orion was flying free on its own to carry out its primary mission. In addition to providing a ride to space as secondary payloads, the agency provides payload integration and engineering support.
As part of the Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
NASA’s AWE Completes Mission to Study Earth’s Effect on Space Weather
A long-exposure photo taken from the International Space Station shows airglow as bands of green and red curving around Earth. A flash of lightning appears near the bottom.
Credits: NASA
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.
Installed on the exterior of the International Space Station since November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves, which are giant ripples in the atmosphere caused by strong winds flowing over tall mountains or by violent weather events, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. The AWE instrument looked for these waves in colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow. Funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division, AWE investigated how atmospheric gravity waves propagate upward to space and contribute to space weather — conditions in space that can disrupt satellites, as well as navigation and communications signals.
“The AWE mission has proven that our atmosphere is not a ceiling, but a living, breathing ocean in the sky,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “For the first time, we can see how a thunderstorm in the Midwest, a hurricane over Florida, or a wind gust over the Andes sends invisible ripples — atmospheric gravity waves — crashing into the edge of space like waves hitting a shoreline. By mapping these ripples from the International Space Station, we’ve discovered that Earth’s weather doesn’t just end at the clouds, instead it reaches out beyond our planet, shaping the space weather that impacts our orbital economy.”
This artist’s conception depicts the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) scanning the atmosphere from aboard the International Space Station, measuring variations in infrared airglow to track atmospheric gravity waves as they move up from the lower atmosphere into space.
Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory
During AWE’s 30-month residency on the station, the instrument captured four infrared images every second, tallying more than 80 million nighttime images, which is when airglow can be seen. It observed atmospheric gravity waves from numerous extreme weather events, including a tornado outbreak across the central U.S. in May 2024 and Hurricane Helene impacting the gulf coast of Florida in September 2024.
“We’ve seen atmospheric wave signatures associated with major terrestrial events, which provided a clear example of how intense weather systems can generate measurable upper-atmospheric responses,” said AWE’s principal investigator, Ludger Scherliess of Utah State University in Logan.
These events revealed variations in the types of atmospheric gravity waves created by different kinds of storms. For example, when AWE viewed atmospheric gravity waves generated by a thunderstorm in north Texas on May 26, 2024, it saw they were smaller and more irregular, with a notable asymmetry from north to south, compared to waves created by storms in the same part of the country earlier that month.
This image from AWE shows concentric atmospheric gravity waves caused by a severe weather event that included a tornado near the U.S.-Mexico border on May 3, 2024. Captured during orbit 2529 of AWE’s stay on the International Space Station, the image shows waves spreading across Texas and Mexico in near-perfect circles, a sight rarely observed with such clarity prior to the AWE mission.
NASA/Utah State University
It is important to understand variations in the density of plasma, which is electrically charged gas, in Earth’s upper atmosphere instigated by atmospheric gravity waves, because these variations can disrupt radio signals traveling between satellites and the ground, and from satellite to satellite, degrading the accuracy and reliability of systems used for navigation, timing, and communications.
In a recent study, AWE measurements also revealed the gravity waves with the greatest influence on the upper atmosphere have small horizontal wavelengths, ranging from 30 to 300 kilometers, which AWE was specifically designed to measure.
With its data-collection phase complete, the AWE instrument was turned off to make way for another science experiment that will take its place on the outside of the space station. Called CLARREO Pathfinder (Calibration Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder), the new instrument will take measurements of sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon that are five to 10 times more accurate than those from existing sensors. The exchange of instruments is a key part of the space station’s mission and versatility as an orbiting laboratory for various types of research.
As the International Space Station traveled over the southeastern United States on Sept. 26, 2024, AWE observed atmospheric gravity waves generated by Hurricane Helene as the storm slammed into the gulf coast of Florida. The curved bands extending to the northwest of Florida, artificially colored red, yellow, and blue, show changes in brightness (or radiance) in a wavelength of infrared light produced by airglow in Earth’s mesosphere. The small black circles on the continent mark the locations of cities.
Utah State University
In the coming days, a robotic arm on the space station, called Canadarm2, will remove the AWE instrument from its location. Soon afterward, the AWE instrument will be loaded into part of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft that will deorbit and burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere. However, all of AWE’s observations will ultimately become available to the public and the scientific community for ongoing research and discovery.
“Data from AWE will continue to be made public for both professional researchers and citizen scientists,” Scherliess said.
Some of this data already is available, including interactive, online visualizations on Utah State University’s website, where AWE’s observations are “painted” in swaths onto a globe or on a map as the space station orbits the planet. Users can rotate the visualizations to view atmospheric gravity waves from different angles.
A still image from an interactive visualization shows AWE data collected over the Western Hemisphere.
Utah State University
Launched on Nov. 9, 2023, AWE is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory built the AWE instrument and provided the mission operations center.
Hear more about AWE by listening to episode 334 of NASA’s Houston We Have a Podcast, recorded on Jan. 26, 2024.
By Vanessa Thomas NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket lifts off from Launch Pad 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen aboard the Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the Moon and back.
Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
NASA’s historic Artemis II mission coverage, which connected global audiences to watch the first humans to travel around the Moon in more than half a century, is among the agency’s video productions recognized with four 2026 Telly Awards.
The agency’s continuous, 24/7 livestream of the Artemis II mission, which functioned as both a live event and as a science storytelling experience, combined visuals, real-time mission data, and expert analysis to make a complex spaceflight clear and accessible for an international audience. NASA’s video documentation of mission astronauts and support teams conducting geology training on Earth to prepare for future Artemis missions on the Moon also won a science and technology storytelling award.
In addition, NASA won a screenwriting award for a documentary on the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, narrated by actor John Rhys-Davies.
“By following NASA’s Artemis II coverage in real time on multiple platforms, millions of viewers around the world were able to experience the mission inside the Orion spacecraft and alongside the crew, from lunar flyby to splashdown,” said Brittany Brown, director, Office of Communications Digital and Technology Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Our team’s coordination, from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to the Moon, technical expertise, and around-the-clock dedication turned a single spaceflight mission into a shared, global experience of wonder and inspiration.”
Full list of NASA’s Telly Award wins:
NASA’s Artemis II: Humanity’s Return to the Moon Gold Winner, Science and Technology
NASA’s Artemis II: Humanity’s Return to the Moon Silver Winner, Live Events and Experiences
Preparing for Artemis: NASA’s Geology Training for Lunar Exploration Silver Winner, Science and Technology
The Fellowship of the Telescopes Bronze Winner, Craft-Writing
Livestream coverage of the mission and milestones reached NASA’s largest streaming audience ever on its individual platforms, ultimately reaching nearly 290 million combined views across agency and commercial partnership streaming platforms.
Watch all NASA content through a variety of online platforms:
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The false-color inset emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The false-color inset emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The false-color inset emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The false-color inset emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Natural color
False color
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The right image emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption. NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison.
It’s a truism among oceanographers that there is more accurate mapping of the surface of the Moon and Mars than of the deep-ocean floor. That’s especially true for the Bismarck Sea, a relatively deep body of water north of Papua New Guinea. It’s an ocean basin with a geologically complex seafloor rife with faults, volcanic features, rifts, scarps, and active subduction and spreading zones at depths that make high-resolution sonar mapping challenging.
When satellites detected signs of an unexpected submarine volcanic eruption in the Central Bismarck Sea on May 8, 2026, volcanologists were confronted with the reality that no high-resolution maps of the area were available, and relatively little is known about the deep-water eruption setting. The new eruption is thought to be occurring along the Titan Ridge, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of the location of a submarine eruption in 1972. However, there is little clarity or consensus among scientists about precisely which volcanic feature may be erupting, the original depth of the currently active vent, or when it last erupted.
“The good news is that there are huge opportunities to explore and learn using both government and commercial satellite platforms already in orbit,” said Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
What is known is that seismometers detected a small swarm of earthquakes on May 8, followed soon after by clear signs of a submarine eruption in satellite observations. Beginning on May 9, NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites captured optical imagery of white, steam-rich volcanic plumes rising into the atmosphere, while the ocean color sensor on NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) satellite revealed discolored and disturbed water surrounding the eruption site.
Floating pumice and green, discolored water extend southwest from the eruption site as a white volcanic plume drifts west overhead in this image acquired by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 15, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Other satellites observed ash plumes soaring several kilometers into the atmosphere. Higher resolution imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 and the NASA/USGS Landsat 9 (top) satellites, acquired on May 10 and 11, respectively, captured detailed views of activity near the water surface. The right image at the top of the page shows the same scene in false color (bands 7-6-5), with the inset highlighting the infrared signature of the eruption. On May 12, the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on Suomi NPP detected thermal anomalies spanning roughly seven square kilometers.
“There must be a lot of hot material near the surface to generate so many thermal anomalies,” said Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech. “This suggests a fairly shallow eruption vent—much shallower than what’s implied by the existing bathymetry, which shows water depths of several hundred meters or more.”
Optical satellite imagery shows intense activity in near-surface water, including large plumes of discolored water and widely distributed steam and ash vents. Both medium– and high-resolution sensors—from both government sources and commercial satellite companies—have captured images of expansive pumice rafts (floating volcanic rocks) forming long bands in the surface currents in recent days.
“We’re now eagerly waiting to see if a new island is about to be born—something that we’ve only rarely been able to observe with satellites as it happens,” Garvin said. If a new island does emerge, volcanologists will be watching it closely to see how it evolves. It could build a tuff cone with a long-lived vent crater, or it could collapse and erode rapidly. The eruption could also take a much more explosive turn if seawater finds its way into the shallow magma chamber that has risen within the growing underwater structure.
To date, the eruption has been much less explosive than other recent submarine eruptions, such as those at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in 2022 and Fukutoku-Okanobain 2021. It seems unlikely that this event will become highly explosive because it appears to be associated with a volcanic ridge near the junction of a transform fault and a back-arc spreading center, Carn said. “Spreading centers are associated with less explosive activity, while the most explosive eruptions are usually along subduction zones and involve large stratovolcanoes.”
How long the current eruption will persist is unclear. The 1972 event in this general region lasted for just four days, while another submarine eruption that occurred about 100 kilometers away in the St. Andrew Strait in 1957 lasted nearly four years.
Garvin and scientists from other institutions are tracking developments closely. He plans to analyze radar data from the NASA-ISRO NISAR satellite and the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT Constellation Mission to map the contours of any new land that emerges and track how its shape changes over time. If a permanent island forms, Garvin also sees opportunities for researchers, or “island-nauts,” to visit the area and study how the infant island responds to plant and animal colonization, rainfall, chemical weathering, and other erosive forces, just as happened after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai eruption.
“This new eruption could present an even better opportunity for ‘island-naut’ exploration as we prepare to return to the Moon with women and men via Artemis IV,” he said.
