NASA Sets Briefings for SpaceX Crew-13 Mission to Space Station

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 members are pictured in their pressure suits seated inside a mockup Dragon spacecraft during a preflight training session at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. From left are Roscosmos Sergey Teteryatnikov, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk.

Credit: SpaceX

NASA and its partners will discuss the upcoming crew rotation mission to the International Space Station during a pair of news conferences on Monday, Aug. 3, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Mission leadership will provide an overview of NASA’s SpaceX Crew‑13 mission at 12 p.m. EDT. Next, crew members will discuss their training and mission preparations at 2 p.m. This is Crew-13’s final media availability prior to traveling to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch.

NASA will stream these events live. Learn where to watch online:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

The Crew-13 mission will carry NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov to the orbiting laboratory. The crew will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida no earlier than mid-September.

International media attending in person must email the NASA Johnson newsroom at jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov by 5 p.m., Tuesday, July 21. United States-based media attending in person must respond by 5 p.m., Thursday, July 30. Media joining virtually must respond by 10 a.m. the day of the event. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Briefing participants are as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):

12 p.m.: Mission Overview News Conference

• Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator, Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Dana Weigel, manager, Low Earth Orbit Program, NASA Johnson
• Mathieu Caron, director, Astronauts, Life Sciences, and Space Medicine, CSA
• Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX

2 p.m.: Crew-13 News Conference

• Jessica Watkins, commander, NASA
• Luke Delaney, pilot, NASA
• Joshua Kutryk, mission specialist, CSA
• Sergey Teteryatnikov, mission specialist, Roscosmos

Following the news conference, crew members will be available for limited media interviews. All interview requests must be submitted by 5 p.m. on July 30, to the NASA Johnson newsroom at: jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov.

This will be the second flight to the space station for Watkins, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. Watkins grew up in Lafayette, Colorado, and earned an undergraduate degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University, as well as a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a geologist, she studied the Martian surface and was a member of the Curiosity rover science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Watkins first launched to the space station as a crew member aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission, spending a total of 170 days in space across space station Expeditions 67/68 in 2022. She will be the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft twice.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, Delaney earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of North Florida and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School. The Florida native is a distinguished naval aviator who participated in exercises throughout the Asia Pacific region and conducted missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As a test pilot, Delaney evaluated developmental aircraft systems and served as a test pilot instructor. He also worked as a research pilot at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where he supported airborne science missions. This is the first spaceflight for Delaney.

The Crew-13 mission also is the first spaceflight for Kutryk. Prior to his selection as a CSA astronaut in 2017, he served as a CF-18 fighter pilot, flying missions in support of Canada’s NATO, U.N., and North American Aerospace Defense Command commitments. A native of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Kutryk also worked as an experimental and operational test pilot at the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, Alberta. Kutryk received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and he is a distinguished graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot school in Edwards, California. He has master’s degrees in space studies, flight test engineering, and defense studies.

This mission will be Teteryatnikov’s first trip to the orbiting laboratory. He graduated from the Naval Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2011 as an engineer specializing in ship power plant operations. Before his selection as a test cosmonaut, Teteryatnikov served in various naval engineering roles, including undersea vessels and specialized engine room operations. He was selected for the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center Cosmonaut Corps in 2021 and has served as a test cosmonaut since 2023.

For more information about the mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-spacex-crew-13

-end-

Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
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joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Leah Cheshier / Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
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leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov / anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

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Jul 20, 2026

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New NASA Earth Missions Gear Up to Start Science Flights  

Satellite imagery captured wildfires burning hot enough to generate pyrocumulonimbus clouds north of Lake Superior in July 2026. NASA aircraft will help scientists study the powerful storms as they develop.

Credits:
CSU/CIRA & NOAA

Landslides in Alaska. Air quality in Atlanta. Fire clouds out West. From the Arctic fringes to farm country, NASA’s newest class of suborbital Earth Venture missions is gearing up to deliver science that will benefit communities in the United States and beyond. 

The six projects will mobilize hundreds of scientists and pilots from NASA, the U.S. Navy, universities, and other institutions over the next several years. While the investigations range across topics, a defining feature of suborbital missions is the use of sensors mounted on aircraft. 

Airborne remote sensing serves as a bridge between ground-based instruments and satellites. Data collected via planes, helicopters, drones, and balloons can fill in gaps in computer models used by weather forecasters, city planners, and others.  

When wildfires create their own weather 

The first project to take wing this summer is Injected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment (INSPYRE), led by the Naval Research Laboratory. From mission headquarters in Colorado, the team will chase one of the least understood forms of severe weather on Earth: towering “fire clouds” generated when extreme wildfires burn hot enough to brew their own thunderstorms.  

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds crackle with lighting in imagery captured over Utah and Colorado by the GOES-18 satellite in early July 2026.

CSU/CIRA & NOAA

Smoky and crackling with lightning, these unique storms can create blind spots for aviators above and spark new blazes below. Measuring and mapping the dangerous storms as they develop in real-time will help scientists forecast them in the future. Several aircraft, including NASA’s high-altitude ER-2, flying out of Montana, will carry a large suite of instruments over wildfire-generated storm systems. Among them will be two state-of-the-art infrared wildfire trackers, which were developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and will be flying as part of the agency’s FireSense program.  

Testing the air over farmland, megacities 

Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission, which kicks off this year, will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms stretching from the Midwest to California’s Central Valley. These emissions affect human health, global climate, and stratospheric ozone. The mission is led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, along with Colorado State University, and Boston University. 

NASA’s 777 aircraft is gearing up to start science flights. Structural modifications – like enlarged cabin windows and instrument portals – have transformed the former passenger plane into a flying laboratory. It’s seen here at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in April 2026.

NASA/Ryan Hill

Two North American cities with air quality concerns are Atlanta and Mexico City. But the causes differ, with weather and terrain playing a role. To explore these differences, the Hemispheric Airborne Measurements of Air Quality (HAMAQ) mission will investigate areas of poor air in the two capitals and test how satellite information can help forecasting and mitigation efforts. The team will deploy two aircraft at different altitudes: NASA’s P-3B will fly close to the surface, directly measuring fine particle and gaseous pollutants, while the recently acquired 777 science jet will soar high above, mapping pollution with remote sensors.  NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is leading the mission. 

Fast-changing north 

As the Arctic warms at least twice as fast as the rest of Earth, data collected today can help guide communities on the front lines of change.  

Alaska’s glaciers are losing ice and contributing to sea level rise. NASA is tracking the changes from land, air, and space.

NASA

The Snow4Flow campaign, led by the University of Arizona, seeks to measure and model how far and fast glaciers are retreating in the far north. Traversing remote icescapes across Alaska, the Yukon, Arctic Canada, Greenland, and Svalbard, Norway, they’ll sound both the near-surface and frozen depths of hundreds of glaciers while flying over in a modernized WWII-era aircraft outfitted with a scanning laser altimeter and two custom radars. Their observations, combined with satellite data and advanced models of snowfall and glacier flow, will advance our understanding of how glaciers behave in different regions of the Arctic. The mission seeks to uncover not just what these glaciers look like beneath the surface today, but the processes that will drive changes in the future. 

As permafrost thaws, rivers on the doorstep of the Arctic become conveyor belts of carbon and sediment. NASA Goddard, and the City College of New York lead a multidisciplinary team studying how rivers, lagoons, and estuaries across Alaska’s North Slope interact with the Arctic Ocean. The project, called Frontlines of Rapidly Transforming Ecosystems (FORTE) will combine optical and radar measurements from satellites, planes, high-tech research vessels, drones, and underwater autonomous systems to track microscopic marine life, water flow, and chemistry. The team will collaborate with local and tribal communities to sustain observations over time and apply NASA assets to address emerging local needs and decision-making priorities.  

Landslide triggers 

When a slow-moving landslide in California suddenly collapsed and buried a section of coastal highway in 2017, scientists at NASA JPL wanted to know how precipitation swings played a role. JPL studies how water infiltrates and destabilizes hillslopes all over the world. The Landslide Change Characterization Experiment (LACCE) project will combine airborne synthetic aperture radar with land-based sensors to track how slopes in California are responding to a world of intensifying droughts and downpours. The project also takes aim at emerging landslide hazards in Alaska, where rapidly retreating glaciers are accelerating slope movements that have the potential to create mega-tsunamis.  

This series of images shows the collapse of the Mud Creek landslide in May 2017 along the Big Sur coast in Central California, and the subsequent repairs to Highway 1, which was damaged during the event.

Andy Ritchie/USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center

NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital program, designed to be nimble and high impact, was established following a recommendation by the National Research Council in 2007. In the decades since, teams have studied phenomena, including blizzards, coral reefs, and ocean whirlpools.  

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Our First View of the Surface of Mars

On the morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of another planet.

NASA/JPL

“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right. For the first time, humans were able to see Mars’s rocky terrain from its surface.

Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic. Areas of brightness and darkness. The picture begins to fill the screen. Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality. Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’”

Fifty years ago today, the Viking 1 lander became NASA’s first robot to explore Mars’s surface and begin the search for signs of life in our solar system. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later by its twin lander, Viking 2, which explored a different region of Mars, while two mission orbiters that delivered the landers to the Red Planet continued to collect data from space and helped relay communications to Earth.

Learn more about what Viking found and NASA’s legacy of discovery on Mars at Viking: 50 Years on Mars.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

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Shaping the Emerald City

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June 16, 2026

Seattle, Washington—sometimes known as the “Emerald City”—was glimmering in the morning sunlight when an astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo on June 16, 2026. The city’s parks and tree-filled neighborhoods lend a lush, green look to the metropolis, while tall buildings downtown cast long shadows and ships navigate surrounding waterways.

The broad contours of the city’s landscape and the water around it owe their shape to the advance and retreat of glaciers during the last ice age. Between roughly 18,000 and 16,000 years ago, the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet covered the area in a mass of ice up to 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) thick. The glacier scoured the basins now occupied by Puget Sound and the region’s lakes. 

The glacier left its mark above water, too. Several of Seattle’s notorious hills (of which there are seven or more, depending on who’s counting) are drumlins. These elongated mounds of glacial debris run north-south, parallel to the direction of the ice’s movement. East-west travelers in the city, facing challenging ups and downs, may attest to this topographic trend.

The ice also transported large boulders called glacial erratics from more northerly locations and deposited them around the region. A particularly large erratic, the Wedgwood Rock, stands about 20 feet (6 meters) tall and draws its name from the North Seattle neighborhood in which it rests.

June 16, 2026

In more recent times, humans have undertaken projects to rework the topography. Notable alterations include leveling Denny Hill north of downtown and filling in tideflats at the mouth of the Duwamish River south of downtown, which created around 1,300 acres of new land. Seattle’s professional sports stadiums sit atop this fill.

This photo was acquired after several development projects to update waterfront infrastructure downtown, initiated in 2010, were completed. These include a new ferry dock and terminal, a rebuilt seawall, and a tunnel to replace an above-ground highway and create more inviting public access to the waterfront.

Some replumbing of the region’s waterways is apparent from the astronaut’s perspective, as well. In the 1910s, the Army Corps of Engineers built canals on either side of Lake Union to connect Puget Sound (an inlet of the Pacific Ocean) with Lake Washington. Starting in 1916, the Montlake Cut connected Lake Washington to Lake Union, and the Ballard Locks, northwest of Lake Union, began raising and lowering watercraft between the freshwater lakes and tidal Puget Sound. As a result of this project, Lake Washington’s water level dropped about 9 feet (3 meters) and ceased draining from its natural outlet at its southern end.

Today, the waters in and around Seattle support many uses: container ships, cruise ships, car and passenger ferries, floatplanes, and recreational craft ply the sound and lakes. And as for Seattle’s emerald nickname, pockets of old-growth forest still exist within city limits, containing centuries-old trees such as Douglas fir, Western red cedar, and Western hemlock. Seattleites often spot wildlife such as bald eagles, coyotes, and sea lions in the city’s various habitats.

Astronaut photograph ISS074-E-723719 was acquired on June 16, 2026, with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 560 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 74 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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References & Resources

• Booth, D.B., et al. (2003) The cordilleran ice sheet. Development in Quaternary Science, 1, 17-43.
• Cascade PBS (2025, January 9) The Giant Ice Sheet That Shaped Seattle. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• City of Seattle (2026) Waterfront Seattle Program. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• HistoryLink.org (2017, February 5) Lake Washington Ship Canal (Seattle). Accessed July 17, 2026.
• HistoryLink.org (2016, December 30) Cedar-Sammamish Watershed. Accessed July 17, 2026.
• Williams, D.B. (2017) Too High and Too Steep. University of Washington Press.

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NASA’s Chandra and IXPE Study Pulsar in Lighthouse Nebula

Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) directly measured the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the “Lighthouse” Nebula, for the first time.

X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./J. Dinsmore et al.; IXPE: NASA/MSFC/J. Dinsmore et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA; Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

This composite image, released on July 9, 2026, shows the region around a pulsar – a neutron star with a strong magnetic field that spins incredibly fast – within the Lighthouse nebula. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in purple, X-rays from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) in blue, and radio emission captured by the Australia Compact Telescope Array in green.

Scientists used IXPE – for the first time ever – to directly measure the magnetic fields of the pulsar. The results provide new insight into the structure of some of the most extreme objects in the cosmos, as NASA continues to explore the secrets of how the universe works. A paper describing the results published July 9 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Read more about this novel use of IXPE.

Image credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./J. Dinsmore et al.; IXPE: NASA/MSFC/J. Dinsmore et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA; Optical: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare

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La NASA invita a los medios de comunicación al lanzamiento del telescopio espacial Roman

Aquí puede verse el telescopio espacial Nancy Grace Roman de la NASA en la sala limpia del Centro de Vuelo Espacial Goddard de la agencia en Greenbelt, Maryland, donde este observatorio fue construido y sometido a pruebas. Los amplios y profundos sondeos de Roman explorarán la materia oscura, la energía oscura, los exoplanetas y prácticamente cualquier objeto celeste, desde nuestro propio sistema solar hasta galaxias situadas en los confines del universo observable.

Crédito: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

Read this release in English here.

Ya está abierto el plazo de acreditación de los medios de comunicación para el lanzamiento de la misión del telescopio espacial Nancy Grace Roman de la NASA.

El lanzamiento del telescopio Roman está programado para no antes de las 7:20 a.m. (hora del este) del domingo 30 de agosto, a bordo de un cohete Falcon Heavy de SpaceX, desde el Complejo de Lanzamiento 39A en el Centro Espacial Kennedy de la NASA en Florida. Este observatorio, que lleva el nombre de la primera astrónoma jefa de la NASA, ofrecerá una visión profunda y panorámica del cosmos, generando imágenes nunca antes vistas que revolucionarán nuestra comprensión del universo.

Los medios interesados en asistir al lanzamiento deben presentar su solicitud antes de los siguientes plazos:

• Los representantes de medios de comunicación internacionales sin ciudadanía estadounidense deben presentar su solicitud antes de las 11:59 p.m. del domingo 26 de julio.
• Los medios de comunicación de Estados Unidos y los ciudadanos estadounidenses que representen a organizaciones de medios internacionales deben presentar su solicitud antes de las 11:59 p.m. del jueves 30 de julio.•

Todas las solicitudes de acreditación deben ser enviadas en línea a través del sitio web:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

La política de acreditación de medios de la NASA está disponible en línea. Para consultas sobre la acreditación o para solicitudes logísticas especiales, envíe un correo electrónico a: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

Para otras consultas, comuníquese con la sala de prensa del Centro Espacial Kennedy de la NASA al teléfono: 321-867-2468.

Para obtener más información sobre esta misión, visite el sitio:

https://www.ciencia.nasa.gov/roman

-fin-

Alise Fisher / María José Viñas
Sede central de la NASA, Washington
202-385-1287
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov

Leejay Lockhart
Centro Espacial Kennedy, Florida
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leejay.lockhart@nasa.gov

Claire Andreoli
Centro de Vuelo Espacial Goddard de la NASA, Greenbelt, Maryland
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claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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NASA’s Psyche Mission Images Details of Martian Surface During Flyby

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NASA’s Psyche Mission Images Details of Martian Surface During Flyby

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Captured by the multispectral imager instrument on NASA’s Psyche mission, this is an enhanced-color mosaic created from four individual images acquired on May 15, 2026, during the spacecraft’s flyby of Mars. 

Psyche was traveling from right to left (northeast to southwest on Mars) during the six minutes that it took to acquire the images for this mosaic, and the pixel scale resolution varies from 381 meters per pixel on the right to 440 meters per pixel on the left. The imager used its near-infrared, green, and blue filters, which helped to reveal highly contrasting craters, ridges, wind streaks, and volcanic plains materials on the surface.

The mosaic covers part of the Iapygia region of the rugged southern highlands of Mars, from approximately 62 degrees east to 78 degrees east longitude and 4 degrees north to 14 degrees south latitude. The largest crater, just below center, is called Fournier and is about 71 miles (114 kilometers) in diameter. The linear feature running from top to bottom of the mosaic just left of center is part of a long irregular cliff (or scarp) system called Oenotria Scopuli, which is part of the circular structure of the large Isidis impact basin to the northeast of this area.

For more information about NASA’s Psyche mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/psyche/

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