Northwestern team captures clearest view of a star before explosion

A Flagstaff-based space company has won a $30 million contract to raise the orbit of a space-based NASA observatory next year before it can drop uncontrolled back into Earth’s atmosphere. NASA officials say they are in a race against time as the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and its three-telescope system studying gamma rays from space needs a rescue. https://buff.ly/H2leKKD

A fascinating phenomenon called solar rain Solar rain occurs when super-heated plasma rises up the sun's looping magnetic field lines, then falls back to the surface (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO)

SmallSats have transformed from a niche research focus into a fundamental part of the modern space industry. Prof. Paulo Lozano and the Space Propulsion Lab received support from NASA’s University SmallSat Technology Partnership (USTP) to develop ways to integrate miniaturized electronic thrusters onto satellites. If all goes well, the possibilities for adoption are wide. “We have many ideas (for application),” Lozano says. “One is to send tens or even hundreds of these small satellites to the asteroid belt to help study and characterize the asteroids’ surface structures.” Read: https://ow.ly/FEnW50XhxOZ

This is a big day for polarimetry from space. 🛰️ Global reflectance imagery from the PACE HARP2 and SPEXone multi-angle polarimeters are now available on NASA Worldview! https://lnkd.in/eqP-hyra HARP2 was developed by my team at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and SPEXone at SRON Space Research Organisation Netherlands. Their measurements are sensitive to critical climate properties of aerosols such as size, shape, refractive index, sphericity, and composition. The NASA PACE mission will expand what we know about our Earth system over the next few years, and bolster our essential climate record. 🌏 Interested in the data? Global PACE data is public and freely available on NASA's EarthDATA service. https://lnkd.in/eMqAfD2A #PACE #HARP2 #SPEXone #polarimetry #NASA #climate #aerosols #clouds

How might lasers revolutionize deep space communications? NASA tested high-bandwidth laser (or optical) communications for the first time beyond the Moon with a pioneering technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), beaming messages via laser across a distance of almost 16 million kilometers or 10 million miles. That's about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, and it's the first time that optical communications have been sent across… https://lnkd.in/ez2vyp3g #laser #deepspace #opticalcommunication

In 2029, humanity will witness something never seen before — the mysterious poles of the Sun. NASA’s Solar Orbiter Mission is on its way to reveal how our star truly works — from the powerful magnetic fields to the storms that shape space weather across the Solar System. Get ready to uncover the secrets of the Sun like never before. 👉 Watch the full reel to see how this mission could change our understanding of space forever.

Two Sydney PhD students have helped fix the focus on the James Webb Space Telescope - without leaving Earth. In this remarkable breakthrough, Max Charles and Louis Desdoigts developed a fix that corrected blurring in images made by NASA’s multibillion-dollar JWST with a data-driven, software-only calibration system that fixed the focus from the ground. As a permanent memento of the work, the pair recently caught up in the Netherlands to get tattoos of the instrument they helped to repair. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gyf9ki5D #USYD #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #ApertureMaskingInterferometer #Physics

The ionosphere affects everything from communication to navigation and space weather. Using innovative satellite data, we’re helping NASA improve understanding of this critical region. In a new #KnowledgeXchange, Orion Space Solutions, an Arcfield Company’s Camella Nasr shares findings from our work with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) program, showing how radio occultation data from GeoOptics can enhance ionospheric research. Read more: https://bit.ly/4ihHct3 #Ionosphere #SpaceWeather #SatelliteData #NASA

#PPOD: A Beacon to Space In this infrared photograph taken on June 2, 2025, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. At the time, Psyche was about 230 million kilometers from Earth. Managed by JPL, DSOC successfully demonstrated that data encoded in laser photons could be reliably transmitted, received, and then decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth out to Mars distances. Nearly two years after launching aboard the agency’s Psyche mission in 2023, the demonstration completed its 65th and final “pass” on Sept. 2, 2025, sending a laser signal to Psyche and receiving the return signal from 350 million kilometers away. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Text: Ian J. O’Neill #planetaryscience

UTEP geologist awarded a grant to map the moon! Using AI, satellite data and advanced GIS, Jose Hurtado, Ph.D. and his team are preparing vital maps of the lunar south pole to support NASA’s Artemis missions. Want to see how UTEP is shaping space science? Read more: https://buff.ly/KLrLAxP