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Ensuring U.S. leadership of in-space manufacturing in low Earth orbit by enabling the use of the ISS National Laboratory to demonstrate the production of advanced materials and products for terrestrial markets.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the smallest found by TESS yet. Two other worlds orbit the same star. While all three planets’ sizes are known, further study with other telescopes will be needed to determine if they have atmospheres and, if so, which gases are present. The L 98-59 worlds nearly double the number of small exoplanets — that is, planets beyond our solar system — that have the best potential for this kind of follow-up. L 98-59b is around 80% Earth’s size and about 10% smaller than the previous record holder discovered by TESS. Its host star, L 98-59, is an M dwarf about one-third the mass of the Sun and lies about 35 light-years away in the southern constellation Volans.

During a press conference at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., astrophysics experts discussed the upcoming launch of NASA’s next planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Scheduled to launch April 16, TESS is expected to find thousands of planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, orbiting the nearest and brightest stars in our cosmic neighborhood. Powerful telescopes like NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope can then further study these exoplanets to search for important characteristics, like their atmospheric composition and whether they could support life.

How do planets get their names? With the exception of Earth, the planets in our solar system were named after Greek or Roman gods. Now, the job of naming things in space falls to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features. NASA scientist Dr. Henry Throop explains more.

The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to the Oort Cloud, 186 billion miles away. But even though the Sun has such a powerful pull, it's surprisingly hard to actually go to the Sun: It takes 55 times more energy to go to the Sun than it does to go to Mars.

Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface.

Snow falls and ice and frost form on Mars, too. NASA's spacecraft on and orbiting the Red Planet reveal the similarities to and differences from how we experience winter on Earth.

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

Did you know sound works differently on Mars than it does on Earth? Mars has a different atmosphere than Earth, so sounds on the Red Planet would sound a bit different and be more muffled. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has two microphones that record sounds on the Red Planet. Since its landing in February 2021, the rover has captured sounds such as dust devils, the whir of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in flight, and the sound of its wheels crunching over the rocky Martian terrain. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI; Mastcam-Z - NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS SHERLOC - NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS;

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will make history's first attempt at powered flight on another planet next spring. It is riding with the agency's next mission to Mars (the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover) as it launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this summer. Perseverance, with Ingenuity attached to its belly, will land on Mars February 18, 2021. As a technology demonstration, Ingenuity is testing a new capability for the first time: showing controlled flight is possible in the very thin Martian atmosphere. If successful, Ingenuity could lead to an aerial dimension to space exploration, aiding both robots and humans in the future.

Science gets scaled up with the first 8K ultra high definition (UHD) video from the International Space Station. Get closer to the in-space experience and see how the international partnership-powered human spaceflight is improving lives on Earth, while enabling humanity to explore the universe. Special thanks to the European Space Agency, the ISS National Lab, and astronauts Alexander Gerst, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel for their support of the 8K filming.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover's entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface. The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing.

NASA joined partners in October 2023 to generate critical new data on sustainable aviation fuel through Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator project. As Boeing’s second ecoDemonstrator Explorer aircraft flew, switching between sustainable aviation fuel and conventional jet fuel, NASA’s DC-8 aircraft collected data that measured the emissions and contrail particles from both types of fuel. The DC-8, based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is the largest flying science laboratory in the world. The data it collected will help advance our understanding of how sustainable aviation fuel affects contrails, which trap heat in the atmosphere. NASA and Boeing were joined by partners including GE, the German Aerospace Center, World Energy, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

A NOBL consists of stainless steel panels covered with a protective Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) thermal coating. These panels fit over existing, degraded insulation on Hubble's exterior surface, to control Hubble's internal temperature. The NOBL will be permanently mounted.

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V 551 rocket successfully launched from Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Space Test Program 3 (STP-3) mission on December 7, 2021, at 5:19 a.m. EST. Two satellites were on board, including the Space Test Program Satellite-6 (STPSat-6) spacecraft, which carried two NASA payloads. NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), will be agency’s first end-to-end laser relay system, sending and receiving data over invisible infrared lasers at a rate of approximately 1.2 gigabits per second from geosynchronous orbit to Earth. With data rates 10 to 100 times higher than traditional radio frequency systems, laser communications systems will provide future missions with extraordinary data capabilities. Laser technology may greatly increase bandwidth for communicating in space while reducing size, weight, and power requirements for both government and commercial uses. UVSC Pathfinder — short for Ultraviolet Spectro-Coronagraph Pathfinder — begins its mission to peer at the lowest regions of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, where solar energetic particles, the Sun’s most dangerous form of radiation, are thought to originate. A joint NASA-U.S. Naval Research Laboratory experiment, UVSC Pathfinder becomes the latest addition to NASA's fleet of heliophysics observatories, which study a vast, interconnected system from the Sun to the space surrounding Earth and other planets, and to the farthest limits of the Sun's constantly flowing stream of solar wind.

NASA’s OCO-3 mission is ready for launch to the International Space Station. This follow-on to OCO-2 brings new techniques and new technologies to carbon dioxide observations of Earth from space. For more on this orbiting carbon observatory, visit https://ocov3.jpl.nasa.gov/