A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 24, 2025, carrying three missions that will investigate the Sun’s influence across the solar system.

NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), the agency’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On–Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft will each focus on different effects of the solar wind – the continuous stream of particles emitted by the Sun – and space weather – the changing conditions in space driven by the Sun – from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our solar system.

Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite’s first images of our planet’s surface are in, and they offer a glimpse of things to come as the joint mission between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) approaches full science operations later this year.

“Launched under President Trump in conjunction with India, NISAR’s first images are a testament to what can be achieved when we unite around a shared vision of innovation and discovery,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “This is only the beginning. NASA will continue to build upon the incredible scientific advancements of the past and present as we pursue our goal to maintain our nation’s space dominance through Gold Standard Science.”

Images from the spacecraft, which was launched by ISRO on July 30, display the level of detail with which NISAR scans Earth to provide unique, actionable information to decision-makers in a diverse range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management.

“By understanding how our home planet works, we can produce models and analysis of how other planets in our solar system and beyond work as we prepare to send humanity on an epic journey back to the Moon and onward to Mars,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “The successful capture of these first images from NISAR is a remarkable example of how partnership and collaboration between two nations, on opposite sides of the world, can achieve great things together for the benefit of all.”

On Aug. 21, the satellite’s L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, which was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, captured Mount Desert Island on the Maine coast. Dark areas represent water, while green areas are forest, and magenta areas are hard or regular surfaces, such as bare ground and buildings. The L-band radar system can resolve objects as small as 15 feet (5 meters), enabling the image to display narrow waterways cutting across the island, as well as the islets dotting the waters around it.

Then, on Aug. 23, the L-band SAR captured data of a portion of northeastern North Dakota straddling Grand Forks and Walsh counties. The image shows forests and wetlands on the banks of the Forest River passing through the center of the frame from west to east and farmland to the north and south. The dark agricultural plots show fallow fields, while the lighter colors represent the presence of pasture or crops, such as soybean and corn. Circular patterns indicate the use of center-pivot irrigation.

The images demonstrate how the L-band SAR can discern what type of land cover — low-lying vegetation, trees, and human structures — is present in each area. This capability is vital both for monitoring the gain and loss of forest and wetland ecosystems, as well as for tracking the progress of crops through growing seasons around the world.

“These initial images are just a preview of the hard-hitting science that NISAR will produce — data and insights that will enable scientists to study Earth’s changing land and ice surfaces in unprecedented detail while equipping decision-makers to respond to natural disasters and other challenges,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “They are also a testament to the years of hard work of hundreds of scientists and engineers from both sides of the world to build an observatory with the most advanced radar system ever launched by NASA and ISRO.”

The L-band system uses a 10-inch (25-centimeter) wavelength that enables its signal to penetrate forest canopies and measure soil moisture and motion of ice surfaces and land down to fractions of an inch, which is a key measurement in understanding how the land surface moves before, during, and after earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides.

The preliminary L-band images are an example of what the mission team will be able to produce when the science phase begins in November. The satellite was raised into its operational 464-mile (747-kilometer) orbit in mid-September.

The NISAR mission also includes an S-band radar, provided by ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, that uses a 4-inch (10-centimeter) microwave signal that is more sensitive to small vegetation, making it effective at monitoring certain types of agriculture and grassland ecosystems.

The spacecraft is the first to carry both L- and S-band radars. The satellite will monitor Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, collecting data using the spacecraft’s drum-shaped antenna reflector, which measures 39 feet (12 meters) wide — the largest NASA has ever sent into space.

The NISAR mission is a partnership between NASA and ISRO spanning years of technical and programmatic collaboration. The successful launch and deployment of NISAR builds on a strong heritage of cooperation between the United States and India in space.

The Space Applications Centre provided the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. The launch vehicle was provided by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, and launch services were through Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Key operations, including boom and radar antenna reflector deployment, are now being executed and monitored by the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network’s global system of ground stations.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, NASA JPL leads the U.S. component of the project. In addition to the L-band SAR, reflector, and boom, JPL also provided the high-rate communication subsystem for science data, a solid-state data recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which receives NISAR’s L-band data.

To learn more about NISAR, visit:

https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov

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Liz Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov

Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov

STEM learning ecosystems are intentionally designed, community-wide partnerships that enable all Americans to actively participate in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) throughout their lifetimes. Lifelong STEM learning helps people build critical knowledge and skills, access economic opportunities, drive innovation, and make informed decisions in a changing world. STEM learning ecosystems draw on expertise and resources to provide access to these benefits for the entire community.

NASA’s Science Activation (SciAct) program, a competitively-selected network of collaborative projects that connect NASA science with people of all ages and backgrounds, includes new and growing STEM learning ecosystems in American communities from Alaska to Maine and creates free, high-quality resources that educators across the country can use to share the excitement of Earth and space science.

To further support connections among STEM learning ecosystems and NASA, the SciAct STEM Ecosystems project held a meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota on August 4-6, 2025. Approximately 100 educators, evaluators, subject matter experts, and other STEM learning facilitators from around the nation participated to share approaches, learn about resources, and build relationships. The gathering offered an opportunity to connect NASA SciAct teams with each other and with external networks and learning ecosystems for mutual benefit.

Meeting goals included sharing ways to create effective partnerships and engage learners in Earth and space science, discovering NASA resources and assets to use in STEM education efforts, and strengthening connections among participants. To accomplish these goals, meeting activities included plenaries, breakout sessions, and networking opportunities.

Led by Arizona State University, the SciAct STEM Ecosystems project is a collaboration among several regional partnerships/SciAct project teams: Arctic and Earth SIGNs, Learning Ecosystems Northeast, Rural Activation and Innovation Network, and the Smoky Mountains STEM Collaborative. The project also partners with the National Informal STEM Education Network to create professional resources.

For those who were unable to attend in person, the STEM Ecosystems project makes a variety of resources available online: https://www.nisenet.org/stem-learning-ecosystems.

SciAct STEM Ecosystems is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0007 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.

NASA will host a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 1, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to highlight the upcoming mission of astronaut Chris Williams to the International Space Station.

The news conference will stream live on NASA’s website and YouTube channel. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.

The Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, targeted to launch Nov. 27 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will carry Williams on his first flight, as well as Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev of Roscosmos, to the space station for an eight-month mission as part of Expeditions 73/74.

Media interested in participating must contact the newsroom at NASA Johnson no later than 5 p.m., Monday, Sept. 29, at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. Media interested in participating by phone must contact the Johnson newsroom by 10 a.m. the day of the event.

Selected as a candidate in 2021, Williams graduated with the 23rd astronaut class in 2024. He began training for his first space station flight assignment immediately after completing initial astronaut candidate training.

Williams was born in New York City, and considers Potomac, Maryland, his hometown. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Stanford University in California and a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where his research focused on astrophysics. Williams completed medical physics residency training at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He was working as a clinical physicist and researcher at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston when he was selected as an astronaut candidate.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology, and human innovation enabling research not possible on Earth. For nearly 25 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, where astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for developing a low Earth economy and NASA’s next great leaps in human exploration at the Moon under the Artemis campaign and Mars.

Learn more about the International Space Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station

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Jimi Russell / Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
james.j.russell@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov

Shaneequa Vereen
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
shaneequa.y.vereen@nasa.gov

Magic is in the air. No wait… MAGEQ is in the air, featuring scientists from NASA centers across the country who teamed up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and several other university and government partners and collaborators.

This summer, six planes collectively flew more than 400 hours over the mid-Atlantic United States with a goal of gathering data on a range of objectives, including air quality, forestry, and fire management.

This was part of an effort called MAGEQ, short for Mid-Atlantic Gas Emissions Quantification. Rather than one mission, MAGEQ consists of several individual missions across more than a dozen organizations and agencies, along with university students. Over the course of around six weeks, aircraft flew over cities, wetlands, farms, and coal mining areas.

“Each aircraft team is comprised of highly skilled and motivated people who understand how to fly their particular plane to achieve the science they want,” said Glenn Wolfe, research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and project lead for MAGEQ. “The complexity comes in identifying how each platform can complement or supplement the others.”

Coordinating flights required both advanced planning and flexibility to get the best outcome. Weather proved to be a primary challenge for the team, as members worked around cloudy days, wind, and storms to ensure safe flights.

The six aircraft had different objectives and requirements. For example, some carried instruments that needed to fly high to simulate a satellite’s view of the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface and could not measure through clouds. Others were equipped with instruments that directly measured the air particles and could work under the clouds, provided there was no rain.

Despite weather challenges, flight teams worked together to coordinate as many multi-aircraft flight days as possible, meeting the overall objective of the MAGEQ campaign.

“It’s been inspiring to see how everybody worked together,” said Lesley Ott, research meteorologist and lead carbon cycle modeler for NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA Goddard. “By collecting data together, not only can we do a better job as scientists in having more complete understanding, we can also do a better job making usable data sets that meets the needs of different stakeholders.”

State resource managers in North Carolina and Virginia, for example, could benefit from this data as they monitor the health of wetlands, which provide resilience to storms, absorb carbon from the atmosphere and support local tourist industries. The data could also help operators at energy-producing facilities detect methane leaks or equipment failures quickly. Faster detection could speed up intervention and minimize waste, as well as lessen environmental impacts. Stakeholders were an integral part of the planning process, Ott said. They made suggestions about measurement sites and data needs that informed the flight planning.

Scientists will also use the measurements to verify satellite data from both public and commercial data providers. Satellites like the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument collect similar data. Scientists can compare the airborne and satellite data to get a more complete picture of the atmosphere. They also will use MAGEQ data to evaluate atmospheric chemistry modeling from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model, which connects atmospheric, oceanic, and land data to help create a more comprehensive picture of Earth science.

“Every aircraft does something different and contributes a different type of data,” said Steve Brown, leader of the tropospheric chemistry and atmospheric remote sensing programs at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. “We’re going to have a lot of work to do at the end of this to put all these data sets together, but we will make the best use of all these measurements.”

By Erica McNamee

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

When wildfires scorch a landscape, the flames are just the beginning. NASA is helping communities across the nation foresee and prepare for what can follow: mudslides, flash flooding, and contaminated surface water supplies.

A new online tool called HydroFlame, built with support from NASA’s Earth Science Division, relies on satellite data, hydrologic modeling, and artificial intelligence to predict how wildfires could affect water resources, from tap water to the rivers and streams where people fish. The project is being developed with the University of Texas at Arlington, Purdue University, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other partners.

For now, the tool includes data only for Montana’s Clark Fork Basin, where it is being piloted. But new applications are underway in California and Utah. Researchers will soon begin fieldwork in Los Angeles County to collect on-the-ground data to refine HydroFlame’s predictive approach — an important step toward expanding it beyond the pilot site.

“As wildfires intensify across the country, so do their ripple effects on regional water resources,” said Erin Urquhart, program manager for NASA’s water resources program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “HydroFlame could help communities in the U.S. see what’s coming and plan for it, before a fire becomes a water crisis.”

That kind of foresight is exactly what local officials are looking for.

“For someone managing a trout fishery or drinking water supply, knowing when a stream might be overwhelmed with debris after a fire can mean the difference between preparedness and a crisis,” said Morgan Valliant, who is part of the project’s advisory group and the associate director of ecosystem services for Missoula Parks and Recreation in Montana. “This tool could let us move from reacting to planning.”

When fire reshapes land

In the wake of a wildfire, charred hillsides are often unstable. With the protective blanket of plants burned away, rain that once soaked gently into the soil can race downhill, sending ash, debris, and sediment into rivers and reservoirs. That runoff can trigger flash floods and contaminate drinking water.

Severe wildfires can also bake soil into a water-repelling crust. With less absorption, the same slopes can swing from drought to destructive floods, and those runoff risks can persist for decades.

HydroFlame, developed by a team led by Adnan Rajib at the University of Texas at Arlington, is built to anticipate those extremes.

“NASA is constantly pushing the boundaries when it comes to sensing and predicting fire,” Rajib said. “But there is still a huge gap when it comes to translating that fire information in terms of water. That’s where HydroFlame comes in.” 

The tool will include three components:

• a historical viewer that maps past fire impacts on streamflow and sediment
• a “what-if” scenario builder to simulate future fires
• a predictive tool that generates weekly forecasts using near-real-time satellite data as initial conditions

When a wildfire is identified, the tool will identify how severely areas are burned across watersheds and track shifts in vegetation, soil wetness, and evapotranspiration, or the release of water from the land and plants to the atmosphere. HydroFlame uses data from satellite missions and instruments including MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), Landsat, and SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive).

Those observations, combined with stream records from gauged rivers, feed into simulations of possible fire-driven changes in water flow and quality. A machine-learning component will fill in where gauges are absent, making it possible to predict impacts up to two weeks in advance.

The historical viewer, which is publicly accessible, lets users explore how past fires altered streamflow and sediment levels across the basin. The other components are still in development: The prototype of the “what-if” scenario builder tool is expected to launch in December 2025, with the full version planned for May 2026.

HydroFlame’s ability to capture compounding factors — drought before a fire, flooding afterward — and simulate their cascading effects on water systems is what makes it different from other tools, Rajib said. “Many traditional models treat each fire as a one-off,” he said. “HydroFlame looks at the bigger picture.”

Just as important, the tool is built for people who aren’t experts in satellite data.

“It’s a practical starting point for scenario planning,” said Kelly Luis, associate program manager for NASA’s water resources program and an aquatic ecosystem scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The tool’s “what-if” function, she explained, will let water managers, city planners, and other officials apply their local knowledge. For example, they might zero in on the rivers and streams most important to a city’s water supply. “That kind of insight is essential for building solutions that are both scientifically grounded and locally relevant.”

For watershed organizations or local and state agencies with limited staff and resources, that ease of use is crucial — saving time and effort while helping keep costs down.

“These groups need holistic ways to understand potential impacts of fires to their rivers and streams and plan, without always having to bring in someone from the outside,” said Amy Seaman, the executive director of the Montana Watershed Coordination Council. Seaman works with community watershed organizations across Montana and is also part of the project’s advisory group.

This effort is part of a broader NASA focus on understanding how fire reshapes water systems and what that means for American communities.

A real-world trial in Los Angeles

Rajib’s team put HydroFlame’s predictive capabilities to the test during the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles. As fires burned through the region, researchers ran real-time model simulations using NASA satellite data, tracking changes in vegetation, soil moisture, and burn severity almost as they happened. By the end of the month, the team had generated forecasts for mud and debris flows expected in February.

Those predictions turned out to be accurate. In early February, mudflow events struck the areas of Altadena and Sierra Madre in Los Angeles County, following the Eaton Fire. HydroFlame had been run specifically for that fire and flagged both neighborhoods as at risk, Rajib said.

“It wasn’t a formal, data-verified result because we didn’t have ground sensors in place,” Rajib said. “But it was a practical validation. The timing and severity of what we modeled lined up with what occurred.”

Rajib’s team is now working with NASA JPL, the University of California, Merced and Los Angeles County to formally test and expand the tool in the Los Angeles area. The team plans to begin collecting on-the-ground data no earlier than Friday, Sept. 26. That work will include installing stream sensors to measure sediment levels in the county’s streams during California’s rainy season and integrating those data into the tool — a step toward building an early-warning system.

HydroFlame invites those interested in the tool to share their ideas and feedback, and to get involved, through a web form available on the project’s Explore Tools webpage.