Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, APXS Strategic Planner and Payload Uplink/Downlink Lead, University New Brunswick, NB, Canada

Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 11, 2026

This week we had two planning days (Tuesday and Friday), as Monday was Labor Day in North America, where many of the Curiosity team are based. Labor Day (the first Monday in September) marks the end of summer holidays and thrills, and the return to more typical routines and back to school.

The MSL team has marked several important milestones within the past few weeks — marking our 14th “Landiversary” on Aug. 6 and surpassing the 1-kilometer elevation mark and our 5000th sol (Martian day) in early September. Our next big date is not until Nov. 26, the 15th anniversary of launch, and so it feels like Curiosity is also back to a more routine schedule at this point.

We are moving up the valley known informally as “Valle Grande.” In recent weeks, we climbed up over what we interpreted as an “erosional supersurface” (which marks a gap in the usual rock record) and are now traversing through a subtly banded area. Bands are 25-200 meters (about 80-650 feet) in diameter, with morphological changes, such as bands with more sand and less rocky outcrops (which often appear darker from a distance because there is more sand) and others where outcrops seem more continuous that allow us to mark out rough contacts between them.  

The terrain this week was characterized by sparse outcrops with a rough texture, often nodular, surrounded by lots of sand and coarse pebbly sand. On Tuesday APXS and MAHLI investigated brushed nodular bedrock at “Cerro Armazones” and “Monte Melimoyu.” ChemCam acquired LIBS on a knot of dark-toned nodules at “Tuta Huallpas” and the dark-toned float rock “Acllahuasi.”

On Friday, after a drive of about 60 meters (nearly 200 feet), we found ourselves with mostly sand close to the rover and just one small rough-textured outcrop close enough for contact science and LIBS. Fortunately, the block was extremely interesting, with abundant small flakes and chips incorporated and laminated areas that are a bit smoother. We will investigate the rougher textures with MAHLI (“Yungay” and “Chiu Chiu”), APXS (Chiu Chiu) and ChemCam LIBS (“Puya Raimondii”) and a smoother area with LIBS (“Liolaemus Tacnae”).

Across both plans, the ChemCam long-distance imager and camera teams were hard at work. In addition to near-field images, which focus on areas close to the rover, both Mastcam and ChemCam acquired several larger mosaics on the buttes on either side of us (“Mishe Mokwa” and “Cordillera”) and looking back to the small butte “La Linea.” Mastcam also took some mosaics documenting the “Chocolatal” scuff, which we analyzed last week, and a larger mosaic of the “Sullivan Field” sand field where Chocolatal is located. Sullivan Field contains sand ripples, mega ripples, and transverse aeolian ridges, and was named by the team in honor of the late Robert Sullivan, a world expert on Martian sands and cherished member of the Curiosity science team.

In parallel to all the geology activities, the environmental team planned their usual full schedule of monitoring activities, such as dust-devil movies, suprahorizon movies looking at the crater rim, and tau images, which look at dust in the atmosphere.

Navcam and Mastcam acquired images of the path ahead in our drive direction. The subtle bands can just about be picked out here, by looking at tonal differences. It will be very interesting to see how these look and vary from each other when we get close enough to each one.

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August 30, 2026

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Arid shrublands in Western Australia were bursting with life in late austral winter 2026, when a profusion of wildflowers brought vivid colors to the rusty ochre landscape. After several wetter-than-normal months earlier in the year, dormant seeds in the soil awoke to produce carpets of blooms. Local experts think the display could be the best the area has seen in nearly two decades.

The images above, captured with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 satellite, compare the more verdant landscape of late August 2026 (right) with a similar time in 2025 (left), when it was drier. This area is located about 600 kilometers (370 miles) north of Perth in the Murchison region, one of Western Australia’s main areas for grazing sheep and cattle. The local vegetation includes grasses, saltbush, and the slow-growing evergreen mulga tree.

Every so often, a variety of wildflowers makes an appearance, too. In 2026, rainfall totals were above average in June and very much above average in August due to several cold fronts moving through the area, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. The rains helped rouse a diverse mix of flowers to bloom across the outback, including on a radio astronomy site managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency. The flower show included some threatened species, which the observatory has helped monitor on its formerly pastoral land.

Though the spectacle underfoot might have momentarily stolen the show, Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, is primarily focused on what’s overhead and the exploration of deep space. At the Murchison site, CSIRO operates several antenna arrays that observe and catalog objects in the southern sky. The remote facility is situated within a “radio quiet” zone, where terrestrial communications and electronic devices are controlled to limit electromagnetic interference with the instruments.

Other telescopes in CSIRO’s purview in Australia have played crucial roles in NASA missions from the agency’s early years to today. The Murriyang radio telescope in Parkes, New South Wales, tracked Mariner 2—the first successful planetary science mission—in 1962 and was an important receiving station for the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969. CSIRO also manages and operates the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, one of three facilities in NASA’s global Deep Space Network that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and collects radar and radio astronomy observations. Both supported the Artemis II mission in April 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photos © CSIRO Australia, September 16, 2026. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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References & Resources

• Australian Bureau of Meteorology (2026) Australian climate history – Climate summaries. Accessed September 22, 2026.
• Australian Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (2008, August) Murchison bioregion (WA). Accessed September 22, 2026.
• CSIRO (2026, September 16) World-leading radio telescopes give space for stunning wildflowers. Accessed September 22, 2026.
• CSIRO (2024, June 24) NASA and CSIRO: partners in space. Accessed September 22, 2026.
• CSIRO, Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, our Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Accessed September 22, 2026.
• The Guardian (2026, September 13) Blankets of colour: Western Australia’s wildflower season bursts into life – in pictures. Accessed September 22, 2026.

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A New Lunar Crater: McGetchin

Explanation: A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), with its monthly monitoring of the Moon, captured today’s images of the lunar surface before and after the event. The resulting crater, named after Apollo-era lunar scientist McGetchin, is two soccer fields across. Craters of this size are only expected once every 132 years! Follow up thermal imaging revealed a large cold spot that surrounds the warm crater. Surface impacts will puff up the loose lunar sediment, or regolith, making it less dense and harder to retain heat. This event affected an area much larger than the visible crater, which will inform humanity’s understanding of surface impacts and the evolution of the Moon’s surface. It also reminds us all to be thankful for Earth’s atmosphere.

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Tomorrow’s picture: the great unknown

Date:	September 23, 2026
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Authors & editors:	Keighley Rockcliffe, Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti
A service of:	ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

Source: science.nasa.gov

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on Sept. 19, marking another new milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the universe.

Hubble has traveled more than 5 billion miles around Earth over its 36-year lifetime, exceeding 1.7 million total observations. An observation completed on the day of the 200,000th orbit pertains to one of Hubble’s defining scientific legacies: measuring the expansion rate of the universe, or the Hubble Constant. The image takes advantage of the telescope’s ability to return to the same regions of the sky over time to monitor for the reappearance of a supernova, or explosion of a star, called Athena.

Massive galaxy cluster MACS J0417, located at the left center of the image, acts as a gravitational lens, bending and magnifying light from objects far behind it. Light from a supernova can reach Earth along multiple paths, causing the same stellar explosion to appear more than once at times separated by months or even years depending on the path it took. Supernova Athena, discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2025, is predicted to reappear between now and early March 2027. Measuring the timing of Athena’s reappearances can help researchers map the mass of MACS J0417, which acts as a magnifying, foreground lens for distant objects, and refine our understanding of the expansion rate of the universe.

After more than 36 years in space, Hubble still is reaching new heights of scientific productivity and impact. Hubble’s unique ability to observe and analyze light in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths complements NASA’s James Webb and Roman Space Telescopes’ capabilities. As a result, demand for Hubble observing time remains high as astronomers request about seven times as much observing time as is available each year.

Hubble continues to observe targets across every area of astronomy around the clock, with real-time tracking of those observations available on NASA’s website.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
[email protected]

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For more information, contact Jonathan E. Jones, Langley Research Center, [email protected]

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The purpose of this Technical Bulletin is to communicate the risks associated with freeze–thaw cycles in hydrazine monopropellant systems and to provide general recommendations for mitigating damage, operational hazards, and loss of system reliability in propulsion and auxiliary hydrazine systems.

Background
Hydrazine (N2H4) freezes near 1.6°C, and its phase transition is known to introduce risks to flight hardware. Multiple NASA programs have historically encountered hydrazine freeze related issues:

• Space Shuttle APU hydrazine lines were vulnerable to freeze induced contraction followed by thaw induced over expansion, capable of bursting plumbing. Shuttle flight rules permitted no more than two freeze–thaw cycles before considering the system degraded or failed.¹

• Voyager propulsion systems faced mission threatening scenarios as hydrazine temperatures approached the freezing/slush formation range (0.1–1.6°C). Detailed thermal modeling was required to prevent freezing of lines, blockage, and thruster malfunction.²

• Hydrazine thermodynamic properties confirm significant changes in density and pressure across phase transitions, emphasizing the sensitivity of propellant lines to freeze–thaw stress.³

These combined lessons form the basis for risk identification and mitigation.

Problem Summary
Freeze–thaw exposure of hydrazine systems presents the following critical risks:

• Structural Damage Hydrazine contraction during freezing allows additional propellant into confined lines, producing “superpacked” conditions that cause line or fitting rupture upon thaw.²

• Valve, Seal, and Diaphragm Compromise Elastomeric components and precision valve seats may experience cracking, distortion, or loss of sealing capability due to differential thermal expansion. Voyager thermal assessments highlighted susceptibility of long stainless steel runs to asymmetric temperature profiles.²

• Line Blockage and Slush Formation Partially thawed hydrazine can remain “slushy,” restricting flow, altering mass flow rates, and causing thruster hard starts or misfires.²

• Hazardous Leaks Freeze induced damage may allow hydrazine to escape confinement, posing significant toxicity, reactivity, and ground crew exposure hazards.

• Loss of System Reliability As documented in Shuttle operations, hydrazine systems exposed to freeze–thaw cycles become life limited, reducing redundancy and mission availability.¹

• Thermal Margin Uncertainty Voyager experience demonstrated that simple temperature readings cannot reliably determine true line temperature, necessitating high fidelity thermal modeling.²

Recommendations Prevention Measures
• Maintain Hydrazine Above Freezing Margin Keep all hydrazine systems above freezing, using heaters, insulation, blankets, or warm gas purge. Include uncertainty analysis in modeling and testing to ensure appropriate margins against freezing are maintained during all phases of operation.

• Avoid Uncontrolled Cooling During Ground Operations Ensure that tank, line, and valve components remain in environmentally controlled areas until integrated into the vehicle.

Post Freeze Response Protocol
If freezing cannot be ruled out:

• Suspend System Use Do not operate the hydrazine system until engineering evaluation is completed.

• Assess Number of Freeze–Thaw Cycles Treat each cycle as life limiting, an engineering assessment (static and fatigue) should be conducted based on conservative estimates of the line pressures during/after freeze/thaw cycles to understand potential line/component damage. Appropriate margin should be applied based on analysis uncertainty and/or underlying assumptions.

• Conduct Integrity Verification Perform pressure decay tests, NDE (if design allows), and valve health assessments.

• Implement Slow, Uniform Thawing To prevent thaw induced over pressure, warm hardware gradually and evenly. Shuttle experience with “superpacking” reinforces the necessity of controlled thawing.

Thruster and Valve Operational Readiness
• Ensure catalyst beds and valves reach proper thermal operating conditions before commanding any flow.

• Conduct pre start thermal stabilization periods, especially when flight readiness temperatures are marginal.

Thermal Modeling and Monitoring
• Utilize high fidelity thermal line modeling, emulating Voyager’s detailed propellant line modeling approach.²

• Avoid relying solely on bulk plate or tank temperatures to infer line readiness.

• Use thermal analysis and test to guide instrumentation placement on of the flight systems to monitor key temperatures set points.

Documentation and Incident Tracking
• Record all freeze exposures as reportable anomalies.

•Assign engineering disposition and track hardware life reduction accordingly.

Conclusion
Hydrazine freeze–thaw cycles present significant structural, operational, and safety risks for propulsion and auxiliary systems. Historical NASA programs show that prevention of hydrazine freezing is the most effective mitigation, with freeze exposure requiring formal engineering assessment, life limit adjustments, and controlled recovery procedures. Adhering to these recommendations will reduce risk to personnel, flight hardware, and mission success.

References
1. Space Shuttle Operational Flight Rules, Vol. A. All Flights, Mission Operations Diretorate, 20 June 2002. 2. W. C. Ledeboer, “Creating a Voyager Thermal Model 39 Years Into the Flight Mission, Along With Model Correlation and Application,” 8 July 2018. 3. J. L. Haws and B. G. Harden, “Thermodynamic Properties of Hydrazine,” Nov 1965.

Source: www.nasa.gov

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Join NASA in the Exhibit Hall (Booth #648) for Hyperwall Storytelling by NASA experts. Full Hyperwall Agenda below.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20

Source: science.nasa.gov

Shannon Lucid’s Record-Setting Mission Aboard Mir 

Three days before returning to Earth, Shannon W. Lucid—who joined NASA in 1978 as one of its first six female astronauts—checked in on wheat growing in the Svet greenhouse aboard the Russian space station Mir. For six months, Lucid lived and worked alongside two Russian cosmonauts conducting life science studies and other experiments in microgravity.

Lucid returned to Earth aboard space shuttle Atlantis on Sept. 26, 1996, completing a 188-day mission—a new record for both a woman and for an American. Lessons from her time on Mir helped NASA prepare for the psychological and cultural challenges of long-duration missions on the International Space Station.  

In December 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Shannon Lucid the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for her achievement. She was the tenth person and the first woman to receive this award.

After her mission on Mir, Lucid continued to serve NASA in key roles on the ground. She worked as a CAPCOM in Mission Control, where she was the primary voice communicating with astronauts in orbit. Later, she served as NASA’s Chief Scientist, helping guide the agency’s science priorities. Lucid retired from NASA in 2012 after a career that spanned more than three decades.

Source: www.nasa.gov

Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 12, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The ice covered an estimated 1.78 million square miles (4.6 million square kilometers), tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record.

The 2026 minimum is consistent with patterns observed in the satellite record. The past 20 years, from 2007 through 2026, have produced the 20 lowest annual Arctic sea ice minimum extents observed since continuous satellite measurements began in late 1978.

Arctic sea ice grows during the dark, cold autumn and winter and retreats as temperatures rise during spring and summer, typically reaching its lowest extent in September. Weather conditions can cause substantial differences in the amount of ice that melts from one summer to another.

Over the last decade, for example, increased cloud cover has prevented solar radiation from further accelerating the melt of sea ice, according to Linette Boisvert, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

That has contributed to relatively stable September sea ice extent in recent years. “We’ve plateaued, but we’re still low relative to the earlier part of the record,” said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at NSIDC.

Antarctic sea ice extent approaches annual maximum

At the opposite end of the planet, Antarctic sea ice is approaching its annual maximum following a fluctuation during August.

Sea ice around Antarctica declined by roughly 116,000 square miles (300,000 square kilometers) over a six-day period before resuming its seasonal growth. Meier said the decline appeared to be associated with weather conditions that pushed and compacted the thin, mobile ice near its outer edge.

“Those types of things happen all the time,” Meier said. “But the magnitude of it certainly is unusual.”

Antarctic sea ice varies more from year to year than Arctic sea ice because, in contrast to the Arctic, it is not surrounded by land and can respond more freely to changing wind and weather conditions. But Antarctic sea ice extent at its annual maximum has generally been lower in recent years. Because of this large year-to-year variability, Boisvert and Meier remain cautious about characterizing the change as a long-term trend.

Scientists have tracked polar sea ice from space for nearly five decades. During that time, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used a series of satellite instruments to maintain a continuous sea ice record, beginning with NASA’s Nimbus-7 satellite, which began observations in October 1978. The record continued with instruments aboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites beginning in 1987 and NASA’s Aqua satellite from 2002 to 2011. Today, scientists continue the record using data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), launched in 2012 aboard JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) GCOM-W satellite.

Antarctic sea ice typically reaches its annual maximum in late September or early October. NASA and NSIDC will announce the 2026 maximum after scientists confirm that seasonal ice growth has ended.

Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0417 (left of center) on Sept. 19, 2026. This galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, bending and magnifying light from objects far behind it. Supernova Athena, discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2025, is predicted to reappear between now and early March 2027. Measuring the timing of Athena’s reappearances can help researchers map the mass of MACS J0417, which acts as a magnifying, foreground lens for distant objects, and refine our understanding of the expansion rate of the universe.

Hubble also completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on Sept. 19, marking another new milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the universe.

Read more about Hubble and this recent milestone.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, M. Pascale (UCLA); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

Source: www.nasa.gov

Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms and the interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission is jointly led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Colorado State University; and Boston University. 

The Colorado deployment is the first series of flights for the FarmFlux mission. Additional low-altitude research flights are scheduled over farmland in Amarillo, Texas, from late October to early November. For the March to July 2027 growing season, research flights with a NASA P-3 Orion aircraft are scheduled in the Midwest and California’s Central Valley with a focus on croplands. 

For more information about the FarmFlux mission, visit:

https://espo.nasa.gov/farmflux

By Sharon Teitelbaum

NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

Source: www.nasa.gov