NASA’s Freedom 250 F-5 team, including NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, performs a flyover during the national anthem at an NFL game between the Cleveland Browns and the Carolina Panthers at Huntington Bank Field, Sept. 27, 2026, in Cleveland.
NASA/Jordan Cochran
As part of the agency’s Inspiration Tour, NASA will conduct a flyover at the University of Alabama vs. Texas A&M football game in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Saturday, Oct. 24. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will pilot one of three F-5 fighter jets during the flyover, highlighting NASA’s contributions to aeronautics and the agency’s continued commitment to advancing aviation technologies.
Ahead of the game, members of the news media are invited to visit the NASA Experience Zone on Champions Lane, where Isaacman will participate in a media opportunity at 11 a.m. CDT. Media interested in attending should confirm their attendance by 12 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, with Lance D. Davis at [email protected] to receive additional details and instructions.
Supported by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the NASA Experience Zone will be open to the public from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. CDT, with no game ticket required. The experience will give visitors an opportunity to meet NASA team members and learn more about the people and technologies advancing the agency’s missions in aeronautics and space exploration.
Attendees can engage with NASA team members and explore exhibits highlighting the agency’s Artemis campaign and efforts to return astronauts to the Moon, including:
An inflatable SLS (Space Launch System) rocket.
Displays featuring the Starship and Blue Moon human landing systems.
Information about NASA internship opportunities.
Photo opportunities featuring NASA exhibits and displays.
With stops across the nation, NASA’s Inspiration Tour convenes academic, industry, and public sector stakeholders to connect the agency with the people, technologies, and organizations that drive American leadership in space.
The tour will culminate in MAX POWER, a public exposition of American air and space innovation, Saturday, Nov. 7, and Sunday, Nov. 8, on and near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Held in honor of America’s historic 250th anniversary, the multi-day, family-friendly event will showcase the next-generation aircraft, spacecraft, autonomous vehicles, and technologies that will help define the future of transportation in air and space.
For more information about MAX POWER and the agency’s missions, visit:
This image, taken by Perseverance on Mars, shows wheel tracks from the drive that broke the record for the farthest distance driven on another celestial body. The image was acquired with its Left Navigation Camera on Oct. 11, 2026 (Sol 2006) at a local mean solar time of 14:40:39.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Written by Vandi Verma, Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Oct. 12, 2026
Since the last blog update, Perseverance has achieved a major milestone on Mars. On Sol 2006 (Oct. 11, 2026), its odometer reached 45.22 kilometers (28.10 miles), setting a new record for the farthest distance driven on another celestial body. Its engineering twin here on Earth even received a plaque from Guinness World Records celebrating the achievement.
Two months ago, on Sol 1947, the odometer sat about 200 meters away from the milestone, a distance easily achievable with a single drive using Autonomous Navigation (AutoNav). However, the rover found itself in a very scientifically interesting area and spent time executing short drives to perform rock abrasions and proximity science on ancient rock outcrops. When Perseverance was finally ready to move on to a new site, it sailed past the record.
On its way to the drive record, Perseverance has navigated challenging terrain while also pioneering new ways to drive across the Martian surface. Perseverance’s various encounters with dense boulder fields and steep slopes have pushed the team to re-evaluate driving guidelines so the rover is better prepared to handle tough terrain. After running thousands of simulations, the team raised the rover’s tilt limit to 24 degrees and reduced the clearance required under the rover’s belly pan to 20 centimeters (about 7.9 inches). The team also updated the rover’s braking software to avoid rock hazards, nearly doubled steer motor current limits, updated flight software with “dynamic slip tables” to model expected slip, and used cross-slope driving to better anchor wheels on exposed bedrock.
One of the most exciting updates the team has made is an autonomous drive capability called onboard Global Localization (GBLC). GBLC repurposes the high-speed commercial processor inside the Ingenuity Helicopter Base Station to compare ground and orbital imagery to autonomously locate the rover in global coordinates at the end of a drive (as though we had GPS on a world without it), enabling Perseverance to drive longer distances without human intervention. Unlike Perseverance’s main flight computer, this coprocessor is not hardened against the punishing radiation environment of the Martian surface, where a thin atmosphere and the lack of a global magnetosphere leave little shielding. This radiation can induce “transient bit flips” in memory the software needs to function, and the team developed an effective software-based approach to radiation hardening. Looking forward to the greater demands of longer drives and to planning more activity with fewer resources, the team is also exploring the use of generative SI to help efficiently propose solutions to steer AutoNav along the many legs of a strategic path.
The team is using hard-won lessons from 45 kilometers (more than 28 miles) of driving to reinvent how the rover drives across the Martian surface. As Perseverance climbs higher along the crater rim, the next leap in autonomous exploration on Mars is just getting started.
Want to read more posts from the Perseverance team?
From orbit, today’s space-based laser instruments measure Earth’s forests and terrain one narrow line at a time. Between those lines are enormous gaps that include millions of acres of land scientists never directly measure. NASA’s CASALS instrument will blend machine learning with an ultra-compact lidar instrument to adaptively ‘sweep’ large swaths of Earth’s surface. This new capability for space-based remote sensors allows CASALS to create truly three-dimensional (3D) topographical renderings.
Video from a CASALS flight over the Great Cypress Swamp in Delaware on Nov. 12, 2024, showing tree canopy tops in green, the ground in purple, and near-ground vegetation in blue.
Credit: NASA
A team of researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots between lines of lidar data on the Earth’s surface. Built with support from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), the Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System (CASALS) could help researchers map the features of Earth’s surface with unprecedented detail. Rather than mechanically steering a laser with moving mirrors, CASALS steers light using wavelength itself, generating a continuous, 3D swath of the ground below.
John Yorks, a physical research scientist at GSFC and Principal Investigator for CASALS, explained that the instrument features a novel transmitter and optical grating system that manipulates laser pulses without heavy, failure-prone motorized mirrors.
Instead, CASALS uses a fast-pulsing, tunable “seed” laser centered at 1040 nanometers, rapidly cycling through 256 unique wavelengths as it pulses through an optical component with a microscopic pattern of ridges called a transmission grating.
At this point, the physics of diffraction takes over. Because light bends at slightly different angles depending on its exact wavelength, the grating naturally “steers” each of the 256 pulses into a distinct position across the flight path.
This non-mechanical approach paints a continuous 3D swath of the ground. Not only does this eliminate the large unmapped gaps left between the isolated tracks of legacy spaceborne lidars, but stripping away moving parts drastically reduces the instrument’s size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements. This makes it more reliable for the harsh environment of space.
Another key innovation within CASALS is its detector array. This component features a uniquely high Quantum Efficiency (QE), a variable that describes how effectively a detector converts incoming light (photons) into an electrical signal. CASALS operates at 80% QE. This means CASALS wastes almost none of the light that makes it back to the sensor.
With QE that high, CASALS can detect much weaker return signals, allowing it to collect useful measurements from darker surfaces or through denser vegetation.
This technology isn’t limited to a laboratory environment. In November 2024, an airborne CASALS prototype flew aboard NASA’s B200 King Air aircraft. The instrument produced science-quality datasets on its first campaign, exceeding the team’s expectations.
“I’m very impressed with Guang Yang, Jeffrey Chen, and all our engineers, and how well CASALS performed. This worked really well from the first time we flew it, which is pretty impressive,” said Yorks.
Flying at an altitude of roughly five kilometers, CASALS can distinguish individual tree branches and subtle changes in ground elevation, thanks to its 22-centimeter horizontal resolution.
“We’re able to see really fine details of vegetation structure and changes in the topography of the surface,” Yorks said.
But there’s more work to do to prepare the technology for space. The team plans to make several improvements to CASALS before creating a space-ready prototype. Specifically, they’re widening the instrument’s swath and adding onboard data processing software.
Transitioning from a successful airborne prototype to a fully realized space mission is a challenge, but the CASALS team is up to the task.
“The team’s really done a great job of sticking together and keeping on task and on schedule. We are being funded to optimize and improve the performance, and we’re also then looking at ways to take the technologies used in the airborne instrument and mature them and prepare them for a spaceborne version in the future,” said Yorks.
If successful, CASALS could become the first spaceborne lidar capable of mapping Earth’s forests and terrain as continuous three-dimensional swaths rather than isolated profiles, giving scientists a dramatically more complete picture of our changing planet.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort.
Project Lead(s): John Yorks, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Sponsoring Organization(s): NASA’s Decadal Survey Incubation (DSI) program; NASA’s Instrument Incubation Program (IIP); NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; University of California, Santa Barbara; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
New Ghosts Revealed in Cassiopeia
Explanation: Jinkies, look at all those ghosts! It took 100 hours of observation and a special oxygen filter for today’s image to capture three faint nebulas hidden in the Cassiopeia constellation. IC 59 and IC 63, the original Ghosts of Cassiopeia, haunt the region near multi-star system γ Cassiopeia. Energetic light from γ Cassiopeia causes the hydrogen gas in IC 59 and 63 to glow red. Their dust reflects and scatters some blue-ish white starlight. Newly discovered Objects 1, 2, and 3 appear as blue phantoms, revealing the presence of ionized oxygen. But ionized by what? Like at the bow of a speeding boat, γ Cassiopeia may be piling up material as the system moves through interstellar gas and dust. It follows that Object 3 may be the compressed and heated oxygen of that bow shock. Object 1 could be a planetary nebula if a central white dwarf is identified. The origins of these astronomical apparitions remain a mystery to be solved.
Read here for more information on how you can help the observing team behind today’s APOD.
Hurricane Isaias—the only Atlantic hurricane to date in 2026—made landfall in Florida as a Category 2 storm on October 9. After delivering a rainy, windy blow to the U.S. Gulf Coast and drenching much of the Eastern Seaboard, the weather system had more in store.
Riding the jet stream east over the North Atlantic, Isaias’s remnants developed into a powerful storm known as an extratropical cyclone. These low-pressure systems often feature asymmetrical, comma-shaped cloud patterns and can strike with hurricane-force winds, rain, and blizzard-like conditions.
The VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-21 satellite captured this image of the extratropical cyclone brushing past Iceland on the afternoon of October 14. During its journey, the system’s air pressure plummeted by more than 50 hectopascals over a 24-hour period, according to reports—approximately double the criteria for explosive cyclogenesis, or bombogenesis. Some meteorologists believe the storm may have set a new October low for barometric pressure in Iceland, after correcting for altitude, likely breaking a record that has stood since 1963.
The cyclone lashed Iceland with high winds as it grazed the coast. A gust of 205 kilometers (128 miles) per hour was recorded near Eyjafjallajökull volcano in the country’s south, while a small island just offshore saw sustained winds of 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour. Damaging winds extended into northern parts of the country, where residents also braced for sleet and snow. Farther across the Atlantic, northwestern Scotland received gusts up to 90 kilometers (55 miles) per hour on October 14, according to news reports, resulting in cancellations on several ferry routes.
Retired Army Lt. Col. David Gauntlett received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor during a recent Oregon National Guard ceremony, 57 years after he stayed at his radios through three days of mortar fire during the Vietnam War.
Six soldier-athletes from the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program will carry Army pride and medal ambitions to the 2026 United World Wrestling Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Rotor blade cross-sections highlight the thinner profile of the roamx-0201 design (right) compared to the more traditional, rounded shape used by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which accomplished the first powered flight on Mars.
NASA researchers are developing the future of flight on Mars, laying the groundwork for helicopters with the ability to fly higher and farther while conducting science on the Red Planet. Using high-fidelity computer simulations and wind tunnel tests, engineers are reimagining the rotorcraft blades that could carry the next generation of Mars flyers.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made history as the first powered aircraft to fly on another planet. The SkyFall mission, scheduled for launch in 2028, builds on that legacy with a trio of helicopters destined for Mars exploration. Both missions utilize a blade designed to operate in Mars’ thin atmosphere, with a curved edge reminiscent of but distinct from blades used on Earth.
Researchers are exploring unconventional blade designs that are thinner and sharper, aiming to enable future missions after Skyfall to expand their single-flight range across Mars. One team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley is working with Imperial College London, United Kingdom, and Nagoya University, Japan, to test a new blade cross-section, or airfoil, that promises to significantly boost aerodynamic performance on Mars.
Researchers designed the new airfoil, called roamx-0201, using advanced simulations and algorithms tuned to Mars conditions, pointing researchers toward a thinner, asymmetrical shape. Subsequent wind tunnel tests showed that the optimized design boosted performance and was better able to recover in risky flight conditions.
Researchers used high-fidelity simulation tools to analyze the performance of the roamx-0201 airfoil and compare it to Ingenuity’s capacity. They found that the redesigned blades could enable future Mars helicopters to expand the distances that can be covered in one uninterrupted flight from Ingenuity’s 0.7 kilometers to as much as 18.7 kilometers while carrying scientific instruments. The findings were announced in a paper published Sept. 22 in the journal of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The roamx‑0201 blades performed well in part because they were able to operate longer at higher speeds before experiencing a phenomenon known as “drag divergence”, where performance drops suddenly when the rotors approach the speed of sound, which is lower on Mars than on Earth.
The new blade also differs from earlier designs in how it uses turbulence to create lift. As air flows over a rotorcraft blade, it forms a thin region called the “boundary layer.” The new airfoil intentionally disrupts the flow of that boundary layer at the front of the airfoil directly at the leading edge to create a disturbance that, counterintuitively, pulls the blade upward to help lift the rotorcraft more effectively than with earlier designs.
Another challenge for rotorcraft is “stall,” an aerodynamic condition in which performance drops sharply and flight becomes unstable following a change in the angle of airflow. Ingenuity’s blades experienced steep performance degradation at stall, but under the conditions studied, the roamx-0201 design showed significantly improved stall behavior. That means future helicopters could operate safely at a wider range of flight angles.
While the technology is not yet ready for Mars, tests are helping engineers understand and resolve discrepancies between computational predictions and real-world performance. Ongoing research across NASA aims to enable more efficient Mars helicopters that can fly farther, carry more payload, and unlock new science and discovery missions.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Artist’s rendering of astronauts working next to a lunar terrain vehicle on the lunar surface.
NASA
As NASA works to build the Moon Base, crewed and robotic lunar rovers will play a crucial role during early development through technology demonstrations, astronaut transport, terrain mapping, scientific investigations, and resource prospecting. Data from these early missions will inform future mobility systems and infrastructure needed for astronauts to live and work on the Moon.
On Tuesday, NASA released a Moon Base video update offering a closer look at the progress being made on the commercial lunar terrain vehicles and robotic rovers that will enable the surface mobility needed to build humanity’s first lunar outpost.
“Lunar rovers are central to our surface mobility strategy,” said Robert Pickle, director of the Surface Mobility Office within the agency’s Moon Base Program. “Their performance will lay the groundwork for the mobility systems that will define the next era of exploration and ultimately determine how effectively we can build, operate, and expand the infrastructure required for long‑duration exploration.”
Learn more about NASA’s VIPER
An artist’s concept of NASA’s VIPER lunar rover on the surface of the Moon.
NASA/Daniel Rutter
NASA’s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) will embark on a mission to the lunar South Pole region in 2027 to venture into permanently shadowed craters looking for water and other valuable resources essential for sustainable exploration.
After delivery to the lunar surface by a Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, VIPER will travel more than 18 miles (30 kilometers), collecting information about the thermal, lighting, and terrain environment in the Moon’s South Pole region. This data could provide information about the origin and distribution of water on the Moon, help determine how lunar resources could be used for the Moon Base, as well as better understand the history of the Moon, Earth, and the processes that helped shape conditions for life.
Mission operations for VIPER will be run out of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley where teams are simulating possible scenarios for when the rover begins its mission on the Moon.
The VIPER rover is currently at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston where it is fully built and undergoing final testing before traveling to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch to the Moon.
Lunar terrain vehicles
To advance surface mobility on the Moon, NASA awarded Astrolab and Lunar Outpost task orders to build the first phase of Moon Base rovers capable of carrying crew, called lunar terrain vehicles (LTVs), that will be delivered to the Moon ahead of crewed Artemis missions. NASA awarded Blue Origin a task order to deliver the LTVs to the lunar South Pole region by 2028 through the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative.
The LTVs will be remotely operated from Earth, traversing up to 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) a day, mapping the lunar surface to help scientists produce high-resolution maps of the region, prior to crew arriving on future missions. The rovers also will collect information to help NASA and its partners learn about operating in this extreme environment, such as data on lighting, navigation, and how well the LTVs preserve energy and function when driving in and out of permanently shadowed regions that can reach minus 334°F (minus 203°C). This will help inform Moon Base development and improve on design and capability for future mobility systems, hardware, and infrastructure.
During missions on the lunar surface, Artemis astronauts will drive the LTVs as they explore geologically diverse areas of the lunar South Pole region, gathering geology samples to bring back to Earth for scientists to study. The LTVs will be able to support up to three moonwalks per Artemis mission, transport up to 176 pounds (80 kilograms) of lunar samples and tools, and travel up to six miles (10 kilometers) on a single battery charge.
Astrolab
An artist’s concept of Astrolab’s Crewed Lunar Vehicle, or CLV-1, on the surface of the Moon.
Astrolab
Astrolab’s Crewed Lunar Vehicle 1, or CLV-1, is a rover adapted from the company’s FLEX (Flexible Logistics and Exploration Vehicle) LTV architecture. Astrolab recently delivered a mockup of CLV-1 to Axiom Space, where NASA astronauts wore mock-ups of the Artemis lunar spacesuit and evaluated the lunar rover’s design, crew cabin, and display interfaces.
Prior to CLV-1 arriving to the Moon, Astrolab will send its first robotic rover, FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform), to the lunar surface as a payload on Voyager Technologies’ Griffin Mission One scheduled to launch in late 2026. FLIP will study the environment of the South Pole and serve as a testbed for critical subsystems on CLV-1, which will include similar tires, batteries, radios, and cameras.
In the next few weeks, Astrolab engineers will head to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland where they will use the center’s Simulated Lunar Operations laboratory to evaluate the how CLV-1’s flexible, airless wheels perform while driving on a simulated lunar surface.
Lunar Outpost
A full-scale prototype of Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus lunar terrain vehicle.
Lunar Outpost
Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus crewed LTV is a lighter, mission-ready evolution of the company’s Eagle LTV. Prior to the award, Lunar Outpost built two mockups of Pegasus and recently delivered a third static mockup to NASA’s Johnson Space Center for crewed testing. During the test, NASA astronauts wore pressurized spacesuits and evaluated the rover’s design, usability, and crew comfort.
In 2025, Lunar Outpost’s robotic exploration rover MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) operated at the Moon’s South Pole. During the mission, MAPP acted as a testbed and collected data, achieving flight-proven readiness for key hardware and software subsystems, like its automatic thermal control system, navigation cameras, and mission control software that will be used to remotely operate Pegasus. With a second MAPP rover scheduled to launch in early 2027, Lunar Outpost is advancing many of the key technologies that are directly transferable to Pegasus.
In the next few weeks, Lunar Outpost teams also will head to NASA Glenn to test and evaluate the soil mechanics, traction, and mobility of Pegasus’ spring mesh tires.
In the coming months, both Astrolab and Lunar Outpost will test drivable LTV mockups with NASA crew to evaluate how the rovers drive and operate in a simulated lunar environment. Lunar Outpost is scheduled to complete the preliminary design review of their LTV in October, and Astrolab is scheduled to complete their preliminary design review by the end of December. Both companies are on schedule to deliver the flight-ready hardware to NASA at the end of 2027.
As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions near the lunar South Pole to explore more of the Moon than ever before. In addition to providing economic benefits and advancing scientific discovery through its Moon missions, NASA will establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface and build on the agency’s foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed many protostars and stars within the glowing gases of NGC 7129. Hot, atomic hydrogen gas is shown here in the golden region, while cooler, molecular hydrogen gas, shocked by embedded protostars, is represented in red.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope released on Oct. 6, 2026, reveals a cauldron of cosmic creation. Webb has unveiled numerous stars formerly hidden by clouds of dust in a stellar nursery known as NGC 7129, which resides about 3,300 light-years from Earth.
