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Deformable Mirrors in Space: Key Technology toDirectly Image Earth Twins
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By Amazing Space
Live Video from the International Space Station (Seen From The NASA ISS Live Stream)
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By NASA
From left to right, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) missions will map our Sun’s influence across the solar system in new ways. Credit: NASA NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for an observatory designed to study space weather and explore and map the boundaries of our solar neighborhood.
Launching with IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) are two rideshare missions, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), both of which will provide insight into space weather and its impacts at Earth and across the solar system.
Liftoff of the missions on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is targeted for 7:32 a.m. EDT, Tuesday, Sept. 23, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Watch coverage beginning at 6:40 a.m. on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
The IMAP spacecraft will study how the Sun’s energy and particles interact with the heliosphere — an enormous protective bubble of space around our solar system — to enhance our understanding of space weather, cosmic radiation, and their impacts on Earth and human and robotic space explorers. The spacecraft and its two rideshares will orbit approximately one million miles from Earth, positioned toward the Sun at a location known as Lagrange Point 1.
NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory is a small satellite that will observe Earth’s outermost atmospheric layer, the exosphere. It will image the faint glow of ultraviolet light from this region, called the geocorona, to better understand how space weather impacts our planet. The Carruthers mission continues the legacy of the Apollo era, expanding on measurements first taken during Apollo 16.
The SWFO-L1 spacecraft will monitor space weather and detect solar storms in advance, serving as an early warning beacon for potentially disruptive space weather, helping safeguard Earth’s critical infrastructure and technological-dependent industries. The SWFO-L1 spacecraft is the first NOAA observatory designed specifically for and fully dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observations.
Media accreditation for in-person coverage of this launch has passed. NASA’s media credentialing policy is available online. For questions about media accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.
NASA’s mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Sunday, Sept. 21
2:30 p.m. – NASA Prelaunch News Conference on New Space Weather Missions
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Brad Williams, IMAP program executive, NASA Headquarters Irene Parker, deputy assistant administrator for Systems at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science Missions, SpaceX Arlena Moses, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, U.S. Space Force Watch the briefing on the agency’s website or NASA’s YouTube channel.
Media may ask questions in person or via phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in-person participation for previously credentialed media. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the start of the event at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
3:45 p.m. – NASA, NOAA Science News Conference on New Space Weather Missions
Joe Westlake, director, Heliophysics Division, NASA Headquarters David McComas, IMAP principal investigator, Princeton University Lara Waldrop, Carruthers Geocorona Observatory principal investigator, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Jamie Favors, director, Space Weather Program, Heliophysics Division, NASA Headquarters Clinton Wallace, director, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center James Spann, senior scientist, NOAA Office of Space Weather Observations Watch the briefing on the agency’s website or NASA’s YouTube channel.
Media may ask questions in person and via phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in-person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the start of the event at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. Members of the public may ask questions on social media using the hashtag #AskNASA.
Monday, Sept. 22
11:30 a.m. – In-person media one-on-one interviews with the following:
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Kieran Hegarty, IMAP project manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab Jamie Rankin, IMAP instrument lead for Solar Wind and Pickup Ion, Princeton University John Clarke, Carruthers deputy principal investigator, Boston University Dimitrios Vassiliadis, SWFO-L1 program scientist, NOAA Brent Gordon, deputy director, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center Remote media may request a one-on-one video interview online by 3 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18.
Tuesday, Sept. 23
6:40 a.m. – Launch coverage begins on NASA+, Amazon Prime and more. NASA’s Spanish launch coverage begins on NASA+, and the agency’s Spanish-language YouTube channel.
7:32 a.m. – Launch
Audio-Only Coverage
Audio-only of the launch coverage will be carried on the NASA “V” circuits, which may be accessed by dialing 321-867-1220, or -1240. On launch day, “mission audio,” countdown activities without NASA+ media launch commentary, will be carried on 321-867-7135.
NASA Website Launch Coverage
Launch day coverage of the mission will be available on the agency’s website. Coverage will include links to live streaming and blog updates beginning no earlier than 6 a.m., Sept. 23, as the countdown milestones occur. Streaming video and photos of the launch will be accessible on demand shortly after liftoff. Follow countdown coverage on the IMAP blog.
For questions about countdown coverage, contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom at 321-867-2468.
Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con María-José Viñas: maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov.
Attend Launch Virtually
Members of the public can register to attend this launch virtually. NASA’s virtual guest program for this mission also includes curated launch resources, notifications about related opportunities or changes, and a stamp for the NASA virtual guest passport following launch.
Watch, Engage on Social Media
Let people know you’re watching the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by following and tagging these accounts:
X: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASASolarSystem, @NOAASatellies
Facebook: NASA, NASA Kennedy, NASA Solar System, NOAA Satellites
Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASASolarSystem, @NOAASatellites
For more information about these missions, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/sun
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Abbey Interrante
Headquarters, Washington
301-201-0124
abbey.a.interrante@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
Leejay Lockhart
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-747-8310
leejay.lockhart@nasa.gov
John Jones-Bateman
NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, Silver Spring, Md.
202-242-0929
john.jones-bateman@noaa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 15, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Heliophysics Division Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (GLIDE) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) Kennedy Space Center Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Image: Part of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia is featured in this image, captured by the Φsat-2 mission in June 2025. View the full article
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By NASA
Artemis II NASA astronauts (left to right) Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen stand in the white room on the crew access arm of the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as part of an integrated ground systems test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. The test ensures the ground systems team is ready to support the crew timeline on launch day.NASA/Frank Michaux With Artemis II, NASA is taking the science of living and working in space beyond low Earth orbit. While the test flight will help confirm the systems and hardware needed for human deep space exploration, the crew also will be serving as both scientists and volunteer research subjects, completing a suite of experiments that will allow NASA to better understand how human health may change in deep space environments. Results will help the agency build future interventions, protocols, and preventative measures to best protect astronauts on future missions to the lunar surface and to Mars.
Science on Artemis II will include seven main research areas:
ARCHeR: Artemis Research for Crew Health and Readiness
NASA’s Artemis II mission provides an opportunity to explore how deep space travel affects sleep, stress, cognition, and teamwork — key factors in astronaut health and performance. While these effects are well-documented in low Earth orbit, they’ve never been fully studied during lunar missions.
Artemis II astronauts will wear wristband devices that continuously monitor movement and sleep patterns throughout the mission. The data will be used for real-time health monitoring and safety assessments, while pre- and post-flight evaluations will provide deeper insights into cognition, behavior, sleep quality, and teamwork in the unique environment of deep space and the Orion spacecraft.
The findings from the test flight will inform future mission planning and crew support systems, helping NASA optimize human performance for the next era of exploration on the Moon and Mars.
Immune Biomarkers
Saliva provides a unique window into how the human immune system functions in a deep space environment. Tracing changes in astronauts’ saliva from before, during, and after the mission will enable researchers to investigate how the human body responds to deep space in unprecedented ways.
Dry saliva will be collected before, during, and after the mission. It will be blotted onto specialized paper in pocket-sized booklets since equipment needed to preserve wet spit samples in space – including refrigeration – will not be available due to volume constraints. To augment that information, liquid saliva and blood samples will be collected before and after the mission.
NASA Astronaut Randy Bresnik prepares to collect a dry saliva sample aboard the International Space Station. The process, which helps scientists investigate how the immune system is affected by spaceflight and will be part of the Artemis II mission, involves blotting saliva onto special paper that’s stored in pocket-sized booklets.Credit: NASA With these wet and dry saliva samples, scientists will gain insights into how the astronauts’ immune systems are affected by the increased stresses of radiation, isolation, and distance from Earth during their deep space flight. They also will examine whether otherwise dormant viruses are reactivated in space, as has been seen previously on the International Space Station with viruses that can cause chickenpox and shingles.
The information gathered from this study, when combined with data from other missions, will help researchers develop ways to keep crew members safe and healthy as we explore farther and travel for longer periods on deep space missions.
AVATAR: A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response
AVATAR is another important component of NASA’s strategy to gain a holistic understanding of how the deep space environment affects humans. Scientists plan to use organ-on-a-chip technology during Artemis II, marking the first time these devices will be used beyond the Van Allen belts.
Roughly the size of a USB thumb drive, the chips will measure how individual astronauts respond to deep space stressors, including extreme radiation and microgravity. The organ chips will contain cells developed from preflight blood donations provided by crew members to create miniature stand-ins, or “avatars,” of their bone marrow. Bone marrow plays a vital role in the immune system and is particularly sensitive to radiation, which is why scientists selected it for this study.
An organ chip for conducting bone marrow experiments in space. Credit: Emulate
A key goal for this research is to validate whether organ chips can serve as accurate tools for measuring and predicting human responses to stressors. To evaluate this, scientists will compare AVATAR data with space station findings, as well as with samples taken from the crew before and after flight.
AVATAR could inform measures to ensure crew health on future deep space missions, including personalizing medical kits to each astronaut. For citizens on Earth, it could lead to advancements in individualized treatments for diseases such as cancer.
AVATAR is a demonstration of the power of public-private partnerships. It’s a collaboration between government agencies and commercial space companies: NASA, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences within the National Institutes of Health, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Space Tango, and Emulate.
Artemis II Standard Measures
The crew also will become the first astronauts in deep space to participate in the Spaceflight Standard Measures study, an investigation that’s been collecting data from participating crew members aboard the space station and elsewhere since 2018. The study aims to collect a comprehensive snapshot of astronauts’ bodies and minds by gathering a consistent set of core measurements of physiological response.
The crew will provide biological samples including blood, urine, and saliva for evaluating nutritional status, cardiovascular health, and immunological function starting about six months before their launch. The crew also will participate in tests and surveys evaluating balance, vestibular function, muscle performance, changes in their microbiome, as well as ocular and brain health. While in space, data gathering will include an assessment of motion sickness symptoms. After landing, there will be additional tests of head, eye, and body movements, among other functional performance tasks. Data collection will continue for a month after their return.
All this information will be available for scientists interested in studying the effects of spaceflight via request to NASA’s Life Sciences Data Archive. The results from this work could lead to future interventions, technologies, and studies that help predict the adaptability of crews on a Mars mission.
Radiation Sensors Inside Orion
During the uncrewed Artemis I mission, Orion was blanketed in 5,600 passive and 34 active radiation sensors. The information they gathered assured researchers Orion’s design can provide protection for crew members from hazardous radiation levels during lunar missions. That doesn’t mean that scientists don’t want more information, however.
Similar to Artemis I, six active radiation sensors, collectively called the Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessors, will be deployed at various locations inside the Orion crew module. Crew also will wear dosimeters in their pockets. These sensors will provide warnings of hazardous radiation levels caused by space weather events made by the Sun. If necessary, this data will be used by mission control to drive decisions for the crew to build a shelter to protect from radiation exposure due to space weather.
Additionally, NASA has again partnered the German Space Agency DLR for an updated model of their M-42 sensor – an M-42 EXT – for Artemis II. The new version offers six times more resolution to distinguish between different types of energy, compared to the Artemis I version. This will allow it to accurately measure the radiation exposure from heavy ions which are thought to be particularly hazardous for radiation risk. Artemis II will carry four of the monitors, affixed at points around the cabin by the crew.
Collectively, sensor data will paint a full picture of radiation exposures inside Orion and provide context for interpreting the results of the ARCHeR, AVATAR, Artemis II Standard Measures, and Immune Biomarkers experiments.
Lunar Observations Campaign
The Artemis II crew will take advantage of their location to explore the Moon from above. As the first humans to see the lunar surface up close since 1972, they’ll document their observations through photographs and audio recordings to inform scientists’ understanding of the Moon and share their experience of being far from Earth. It’s possible the crew could be the first humans to see certain areas of the Moon’s far side, though this will depend on the time and date of launch, which will affect which areas of the Moon will be illuminated and therefore visible when the spacecraft flies by.
Spacecraft such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have been surveying and mapping the Moon for decades, but Artemis II provides a unique opportunity for humans to evaluate the lunar surface from above. Human eyes and brains are highly sensitive to subtle changes in color, texture, and other surface characteristics. Having the crew observe the lunar surface directly – equipped with questions that scientists didn’t even know to ask during Apollo missions – could form the basis for future scientific investigations into the Moon’s geological history, the lunar environment, or new impact sites.
This visualization simulates what the crew of Artemis II might see out the Orion windows on the day of their closest approach to the Moon. It compresses 36 hours into a little more than a minute as it flies the virtual camera on a realistic trajectory that swings the spacecraft around the Moon’s far side. This sample trajectory is timed so that the far side is fully illuminated when the astronauts fly by, but other lighting conditions are possible depending on the exact Artemis II launch date. The launch is scheduled for no later than April of 2026. NASA Goddard/Ernie Wright
It will also offer the first opportunity for an Artemis mission to integrate science flight control operations. From their console in the flight control room in mission control, a science officer will consult with a team of scientists with expertise in impact cratering, volcanism, tectonism, and lunar ice, to provide real-time data analysis and guidance to the Artemis II crew in space. During the mission, the lunar science team will be located in mission control’s Science Evaluation Room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Lessons learned during Artemis II will pave the way for lunar science operations on future missions.
CubeSats
Several additional experiments are hitching a ride to space onboard Artemis II in the form of CubeSats – shoe-box-sized technology demonstrations and scientific experiments. Though separate from the objectives of the Artemis II mission, they may enhance understanding of the space environment.
Technicians install the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) K-Rad Cube within the Orion stage adapter inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. The K-Rad Cube, about the size of a shoebox, is one of the CubeSats slated to fly on NASA’s Artemis II test flight in 2026. Credit: NASA Four international space agencies have signed agreements to send CubeSats into space aboard the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, each with their own objectives. All will be released from an adapter on the SLS upper stage into a high-Earth orbit, where they will conduct an orbital maneuver to reach their desired orbit.
ATENEA – Argentina’s Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales will collect data on radiation doses across various shielding methods, measure the radiation spectrum around Earth, collect GPS data to help optimize future mission design, and validate a long-range communications link.
K-Rad Cube – The Korea Aerospace Administration will use a dosimeter made of material designed to mimic human tissue to measure space radiation and assess biological effects at various altitudes across the Van Allen radiation belt.
Space Weather CubeSat – The Saudi Space Agency will measure aspects of space weather, including radiation, solar X-rays, solar energetic particles, and magnetic fields, at a range of distances from Earth.
TACHELES – The Germany Space Agency DLR will collect measurements on the effects of the space environment on electrical components to inform technologies for lunar vehicles.
Together, these research areas will inform plans for future missions within NASA’s Artemis campaign. Through Artemis, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
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