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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
Credit: NASA NASA has selected Troy Sierra JV, LLC of Huntsville, Alabama, to provide engineering, research, and scientific support at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
The Test Facility Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering Services III contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $388.3 million. The performance period begins Jan. 1, 2026, with a three-year base period followed by a two-year option, and a potential six-month extension through June 2031.
This contract will provide and manage the engineering, technical, manufacturing, development, operations, maintenance, inspection, and certification support services needed to conduct aerospace testing in NASA Glenn’s facilities and laboratories.
For information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
-end-
Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov
Jan Wittry
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland
216-433-5466
jan.m.wittry-1@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 12, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Langley Research Center Acting Director Dr. Trina Marsh Dyal and Dr. Jeremy Ernst, vice president for Research and Doctoral Programs at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, complete the signing of a Space Act Agreement during a ceremony held at NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025NASA/Mark Knopp As NASA inspires the world through discovery in a new era of innovation and exploration, NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University are working together to advance research, educational opportunities, and workforce development to enable the next generation of aerospace breakthroughs.
The collaborative work will happen through a Space Act Agreement NASA Langley and Embry-Riddle signed during a ceremony held Thursday at NASA Langley. The agreement will leverage NASA Langley’s aerospace expertise and Embry-Riddle’s specialized educational programs and research to drive innovation in aerospace, research, education, and technology, while simultaneously developing a highly skilled workforce for the future of space exploration and advanced air mobility.
Dr. Trina Marsh Dyal, NASA Langley’s acting center director, and Dr. Jeremy Ernst, vice president for Research and Doctoral Programs at Embry-Riddle, presided over the ceremony.
“NASA Langley values opportunities to partner with colleges and universities on research and technology demonstrations that lay the foundation for tomorrow’s innovations,” said Dyal. “These collaborations play an essential role in advancing aeronautics, space exploration, and science initiatives that benefit NASA, industry, academia, and the nation.”
In addition to forging a formal partnership between NASA Langley and Embry-Riddle, the agreement lays the framework to support Embry-Riddle’s development of an Augmented Reality tool by using NASA sensor technology and data. Augmented Reality uses computer-generated elements to enhance a user’s real-world environment and can help users better visualize data. Incorporating model and lunar landing data from Navigation Doppler Lidar, a technology developed at NASA Langley, this tool will enhance visualization and training for entry, descent, and landing, and deorbit, descent, and landing systems — advancing our capabilities for future Moon and Mars missions.
NASA’s Langley Research Center Acting Director Dr. Trina Marsh Dyal and Dr. Jeremy Ernst, vice president for Research and Doctoral Programs at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, sign a Space Act Agreement during a ceremony held at NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.NASA/Mark Knopp “As we work to push the boundaries of what is possible and solve the complexities of a sustained human presence on the lunar surface and Mars, this partnership with Embry-Riddle will not only support NASA’s exploration goals but will also ensure the future workforce is equipped to maintain our nation’s aerospace leadership,” Dyal said.
Embry-Riddle educates more than 30,000 students through its residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, and through online programs offered by its
Worldwide Campus, which counts more than 100 locations across the globe, including a site at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
“We are thrilled that this partnership with NASA Langley is making it possible for our faculty, students, and staff to engage with NASA talent and collaborate on cutting-edge aerospace applications and technology,” said Ernst. “This partnership also presents an incredible opportunity for our students to augment direct research experiences, enhancing career readiness as they prepare to take on the aerospace challenges of tomorrow.”
NASA is committed to partnering with a wide variety of domestic and international partners, in academia, industry, and across the government, to successfully accomplish its diverse missions, including NASA’s Artemis campaign which will return astronauts to the Moon and help pave the way for future human missions to Mars.
For more information on programs at NASA Langley, visit:
https://nasa.gov/langley
Brittny McGraw
NASA Langley Research Center
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Last Updated Sep 11, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A ship plows through rough seas in the Bering Sea in the aftermath of Typhoon Tip, one of the largest hurricanes on record. The Sentinel-6B satellite will provide data crucial to forecasting sea states, information that can help ships avoid danger. CC BY 2.0 NOAA/Commander Richard Behn Sea surface height data from the Sentinel-6B satellite, led by NASA and ESA, will help with the development of marine weather forecasts, alerting ships to possible dangers.
Because most global trade travels by ship, accurate, timely ocean forecasts are essential. These forecasts provide crucial information about storms, high winds, and rough water, and they depend on measurements provided by instruments in the ocean and by satellites including Sentinel-6B, a joint mission led by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) that will provide essential sea level and other ocean data after it launches this November.
The satellite will eventually take over from its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which launched in 2020. Both satellites have an altimeter instrument that measures sea levels, wind speeds, and wave heights, among other characteristics, which meteorologists feed into models that produce marine weather forecasts. Those forecasts provide information on the state of the ocean as well as the changing locations of large currents like the Gulf Stream. Dangerous conditions can result when waves interact with such currents, putting ships at risk.
“Building on NASA’s long legacy of satellite altimetry data and its real-world impact on shipping operations, Sentinel-6B will soon take on the vital task of improving ocean and weather forecasts to help keep ships, their crews, and cargo safe”, said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, lead program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and Sentinel-6B are part of the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, the latest in a series of ocean-observing radar altimetry missions that have monitored Earth’s changing seas since the early 1990s. Sentinel-6/Jason-CS is a collaboration between NASA, ESA, the European Union, EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), and NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The European Commission provided funding support, and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales) contributed technical support.
Keeping current
“The ocean is getting busier, but it’s also getting more dangerous,” said Avichal Mehra, deputy director of the Ocean Prediction Center at the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland. He and his colleagues produce marine weather forecasts using data from ocean-based instruments as well as complementary measurements from five satellites, including Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. Among those measurements: sea level, wave height, and wind speed. The forecasters derive the location of large currents from changes in sea level.
One of the planet’s major currents, the Gulf Stream is located off the southeastern coast of the United States, but its exact position varies. “Ships will actually change course depending on where the Gulf Stream is and the direction of the waves,” said Mehra. “There have been instances where, in calm conditions, waves interacting with the Gulf Stream have caused damage or the loss of cargo containers on ships.”
Large, warm currents like the Gulf Stream can have relatively sharp boundaries since they are generally higher than their surroundings. Water expands as it warms, so warm seawater is taller than cooler water. If waves interact with these currents in a certain way, seas can become extremely rough, presenting a hazard to even the largest ships.
“Satellite altimeters are the only reliable measurement we have of where these big currents can be,” said Deirdre Byrne, sea surface height team lead at NOAA in College Park.
There are hundreds of floating sensors scattered about the ocean that could pick up parts of where such currents are located, but these instruments are widely dispersed and limited in the area they measure at any one time. Satellites like Sentinel-6B offer greater spatial coverage, measuring areas that aren’t regularly monitored and providing essential information for the forecasts that ships need.
Consistency is key
Sentinel-6B won’t just help marine weather forecasts through its near-real-time data, though. It will also extend a long-term dataset featuring more than 30 years of sea level measurements, just as Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich does today.
“Since 1992, we have launched a series of satellites that have provided consistent sea level observations from the same orbit in space. This continuity allows each new mission to be calibrated against its predecessors, providing measurements with centimeter-level accuracy that don’t drift over time,” said Severine Fournier, Sentinel-6B deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
This long-running, repeated measurement has turned this dataset into the gold standard sea level measurement from space — a reference against which data from other sea level satellites is checked. It also serves as a baseline, giving forecasters a way to tell what ocean conditions have looked like over time and how they are changing now. “This kind of data can’t be easily replaced,” said Mehra.
More about Sentinel-6B
Sentinel-6/Jason-CS was jointly developed by ESA, EUMETSAT, NASA, and NOAA, with funding support from the European Commission and technical support from CNES.
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL contributed three science instruments for each Sentinel-6 satellite: the Advanced Microwave Radiometer, the Global Navigation Satellite System – Radio Occultation, and the Laser Retroreflector Array. NASA is also contributing launch services, ground systems supporting operation of the NASA science instruments, the science data processors for two of these instruments, and support for the U.S. members of the international Ocean Surface Topography and Sentinel-6 science teams.
For more about Sentinel-6/Jason-CS, visit:
https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/jason-cs-sentinel-6
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-491-1943 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 11, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on September 10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol of its mission.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will host a news conference at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, to discuss the analysis of a rock sampled by the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover last year, which is the subject of a forthcoming science paper. The agency previously announced this event as a teleconference.
Watch the news conference on NASA’s YouTube channel and the agency’s website. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Participants include:
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington Lindsay Hays, senior scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than one hour before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. Media who registered for the earlier teleconference-only version of this event do not need to re-register. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
The sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” was collected in July 2024 from a set of rocky outcrops on the edges of Neretva Vallis, a river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago.
Since landing in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021, Perseverance has collected 30 samples. The rover still has six empty sample tubes to fill, and it continues to collect detailed information about geologic targets that it hasn’t sampled by using its abrasion tool. Among the rover’s science instruments is a weather station that provides environmental information for future human missions, as well as swatches of spacesuit material so that NASA can study how it fares on Mars.
Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
To learn more about Perseverance visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance
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Bethany Stevens / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 10, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Perseverance (Rover) Mars 2020 Planetary Science Division Science Mission Directorate
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