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By NASA
On June 11, NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) captured photos of the site where the ispace Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon (RESILIENCE) lunar lander experienced a hard landing on June 5, 2025, UTC.
RESILIENCE lunar lander impact site, as seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on June 11, 2025. The lander created a dark smudge surrounded by a subtle bright halo.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. RESILIENCE was launched on Jan. 15 on a privately funded spacecraft.
LRO’s right Narrow Angle Camera (one in a suite of cameras known as LROC) captured the images featured here from about 50 miles above the surface of Mare Frigoris, a volcanic region interspersed with large-scale faults known as wrinkle ridges.
The dark smudge visible above the arrow in the photo formed as the vehicle impacted the surface, kicking up regolith — the rock and dust that make up Moon “soil.” The faint bright halo encircling the site resulted from low-angle regolith particles scouring the delicate surface.
This animation shows the RESILIENCE site before and after the impact. In the image, north is up. Looking from west to east, or left to right, the area pictured covers 2 miles.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.
More on this story from Arizona State University’s LRO Camera website
Media Contact
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jun 20, 2025 EditorMadison OlsonContactMolly Wassermolly.l.wasser@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Earth's Moon View the full article
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory perfected aerogel for the Stardust mission. Under Stardust, bricks of aerogel covered panels on a spacecraft that flew behind a comet, with the microporous material “soft catching” any particles that might strike it and preserving them for return to Earth.NASA Consisting of 99% air, aerogel is the world’s lightest solid. This unique material has found purpose in several forms — from NASA missions to high fashion.
Driven by the desire to create a 3D cloud, Greek artist, Ioannis Michaloudis, learned to use aerogel as an artistic medium. His journey spanning more than 25 years took him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge; Shivaji University in Maharashtra, India, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
A researcher at MIT introduced Michaloudis to aerogel after hearing of his cloud-making ambition, and he was immediately intrigued. Aerogel is made by combining a polymer with a solvent to create a gel and flash-drying it under pressure, leaving a solid filled with microscopic pores.
Scientists at JPL chose aerogel in the mid-1990s to enable the Stardust mission, with the idea that a porous surface could capture particles while flying on a probe behind a comet. Aerogel worked in lab tests, but it was difficult to manufacture consistently and needed to be made space-worthy. NASA JPL hired materials scientist Steve Jones to develop a flight-ready aerogel, and he eventually got funding for an aerogel lab.
The aerogel AirSwipe bag Michaloudis created for Coperni’s 2024 fall collection debut appears almost luminous in its model’s hand. The bag immediately captured the world’s attention.Coperni
The Stardust mission succeeded, and when Michaloudis heard of it, he reached out to JPL, where Jones invited him to the lab. Now retired, Jones recalled, “I went through the primer on aerogel with him, the different kinds you could make and their different properties.” The size of Jones’ reactor, enabling it to make large objects, impressed Michaloudis. With tips on how to safely operate a large reactor, he outfitted his own lab with one.
In India, Michaloudis learned recipes for aerogels that can be molded into large objects and don’t crack or shrink during drying. His continued work with aerogels has created an extensive art portfolio.
Michaloudis has had more than a dozen solo exhibitions. All his artwork involves aerogel, drawing attention with its unusual qualities. An ethereal, translucent blue, it casts an orange shadow and can withstand molten metals.
In 2020, Michaloudis created a quartz-encapsulated aerogel pendant for the centerpiece of that year’s collection from French jewelry house Boucheron. Michaloudis also captured the fashion and design world’s attention with a handbag made of aerogel, unveiled at Coperni’s 2024 fall collection debut.
NASA was a crucial step along the way. “I am what I am, and we made what we made thanks to the Stardust project,” said Michaloudis.
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Last Updated Jun 09, 2025 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The SWOT satellite is helping scientists size up flood waves on waterways like the Yellowstone River, pictured here in October 2024 in Montana. SWOT measures the height of surface waters, including the ocean, and hundreds of thousands of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs in the U.S. alone.NPS In a first, researchers from NASA and Virginia Tech used satellite data to measure the height and speed of potentially hazardous flood waves traveling down U.S. rivers. The three waves they tracked were likely caused by extreme rainfall and by a loosened ice jam. While there is currently no database that compiles satellite data on river flood waves, the new study highlights the potential of space-based observations to aid hydrologists and engineers, especially those working in communities along river networks with limited flood control structures such as levees and flood gates.
Unlike ocean waves, which are ordinarily driven by wind and tides, and roll to shore at a steady clip, river waves (also called flood or flow waves) are temporary surges stretching tens to hundreds of miles. Typically caused by rainfall or seasonal snowmelt, they are essential to shuttling nutrients and organisms down a river. But they can also pose hazards: Extreme river waves triggered by a prolonged downpour or dam break can produce floods.
“Ocean waves are well known from surfing and sailing, but rivers are the arteries of the planet. We want to understand their dynamics,” said Cedric David, a hydrologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and a coauthor of a new study published May 14 in Geophysical Research Letters.
SWOT is depicted in orbit in this artist’s concept, with sunlight glinting off one of its solar panels and both antennas of its key instrument — the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) — extended. The antennas collect data along a swath 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide on either side of the satellite.CNES Measuring Speed and Size
To search for river waves for her doctoral research, lead author Hana Thurman of Virginia Tech turned to a spacecraft launched in 2022. The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). It is surveying the height of nearly all of Earth’s surface waters, both fresh and salty, using its sensitive Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn). The instrument maps the elevation and width of water bodies by bouncing microwaves off the surface and timing how long the signal takes to return.
“In addition to monitoring total storage of waters in lakes and rivers, we zoom in on dynamics and impacts of water movement and change,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Thurman knew that SWOT has helped scientists track rising sea levels near the coast, spot tsunami slosh, and map the seafloor, but could she identify river height anomalies in the data indicating a wave on the move?
She found that the mission had caught three clear examples of river waves, including one that arose abruptly on the Yellowstone River in Montana in April 2023. As the satellite passed overhead, it observed a 9.1-foot-tall (2.8-meter-tall) crest flowing toward the Missouri River in North Dakota. It was divided into a dramatic 6.8-mile-long (11-kilometer-long) peak followed by a more drawn‐out tail. These details are exciting to see from orbit and illustrate the KaRIn instrument’s uniquely high spatial resolution, Thurman said.
Sleuthing through optical Sentinel-2 imagery of the area, she determined that the wave likely resulted from an ice jam breaking apart upstream and releasing pent-up water.
The other two river waves that Thurman and the team found were triggered by rainfall runoff. One, spotted by SWOT starting on Jan. 25, 2024, on the Colorado River south of Austin, Texas, was associated with the largest flood of the year on that section of river. Measuring over 30 feet (9 meters) tall and 166 miles (267 kilometers) long, it traveled around 3.5 feet (1.07 meters) per second for over 250 miles (400 kilometers) before discharging into Matagorda Bay.
The other wave originated on the Ocmulgee River near Macon, Georgia, in March 2024. Measuring over 20 feet (6 meters) tall and extending more than 100 miles (165 kilometers), it traveled about a foot (0.33 meters) per second for more than 124 miles (200 kilometers).
“We’re learning more about the shape and speed of flow waves, and how they change along long stretches of river,” Thurman said. “That could help us answer questions like, how fast could a flood get here and is infrastructure at risk?”
Complementary Observations
Engineers and water managers measuring river waves have long relied on stream gauges, which record water height and estimate discharge at fixed points along a river. In the United States, stream gauge networks are maintained by agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey. They are sparser in other parts of the world.
“Satellite data is complementary because it can help fill in the gaps,” said study supervisor George Allen, a hydrologist and remote sensing expert at Virginia Tech.
If stream gauges are like toll booths clocking cars as they pass, SWOT is like a traffic helicopter taking snapshots of the highway.
The wave speeds that SWOT helped determine were similar to those calculated using gauge data alone, Allen said, showing how the satellite could help monitor waves in river basins without gauges. Knowing where and why river waves develop can help scientists tracking changing flood patterns around the world.
Orbiting Earth multiple times each day, SWOT is expected to observe some 55% of large-scale floods at some stage in their life cycle. “If we see something in the data, we can say something,” David said of SWOT’s potential to flag dangerous floods in the making. “For a long time, we’ve stood on the banks of our rivers, but we’ve never seen them like we are now.”
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
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Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
Written by Sally Younger
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Last Updated May 21, 2025 Related Terms
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