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NASA Tests Drones to Provide Micrometeorology, Aid in Fire Response
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By NASA
NASA researchers Matt Gregory, right, Arwa Awiess, center, and Andrew Guion, left, discuss live flight data being ingested at the Mission Visualization and Research Control Center (MVRCC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on Aug. 21, 2025.NASA/ Brandon Torres-Navarrete NASA and its partners recently tested a tool for remotely piloted operations that could enable operators to transport people and goods more efficiently within urban areas.
The team’s goal is to ensure that when these remotely piloted aircraft – including electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) – take to the skies, air traffic controllers won’t be overburdened by increased flight operations and safety is maintained across the national airspace.
On Aug. 21, NASA’s Air Traffic Management eXploration Project (ATM-X) assisted Wisk Aero when they flew a Bell 206 helicopter in Hollister, California. The purpose of the flight test was to evaluate and fine-tune a ground-based radar developed by Collins Aerospace. The radar, which provides aircraft location data, could be used during future remotely piloted operations to detect and avoid other aircraft in the vicinity. NASA, Wisk, and Collins researchers also used the flight to test data exchange capabilities across different geographic locations between the groups, a critical capability for future remotely piloted operators in a shared airspace. This work builds on a November 2024 flight test NASA performed with Reliable Robotics and Collins Aerospace.
Initial analysis of the August testing of Collins’ ground-based radar actively and accurately surveilled the airspace during the aircraft’s flight test. The Collins radar system also successfully transmitted these data to NASA’s Mission Visualization Research Command Center lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. NASA, Wisk, and Collins will further analyze the flight data to better understand the radar’s performance and data exchange capabilities for future remotely piloted flight tests. This testing is a part of ATM-X’s remotely piloted testing campaign, designed to identify the infrastructure and technologies needed for the Federal Aviation Administration to safely integrate drones and air taxis into the airspace, bringing the movement of people and goods off the ground, and into the sky.
Remotely piloted eVTOL aircraft could bridge the gap for urban communities by offering a more affordable and accessible method of transportation and delivery services in congested, highly-populated areas.
NASA and Wisk will continue to collaborate on emerging eVTOL technologies to safely integrate advanced aircraft, into the national airspace. Together, the teams will gather data on eVTOL performance and characteristics during a flight test of a helicopter, which will act as a “surrogate” simulating an eVTOL flight. This work will mark another critical step towards better connecting communities across the globe.
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By NASA
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help scientists better understand our Milky Way galaxy’s less sparkly components — gas and dust strewn between stars, known as the interstellar medium.
One of Roman’s major observing programs, called the Galactic Plane Survey, will peer through our galaxy to its most distant edge, mapping roughly 20 billion stars—about four times more than have currently been mapped. Scientists will use data from these stars to study and map the dust their light travels through, contributing to the most complete picture yet of the Milky Way’s structure, star formation, and the origins of our solar system.
Our Milky Way galaxy is home to more than 100 billion stars that are often separated by trillions of miles. The spaces in between, called the interstellar medium, aren’t empty — they’re sprinkled with gas and dust that are both the seeds of new stars and the leftover crumbs from stars long dead. Studying the interstellar medium with observatories like NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will reveal new insight into the galactic dust recycling system.
Credit: NASA/Laine Havens; Music credit: Building Heroes by Enrico Cacace [BMI], Universal Production Music “With Roman, we’ll be able to turn existing artist’s conceptions of the Milky Way into more data-driven models using new constraints on the 3D distribution of interstellar dust,” said Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Solving Milky Way mystery
Scientists know how our galaxy likely looks by combining observations of the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies. But dust clouds make it hard to work out the details on the opposite side of our galaxy. Imagine trying to map a neighborhood while looking through the windows of a house surrounded by a dense fog.
Roman will see through the “fog” of dust using a specialized camera and filters that observe infrared light — light with longer wavelengths than our eyes can detect. Infrared light is more likely to pass through dust clouds without scattering.
This artist’s concept visualizes different types of light moving through a cloud of particles. Since infrared light has a longer wavelength, it can pass more easily through the dust. That means astronomers observing in infrared light can peer deeper into dusty regions.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Light with shorter wavelengths, including blue light produced by stars, more easily scatters. That means stars shining through dust appear dimmer and redder than they actually are.
By comparing the observations with information on the source star’s characteristics, astronomers can disentangle the star’s distance from how much its colors have been reddened. Studying those effects reveals clues about the dust’s properties.
“I can ask, ‘how much redder and dimmer is the starlight that Roman detects at different wavelengths?’ Then, I can take that information and relate it back to the properties of the dust grains themselves, and in particular their size,” said Brandon Hensley, a scientist who studies interstellar dust at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Scientists will also learn about the dust’s composition and probe clouds to investigate the physical processes behind changing dust properties.
Clues in dust-influenced starlight hint at the amount of dust between us and a star. Piecing together results from many stars allows astronomers to construct detailed 3D dust maps. That would enable scientists like Zucker to create a model of the Milky Way, which will show us how it looks from the outside. Then scientists can better compare the Milky Way with other galaxies that we only observe from the outside, slotting it into a cosmological perspective of galaxy evolution.
“Roman will add a whole new dimension to our understanding of the galaxy because we’ll see billions and billions more stars,” Zucker said. “Once we observe the stars, we’ll have the dust data as well because its effects are encoded in every star Roman detects.”
Galactic life cycles
The interstellar medium does more than mill about the Milky Way — it fuels star and planet formation. Dense blobs of interstellar medium form molecular clouds, which can gravitationally collapse and kick off the first stages of star development. Young stars eject hot winds that can cause surrounding dust to clump into planetary building blocks.
“Dust carries a lot of information about our origins and how everything came to be,” said Josh Peek, an associate astronomer and head of the data science mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Right now, we’re basically standing on a really large dust grain — Earth was built out of lots and lots of really tiny grains that grew together into a giant ball.”
Roman will identify young clusters of stars in new, distant star-forming regions as well as contribute data on “star factories” previously identified by missions like NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
“If you want to understand star formation in different environments, you have to understand the interstellar landscape that seeds it,” Zucker said. “Roman will allow us to link the 3D structure of the interstellar medium with the 3D distribution of young stars across the galaxy’s disk.”
Roman’s new 3D dust maps will refine our understanding of the Milky Way’s spiral structure, the pinwheel-like pattern where stars, gas, and dust bunch up like galactic traffic jams. By combining velocity data with dust maps, scientists will compare observations with predictions from models to help identify the cause of spiral structure—currently unclear.
The role that this spiral pattern plays in star formation remains similarly uncertain. Some theories suggest that galactic congestion triggers star formation, while others contend that these traffic jams gather material but do not stimulate star birth.
Roman will help to solve mysteries like these by providing more data on dusty regions across the entire Milky Way. That will enable scientists to compare many galactic environments and study star birth in specific structures, like the galaxy’s winding spiral arms or its central stellar bar.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a Galactic Plane Survey to explore our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The survey will map around 20 billion stars, each encoding information about intervening dust and gas called the interstellar medium. Studying the interstellar medium could offer clues about our galaxy’s spiral arms, galactic recycling, and much more.
Credit: NASA, STScI, Caltech/IPAC The astronomy community is currently in the final stages of planning for Roman’s Galactic Plane Survey.
“With Roman’s massive survey of the galactic plane, we’ll be able to have this deep technical understanding of our galaxy,” Peek said.
After processing, Roman’s data will be available to the public online via the Roman Research Nexus and the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, which will each provide open access to the data for years to come.
“People who aren’t born yet are going to be able to do really cool analyses of this data,” Peek said. “We have a really beautiful piece of our heritage to hand down to future generations and to celebrate.”
Roman is slated to launch no later than May 2027, with the team working toward a potential early launch as soon as fall 2026.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Download additional images and video from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
For more information about the Roman Space Telescope, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/roman
By Laine Havens
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 16, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Article 2 months ago View the full article
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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 NASA
Credit: NASA NASA has selected Bastion Technologies Inc. of Houston to provide safety and mission assurance services for the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The Safety and Mission Assurance II (SMAS II) award is a performance-based, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum potential value of $400 million. A phase-in period begins Monday, followed by a base ordering period of four years with options to extend services through March 2034.
Under the contract, Bastion will provide services for a wide range of activities including system safety, reliability, maintainability, software assurance, quality engineering and assurance, independent assessment, institutional safety, and pressure systems.
The work will support various spaceflight and science missions, research and development projects, hardware fabrication and testing, and other activities at NASA Marshall, Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Tasks also will be performed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, contractor facilities, and other sites supported by Marshall’s Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate.
The SMAS II contract is a small business set-aside, which levels the playing field for qualified small businesses to compete for and win federal contracts.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov
-end-
Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov
Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 15, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Marshall Space Flight Center Kennedy Space Center Michoud Assembly Facility NASA Centers & Facilities Stennis Space Center View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
Avatars for Astronaut Health to Fly on NASA’s Artemis II
An organ chip for conducting bone marrow experiments in space. Emulate NASA announced a trailblazing experiment that aims to take personalized medicine to new heights. The experiment is part of a strategic plan to gather valuable scientific data during the Artemis II mission, enabling NASA to “know before we go” back to the lunar surface and on to Mars.
The AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation will use organ-on-a-chip devices, or organ chips, to study the effects of deep space radiation and microgravity on human health. The chips will contain cells from Artemis II astronauts and fly side-by-side with crew on their approximately 10-day journey around the Moon. This research, combined with other studies on the health and performance of Artemis II astronauts, will give NASA insight into how to best protect astronauts as exploration expands to the surface of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
AVATAR is NASA’s visionary tissue chip experiment that will revolutionize the very way we will do science, medicine, and human multi-planetary exploration.”
Nicky Fox
Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate
“AVATAR is NASA’s visionary tissue chip experiment that will revolutionize the very way we will do science, medicine, and human multi-planetary exploration,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Each tissue chip is a tiny sample uniquely created so that we can examine how the effects of deep space act on each human explorer before we go to ensure we pack the appropriate medical supplies tailored to each individual’s needs as we travel back to the Moon, and onward to Mars.”
The investigation is a collaboration between NASA, government agencies, and industry partners, leveraging commercial expertise to gain a deeper understanding of human biology and disease. This research could accelerate innovations in personalized healthcare, both for astronauts in space and patients on Earth.
Organ-on-a-chip: mimic for human health
Organ chips, also referred to as tissue chips or microphysiological systems, are roughly the size of a USB thumb drive and used to help understand — and then predict — how an individual might respond to a variety of stressors, such as radiation or medical treatments, including pharmaceuticals. Essentially, these small devices serve as “avatars” for human organs.
Organ chips contain living human cells that are grown to model the structures and functions of specific regions in human organs, such as the brain, lungs, heart, pancreas, and liver — they can beat like a heart, breathe like a lung, or metabolize like a liver. Tissue chips can be linked together to mimic how organs interact with each other, which is important for understanding how the whole human body responds to stressors or treatments.
Researchers and oncologists use human tissue chips today to understand how a specific patient’s cancer might react to different drugs or radiation treatments. To date, a standard milestone for organs-on-chips has been to keep human cells healthy for 30 days. However, NASA and other research institutions are pushing these boundaries by increasing the longevity of organ chips to a minimum of six months so that scientists can observe diseases and drug therapies over a longer period.
Bone marrow as bellwether
The Artemis II mission will use organ chips created using blood-forming stem and progenitor cells, which originate in the bone marrow, from Artemis II crew members.
Bone marrow is among the organs most sensitive to radiation exposure and, therefore, of central importance to human spaceflight. It also plays a vital role in the immune system, as it is the origin of all adult red and white blood cells, which is why researchers aim to understand how deep space radiation affects this organ.
Studies have shown that microgravity affects the development of bone marrow cells. Although the International Space Station operates in low Earth orbit, which is shielded from most cosmic and solar radiation by the Earth’s magnetosphere, astronauts often experience a loss of bone density. Given that Artemis II crew will be flying beyond this protective layer, AVATAR researchers also seek to understand how the combined stressors of deep space radiation and microgravity affect the developing cells.
To make the bone marrow organ chips, Artemis II astronauts will first donate platelets to a local healthcare system. The cells remaining from their samples will contain a small percentage of bone marrow-derived stem and progenitor cells. NASA-funded scientists at Emulate, Inc., which developed the organ chip technology used in AVATAR, will purify these cells with magnetic beads that bind specifically to them. The purified cells will then be placed in the bone marrow chips next to blood vessel cells and other supporting cells to model the structure and function of the bone marrow.
Investigating how radiation affects the bone marrow can provide insights into how radiation therapy and other DNA-damaging agents, such as chemotherapeutic drugs, impair blood cell formation. Its significance for both spaceflight and medicine on Earth makes the bone marrow an ideal organ to study in the Artemis II AVATAR project.
Passenger for research
“For NASA, organ chips could provide vital data for protecting astronaut health on deep space missions,” said Lisa Carnell, director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences division at NASA Headquarters. “As we go farther and stay longer in space, crew will have only limited access to on-site clinical healthcare. Therefore, it’ll be critical to understand if there are unique and specific healthcare needs of each astronaut, so that we can send the right supplies with them on future missions.”
During the Artemis II mission, the organ chips will be secured in a custom payload developed by Space Tango and mounted inside the capsule during the mission. The battery-powered payload will maintain automated environmental control and media delivery to the organ chips throughout the flight.
For NASA, organ chips could provide vital data for protecting astronaut health on deep space missions.”
Lisa Carnell
Director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division
Upon return, researchers at Emulate will examine how spaceflight affected the bone marrow chips by performing single-cell RNA sequencing, a powerful technique that measures how thousands of genes change within individual cells. The scientists will compare data from the flight samples to measurements of crew cells used in a ground-based immunology study happening simultaneously. This will provide the most detailed look at the impact of spaceflight and deep space radiation on developing blood cells to date.
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Biological & Physical Sciences Division (BPS)
NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division pioneers scientific discovery and enables exploration by using space environments to conduct investigations not possible on Earth. Studying biological and physical phenomenon under extreme conditions allows researchers to advance the fundamental scientific knowledge required to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefitting life on Earth.
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