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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ResilienX employees Angelo Niforatos, left, and Ryan Pleskach, right, overview the NASA safety tools integrated into the company’s commercial system, July 11, 2025, at the ResilienX Headquarters in Syracuse, New York. Credit: ResilienX A future with advanced air mobility aircraft populating the skies will require the U.S. to implement enhanced preflight planning that can mitigate potential risks well before takeoff – and NASA is working to develop the tools to make that happen.
Preflight planning is critical to ensuring safety in the complex, high-risk environments of the future airspace. Timely, predictive, and up-to-date risk assessment within a single platform makes it much easier for drone or air taxi operators to check flight plans for high-risk concerns.
NASA is working on tools to deliver those services, and in June, the agency and aviation safety company ResilienX Inc. demonstrated how these tools can be integrated into commercial systems.
During a series of tests conducted at ResilienX’s facility in Syracuse, New York, researchers used NASA services that allowed flight operators to submit flight plans prior to departure, obtain risk assessment results, and then decide whether to proceed with flights or change their flight plans and re-assess risks. Allowing operators to perform these tasks quickly reduces the safety risk to flight passengers as well as humans on the ground.
The three NASA-developed services are intended to assess unique risks associated with highly automated aircraft flying at low altitudes over cities.
The partnership was managed under a Phase III NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract, which is an extension of prior work to assess weather-related risks. This collaboration is already leading to direct technology transfer of safety systems into ResilienX’s platform. The partnership is also intended to provide indirect benefits for ResilienX partners and customers, such as the U.S. Air Force and regional operators, helping to advance the overall safety of future airspace operations.
This work is led by NASA’s System-Wide Safety project under the Airspace Operations and Safety program in support of the agency’s Advanced Air Mobility mission. The mission seeks to deliver data, findings, and recommendations to guide the industry’s development of future air taxis and drones.
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Last Updated Aug 22, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactTeresa Whitingteresa.whiting@nasa.gov Related Terms
Armstrong Flight Research Center Advanced Air Mobility Aeronautics Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Airspace Operations and Safety Program Drones & You Small Business Innovation Research / Small Business System-Wide Safety Explore More
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By NASA
A scanning electron microscope image of a micrometeorite impact crater in a particle of asteroid Bennu material. Credits: NASA/Zia Rahman 5 min read
NASA’s Bennu Samples Reveal Complex Origins, Dramatic Transformation
Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023, is a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.
These insights come from a trio of newly published papers based on the analysis of Bennu samples by scientists at NASA and other institutions.
Bennu is made of fragments from a larger parent asteroid destroyed by a collision in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. One of the papers, co-led by Jessica Barnes at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that Bennu’s ancestor was made up of material that had diverse origins—near the Sun, far from the Sun, and even beyond our solar system.
The analyses show that some of the materials in the parent asteroid, despite very low odds, escaped various chemical processes driven by heat and water and even survived the extremely energetic collision that broke it apart and formed Bennu.
“We traced the origins of these initial materials accumulated by Bennu’s ancestor,” said Nguyen. “We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun. All of these constituents were transported great distances to the region that Bennu’s parent asteroid formed.”
The chemical and atomic similarities of samples from Bennu, the asteroid Ryugu (sampled by JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission) and the most chemically primitive meteorites collected on Earth suggest their parent asteroids may have formed in a similar, distant region of the early solar system. Yet the differences from Ryugu and meteorites that were seen in the Bennu samples may indicate that this region changed over time or did not mix as well as some scientists have thought.
We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun.
Ann Nguyen
Planetary Scientist
Though some original constituents survived, most of Bennu’s materials were transformed by reactions with water, as reported in the paper co-led by Tom Zega of the University of Arizona and Tim McCoy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and published in Nature Geoscience. In fact, minerals in the parent asteroid likely formed, dissolved, and reformed over time.
“Bennu’s parent asteroid accumulated ice and dust. Eventually that ice melted, and the resulting liquid reacted with the dust to form what we see today, a sample that is 80% minerals that contain water,” said Zega. “We think the parent asteroid accumulated a lot of icy material from the outer solar system, and then all it needed was a little bit of heat to melt the ice and cause liquids to react with solids.”
Bennu’s transformation did not end there. The third paper, co-led by Lindsay Keller at NASA Johnson and Michelle Thompson of Purdue University, also published in Nature Geoscience, found microscopic craters and tiny splashes of once-molten rock – known as impact melts – on the sample surfaces, signs that the asteroid was bombarded by micrometeorites. These impacts, together with the effects of solar wind, are known as space weathering and occurred because Bennu has no atmosphere to protect it.
“The surface weathering at Bennu is happening a lot faster than conventional wisdom would have it, and the impact melt mechanism appears to dominate, contrary to what we originally thought,” said Keller. “Space weathering is an important process that affects all asteroids, and with returned samples, we can tease out the properties controlling it and use that data and extrapolate it to explain the surface and evolution of asteroid bodies that we haven’t visited.”
Ann Nguyen, co-lead author of a new paper that gives insights into the diverse origin of asteroid Bennu’s “parent” asteroid works alongside the NanoSIMS 50L (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry) ion microprobe in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/James Blair As the leftover materials from planetary formation 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids provide a record of the solar system’s history. But as Zega noted, we’re seeing that some of these remnants differ from what has been found in meteorites on Earth, because certain types of asteroids burn up in the atmosphere and never make it to the ground. That, the researchers point out, is why collecting actual samples is so important.
“The samples are really crucial for this work,” Barnes said. “We could only get the answers we got because of the samples. It’s super exciting that we’re finally able to see these things about an asteroid that we’ve been dreaming of going to for so long.”
The next samples NASA expects to help unravel our solar system’s story will be Moon rocks returned by the Artemis III astronauts.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from the Canadian Space Agency and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Melissa Gaskill
Johnson Space Center
For more information on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
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Victoria Segovia
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By NASA
NASA’s SpaceX 33rd commercial resupply mission will launch on the company’s Dragon spacecraft on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver research and supplies to the International Space StationNASA NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 2:45 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 24, for the next launch to deliver scientific investigations, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station.
Filled with more than 5,000 pounds of supplies, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, will lift off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Dragon will dock autonomously about 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 25, to the forward port of the space station’s Harmony module.
NASA’s SpaceX 33rd commercial resupply mission will launch from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.NASA This launch is the 33rd SpaceX commercial resupply services mission to the orbital laboratory for the agency, and the 13th SpaceX launch under the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract. The first 20 launches were under the original resupply services contract.
Watch agency launch and arrival coverage on NASA+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
NASA’s live launch coverage will begin at 2:25 a.m. on Aug 24. Dragon’s arrival coverage will begin at 6 a.m. on Aug. 25. For nearly 25 years, the International Space Station has provided research capabilities used by scientists from over 110 countries to conduct more than 4,000 groundbreaking experiments in microgravity. Research conducted aboard the space station advances Artemis missions to the Moon and human exploration of Mars, while providing multiple benefits to humanity.
Arrival & Departure
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will arrive at the space station and dock autonomously to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at approximately 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 25. NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim will monitor the spacecraft’s arrival. It will stay docked to the orbiting laboratory for about four months before splashing down and returning critical science and hardware to teams on Earth.
NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Jonny Kim will monitor the arrival of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station.NASA Research Highlights
Preventing bone loss in space
Microgravity Associated Bone Loss-B (MABL-B) assesses the effects of microgravity on bone marrow stem cells and may provide a better understanding of the basic molecular mechanisms of bone loss that occurs during spaceflight and from normal aging on Earth.NASA A study of bone-forming stem cells in microgravity could provide insight into the basic mechanisms of the bone loss astronauts experience during long-duration space flight ahead of future exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Researchers identified a protein in the body called IL-6 that can send signals to stem cells to promote either bone formation or bone loss. This work evaluates whether blocking IL-6 signals could reduce bone loss during spaceflight. Results could improve our understanding of bone loss on Earth due to aging or disease and lead to new prevention and treatment strategies.
Printing parts, tools in space
Printing parts, tools in space
The objective of the Metal 3D printer aboard the International Space Station is to gain experience with operating and evaluating the manufacturing of spare parts in microgravity to support long duration space missions.NASA As mission duration and distance from Earth increase, resupply becomes harder. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, could be used to make parts and dedicated tools on demand, enhancing mission autonomy.
Research aboard the space station has made strides in 3D printing with plastic, but it is not suitable for all uses. Investigations from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Metal 3D Printer builds on recent successful printing of the first metal parts in space.
Bioprinting tissue in microgravity
Maturation of Vascularized Liver Tissue Construct in Zero Gravity (MVP Cell-07) is a biotechnology experiment studying bioprinted, or lab grown, liver tissues complete with blood vessels in space. The results could improve astronaut health on long missions and lead to new ways to treat patients on Earth.NASA Researchers plan to bioprint liver tissue containing blood vessels on the ground and examine how the tissue develops in microgravity. Results could help support the eventual production of entire functional organs for transplantation on Earth.
A previous mission tested whether this bioprinted liver tissue survived and functioned in space. This experimental round could show whether microgravity improves the development of the bioprinted tissue.
Biomanufacturing drug-delivery medical devices
The InSPA-Auxilium Bioprinter will test 3D printing medical implant devices designed to deliver drugs and treat various health conditions such as nerve inuries. Printing on the International Space Station may produce higher-quality devices than on Earth.NASA Scientists are creating an implantable device in microgravity that could support nerve regrowth after injuries. The device is created through bioprinting, a type of 3D printing that uses living cells or proteins as raw materials.
Traumatic injuries can create gaps between nerves, and existing treatments have a limited ability to restore nerve function and may result in impaired physical function. A bioprinted device to bridge nerve gaps could accelerate recovery and preserve function.
Cargo Highlights
NASA’s SpaceX 33rd commercial resupply mission will carry over 5,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station.NASA Hardware
Launch:
Reboost Kit – This kit will perform a reboost demonstration of the station to maintain its current altitude. The hardware, located in Dragon’s trunk, contains an independent propellant system, separate from the spacecraft’s main system, to fuel two Draco engines using existing hardware and propellant system design. The boost kit will demonstrate the capability to maintain the orbiting lab’s altitude starting in September with a series of burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025. During NASA’s SpaceX 31st commercial resupply services mission, the Dragon spacecraft first demonstrated these capabilities on Nov. 8, 2024. Poly Exercise Rope Kit – These exercise ropes distribute the desired exercise loads through a series of pulleys for the Advanced Restrictive Exercise Device. The ropes have a limited life cycle, and it will be necessary to replace them once they have reached their limit. Brine Filter – These filters remove solid particles from liquid in urine during processing as a part of the station’s water recovery system. Acoustic Monitor – A monitor that measures sound and records the data for download. This monitor will replace the sound level meter and the acoustic dosimeter currently aboard the orbiting laboratory. Multi-filtration Bed – This space unit will support the Water Processor Assembly and continue the International Space Station Program’s effort to replace a fleet of degraded units aboard the station to improve water quality through a single bed. Water Separator Orbital Unit – The unit draws air and condensate mixture from a condensing heat exchanger and separates the two components. The air is returned to the cabin air assembly outlet air-flow stream, and the water is delivered to the condensate bus. This unit launches to maintain in-orbit sparing while another is being returned for repair. Anomaly Gas Analyzer Top Assembly – This battery-powered device detects and monitors gases aboard the station, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen cyanide. It also measures cabin pressure, humidity, and temperature. It replaces the Compound Specific Analyzer Combustion Products as the primary tool for detecting airborne chemicals and conditions. Separator Pump (Water Recovery and Management) – This electrically-powered pump separates liquids and gases while rotating. It includes a scoop pump that moves the separated liquid into storage containers for use in other systems. The pump also contains sensor components and a filter to reduce electrical interference from the motor. Launching to maintain in-orbit sparing. Reducer Cylinder Assembly & Emergency Portable Breathing Apparatus – Together, this hardware provides 15 minutes of oxygen to a crew member in case of an emergency (smoke, fire, alarm). Two are launching to maintain a minimum in-orbit spare requirement. Passive Separator Flight Experiment – This experiment will test a new method for separating urine and air using existing technology that combines a water-repellent urine hose with an airflow separator from the station’s existing Waste Hygiene Compartment. Improved Resupply Water Tanks – Two tanks, each holding approximately 160 pounds of potable water, to supplement the Urine Processing Assembly. NORS (Nitrogen/Oxygen Recharge System) Maintenance Tank/Recharge Tank Assembly, Nitrogen – The NORS maintenance kit comprises two assemblies: the NORS recharge tank assembly and the NORS vehicle interface assembly. The recharge tank assembly will be pressurized with nitrogen gas for launch. The vehicle interface assembly will protect the recharge tank assembly for launch and stowage aboard the space station. Launching to maintain reserve oxygen levels on station. Swab Kits – These quick-disconnect cleaning kits are designed and created to replace in-orbit inventory. Return:
Oxygen Generation Assembly Pump – The assembly pump converts potable water from the water recovery system into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is sent to the crew cabin, and the hydrogen is either vented or used to produce more water. The International Space Station has been using this process to produce oxygen and hydrogen for 15 years, and this unit will be retired upon its return to Earth. The flight support equipment within will be refurbished and used in a new pump launched aboard a future flight. Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Assembly – A carbon dioxide monitor that measures the gas using the infrared absorption sensor. It expired in July 2025 and will return for refurbishment. Meteoroid Debris Cover Center Section Assembly – This external multilayer insulation provides thermal and micro-meteoroid orbital debris protection on the node port. After it is removed and replaced with a new assembly launching on NASA’s Northrop Grumman 23rd commercial resupply services mission, this unit will return for repair or used for spare parts. Multi-filtration Bed – This spare unit supports the Water Processor Assembly, which improves water quality aboard the International Space Station. Its return is part of an ongoing effort to replace a degraded fleet of in-orbit units. After its use, this multi-filtration bed will be refurbished for future re-flight. Separator Pump – This electrically powered pump separates liquids and gases while rotating. It includes a scoop pump that moves the separated liquid into storage containers for use in other systems. The pump also contains sensor components and a filter to reduce electrical interference from the motor. This unit is designed to run to failure, and after investigation and testing, it will be returned for repair and future flight. Rate Gyro Enclosure Assembly – The Rate Gyro Assembly determines the space station’s rate of angular motion. It is returning for repair and refurbishment and will be used as a spare. NORS (Nitrogen/Oxygen Recharge System) Maintenance Kit (Oxygen) – The NORS Maintenance Kit comprises two assemblies: the NORS Recharge Tank Assembly and the NORS Vehicle Interface Assembly. The recharge tank assembly will be pressurized with Nitrogen gas for launch. The vehicle interface assembly will protect the recharge tank assembly for launch and stowage aboard the space station. They are routinely returned for reuse and re-flight. The kit also includes a VIA bag (vehicle interface assembly) with foam, which is used as a cargo transfer bag for launch and return to protect the tank. Watch, Engage
Watch agency launch and arrival coverage on NASA+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
NASA’s live launch coverage will begin at 2:25 a.m. on Aug 24. Dragon’s arrival coverage will begin at 6 a.m. on Aug. 25.
Read more about how to watch and engage.
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By NASA
5 min read
Close-Up Views of NASA’s DART Impact to Inform Planetary Defense
Photos taken by the Italian LICIACube, short for the LICIA Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids. These offer the closest, most detailed observations of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impact aftermath to date. The photo on the left was taken roughly 2 minutes and 40 seconds after impact, as the satellite flew past the Didymos system. The photo on the right was taken 20 seconds later, as LICIACube was leaving the scene. The larger body, near the top of each image is Didymos. The smaller body in the lower half of each image is Dimorphos, enveloped by the cloud of rocky debris created by DART’s impact. NASA/ASI/University of Maryland On Sept. 11, 2022, engineers at a flight control center in Turin, Italy, sent a radio signal into deep space. Its destination was NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft flying toward an asteroid more than 5 million miles away.
The message prompted the spacecraft to execute a series of pre-programmed commands that caused a small, shoebox-sized satellite contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), called LICIACube, to detach from DART.
Fifteen days later, when DART’s journey ended in an intentional head-on collision with near-Earth asteroid Dimorphos, LICIACube flew past the asteroid to snap a series of photos, providing researchers with the only on-site observations of the world’s first demonstration of an asteroid deflection.
After analyzing LICIACube’s images, NASA and ASI scientists report on Aug. 21 in the Planetary Science Journal that an estimated 35.3 million pounds (16 million kilograms) of dust and rocks spewed from the asteroid as a result of the crash, refining previous estimates that were based on data from ground and space-based observations.
While the debris shed from the asteroid amounted to less than 0.5% of its total mass, it was still 30,000 times greater than the mass of the spacecraft. The impact of the debris on Dimorphos’ trajectory was dramatic: shortly after the collision, the DART team determined that the flying rubble gave Dimorphos a shove several times stronger than the hit from the spacecraft itself.
“The plume of material released from the asteroid was like a short burst from a rocket engine,” said Ramin Lolachi, a research scientist who led the study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The important takeaway from the DART mission is that a small, lightweight spacecraft can dramatically alter the path of an asteroid of similar size and composition to Dimorphos, which is a “rubble-pile” asteroid — or a loose, porous collection of rocky material bound together weakly by gravity.
“We expect that a lot of near-Earth asteroids have a similar structure to Dimorphos,” said Dave Glenar, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who participated in the study. “So, this extra push from the debris plume is critical to consider when building future spacecraft to deflect asteroids from Earth.”
The tail of material that formed behind Dimorphos was prominent almost 12 days after the DART impact, giving the asteroid a comet-like appearance, as seen in this image captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in October 2022. Hubble’s observations were made from roughly 6.8 million miles away. NASA, ESA, STScI, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale DART’s Star Witness
NASA chose Dimorphos, which poses no threat to Earth, as the mission target due to its relationship with another, larger asteroid named Didymos. Dimorphos orbits Didymos in a binary asteroid system, much like the Moon orbits Earth. Critically, the pair’s position relative to Earth allowed astronomers to measure the duration of the moonlet’s orbit before and after the collision.
Ground and space-based observations revealed that DART shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by 33 minutes. But these long-range observations, made from 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) away, were too distant to support a detailed study of the impact debris. That was LICIACube’s job.
After DART’s impact, LICIACube had just 60 seconds to make its most critical observations. Barreling past the asteroid at 15,000 miles (21,140 kilometers) per hour, the spacecraft took a snapshot of the debris roughly once every three seconds. Its closest image was taken just 53 miles (85.3 km) from Dimorphos’ surface.
The short distance between LICIACube and Dimorphos provided a unique advantage, allowing the cubesat to capture detailed images of the dusty debris from multiple angles.
The research team studied a series of 18 LICIAcube images. The first images in the sequence showed LICIACube’s head-on approach. From this angle, the plume was brightly illuminated by direct sunlight. As the spacecraft glided past the asteroid, its camera pivoted to keep the plume in view.
This animated series of images was taken by a camera aboard LICIACube 2 to 3 minutes after DART crashed into Dimorphos. As LICIACube made its way past the binary pair of asteroids Didymos, the larger one on top, and Dimorphos, the object at the bottom. The satellite’s viewing angle changed rapidly during its flyby of Dimorphos, allowing scientists o get a comprehensive view of the impact plume from a series of angles. ASI/University of Maryland/Tony Farnham/Nathan Marder As LICIACube looked back at the asteroid, sunlight filtered through the dense cloud of debris, and the plume’s brightness faded. This suggested the plume was made of mostly large particles — about a millimeter or more across — which reflect less light than tiny dust grains.
Since the innermost parts of the plume were so thick with debris that they were completely opaque, the scientists used models to estimate the number of particles that were hidden from view. Data from other rubble-pile asteroids, including pieces of Bennu delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, and laboratory experiments helped refine the estimate.
“We estimated that this hidden material accounted for almost 45% of the plume’s total mass,” said Timothy Stubbs, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who was involved with the study.
While DART showed that a high-speed collision with a spacecraft can change an asteroid’s trajectory, Stubbs and his colleagues note that different asteroid types, such as those made of stronger, more tightly packed material, might respond differently to a DART-like impact. “Every time we interact with an asteroid, we find something that surprises us, so there’s a lot more work to do,” said Stubbs. “But DART is a big step forward for planetary defense.”
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, managed the DART mission and operated the spacecraft for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office.
By Nathan Marder, nathan.marder@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 21, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
6 min read
NASA, IBM’s ‘Hot’ New AI Model Unlocks Secrets of Sun
This image from June 20, 2013 shows the bright light of a solar flare and an eruption of solar material shooting through the sun’s atmosphere, called a prominence eruption. Shortly thereafter, this same region of the sun sent a coronal mass ejection out into space — a phenomenon which can cause magnetic storms that degrade communication signals and cause unexpected electrical surges in power grids on Earth. NASA’s new heliophysics AI foundation model, Surya, can help predict these storms. NASA/Goddard/SDO NASA is turning up the heat in solar science with the launch of the Surya Heliophysics Foundational Model, an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained on 14 years of observations from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Developed by NASA in partnership with IBM and others, Surya uses advances in AI to analyze vast amounts of solar data, helping scientists better understand solar eruptions and predict space weather that threatens satellites, power grids, and communication systems. The model can be used to provide early warnings to satellite operators and helps scientists predict how the Sun’s ultraviolet output affects Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Preliminary results show Surya is making strides in solar flare forecasting, a long-standing challenge in heliophysics. Surya, with its ability to generate visual predictions of solar flares two hours into the future, marks a major step towards the use of AI for operational space weather prediction. These initial results surpass existing benchmarks by 15%. By providing open access to the model on HuggingFace and the code on GitHub, NASA encourages the science and applications community to test and explore this AI model for innovative solutions that leverage the unique value of continuous, stable, long-duration datasets from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Illustrations of Solar Dynamics Observatory solar imagery used for training Surya: Solar coronal ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and solar surface velocity and magnetic field maps from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI). NASA/SDO The model’s success builds directly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s long-term database. Launched in 2010, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has provided an unbroken, high-resolution record of the Sun for nearly 15 years through capturing images every 12 seconds in multiple wavelengths, plus precise magnetic field measurements. This stable, well-calibrated dataset, spanning an entire solar cycle, is uniquely suited for training AI models like Surya, enabling them to detect subtle patterns in solar behavior that shorter datasets would miss.
Surya’s strength lies in its foundation model architecture, which learns directly from raw solar data. Unlike traditional AI systems that require extensive labeling, Surya can adapt quickly to new tasks and applications. Applications include tracking active regions, forecasting flare activity, predicting solar wind speed, and integrating data from other observatories including the joint NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
“We are advancing data-driven science by embedding NASA’s deep scientific expertise into cutting-edge AI models,” said Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By developing a foundation model trained on NASA’s heliophysics data, we’re making it easier to analyze the complexities of the Sun’s behavior with unprecedented speed and precision. This model empowers broader understanding of how solar activity impacts critical systems and technologies that we all rely on here on Earth.”
These images compare the ground-truth data (right) with model output (center) for solar flares, which are the events behind most space weather. Surya’s prediction is very close to what happened in reality (right). These preliminary results suggest that Surya has learned enough solar physics to predict the structure and evolution of a solar flare by looking at its beginning phase. NASA/SDO/ODSI IMPACT AI Team Solar storms pose significant risks to our technology-dependent society. Powerful solar events energize Earth’s ionosphere, resulting in substantial GPS errors or complete signal loss to satellite communications. They also pose risks to power grids, as geomagnetically induced currents from coronal mass ejections can overload transformers and trigger widespread outages.
In commercial aviation, solar flares can disrupt radio communications and navigation systems while exposing high-altitude flights to increased radiation. The stakes are even higher for human spaceflight. Astronauts bound for the Moon or Mars may need to depend on precise predictions to shelter from intense radiation during solar particle events.
The Sun’s influence extends to the growing number of low Earth orbit satellites, including those that deliver global high-speed internet. As solar activity intensifies, it heats Earth’s upper atmosphere, increasing drag that slows satellites, pulls them from orbit, and causes premature reentry. Satellite operators often struggle to forecast where and when solar flares might affect these satellites.
The “ground truth” solar activity is shown on the top row. The bottom row shows solar activity predicted by Surya. NASA/SDO/ODSI IMPACT AI Team “Our society is built on technologies that are highly susceptible to space weather,” said Joseph Westlake, Heliophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. “Just as we use meteorology to forecast Earth’s weather, space weather forecasts predict the conditions and events in the space environment that can affect Earth and our technologies. Applying AI to data from our heliophysics missions is a vital step in increasing our space weather defense to protect astronauts and spacecraft, power grids and GPS, and many other systems that power our modern world.”
While Surya is designed to study the Sun, its architecture and methodology are adaptable across scientific domains. From planetary science to Earth observation, the project lays the foundational infrastructure for similar AI efforts in diverse domains.
Surya is part of a broader NASA push to develop open-access, AI-powered science tools. Both the model and training datasets are freely available online to researchers, educators, and students worldwide, lowering barriers to participation and sparking new discoveries.
The process for creating Surya. Foundation models enhance the utility of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory datasets and create a base for building new applications. NASA/ODSI IMPACT AI Team Surya’s training was supported in part by the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-led initiative that provides researchers with access to advanced computing, datasets, and AI tools. The NAIRR Pilot brings together federal and industry resources, such as computing power from NVIDIA, to expand access to the infrastructure needed for cutting-edge AI research.
“This project shows how the NAIRR Pilot is uniting federal and industry AI resources to accelerate scientific breakthroughs,” said Katie Antypas, director of NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. “With support from NVIDIA and NSF, we’re not only enabling today’s research, we’re laying the groundwork for a national AI network to drive tomorrow’s discoveries.”
Surya is part of a larger effort championed and supported by NASA’s Office of the Chief Science Data Officer and Heliophysics Division, the NSF , and partnering universities to advance NASA’s scientific missions through innovative data science and AI models. Surya’s AI architecture was jointly developed by the Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) under the Office of Data Science and Informatics at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; IBM; and a collaborative science team.
The science team, assembled by NASA Headquarters, consisted of experts from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas; the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Huntsville, Alabama; the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, Colorado; Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia; Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; NASA’s SMD’s Heliophysics Division; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
For a behind-the-scenes dive into Surya’s architecture, industry and academic collaborations, challenges behind developing the model, read the blog post on NASA’s Science Data Portal:
https://science.data.nasa.gov/features-events/inside-surya-solar-ai-model
For more information about NASA’s strategy of developing foundation models for science, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/artificial-intelligence-science
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2025 Related Terms
Science & Research Artificial Intelligence (AI) Heliophysics Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Explore More
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