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By NASA
Explore Hubble Science Hubble Space Telescope NASA’s Hubble Sees White… Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Universe Uncovered Hubble’s Partners in Science AI and Hubble Science Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Science Operations Astronaut Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities 3D Hubble Models Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf. Credits:
Artwork: NASA, Tim Pyle (NASA/JPL-Caltech) In our nearby stellar neighborhood, a burned-out star is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. With its unique ultraviolet capability, only NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could identify that this meal is taking place.
The stellar remnant is a white dwarf about half the mass of our Sun, but that is densely packed into a body about the size of Earth. Scientists think the dwarf’s immense gravity pulled in and tore apart an icy Pluto analog from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system. The findings were reported on September 18 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers were able to determine this carnage by analyzing the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. In particular, they detected “volatiles” — substances with low boiling points — including carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, and a high oxygen content that suggests the strong presence of water.
“We were surprised,” said Snehalata Sahu of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Sahu led the data analysis of a Hubble survey of white dwarfs. “We did not expect to find water or other icy content. This is because the comets and Kuiper Belt-like objects are thrown out of their planetary systems early, as their stars evolve into white dwarfs. But here, we are detecting this very volatile-rich material. This is surprising for astronomers studying white dwarfs as well as exoplanets, planets outside our solar system.”
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf. Artwork: NASA, Tim Pyle (NASA/JPL-Caltech) Only with Hubble
Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the team found that the fragments were composed of 64 percent water ice. The fact that they detected so much ice meant that the pieces were part of a very massive object that formed far out in the star system’s icy Kuiper Belt analog. Using Hubble data, scientists calculated that the object was bigger than typical comets and may be a fragment of an exo-Pluto.
They also detected a large fraction of nitrogen – the highest ever detected in white dwarf debris systems. “We know that Pluto’s surface is covered with nitrogen ices,” said Sahu. “We think that the white dwarf accreted fragments of the crust and mantle of a dwarf planet.”
Accretion of these volatile-rich objects by white dwarfs is very difficult to detect in visible light. These volatile elements can only be detected with Hubble’s unique ultraviolet light sensitivity. In optical light, the white dwarf would appear ordinary.
About 260 light-years away, the white dwarf is a relatively close cosmic neighbor. In the past, when it was a Sun-like star, it would have been expected to host planets and an analog to our Kuiper Belt.
Like seeing our Sun in future
Billions of years from now, when our Sun burns out and collapses to a white dwarf, Kuiper Belt objects will be pulled in by the stellar remnant’s immense gravity. “These planetesimals will then be disrupted and accreted,” said Sahu. “If an alien observer looks into our solar system in the far future, they might see the same kind of remains we see today around this white dwarf.”
The team hopes to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect molecular features of volatiles such as water vapor and carbonates by observing this white dwarf in infrared light. By further studying white dwarfs, scientists can better understand the frequency and composition of these volatile-rich accretion events.
Sahu is also following the recent discovery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. She is eager to learn its chemical composition, especially its fraction of water. “These types of studies will help us learn more about planet formation. They can also help us understand how water is delivered to rocky planets,” said Sahu.
Boris Gänsicke, of the University of Warwick and a visitor at Spain’s Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, was the principal investigator of the Hubble program that led to this discovery. “We observed over 500 white dwarfs with Hubble. We’ve already learned so much about the building blocks and fragments of planets, but I’ve been absolutely thrilled that we now identified a system that resembles the objects in the frigid outer edges of our solar system,” said Gänsicke. “Measuring the composition of an exo-Pluto is an important contribution toward our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies.”
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
To learn more about Hubble, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/hubble
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White Dwarf Accreting Icy Object (Illustration)
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf.
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Last Updated Sep 18, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
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Science Paper: Discovery of an icy and nitrogen-rich extra-solar planetesimal, PDF (674.84 KB)
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By NASA
NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket poised to send four astronauts from Earth on a journey around the Moon next year may appear identical to the Artemis I SLS rocket. On closer inspection, though, engineers have upgraded the agency’s Moon rocket inside and out to improve performance, reliability, and safety.
SLS flew a picture perfect first mission on the Artemis I test flight, meeting or exceeding parameters for performance, attitude control, and structural stability to an accuracy of tenths or hundredths of a percent as it sent an uncrewed Orion thousands of miles beyond the Moon. It also returned volumes of invaluable flight data for SLS engineers to analyze to drive improvements.
Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems integrate the SLS (Space Launch System) Moon rocket with the solid rocket boosters onto mobile launcher 1 inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in March 2025. Artemis II is the first crewed test flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign and is another step toward missions on the lunar surface and helping the agency prepare for future human missions to Mars.NASA/Frank Michaux For Artemis II, the major sections of SLS remain unchanged – a central core stage, four RS-25 main engines, two five-segment solid rocket boosters, the ICPS (interim cryogenic propulsion stage), a launch vehicle stage adapter to hold the ICPS, and an Orion stage adapter connecting SLS to the Orion spacecraft. The difference is in the details.
“While we’re proud of our Artemis I performance, which validated our overall design, we’ve looked at how SLS can give our crews a better ride,” said John Honeycutt, NASA’s SLS Program manager. “Some of our changes respond to specific Artemis II mission requirements while others reflect ongoing analysis and testing, as well as lessons learned from Artemis I.”
Engineers have outfitted the ICPS with optical targets that will serve as visual cues to the astronauts aboard Orion as they manually pilot Orion around the upper stage and practice maneuvers to inform docking operations for Artemis III.
The Artemis II rocket includes an improved navigation system compared to Artemis I. Its communications capability also has been improved by repositioning antennas on the rocket to ensure continuous communications with NASA ground stations and the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 which controls launches along the Eastern Range.
An emergency detection system on the ICPS allows the rocket to sense and respond to problems and notify the crew. The flight safety system adds a time delay to the self-destruct system to allow time for Orion’s escape system to pull the capsule to safety in event of an abort.
The separation motors that push the solid rocket booster away after the elements are no longer needed were angled an additional 15 degrees to increase separation clearance as the rest of the rocket speeds by.
Additionally, SLS will jettison the spent boosters four seconds earlier during Artemis II ascent than occurred during Artemis I. Dropping the boosters several seconds closer to the end of their burn will give engineers flight data to correlate with projections that shedding the boosters several seconds sooner will yield approximately 1,600 pounds of payload to Earth orbit for future SLS flights.
Engineers have incorporated additional improvements based on lessons learned from Artemis I. During the Artemis I test flight the SLS rocket experienced higher-than-expected vibrations near the solid rocket booster attachment points that was caused by unsteady airflow.
To steady the airflow, a pair of six-foot-long strakes flanking each booster’s forward connection points on the SLS intertank will smooth vibrations induced by airflow during ascent, and the rocket’s electronics system was requalified to endure higher levels of vibrations.
Engineers updated the core stage power distribution control unit, mounted in the intertank, which controls power to the rocket’s other electronics and protects against electrical hazards.
These improvements have led to an enhanced rocket to support crew as part of NASA’s Golden Age of innovation and exploration.
The approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight is the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign. It is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions on the Moon’s surface that will help the agency prepare to send the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
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Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2025 EditorLee MohonContactJonathan DealLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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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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5 min read NASA’s Roman Team Selects Survey to Map Our Galaxy’s Far Side
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By NASA
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL spacecraft is launched on NASA’s Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services 23 mission to the International Space Station on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025.Credit: NASA NASA is sending more science, technology demonstrations, and crew supplies to the International Space Station following the successful launch of the agency’s Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services 23 mission, or Northrop Grumman CRS-23.
The company’s Cygnus XL spacecraft, carrying more than 11,000 pounds of cargo to the orbiting laboratory, lifted off at 6:11 p.m. EDT Sunday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This mission is the first flight of the larger, more cargo-capable version of the solar-powered spacecraft.
Cygnus XL is scheduled to be captured at 6:35 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 17, by the Canadarm2 robotic arm, which NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will operate with assistance from NASA astronaut Zena Cardman. Following capture, the spacecraft will be installed to the Unity module’s Earth-facing port for cargo unloading.
The resupply mission is carrying dozens of research experiments that will be conducted during Expedition 73, including materials to produce semiconductor crystals in space and equipment to develop improvements for cryogenic fuel tanks. The spacecraft also will deliver a specialized UV light system to prevent the growth of microbe communities that form in water systems and supplies to produce pharmaceutical crystals that could treat cancer and other diseases.
These are just a sample of the hundreds of scientific investigations conducted aboard the station in the areas of biology and biotechnology, Earth and space science, physical sciences, as well as technology development and demonstrations. For nearly 25 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, where astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for developing a low Earth economy and NASA’s next great leaps in exploration, including Artemis missions to the Moon and American astronaut missions to Mars.
NASA’s arrival, capture, and installation coverage are as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Wednesday, Sept. 17
5 a.m. – Arrival coverage begins on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more.
6:35 a.m. – Capture of Cygnus XL with the space station’s robotic arm.
8 a.m. – Installation coverage begins on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more.
All coverage times are estimates and could be adjusted based on operations after launch. Follow the space station blog for the most up-to-date information.
Cygnus XL is scheduled to remain at the orbiting laboratory until March 2026, before it departs and disposes of several thousand pounds of trash through its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will harmlessly burn up. The spacecraft is named the S.S. William “Willie” C. McCool, in honor of the NASA astronaut who perished in 2003 during the space shuttle Columbia accident.
Learn more about this NASA commercial resupply mission at:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-northrop-grumman-crs-23/
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Josh Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Steven Siceloff
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-876-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones / Joseph Zakrzewski
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov / joseph.a.zakrzewski@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 14, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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