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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Researchers in the Verification and Validation Lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley monitor a simulated drone’s flight path during a test of the FUSE demonstration.NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete Through an ongoing collaboration, NASA and the Department of War are working to advance the future of modern drones to support long distance cargo transportation that could increase efficiency, reduce human workload, and enhance safety.
Researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley recently participated in a live flight demonstration showcasing how drones can successfully fly without their operators being able to see them, a concept known as beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).
Cargo drones, a type of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), carried various payloads more than 75 miles across North Dakota, between Grand Forks Air Force Base and Cavalier Space Force Station. This demonstration was conducted as part of the War Department’s UAS Logistics, Traffic, Research, and Autonomy (ULTRA) effort.
NASA’s UAS Service Supplier (USS) technology helped to demonstrate that cargo drones could operate safely even in complex, shared airspace. During the tests, flight data including location, altitude, and other critical data were transmitted live to the NASA system, ensuring full situational awareness throughout the demonstration.
Terrence Lewis and Sheryl Jurcak, members of the FUSE project team at NASA Ames, discuss the monitoring efforts of the FUSE demonstration at the Airspace Operations Lab. NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete The collaboration between NASA and the Department of War is known as the Federal USS Synthesis Effort (FUSE). The demonstration allowed FUSE researchers to test real-time tracking, situational awareness, and other factors important to safely integrating of drone traffic management into U.S. national airspace. The FUSE work marks an important step towards routine, scalable autonomous cargo drone operations and broader use for future military logistics.
“NASA and the Department of War have a long and storied partnership, collaborating with one another to contribute to continued advancement of shared American ideals,” said Todd Ericson, senior advisor to the NASA administrator. “FUSE builds upon our interagency cooperation to contribute enhanced capabilities for drones flying beyond the visual line of sight. This mission is the next big step toward true autonomous flight and will yield valuable insights that we can leverage as both the commercial drone, cargo and urban air taxi industries continue to expand and innovate. As always, safety is of paramount importance at NASA, and we are working with our partners at the FAA and Department of Transportation to ensure we regulate this appropriately.”
Autonomous and semi-autonomous drones could potentially support a broad range of tasks for commercial, military, and private users. They could transport critical medical supplies to remote locations, monitor wildfires from above, allow customers to receive deliveries directly in their backyards. NASA is researching technology to further develop the infrastructure needed for these operations to take place safely and effectively, without disrupting the existing U.S. airspace.
“This system is crucial for enabling safe, routine BVLOS operations,” said Terrence Lewis, FUSE project manager at NASA Ames. “It ensures all stakeholders can see and respond to drone activity, which provides the operator with greater situational awareness.”
NASA Ames is collaborating on the FUSE project with the War Department’s Office of the Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment. The NASA FUSE effort is also collaborating with ULTRA, a multi-entity partnership including the Office of the Secretary of War, the County of Grand Forks, the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, the Grand Sky Development, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and several other commercial partners, aiming to bolster capabilities within the National Airspace System.
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Last Updated Sep 12, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
Three U.S. military veterans, two from the Air Force and one from the Navy, took the stand Tuesday during the third congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the government’s sanitized new term for UFOs.
The most shocking moment came when Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri unveiled never before seen military footage: a U.S. drone firing a hellfire missile at a mysterious object off the coast of Yemen on October 30, 2024.
The grainy black and white video shows the 100 pound precision weapon streaking toward the target, only to ricochet off harmlessly as the object shot away at impossible speed. Just as baffling, three smaller spheres hovered in formation around the craft, undisturbed by the impact.
Reactions were mixed. Skeptics immediately dismissed the video, claiming it could be nothing more than a misidentified balloon, its apparent speed exaggerated by the drone’s telephoto lens. Others suggested the missile was part of a weapons test rather than a failed strike on something otherworldly.
But the testimony didn’t stop with the video. Two veterans alleged the government has been actively silencing witnesses, threatening those who came forward, and even blacklisting service members who refused to stay quiet. Dylan Borland, a former Air Force geospatial intelligence specialist, testified that multiple agencies conspired to destroy his career blocking jobs, forging documents, and tampering with his security clearance.
For some, this hearing represented a breakthrough in UFO transparency. For others, it was little more than political theater. As one observer put it: it looks like it is just another carefully staged distraction, the UFO spectacle might just be a smokescreen for something deeper.
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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
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA instruments and aircraft are helping identify potential sources of critical minerals across vast swaths of California, Nevada, and other Western states. Pilots gear up to reach altitudes about twice as high as those of a cruising passenger jet.NASA NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have been mapping the planets since Apollo. One team is searching closer to home for minerals critical to national security and the economy.
If not for the Joshua trees, the tan hills of Cuprite, Nevada, would resemble Mars. Scalded and chemically altered by water from deep underground, the rocks here are earthly analogs for understanding ancient Martian geology. The hills are also rich with minerals. They’ve lured prospectors for more than 100 years and made Cuprite an ideal place to test NASA technology designed to map the minerals, craters, crusts, and ices of our solar system.
Sensors that discovered lunar water, charted Saturn’s moons, even investigated ground zero in New York City were all tested and calibrated at Cuprite, said Robert Green, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He’s honed instruments in Nevada for decades.
One of Green’s latest projects is to find and map rocky surfaces in the American West that could contain minerals crucial to the nation’s economy and security. Currently, the U.S. is dependent on imports of 50 critical minerals, which include lithium and rare earth elements used in everything from rechargeable batteries to medicine.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are searching nationwide for domestic sources. NASA is contributing to this effort with high-altitude aircraft and sensors capable of detecting the molecular fingerprints of minerals across vast, treeless expanses in wavelengths of light not visible to human eyes.
The hills of Cuprite, Nevada, appear pink and tan to the eye (top image) but they shine with mica, gypsum, and alunite among other types of minerals when imaged spectroscopically (lower image). NASA sensors used to study Earth and other rocky worlds have been tested there.USGS/Ray Kokaly The collaboration is called GEMx, the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment, and it’s likely the largest airborne spectroscopic survey in U.S. history. Since 2023, scientists working on GEMx have charted more than 190,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers) of North American soil.
Mapping Partnership Started During Apollo
As NASA instruments fly in aircraft 60,000 feet (18,000 meters) overhead, Todd Hoefen, a geophysicist, and his colleagues from USGS work below. The samples of rock they test and collect in the field are crucial to ensuring that the airborne observations match reality on the ground and are not skewed by the intervening atmosphere.
The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
For example, geologic maps of the Moon made in the early 1960s at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, helped Apollo mission planners select safe and scientifically promising sites for the six crewed landings that occurred from 1969 to 1972. Before stepping onto the lunar surface, NASA’s Moon-bound astronauts traveled to Flagstaff to practice fieldwork with USGS geologists. A version of those Apollo boot camps continues today with astronauts and scientists involved in NASA’s Artemis mission.
Geophysicist Raymond Kokaly, who leads the GEMx campaign for USGS, is pictured here conducting ground-based hyperspectral imaging of rock in Cuprite, Nevada, in April 2019.USGS/Todd Hoefen The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
Rainbows and Rocks
To detect minerals and other compounds on the surfaces of rocky bodies across the solar system, including Earth, scientists use a technology pioneered by JPL in the 1980s called imaging spectroscopy. One of the original imaging spectrometers built by Robert Green and his team is central to the GEMx campaign in the Western U.S.
About the size and weight of a minifridge and built to fly on planes, the instrument is called AVIRIS-Classic, short for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer. Like all imaging spectrometers, it takes advantage of the fact that every molecule reflects and absorbs light in a unique pattern, like a fingerprint. Spectrometers detect these molecular fingerprints in the light bouncing off or emitted from a sample or a surface.
In the case of GEMx, that’s sunlight shimmering off different kinds of rocks.
Compared to a standard digital camera, which “sees” three color channels (red, green, and blue), imaging spectrometers can see more than 200 channels, including infrared wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye.
NASA spectrometers have orbited or flown by every major rocky body in our solar system. They’ve helped scientists investigate methane lakes on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and study Pluto’s thin atmosphere. One JPL-built spectrometer is currently en route to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, to help search for chemical ingredients necessary to support life.
“One of the cool things about NASA is that we develop technology to look out at the solar system and beyond, but we also turn around and look back down,” said Ben Phillips, a longtime NASA program manager who led GEMx until he retired in 2025.
The Newest Instrument
More than 200 hours of GEMx flights are scheduled through fall 2025. Scientists will process and validate the data, with the first USGS mineral maps to follow. During these flights, an ER-2 research aircraft from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, will cruise over the Western U.S. at altitudes twice as high as a passenger jet flies.
At such high altitudes, pilot Dean Neeley must wear a spacesuit similar to those used by astronauts. He flies solo in the cramped cockpit but will be accompanied by state-of-the-art NASA instruments. In the belly of the plane rides AVIRIS-Classic, which will be retiring soon after more than three decades in service. Carefully packed in the plane’s nose is its successor: AVIRIS-5, taking flight for the first time in 2025.
Together, the two instruments provide 10 times the performance of the older spectrometer alone, but even by itself AVIRIS-5 marks a leap forward. It can sample areas ranging from about 30 feet (10 meters) to less than a foot (30 centimeters).
“The newest generation of AVIRIS will more than live up to the original,” Green said.
More About GEMx
The GEMx research project will last four years and is funded by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. The initiative will capitalize on both the technology developed by NASA for spectroscopic imaging, as well as the agency’s expertise in analyzing the datasets and extracting critical mineral information from them.
Data collected by GEMx is available here.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
2025-086
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Last Updated Jul 10, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
A mysterious object within our own galaxy is emitting a bizarre pulsing signal directed at Earth, one that scientists say is unlike anything ever recorded, and they haven’t ruled out an alien origin.
NASA astrophysicist Dr. Richard Stanton, who led the research team, described the signal as “strange” and said its properties defy all known astrophysical explanations. “In more than 1,500 hours of observations, we’ve never seen a pulse like this,”
Stanton noted. The signal originates from a sun-like star approximately 100 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). It was first detected as a flash of light that abruptly brightened, dimmed, and then brightened again, an unusual pattern that immediately drew attention.
Even more puzzling, the pulse repeated exactly four seconds later, matching the first in every detail.
According to Stanton’s findings, published in Acta Astronautica, the signal also triggered bizarre activity in the host star, causing it to partially vanish in just a tenth of a second, a phenomenon with no clear scientific explanation.
It's noteworthy that this object was specifically targeting Earth with its signal, not just broadcasting randomly into space, but directing its transmission toward our planet.
Whatever the intention behind it, that alone is intriguing. Even more interesting is that NASA publicly acknowledged this discovery. While NASA’s statements aren't always fully transparent, could this be a prelude to something bigger, perhaps a forthcoming revelation about the discovery of a Dyson Sphere, or even confirmation of intelligent extraterrestrial life?
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