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By European Space Agency
The European Space Agency will be present at the 55th edition of International Paris Air Show, taking place on 16-22 June at Le Bourget airport.
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By NASA
NASA Langley highlights its Cirrus Design SR22 during Air Power Over Hampton Roads STEM Day. NASA/Angelique Herring NASA Langley Research Center’s integral role in the past, present, and future of flight was on full display April 25-27 during the Air Power Over Hampton Roads air show.
The air show, held at Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE), which neighbors NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia, attracted thousands of spectators throughout the weekend.
The weekend kicked off with a STEM Day on April 25. Langley’s Office of STEM Engagement (OSTEM) offered educational and engaging activities, exhibits, and displays to share NASA missions and encourage K-12 students from local schools to explore the possibilities that science, technology, engineering, and math offer.
“Participation in the air show allows us to share NASA’s work in aeronautics with the public and provides an opportunity for Langley researchers and engineers to work directly with students and families to share the exciting work they do,” said Bonnie Murray, Langley OSTEM Student Services manager.
NASA Langley personnel inspire young minds during Air Power Over Hampton Roads STEM Day.NASA/Angelique Herring Langley OSTEM’s participation continued throughout the weekend as a part of the air show’s STEM Expo, where visitors to the NASA booths tested a paper helicopter in a small-scale wind tunnel to explore flight dynamics, learned how NASA uses X-planes for research and designed their own X-plane, and tested experimental paper airplanes of various designs. By observing flight of the plane designs and making improvements to each one, students participated in the engineering design process. NASA subject matter experts in attendance guided students through these activities, inspired young minds by sharing some of their innovations, and promoted a variety of STEM career paths.
“Through engagement in the NASA STEM Zone activities, students had an opportunity to see themselves in the role of a NASA researcher,” Murray said. “Authentic learning experiences such as these help build children’s STEM identity, increasing the likelihood of them pursuing STEM careers in the future.”
A child enjoys NASA STEM activities during Air Power Over Hampton Roads STEM Day.NASA/Angelique Herring The air show’s static aircraft displays included NASA Langley’s Cirrus Design SR22, a research aircraft used to support NASA’s airborne science program, the science community, and aeronautics research.
“Reflective of our strong, long-standing partnership with JBLE, NASA Langley was proud to participate in this year’s Air Power Over Hampton Roads air show,” said Glenn Jamison, director of Langley’s Research Services Directorate. “Our relationship spans back to 1917 when NACA and Langley Field evolved together over formative years in aerodynamic research, sharing the airspace and facilities here in Hampton. Today, we continue our collaboration with JBLE in pursuing shared interests and finding innovative solutions to complex problems.”
The displays also featured several small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) and NASA’s P-3 Orion, a research aircraft based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.
Air show visitors could explore a picture display that highlighted NASA Langley’s rich aviation legacy, from its founding in 1917 to Langley’s work today to accelerate advancements in aeronautics, science, and space technology and exploration. Spacey Casey, a crowd favorite, greeted and took pictures with educators, students, and guests throughout the weekend, bringing out-of-this-world smiles to their faces. Members of Langley’s Office of the Director also represented the center at the event.
Brittny McGraw
NASA Langley Research Center
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By NASA
Did you know some of the brightest sources of light in the sky come from the regions around black holes in the centers of galaxies? It sounds a little contradictory, but it’s true! They may not look bright to our eyes, but satellites have spotted oodles of them across the universe.
One of those satellites is NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi has found thousands of these kinds of galaxies since it launched in 2008, and there are many more out there!
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Watch a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using just a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Each object’s magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims. The yellow circle represents the Sun following its apparent annual path across the sky. The animation shows a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records available for more than 1,500 objects in a continually updated repository. Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski Black holes are regions of space that have so much gravity that nothing — not light, not particles, nada — can escape. Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and these black holes are hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our Sun. In active galactic nuclei (also called “AGN” for short, or just “active galaxies”) the central region is stuffed with gas and dust that’s constantly falling toward the black hole. As the gas and dust fall, they start to spin and form a disk. Because of the friction and other forces at work, the spinning disk starts to heat up.
This composite view of the active galaxy Markarian 573 combines X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from the Hubble Space Telescope. Markarian 573 is an active galaxy that has two cones of emission streaming away from the supermassive black hole at its center. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Paggi et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA The disk’s heat gets emitted as light, but not just wavelengths of it that we can see with our eyes. We detect light from AGN across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the more familiar radio and optical waves through to the more exotic X-rays and gamma rays, which we need special telescopes to spot.
In the heart of an active galaxy, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole creates jets of particles traveling near the speed of light as shown in this artist’s concept. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab About one in 10 AGN beam out jets of energetic particles, which are traveling almost as fast as light. Scientists are studying these jets to try to understand how black holes — which pull everything in with their huge amounts of gravity — somehow provide the energy needed to propel the particles in these jets.
This artist’s concept shows two views of the active galaxy TXS 0128+554, located around 500 million light-years away. Left: The galaxy’s central jets appear as they would if we viewed them both at the same angle. The black hole, embedded in a disk of dust and gas, launches a pair of particle jets traveling at nearly the speed of light. Scientists think gamma rays (magenta) detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope originate from the base of these jets. As the jets collide with material surrounding the galaxy, they form identical lobes seen at radio wavelengths (orange). The jets experienced two distinct bouts of activity, which created the gap between the lobes and the black hole. Right: The galaxy appears in its actual orientation, with its jets tipped out of our line of sight by about 50 degrees. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Many of the ways we tell one type of AGN from another depend on how they’re oriented from our point of view. With radio galaxies, for example, we see the jets from the side as they’re beaming vast amounts of energy into space. Then there’s blazars, which are a type of AGN that have a jet that is pointed almost directly at Earth, which makes the AGN particularly bright.
Blazar 3C 279’s historic gamma-ray flare in 2015 can be seen in this image from the Large Area Telescope on NASA’s Fermi satellite. During the flare, the blazar outshone the Vela pulsar, usually the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration Fermi has been searching the sky for gamma ray sources since 2008. More than half of the sources it has found have been blazars. Gamma rays are useful because they can tell us a lot about how particles accelerate and how they interact with their environment.
So why do we care about AGN? We know that some AGN formed early in the history of the universe. With their enormous power, they almost certainly affected how the universe changed over time. By discovering how AGN work, we can understand better how the universe came to be the way it is now.
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Last Updated Apr 30, 2025 Related Terms
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By Space Force
When a social media message pops up offering a high-paying consulting job from an unknown recruiter, it’s easy to be intrigued, but think twice. For many current and former members of the Department of the Air Force, and increasingly, across the entire U.S. government workforce, this is the first step in a recruitment scheme by foreign intelligence entities, officials warn.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Origins Uncertain: ‘Skull Hill’ Rock
Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University
Last week, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover continued its journey down lower ‘Witch Hazel Hill’ on the Jezero crater rim. The rover stopped along a boundary visible from orbit dividing light and dark rock outcrop (also known as a contact) at a site the team has called ‘Port Anson’. In addition to this contact, the rover has encountered a variety of neat rocks that may have originated from elsewhere and transported to their current location, also known as float.
This image from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument’s right eye, shows the ‘Skull Hill’ target, a dark-toned float rock. The rover acquired this image while driving west downslope towards lower ‘Witch Hazel Hill’. Perseverance acquired this image on April 11, 2025, or sol 1472 of the Mars 2020 mission NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU Pictured above is an observation named ‘Skull Hill’ taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. This float rock uniquely contrasts the surrounding light-toned outcrop with its dark tone and angular surface, and it features a few pits in the rock. If you look closely, you might even spot spherules within the surrounding regolith! See Alex Jones’ recent blog post for more information on these neat features: https://science.nasa.gov/blog/shocking-spherules/. The pits on Skull Hill may have formed via the erosion of clasts from the rock or scouring by wind. We’ve found a few of these dark-toned floats in the Port Anson region, and the team is working to better understand where these rocks came from and how they got here.
Skull Hill’s dark color is reminiscent of meteorites found in Gale crater by the Curiosity rover: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/curiosity-mars-rover-checks-odd-looking-iron-meteorite/. Chemical composition is an important factor in identifying a meteorite, and Gale’s meteorites contain significant amounts of iron and nickel. However, recent analysis of SuperCam data from nearby similar rocks suggests a composition inconsistent with a meteorite origin.
Alternatively, ‘Skull Hill’ could be an igneous rock eroded from a nearby outcrop or ejected from an impact crater. On Earth and Mars, iron and magnesium are some of the main contributors to igneous rocks, which form from the cooling of magma or lava. These rocks can include dark-colored minerals such as olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite. Luckily for us, the rover has instruments that can measure the chemical composition of rocks on Mars. Understanding the composition of these darker-toned floats will help the team to interpret the origin of this unique rock!
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