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Launches secured for five Sentinel satellites
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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
International Space Station (ISS) Commercial Resupply ISS Research Johnson Space Center Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply View the full article
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By European Space Agency
The fourth satellite for the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, Sentinel-1D, has arrived at Félix Eboué airport, the main airport in French Guiana. From there the spacecraft, safely stored in its protective casing, will be transported to launch preparation facilities at the European Spaceport in Kourou.
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By NASA
Students prepare their robots to enter Artemis Arena during NASA’s Lunabotics competition on May 20, 2025, at the Center for Space Education near the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. NASA/Isaac Watson As college students across the country embark upon the academic year, NASA is giving them something else to look forward to – the agency’s 2026 Lunabotics Challenge. Teams interested in participating can submit their applications and supporting materials through NASA’s Stem Gateway portal beginning Monday, Sept. 8.
Key dates and challenge details are available in the 2026 Lunabotics Challenge Guidebook. Once all applications and supporting materials are received and evaluated, NASA will notify the selected teams to begin the challenge.
Student teams participating in this year’s challenge will create robots capable of building berms out of lunar regolith – the loose, fragmental material on the Moon’s surface. Structures like these will be important during lunar missions as blast protection during lunar landings and launches, shading for cryogenic propellant tank farms, radiation shielding around nuclear power plants, and other uses critical to future Moon missions.
“We are excited to continue the Lunabotics competition for universities as NASA develops new Moon to Mars technologies for the Artemis program,” said Robert Mueller, senior technologist at NASA, as well as co-founder and chief judge of the Lunabotics competition. “Excavating and moving regolith is a fundamental need to build infrastructure on the Moon and Mars and this competition creates 21st century skills in the future workforce.”
An in-person qualifying event will be held May 12-17, 2026, at the University of Central Florida’s Space Institute’s Exolith Lab in Orlando. From this round, the top 10 teams will be invited to bring their robots to the final competition on May 19-21, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Artemis Arena in Florida, which has an area filled with a lunar regolith simulant. The team scoring the most points will receive the Lunabotics Grand Prize and participate in an exhibition-style event at NASA Kennedy.
By encouraging innovative construction techniques and assessing student designs and data the same way it does its own prototypes, NASA casts a wider net to find innovative solutions to challenges inherent in future Artemis missions, like developing future lunar excavators, in-situ resource utilization capabilities, and living on the Moon or Mars. With its multidisciplinary approach, Lunabotics also serves as a workforce pipeline, with teams gaining valuable hands-on experience in computer coding, engineering, manufacturing, fabricating, and other crucial skills, while also receiving technical expertise in space technology development.
NASA’s Lunabotics Challenge, held annually since 2010, is one of several Artemis Student Challenges. The two-semester competition provides U.S. college and technical school teams an opportunity to design, build, and operate a prototype lunar robot using NASA systems engineering processes. Competitions help NASA get innovative design and operational data, reduce risks, and cultivate new ideas needed to return to the Moon under the Artemis campaign to prepare for human exploration of Mars.
To learn more about Lunabotics, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/lunabotics-challenge/
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By NASA
NASA science and American industry have worked hand-in-hand for more than 60 years, transforming novel technologies created with NASA research into commercial products like cochlear implants, memory-foam mattresses, and more. Now, a NASA-funded device for probing the interior of storm systems has been made a key component of commercial weather satellites.
The novel atmospheric sounder was originally developed for NASA’s TROPICS (short for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats), which launched in 2023. Boston-based weather technology company Tomorrow.io integrated the same instrument design into some of its satellites.
NASA’s TROPICS instrument. TROPICS pioneered a novel, compact atmospheric sound now flying aboard a fleet of commercial small satellites created by the weather technology company Tomorrow.io.Credit: Blue Canyon Technologies Atmospheric sounders allow researchers to gather data describing humidity, temperature, and wind speed — important factors for weather forecasting and atmospheric analysis. From low-Earth orbit, these devices help make air travel safer, shipping more efficient, and severe weather warnings more reliable.
Novel tools for Observing Storm Systems
In the early 2000s, meteorologists and atmospheric chemists were eager to find a new science tool that could peer deep inside storm systems and do so multiple times a day. At the same time, CubeSat constellations (groupings of satellites each no larger than a shoebox) were emerging as promising, low-cost platforms for increasing the frequency with which individual sensors could pass over fast-changing storms, which improves the accuracy of weather models.
The challenge was to create an instrument small enough to fit aboard a satellite the size of a toaster, yet powerful enough to observe the innermost mechanisms of storm development. Preparing these technologies required years of careful development that was primarily supported by NASA’s Earth Science Division.
William Blackwell and his team at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accepted this challenge and set out to miniaturize vital components of atmospheric sounders. “These were instruments the size of a washing machine, flying on platforms the size of a school bus,” said Blackwell, the principal investigator for TROPICS. “How in the world could we shrink them down to the size of a coffee mug?”
With a 2010 award from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), Blackwell’s team created an ultra-compact microwave receiver, a component that can sense the microwave radiation within the interior of storms.
The Lincoln Lab receiver weighed about a pound and took up less space than a hockey puck. This innovation paved the way for a complete atmospheric sounder instrument small enough to fly aboard a CubeSat. “The hardest part was figuring out how to make a compact back-end to this radiometer,” Blackwell said. “So without ESTO, this would not have happened. That initial grant was critical.”
In 2023, that atmospheric sounder was sent into space aboard four TROPICS CubeSats, which have been collecting torrents of data on the interior of severe storms around the world.
Transition to Industry
By the time TROPICS launched, Tomorrow.io developers knew they wanted Blackwell’s microwave receiver technology aboard their own fleet of commercial weather satellites. “We looked at two or three different options, and TROPICS was the most capable instrument of those we looked at,” said Joe Munchak, a senior atmospheric data scientist at Tomorrow.io.
In 2022, the company worked with Blackwell to adapt his team’s design into a CubeSat platform about twice the size of the one used for TROPICS. A bigger platform, Blackwell explained, meant they could bolster the sensor’s capabilities.
“When we first started conceptualizing this, the 3-unit CubeSat was the only game in town. Now we’re using a 6-unit CubeSat, so we have room for onboard calibration,” which improves the accuracy and reliability of gathered data, Blackwell said.
Tomorrow.io’s first atmospheric sounders, Tomorrow-S1 and Tomorrow-S2, launched in 2024. By the end of 2025, the company plans to have a full constellation of atmospheric sounders in orbit. The company also has two radar instruments that were launched in 2023 and were influenced by NASA’s RainCube instrument — the first CubeSat equipped with an active precipitation radar.
More CubeSats leads to more accurate weather data because there are more opportunities each day — revisits — to collect data. “With a fleet size of 18, we can easily get our revisit rate down to under an hour, maybe even 40 to 45 minutes in most places. It has a huge impact on short-term forecasts,” Munchak said.
Having access to an atmospheric sounder that had already flown in space and had more than 10 years of testing was extremely useful as Tomorrow.io planned its fleet. “It would not have been possible to do this nearly as quickly or nearly as affordably had NASA not paved the way,” said Jennifer Splaingard, Tomorrow.io’s senior vice president for space and sensors.
A Cycle of Innovation
The relationship between NASA and industry is symbiotic. NASA and its grantees can drive innovation and test new tools, equipping American businesses with novel technologies they may otherwise be unable to develop on their own. In exchange, NASA gains access to low-cost data sets that can supplement information gathered through its larger science missions.
Tomorrow.io was among eight companies selected by NASA’s Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) program in September 2024 to equip NASA with data that will help improve weather forecasting models. “It really is a success story of technology transfer. It’s that sweet spot, where the government partners with tech companies to really take an idea, a proven concept, and run with it,” Splaingard said.
By Gage Taylor
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 02, 2025 Related Terms
Earth Hurricanes & Typhoons TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) View the full article
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By NASA
Explore This Section Earth Earth Observer Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam Announcements More Archives Conference Schedules Style Guide 9 min read
Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2: Collaboration Drives Innovation
Introduction
Landsat, a joint program of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has been an invaluable tool for monitoring changes in Earth’s land surface for over 50 years. Researchers use instruments on Landsat satellites to monitor decades-long trends, including urbanization and agricultural expansion, as well as short-term dynamics, including water use and disaster recovery. However, scientists and land managers often encounter one critical limitation of this program: Landsat has a revisit time of eight days (with Landsat 8 and 9 operating), which is too long to capture events and disasters that occur on short timescales. Floods, for example, can quickly inundate a region, and cloud cover from storms can delay Landsat’s ability to get a clear observation on damage.
In 2015, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-2A mission joined Landsat 7 and 8 in orbit. It was designed to collect comparable optical land data with the intention of leveraging Landsat’s archive. Two years later, ESA launched Sentinel-2B, a satellite identical to Sentinel-2A.
Led by a science team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the USGS, NASA, and ESA began to work on combining the capabilities of Sentinel-2 and Landsat satellites. This idea was the impetus behind Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project, a NASA initiative that created a seamless product from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) aboard Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites, respectively. HLS Version 2.0 (V2.0) is the most recent version of these data and had a global median repeat frequency of 1.6 days in 2022 by combining observations from Landsat 8 and 9 and Sentinel-2A and B. The recent addition of Sentinel-2C data will provide even more frequent observations. With near-global coverage and improved harmonization algorithms, HLS V2.0 paves the way for new applications and improved land monitoring systems – see Animation 1. HLS data are available for download on NASA Earthdata: HLSL30v2.0 and HLSS30v2.0. These data can also be accessed through Google Earth Engine: HLSL30v2.0 and HLSS30v2.0.
Animation 1. This visualization shows the change in vegetation in Maryland from January 1 to December 30, 2016, using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS). The visualization shows land on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay, where red represents bare soil and green indicates healthy, growing vegetation. Animation credit: Michael Taylor [Science Systems and Applications Inc. (SSAI)], Matthew Radcliff [USRA], and Jeffrey Masek [GSFC]. Caption adapted from Laura Rocchio [SSAI] The Dawn of HLS
The story of HLS begins before the launch of Sentinel-2A in 2015. Jeffrey Masek [GSFC], who was at that time project scientist for Landsat 8, led a group of researchers who wanted to find a way to harmonize Landsat data with other satellite data. Their aim was to create a “virtual constellation” similar to how weather satellites operate.
“HLS meets a need that people have been asking for for a long time,” said Masek.
What began as a research question with an experimental product evolved into an operational project with the involvement of the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG). SNWG is an interagency effort to develop solutions that address Earth observation needs of civilian federal agencies. Every two years, SNWG conducts a survey of federal agencies to see how their work could benefit from satellite data. The answers span the gamut of application areas, from water quality monitoring to disaster recovery to planning how best to protect and use natural resources. SNWG brings these ideas to NASA, USGS, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the three main U.S. government providers of satellite data. These agencies work together to create and implement solutions that serve those needs. NASA plays a critical role in every step of the SNWG process, including leading the assessment of survey responses from over 30 federal agencies, managing and supporting the implementation of identified solutions, and encouraging solution co-design with federal partners to maximize impact.
The HLS surface reflectance product was an outcome of the very first SNWG solution cycle in 2016. This product was expanded, following additional SNWG requests in 2020 and 2022. The 2020 cycle saw the creation of nine HLS-derived vegetation indices, and the 2022 cycle aimed for a six-hour latency product.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) now uses HLS to map crop emergence at the field scale in the corn belt, allowing farmers to better plan their growing seasons. Ranchers in Colorado use the dataset to decide where to graze their cattle during periods of drought. HLS also informs the use and termination of cover crops in the Chesapeake Bay area. In 2024, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employed HLS to identify where to focus aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
A New and Improved HLS
In the July 2025 issue of Remote Sensing of Environment, a team of researchers outlined the HLS V2.0 surface reflectance dataset and algorithms. The team included seven NASA co-authors, members of the 2018–2023 Landsat Science Team, and ESA. The lead author, Junchang Ju [GSFC—Remote Sensing Scientist], has been the technical lead on HLS since its inception. Co-author Christopher Neigh [GSFC—Landsat 8/9 Project Scientist] is the principal investigator on the HLS project. V2.0, which was completed in Summer 2023, incorporates several major improvements over HLS V1.4, the most recent publicly available HLS product. HLS V1.4 covered about 30% of the global land area, providing data on North America and other select locations. HLS V2.0 provides data at a spatial resolution of 30 m (98 ft) with near-global coverage from 2013 onward. The dataset includes all land masses except Antarctica. HLS V2.0 also has key algorithmic improvements in atmospheric correction, cloud masking, and bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) correction. Together, these algorithms “harmonize” the data, or ensure that the distinct Landsat and Sentinel-2 datasets can effectively be used interchangeably – see Animation 2.
Animation 2: The visualization provides the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) for farm fields south of Columbus, NE. The red represents bare soil and green represents healthy, growing vegetation. The animation runs from January 1 to December 30, 2016. Animation credit: Michael Taylor [SSAI], Matthew Radcliff [USRA], and Jeffrey Masek [GSFC]. Caption adapted from Laura Rocchio [SSAI] HLS V2.0 in Action
The increased frequency of observations improved the ability of the scientific community to track disaster recovery, changes in phenology, agricultural intensification, rapid urban growth, logging, and deforestation. Researchers are already putting these advances to use.
The land disturbance product (DIST-ALERT) is a global land change monitoring system that uses HLS V2.0 data to track vegetation anomalies in near real-time – see Figure 1. DIST-ALERT captures agricultural expansion, urban growth, fire, flooding, logging, drought, landslides, and other forces of change to vegetation. Amy Pickens [University of Maryland, Department of Geographical Sciences—Assistant Research Professor] said that HLS is the perfect dataset for tracking disturbances because of the frequency of observations.
DIST-ALERT was created through Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA), a project at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). OPERA products respond to agency needs identified by the SNWG. In 2018, SNWG identified tracking surface disturbance as a key need. OPERA partnered with the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab at University of Maryland to develop the change detection algorithm.
To track changes in vegetation, the DIST-ALERT system establishes a rolling baseline – meaning that for any given pixel, the vegetation cover is compared against vegetation cover from the same 31-day window in the previous three years. The primary algorithm detects any vegetation loss relative to the established baseline. A secondary algorithm flags any spectral anomaly (i.e., any change in reflectance) compared to that same baseline. This approach ensures that the algorithm catches non-vegetation change (e.g., new building or road projects in unvegetated areas). Used together, these algorithms can identify long-term changes in agricultural expansion, deforestation, and urbanization alongside short-term changes in crop harvest, drought, selective logging, and the impacts of disasters. On average, DIST-ALERT is made available on LP DAAC within six hours of when new HLS data is available. Currently, the dataset does not provide attribution to disturbances.
Figure 1. In March 2025, wildfires burned through South Korea, resulting in heavy vegetation loss. [left] Output of the DIST-ALERT product on NASA Worldview from May 8, 2025, with vegetation loss in percent flagged with varying levels of confidence. Yellow and red represent areas with confirmed vegetation cover losses of right] Natural-color image captured by the Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) aboard Sentinel-2C on May 8, 2025. The large brown burn scar in the center of the image corresponds to vegetation loss detected by DIST-ALERT. It stands in contrast to the surrounding green vegetation. Figure credit: NASA Earthdata Disturbance alerts already exist in some ecosystems. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research [Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)] runs two projects that detect deforestation in the Amazon: Programa de Cálculo do Desflorestamento da Amazônia (PRODES) and Sistema de Detecção de Desmatamento em Tempo Real (DETER). The GLAD lab created its own forest loss alerts – GLAD-L and GLAD-S2 – using Landsat and Sentinel-2 data respectively. Global Forest Watch integrates GLAD-L and GLAD-S2 data with Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD) observations – derived from synthetic aperture radar data from Copernicus Sentinel-1 – into an integrated deforestation alert.
The implementation of these alert systems, some of which have been around for decades, have been shown to impact deforestation rates in the tropics. For example, a 2021 study in Nature Climate Change found that deforestation alerts decreased the probability of deforestation in Central Africa by 18% relative to the average 2011–2016 levels.
DIST-ALERT is distinct from other alert systems in a few ways. First, it has global coverage. Second, the rolling baseline allows for tracking changes in seasonality and disturbances to dynamic ecosystems. When HLS V2.0 data are input to DIST-ALERT, the system is also better at identifying disturbances in cloudy ecosystems than other individual alert systems – because it is more likely to obtain clear observations. This also enables it to identify the start and end of the disturbance more precisely.
Pickens said that the DIST-ALERT team is already working with end-users who are implementing their data product. She has spoken to some who use the system to help logging companies prove that they are complying with regulations. The U.S. Census Bureau is also using DIST-ALERT to monitor fast-growing communities so that they can do targeted assessments in the interim between the larger decennial census.
Alongside DIST-ALERT, OPERA has also been developing the Dynamic Surface Water eXtent (DSWx) product suite, which employs HLS to track surface water (e.g., lakes, reservoirs, rivers, and floods) around the globe – see Figure 2. These new products represent the new applications made possible by the HLS interagency and international collaboration.
Figure 2. The map shows flood extent and estimates of flood depth in areas west of Porto Alegre, Brazil on May 6, 2024. The flood extent is from the Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) Dynamic Surface Water eXtent product, which uses Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 data. The flood depth estimate is from the Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool (FwD ET). The darkest blue areas represent floodwater at least 5 m (20 ft) deep. Much of the inundated floodplain is light blue, which equates to depths of between 0.1–1 m (4–40 in). Figure credit: Lauren Dauphin [NASA’s Earth Observatory], Dinuke Munasinghe [JPL], Sagy Cohen [University of Alabama], and Alexander Handwerger [JPL] Conclusion
HLS is set to continue improving land monitoring efforts across the globe. Meanwhile, the HLS science team is working to improve the algorithms for a more seamless harmonization of Landsat 8 and 9 and Sentinel-2 data. They are also working to improve the cloud-masking algorithm, have recently released vegetation indices, and are working on developing a low-latency (six-hour) HLS surface reflectance product, all while incorporating user feedback.
Looking ahead, the launch of future Sentinel and Landsat satellites will further the development of HLS. The additional data and unique capabilities will continue to meet researchers’ need for more frequent, high-quality satellite observations of Earth’s land surface.
Madeleine Gregory
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Science Systems and Applications Inc.
madeleine.s.gregory@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 25, 2025 Related Terms
Earth Science View the full article
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