NASA | ESA Space Updates

Over 1,645 Martian days, NASA's Perseverance rover measured fine and ultrafine Martian dust particles clinging to spacesuit material samples aboard the rover, helping prepare for future human missions! 🚀 #Mars #NASA #Perseverance

Unlike the sharp, jagged dust on the Moon, Mars dust grains are rounded by wind-driven collisions, making them less abrasive. However, they are enriched in sulfur, chlorine, iron, and silica! 🏜️🔴 #MarsScience

Organic polymers like Teflon used in spacesuit outer layers readily collect fine dust due to static electricity. This discovery will guide future spacesuit materials and habitat designs! 👩‍🚀🛠️ #SpaceTech

NASA's PIXL instrument detected ultrafine Martian dust particles around 100 nanometers wide—about 700 times thinner than a human hair—small enough to penetrate lungs and enter the bloodstream! 🔬 #SpaceExploration #MarsDust

To speed up the 2028 lunar landing, NASA is changing the plan! Artemis landers and Orion will no longer rendezvous in a near-rectilinear halo orbit—they'll instead meet in orbits tailored to each partner's specific systems. 🚀🌙 #Artemis #NASA

SpaceX is gearing up for Artemis! During its uncrewed demonstration mission, the company will put NASA's accelerated timeline into action by demonstrating the innovative propellant aggregation approach. ⛽🚀 #SpaceX #Artemis

Blue Origin is charging toward 2028! For its crewed lunar landing, the company will defer propellant transfer and deploy three transfer stages to send the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander, incorporating lessons from robotic Mark 1 missions. 🌕🛰️ #BlueOrigin

Safety first! Before sending astronauts to the Moon for the accelerated 2028 missions, both SpaceX and Blue Origin must complete uncrewed demonstration missions. NASA will thoroughly certify all lander systems to ensure mission success. 🛰️👨‍🚀 #Space

Launching in 2027, NASA's Artemis III mission will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit to test critical human landing systems from commercial partners before landing near the Moon's South Pole! 🚀🌕 #NASA #Artemis

During Artemis III, astronauts will dock with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander test article and spend two days inside checking out the cabin environment, controls, and life-support systems! 🧑‍🚀🛠️ #SpaceExploration

Artemis III will also feature a docking test with SpaceX’s Starship test article! While crew won't enter Starship, this test validates how Orion and Starship interact as a docked system in space. 🌌🛸

For the first time, NASA will launch three separate spacecraft on three different heavy-lift rockets for a single mission! Artemis III will test how Orion, Blue Origin, and SpaceX systems operate together in space. 🛰️🚀

Pedal to the metal! 🚀 Following a successful Mars gravity assist, NASA's Psyche spacecraft has started firing its electric thrusters nearly continuously, keeping it on track to reach the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in the summer of 2029. #NASA #Psyche

Fast and steady! At its maximum speed during cruise, NASA's Psyche spacecraft will rocket through space at more than 100,000 mph (160,900 kph) relative to an observer on Earth. 🌌🛰️ #SpaceScience #Psyche

The target asteroid Psyche is about 173 miles (280 km) wide and is believed to be the partial metallic core of an ancient planetesimal, offering a unique window into rocky planet interiors like Earth! 🪐🔬 #NASA #Asteroid

Psyche’s solar-powered electric propulsion uses electromagnetic fields to expel xenon ions, generating a gentle thrust of about 250 millinewtons—roughly the force felt from holding a single AA battery! 🔋✨ #SpaceExploration #NASA

65 years of testing the engines that take us to space! 🚀✨ On Oct 25, 1961, NASA announced the creation of what would become Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi. From Apollo to today, every big chapter in US spaceflight owes a lot to the work done here. Happy Birthday, Stennis! 🎉

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is an astrophysics multitool that can rapidly observe cosmic objects across visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light! 🔭✨ The mission may be wrapping up, but the science is far from over! Dive into its lasting legacy

Speed record! After NASA awarded a contract in Sept 2025, Katalyst Space designed, built, tested, and launched the LINK robotic servicing spacecraft in less than a year to help save Swift. 🚀⏱️

Due to an attitude control issue, the LINK spacecraft won't boost Swift to a higher altitude, but it will still perform a tech demo by conducting rendezvous and proximity operations! 🤖🛰️

Because spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience atmospheric drag—magnified recently by solar storms—NASA's Swift observatory began sinking faster than anticipated, prompting an innovative rescue mission! 🛰️💨

A cosmic phoenix! Astronomers using NASAs Hubble Space Telescope data from have found evidence of a "second-generation" planet—a world that didn't form around a newborn star, but rather rose from the cast-off material of a dead white dwarf.

It’s a gas giant about the size of Jupiter, but it’s currently shedding its atmosphere! Why? The intensely hot white dwarf it orbits is constantly bombarding the planet with heavy radiation. Talk about a harsh stellar environment! ☀️🔥

How do you build a planet around a dead star? Scientists believe white dwarf HS 0209+0832 once had a companion star whose gravity helped pull ejected stellar debris back into orbit to form a brand-new planetary disk! 🪐✨

Case cracked! 🔍 Back in 1999, Hubble data revealed ~100 mystery chemical signatures around white dwarf HS 0209+0832. Updated databases reveal the culprit: a high abundance of the element niobium, pointing straight to a new planetary system!

NASA has completed stacking operations for the twin SLS solid rocket boosters for Artemis III inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center! These massive boosters provide over 75% of total SLS thrust during liftoff. 🚀🌕

The Artemis III Orion spacecraft's power comes from impressive ESA-built solar array wings! Each panel spans about 63 feet and generates 11 kilowatts of power to supply propulsion, life support, and systems during the mission. ☀️🛰️

Preparation is key! The Artemis III crew recently sampled nearly 200 space food items at NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory to select their favorite menu choices for the mission, ensuring optimal nutrition and performance. 👨‍🚀

All four RS-25 engines are now installed on the Artemis III SLS core stage! In the coming months, the rocket will roll to Launch Pad 39B for a critical tanking test where teams will practice propellant loading procedures. ⛽🛰️

A cosmic whale swimming through the stars 🐋✨ This stunning edge-on view shows NGC 4631 (the Whale Galaxy) in all its glory. Viewing spiral galaxies from this angle lets astronomers measure exactly how flat stellar disks are & observe gas & dust drifting high above & below the galaxy's main plane!🌌

🔭 Record-breaker! Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers pinpointed the host galaxy of fast radio burst FRB 20240304B, confirming it occurred just 3 billion years after the big bang. 🌌✨ #JWST #SpaceNews #Astronomy

💥 Unlocking origins! Because this distant FRB lives in a young, active dwarf galaxy—not an old stellar population—scientists believe it's very unlikely to have been produced by a neutron star merger, pointing to magnetars instead! ⚡🔭 #Space #Webb

Cosmic flashlight! This record-breaking fast radio burst served as a beacon, allowing scientists to detect invisible matter along its path, including a newly discovered galaxy cluster and the Virgo Cluster! 🌠✨ #Webb #Cosmology

🌌 Not what we expected! Instead of a large, mature galaxy, Webb found that the most distant fast radio burst came from a tiny dwarf galaxy 1,000 times less massive than anticipated, though it was actively forming stars! 🌟🛰️ #JWST #Galaxies

As part of upcoming mission updates, Artemis III will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems required for future lunar landings! 🛰️👨‍🚀 #ArtemisIII #SpaceExploration

Artemis astronauts will explore the lunar South Pole to establish an enduring human presence, building the essential stepping stones and foundation for humanity's first crewed mission to Mars. 🔴🚀 #Mars #Space

Join NASA on Friday, Oct. 23 at 2 p.m. EDT for a major update on Artemis acceleration and plans to return American astronauts to the Moon by 2028!

🚀 Liftoff is near! The JAXA-led MMX mission launches on Oct 19/20, 2026, to explore Mars's mysterious moons. It will be the first mission to collect samples from Phobos and bring them back to Earth! 🌌 #MMX #SpaceExploration #Mars

🤖 Meet Idefix! The 25-kg rover heading to Phobos will experience gravity so low that it will weigh the equivalent of just 15 grams on the moon's surface! It will scout ahead for the main lander. 🌕🐾 #MMX #Rover #Mars

⏳ The ultimate round trip: After arriving at Mars in 2027 and landing on Phobos in 2030, MMX will bring back at least 10 grams of pristine moon material to Earth in 2031, landing safely in Australia! 🪨🇦🇺 #Science #Mars

🪐 Making history! MMX will be the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mars' moon Phobos, the first to land on a moon other than Earth's, AND the first to return samples from a Martian moon back to our home planet. 🛰️✨ #Space #Astronomy

Did you know extreme debris disks are surprisingly rare? Scientists estimate that roughly only 1% of young stars show observable signatures of this chaotic planetary collision phase! 🌌✨ #NASA #JWST #Space

Not all space crashes are huge! About two-thirds of extreme debris disks are silica-poor, indicating smaller-scale, grazing impacts between Moon-sized objects. The Webb Space Telescope is helping decode this ancient history! 🌙💥

While the retired Spitzer Space Telescope found just a handful, The Webb Space Telescope compiled a sample of 16 extreme debris disks—including 12 newly observed ones—giving us our best look yet at planet formation! 🪐🛰️

Silica-rich extreme debris disks are forged by high-energy impacts between Mars-sized bodies, where massive amounts of rock are vaporized into space! Thanks to @NASAWebb, we can study these planetary nurseries. 🔭☄️ #Astronomy

Look at this young star cluster captured by Webb Space Telescope! 🌟 At its center sits a bright yellow star boasting the largest eight-pronged diffraction pattern. To its left, a massive yellow region of dust and gas stretches across two-thirds of the view, embedding blue stars of all sizes.

Deep space drama! 💫 In the top third of this star cluster, bright protostars sit within dense gray gas. As they illuminate the surrounding gas, it glows a vivid blue—while brilliant red outflows from nearby protostars streak above the grayish-blue clouds.