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NASA's planned crewed Artemis program mission to fly astronauts around the Moon aboard Orion, paving the way for a future lunar landing on Artemis III.
NASA reports Orion's Artemis II heat shield had nine spots of char loss, down from 103 on Artemis I, after a change to the reentry trajectory. The comparison rests on two flights and NASA's own review.
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NASA released three reports and a data archive from Artemis II on October 7, three days before its six-month deadline. Science News reports that the crew's spoken and written notes proved more valuable than the photos.
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NASA will make astronaut Christina Koch acting deputy chief engineer on Nov. 1, ending her eligibility for future spaceflight assignments. She takes the seat Katherine Van Hooser leaves when she retires Oct. 21, and Amit Kshatriya holds the chief engineer title.
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NASA released a preliminary Artemis II lunar science report built from the four-person crew's photos, spoken notes and drawings. Researchers can now test whether those observations hold science that instruments alone would have missed.
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NASA has posted about 800GB of Artemis II mission data, including more than 11,000 photos and videos and 8.5 hours of audio. Anyone can download it, though the raw archive is organized for researchers and a curated science page is the version built for everyone else.
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NASA has released the full Artemis II lunar science dataset, including five faint impact flashes the crew marked by hand on a tablet image. Scientists outside the mission can now examine those sightings, though without a stated watch time they cannot yet give an impact rate.
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Five impact flashes Artemis II astronauts saw on the farside led NASA to estimate a one-in-10,000-per-decade chance of a similar strike on a Moon base. The crew counted them by eye and with handheld cameras on a flight carrying minimal science payloads, and the count gives planners of the south-pole base a background rate to design against.
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Azora says its portable optical ground receiver latched onto Artemis II's Orion capsule at 240,000 miles, working from a California parking lot. The result shows a drivable terminal can pick up a signal at lunar range, though buyers will want its data rate and price before signing up for a pilot.
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Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover moved to emeritus advisory roles at NASA to help teams prepare Artemis III for 2027. Their Orion experience will now reach that Earth-orbit docking test through volunteer mentoring.
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A Circulation study followed cardiac structure through full six-month missions using ultrasound the crews ran themselves. Because every astronaut completed the prescribed exercise, it cannot separate the countermeasure from the adaptation.
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The order signed at Johnson Space Center stands up a commission under NASA's administrator. The plan it owes the president by late December is where training vendors learn whether appropriations follow the rhetoric.
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The telescope's first proposal round came back twelvefold oversubscribed. Hubble and Webb have posted the same result for years: the figure describes how much telescope time exists, not Roman's standing in particular.
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The Artemis II crew flew 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than anyone before them. The medals presented in Houston close the mission out institutionally, while its successor is scheduled to stay in low Earth orbit.
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Space Force growth and lunar ambition are the stated rationale, and NASA's own leadership drew the design work on a four-month clock. The announcement puts no size on the workforce gap the school would close.
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The advertised window is generous. The part that actually looks like an eclipse is shorter, and only the Americas are placed to see all of it.
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A NASA-backed study of 52 ISS crew members found gut bacteria switching to protein fermentation within weeks of launch, producing compounds the authors tie to kidney and cognitive harm.
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