Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Completed: Timelapse View | NASA Goddard

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Completed: Timelapse View | NASA Goddard

On Nov. 25, 2025, technicians meticulously connected the inner and outer segments of NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, as shown in this time-lapse. The observatory will undergo final testing and then move to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. 

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully assembled following the integration of its two major segments on November 25, 2025, at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The mission is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. 

“Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered—piece by piece, test by test—an observatory that will expand our understanding of the universe. As Roman moves into its final stage of testing following integration, we are focused on executing with precision and preparing for a successful launch on behalf of the global scientific community.”

After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will send the observatory to its final destination a million miles from Earth.

“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”

Observing from space will make Roman very sensitive to infrared light—light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see—from far across the cosmos. Pairing its crisp infrared vision with a sweeping view of space will allow astronomers to explore myriad cosmic topics, from dark matter and dark energy to distant worlds and solitary black holes, and conduct research that would take hundreds of years using other telescopes.

“Within our lifetimes, a great mystery has arisen about the cosmos: why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. There is something fundamental about space and time we don’t yet understand, and Roman was built to discover what it is,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With Roman now standing as a complete observatory, which keeps the mission on track for a potentially early launch, we are a major step closer to understanding the universe as never before. I couldn’t be prouder of the teams that have gotten us to this point.”

Double vision

Roman is equipped with two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument technology demonstration.

The coronagraph will demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from distant stars and make it easier for scientists to see the faint light from planets in orbit around them. The coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.

“The question of ‘Are we alone?’ is a big one, and it’s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it,” said Feng Zhao, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman.”

The coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for three months spread across the mission’s first year and a half of operations, after which the mission may conduct additional observations based on scientific-community input.

The Wide Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel camera that will unveil the cosmos all the way from our solar system to near the edge of the observable universe. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full Moon. The mission will gather data hundreds of times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, adding up to 20,000 terabytes (20 petabytes) over the course of its five-year primary mission.

“The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,” said Dominic Benford, Roman’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

Survey trifecta

Using the Wide Field Instrument, Roman will conduct three core surveys that will account for 75% of the primary mission. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will combine the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of space and time. Astronomers will trace the evolution of the universe to probe dark matter—invisible matter detectable only by how its gravity affects things we can see—and trace the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters over time.

The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will probe our dynamic universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly. Stitching these observations together to create movies will allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years. That will help astronomers study dark energy—the mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the universe’s expansion—and could even uncover entirely new phenomena that we do not yet know to look for.

Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals—gravitational boosts of a background star’s light caused by the gravity of an intervening object. While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including worlds like every planet in our solar system except Mercury. Microlensing will also reveal rogue planets—worlds that roam the galaxy untethered to a star—and isolated black holes. The same dataset will reveal 100,000 worlds that transit, or pass in front of, their host stars.

The remaining 25% of Roman’s five-year primary mission will be dedicated to other observations that will be determined with input from the broader scientific community. The first such program, called the Galactic Plane Survey, has already been selected.

Because Roman’s observations will enable such a wide range of science, the mission will have a General Investigator Program designed to support astronomers to reveal scientific discoveries using Roman data. As part of NASA’s commitment to Gold Standard Science, NASA will make all of Roman’s data publicly available with no exclusive use period. This ensures multiple scientists and teams can use data at the same time, which is important since every Roman observation will address a wealth of science cases.

Roman’s namesake—Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer—made it her personal mission to make cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.

“The mission will acquire enormous quantities of astronomical imagery that will permit scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come, honoring Dr. Roman’s legacy in promoting scientific tools for the broader community,” said Jackie Townsend, Roman’s deputy project manager at NASA Goddard. “I like to think Dr. Roman would be extremely proud of her namesake telescope and thrilled to see what mysteries it will uncover in the coming years.”

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

Learn more about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the discoveries it will enable: 
https://www.nasa.gov/roman
https://www.stsci.edu/roman

Learn more about Dr. Nancy Grace Roman: 
https://science.nasa.gov/people/nancy-roman/

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Sophia Roberts

Duration: 23 seconds
Release Date: Dec. 4, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #NASARoman #RomanSpaceTelescope #NancyGraceRoman #Exoplanets #Planets #SolarSystem #Stars #MilkyWayGalaxy #Galaxies #BlackHoles #Cosmos #Universe #SpaceTelescopes #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Construction of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Completed | NASA Goddard

Construction of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Completed | NASA Goddard

NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On Nov. 25, 2025, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey vast swaths of the sky during its five-year primary mission, observing stars, galaxies, black holes, and exoplanets. This infographic previews examples of the discoveries scientists anticipate from Roman’s data.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully assembled following the integration of its two major segments on Nov. 25, 2025, at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The mission is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. 

“Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered—piece by piece, test by test—an observatory that will expand our understanding of the universe. As Roman moves into its final stage of testing following integration, we are focused on executing with precision and preparing for a successful launch on behalf of the global scientific community.”

After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will send the observatory to its final destination a million miles from Earth.

“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”

Observing from space will make Roman very sensitive to infrared light—light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see—from far across the cosmos. Pairing its crisp infrared vision with a sweeping view of space will allow astronomers to explore myriad cosmic topics, from dark matter and dark energy to distant worlds and solitary black holes, and conduct research that would take hundreds of years using other telescopes.

“Within our lifetimes, a great mystery has arisen about the cosmos: why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. There is something fundamental about space and time we don’t yet understand, and Roman was built to discover what it is,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With Roman now standing as a complete observatory, which keeps the mission on track for a potentially early launch, we are a major step closer to understanding the universe as never before. I couldn’t be prouder of the teams that have gotten us to this point.”

Double vision

Roman is equipped with two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument technology demonstration.

The coronagraph will demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from distant stars and make it easier for scientists to see the faint light from planets in orbit around them. The coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.

“The question of ‘Are we alone?’ is a big one, and it’s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it,” said Feng Zhao, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman.”

The coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for three months spread across the mission’s first year and a half of operations, after which the mission may conduct additional observations based on scientific-community input.

The Wide Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel camera that will unveil the cosmos all the way from our solar system to near the edge of the observable universe. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full Moon. The mission will gather data hundreds of times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, adding up to 20,000 terabytes (20 petabytes) over the course of its five-year primary mission.

“The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,” said Dominic Benford, Roman’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

Survey trifecta

Using the Wide Field Instrument, Roman will conduct three core surveys that will account for 75% of the primary mission. The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will combine the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of space and time. Astronomers will trace the evolution of the universe to probe dark matter—invisible matter detectable only by how its gravity affects things we can see—and trace the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters over time.

The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will probe our dynamic universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly. Stitching these observations together to create movies will allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years. That will help astronomers study dark energy—the mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the universe’s expansion—and could even uncover entirely new phenomena that we do not yet know to look for.

Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals—gravitational boosts of a background star’s light caused by the gravity of an intervening object. While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including worlds like every planet in our solar system except Mercury. Microlensing will also reveal rogue planets—worlds that roam the galaxy untethered to a star—and isolated black holes. The same dataset will reveal 100,000 worlds that transit, or pass in front of, their host stars.

The remaining 25% of Roman’s five-year primary mission will be dedicated to other observations that will be determined with input from the broader scientific community. The first such program, called the Galactic Plane Survey, has already been selected.

Because Roman’s observations will enable such a wide range of science, the mission will have a General Investigator Program designed to support astronomers to reveal scientific discoveries using Roman data. As part of NASA’s commitment to Gold Standard Science, NASA will make all of Roman’s data publicly available with no exclusive use period. This ensures multiple scientists and teams can use data at the same time, which is important since every Roman observation will address a wealth of science cases.

Roman’s namesake—Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer—made it her personal mission to make cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.

“The mission will acquire enormous quantities of astronomical imagery that will permit scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come, honoring Dr. Roman’s legacy in promoting scientific tools for the broader community,” said Jackie Townsend, Roman’s deputy project manager at NASA Goddard. “I like to think Dr. Roman would be extremely proud of her namesake telescope and thrilled to see what mysteries it will uncover in the coming years.”

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.

Learn more about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the discoveries it will enable: 
https://www.nasa.gov/roman
https://www.stsci.edu/roman

Learn more about Dr. Nancy Grace Roman: 
https://science.nasa.gov/people/nancy-roman/

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jolearra Tshiteya
Release Date: Dec. 4, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #NASARoman #RomanSpaceTelescope #NancyGraceRoman #Exoplanets #Planets #SolarSystem #Stars #MilkyWayGalaxy #Galaxies #Cosmos #Universe #SpaceTelescopes #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Infographics #STEM #Education

Prairie 'Sky Fire': Aurora Borealis over Saskatchewan, Canada

Prairie 'Sky Fire': Aurora Borealis over Saskatchewan, Canada

On Earth, auroras are mainly created by particles originally emitted by the Sun in the form of solar wind. When this stream of electrically charged particles gets close to our planet, it interacts with the magnetic field, which acts as a gigantic shield. While it protects Earth’s environment from solar wind particles, it can also trap a small fraction of them. Particles trapped within the magnetosphere—the region of space surrounding Earth in which charged particles are affected by its magnetic field—can be energized and then follow the magnetic field lines down to the magnetic poles. There, they interact with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating the flickering, colorful lights visible in the polar regions here on Earth.

Earth auroras have different names depending on the pole they occur at. Aurora Borealis, or the northern lights, is the name given to auroras around the north pole and Aurora Australis, or the southern lights, is the name given for auroras around the south pole.

The Colors of the Aurora (U.S. National Park Service)

https://www.nps.gov/articles/-articles-aps-v8-i1-c9.htm

Saskatchewan is a province in Western Canada. It is bordered to the west by Alberta, to the north by the Northwest Territories, to the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the United States (Montana and North Dakota). 

Image Credit: Gerry Pocha
Image Details: Sony ILCE-7M3, Viltrox 16mm F1.8

Gerry's website:

https://www.facebook.com/gerry.pocha/

Image Date: Nov. 11, 2025

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Planets #Earth #Aurora #AuroraBorealis #NorthernLights #MagneticField #Magnetosphere #SolarWind #Sun #Star #Photography #GerryPocha #Photographer #CitizenScience #Saskatchewan #Canada #NorthAmerica #STEM #Education

Earth Aurora in Geomagnetic Storm: "Wait for It." | International Space Station

Earth Aurora in Geomagnetic Storm: "Wait for It." | International Space Station

Expedition 73 Flight Engineer and NASA Astronaut Jonny Kim: ". . . time lapse of the solar particle event last month. I accidentally captured parts of the window frame but I think it adds to the ISS feel." 

Enjoy the moonrise, too!

A geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm, is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere that is driven by interactions between the magnetosphere and large-scale transient plasma and magnetic field structures that originate on or near the Sun. 

A severe geomagnetic storm occurred on November 12, 2025, triggered by multiple solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), leading to widespread auroras visible across much of the northern United States and Canada. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona. The corona is the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov, Sergey-Kud Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev

NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center

Video Details: Nikon Z9 | 14mm

Duration: 1 minute, 27 seconds

Capture Date: Nov. 12, 2025
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Sun #SolarSystem #Planets #Earth #Atmosphere #Aurora #GeomagneticStorm #Moon #Astronauts #Cosmonauts #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #JSC #UnitedStates #Russia #Roscosmos #Japan #JAXA #Expedition73 #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Earth Airglow Collection | International Space Station

Earth Airglow Collection | International Space Station

The Moon glares into a camera aboard the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa at approximately 10:49 p.m. local time. A bright airglow blankets Earth's horizon as the Milky Way illuminates the night sky.

The Persian Gulf region—from Oman to the United Arab Emirates, with Iran's southwest coast visible across the geographically important waterway—is illuminated beneath a bright yellow-green airglow. This long-exposure photograph, taken at approximately 11:40 p.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above northwestern India, also captures the starry expanse of the night sky.

The Milky Way spans the night sky above a bright orange-yellow airglow that blankets the city lights along the east coast of Africa, from Kenya to Somalia. The International Space Station was orbiting 259 miles above the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar, at approximately 10:29 p.m. local time when this photograph was taken.

A yellow-green airglow, caused by atoms and molecules releasing energy as light after being excited by ultraviolet sunlight or cosmic rays, blankets the city lights of North America in this photograph, taken at approximately 2:18 a.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above Texas.

This serene image of the Moon (upper right) glinting off the Southern Pacific Ocean—beneath a yellow-green airglow and a starry night sky—was taken at approximately 8:59 p.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above Earth, southwest of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France comprising more than 100 islands.

Stars fill the sky above a serene, blue-green airglow blanketing Earth's horizon in this photograph taken from the International Space Station at approximately 1:05 a.m. local time while orbiting 263 miles above the Republic of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

A red-yellow airglow blankets Earth as the last rays of an orbital sunset illuminate the atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above the South Atlantic Ocean.

You will notice green, yellow, and red airglow in these images. Airglow occurs when atoms and molecules in the Earth's upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy. Or, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light—called a photon—in order to relax again. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day solar radiation. 

Unlike episodic and fleeting auroras, airglow shines constantly throughout Earth’s atmosphere, and the result is a tenuous bubble of light that closely encases our entire planet. (Auroras, on the other hand, are usually constrained to Earth’s poles.) Just a tenth as bright as all the stars in the night sky, airglow is far more subdued than auroras, too dim to observe easily except in orbit or on the ground with clear, dark skies and a sensitive camera.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov, Sergey-Kud Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev

NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center

Image Dates: Sept. 27-Oct. 26, 2025
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Planets #Earth #Atmosphere #Airglow #Astronauts #Cosmonauts #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #JSC #UnitedStates #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #Japan #JAXA #Expedition73 #STEM #Education

China Landspace Zhuque-3 Y1 Reusable Rocket Liftoff on 1st Orbital Test Mission

China Landspace Zhuque-3 Y1 Reusable Rocket Liftoff on 1st Orbital Test Mission

China Landspace Update: "The Zhuque-3 launch vehicle completed its maiden flight with all primary mission events performed nominally. The first stage flight was normal, stage separation performed as planned, and the fairing jettison and first stage landed precisely within the designated area. The second stage performed normally and achieved the target orbit, marking a complete success of the orbital launch mission."

"During the first stage recovery system verification test, engines thrust throttling operated normally, attitude control remained stable, and the down range recovery trajectory was nominal. An anomaly occurred as the first stage approached the designated recovery zone. No personnel safety issues occurred. China’s first rocket recovery attempt achieved its expected technical objectives."

On December 3, 2025, 12:00 p.m. (UTC+8), China commercial launch services firm Landspace's Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) Y1 launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China near the Jiuquan spaceport, completing its flight mission with a successful preset orbital insertion by its second stage. However, anomalous combustion occurred, preventing the first stage from achieving a soft landing at the recovery site. The first stage was not recovered. Despite this, the mission validated the design and operational procedures of the Zhuque-3 rocket, including testing, launch, and flight processes. Moreover, it confirmed the compatibility of interfaces across all systems and provided critical flight engineering data.

By comparison, SpaceX's first landing test occurred in September 2013 on the sixth flight of a Falcon 9 and maiden launch of the v1.1 rocket version. Between 2013 to 2016, sixteen test flights were conducted, only six of these achieved a soft landing and recovery of the first-stage booster. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has commented on the Landspace Zhuque-3's design: "They have added aspects of Starship, such as use of stainless steel and methalox, to a Falcon 9 architecture, which would enable it to beat Falcon 9 . . ."

With a diameter of 4.5 meters and a total length of around 66 meters, the Zhuque-3 rocket can carry up to 18 satellites per launch, making it an ideal choice for launching satellites for large-scale constellation networks.

Equipped with landing legs and grid fins for controlled descent, the rocket is designed to vertically recover its most expensive component—the first stage, accounting for 70 percent of the rocket's total cost.

As its first stage is designed to be reused at least 20 times, the rocket has the potential to reduce launch costs by 80 to 90 percent compared with single-use rockets.

Powered by a parallel cluster of nine liquid oxygen-methane engines, the first-stage can achieve meter-level landing precision, as five of the engines are capable of gimballing.

In addition, these engines produce a combined thrust of more than 7,500 kilonewtons, setting a new record for Chinese commercial liquid-fueled rockets.

Beijing-based LandSpace is a leading Chinese private space company. With its Zhuque-2 rocket, LandSpace became the world's first company to launch a methane-liquid oxygen rocket to Earth orbit in July 2023, ahead of U.S. rivals, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

Zhuque-3's development marks a significant stride in the pursuit of low-cost, high-frequency, and large-capacity space launches for China's private space industry.

The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) in nortwestern China was founded in 1958. It was the first of China's four spaceports. The launch center has been the focus of many of China's historic space ventures, including the country's first satellite Dong Fang Hong I in 1970 and their first crewed space mission, Shenzhou V, on October 15, 2003. JSLC is now a home for many new Chinese commercial space launch firms, like Landspace.

Credit: Landspace

Time: 1 min.
Date: Dec. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #Satellites #Earth #LEO #China #中国 #LandSpace #蓝箭 #Zhuque3Rocket #Zhuque3 #ReusableRockets #LaunchVehicles #MethaneLiquidOxygen #Methalox #JSLC  #JiuquanSatelliteLaunchCenter #酒泉卫星发射中心 #InnerMongolia #CommercialSpace #CommercialSpaceflight #STEM #Education #HD #Video

China Landspace Zhuque-3 Y1 Reusable Rocket Completes Orbital Test Mission

China Landspace ZhuQue-3 Y1 Reusable Rocket Completes Orbital Test Mission

On December 3, 2025, 12:00 p.m. (UTC+8), China commercial launch services firm Landspace's Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) Y1 launch vehicle lifted off from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China near the Jiuquan spaceport, completing its flight mission with a successful preset orbital insertion by its second stage. However, anomalous combustion occurred, preventing the first stage from achieving a soft landing at the recovery site. The first stage was not recovered. Despite this, the mission validated the design and operational procedures of the Zhuque-3 rocket, including testing, launch, and flight processes. Moreover, it confirmed the compatibility of interfaces across all systems and provided critical flight engineering data.

By comparison, SpaceX's first landing test occurred in September 2013 on the sixth flight of a Falcon 9 and maiden launch of the v1.1 rocket version. Between 2013 to 2016, sixteen test flights were conducted, only six of these achieved a soft landing and recovery of the first-stage booster. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has commented on the Landspace Zhuque-3's design: "They have added aspects of Starship, such as use of stainless steel and methalox, to a Falcon 9 architecture, which would enable it to beat Falcon 9 . . ."

With a diameter of 4.5 meters and a total length of around 66 meters, the Zhuque-3 rocket can carry up to 18 satellites per launch, making it an ideal choice for launching satellites for large-scale constellation networks.

Equipped with landing legs and grid fins for controlled descent, the rocket is designed to vertically recover its most expensive component—the first stage, accounting for 70 percent of the rocket's total cost.

As its first stage is designed to be reused at least 20 times, the rocket has the potential to reduce launch costs by 80 to 90 percent compared with single-use rockets.

Powered by a parallel cluster of nine liquid oxygen-methane engines, the first-stage can achieve meter-level landing precision, as five of the engines are capable of gimballing.

In addition, these engines produce a combined thrust of more than 7,500 kilonewtons, setting a new record for Chinese commercial liquid-fueled rockets.

Beijing-based LandSpace is a leading Chinese private space company. With its Zhuque-2 rocket, LandSpace became the world's first company to launch a methane-liquid oxygen rocket to Earth orbit in July 2023, ahead of U.S. rivals, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

Zhuque-3's development marks a significant stride in the pursuit of low-cost, high-frequency, and large-capacity space launches for China's private space industry.

The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) in nortwestern China was founded in 1958. It was the first of China's four spaceports. The launch center has been the focus of many of China's historic space ventures, including the country's first satellite Dong Fang Hong I in 1970 and their first crewed space mission, Shenzhou V, on October 15, 2003. JSLC is now a home for many new Chinese commercial space launch firms, like Landspace.

Credit: Landspace
Date: Dec. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #Satellites #Earth #LEO #China #中国 #LandSpace #蓝箭 #Zhuque3Rocket #Zhuque3 #ReusableRockets #LaunchVehicles #MethaneLiquidOxygen #Methalox #JSLC  #JiuquanSatelliteLaunchCenter #酒泉卫星发射中心 #InnerMongolia #CommercialSpace #CommercialSpaceflight #STEM #Education

NASA Astronauts Collect Blood Samples for Science | International Space Station

NASA Astronauts Collect Blood Samples for Science | International Space Station

Drawing blood is a regular part of life aboard the International Space Station, supporting research on how the human body adapts to space. Watch NASA astronaut Jonny Kim collect blood to help NASA prepare astronauts for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Learn more about human research on station: https://go.nasa.gov/4iYTqGh

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Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov, Sergey-Kud Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev

NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Video Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center
Duration: 1 minute, 41 seconds
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2025

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Electric Sparks Detected in Martian Dust Devils | NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Electric Sparks Detected in Martian Dust Devils | NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Three Martian dust devils can be seen near the rim of Jezero Crater in this short video made of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Sept. 6, 2025.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has recorded the sounds of electrical discharges—sparks —and mini-sonic booms in dust devils on planet Mars. Long theorized, the phenomenon has now been confirmed through audio and electromagnetic recordings captured by the rover’s SuperCam microphone. The discovery, published Nov. 26, 2025, in the journal Nature, has implications for Martian atmospheric chemistry, climate, and habitability, and could help guide the design of future robotic and human missions to Mars.

A frequent occurrence on the Red Planet, dust devils form from rising and rotating columns of warm air. Air near the planet’s surface becomes heated by contact with the warmer ground and rises through the denser, cooler air above. As other air moves along the surface to take the place of the rising warmer air, it begins to rotate. When the incoming air rises into the column, it picks up speed like spinning ice skaters bringing their arms closer to their body. The air rushing in also picks up dust, and a dust devil is born.

SuperCam has recorded 55 distinct electrical events over the course of the mission, beginning on the mission’s 215th Martian day, or sol, in 2021. Sixteen have been recorded when dust devils passed directly over the rover.

Decades before Perseverance landed, scientists theorized that the friction generated by tiny dust grains swirling and rubbing against each other in Martian dust devils could generate enough of an electrical charge to eventually produce electrical arcs. Called the triboelectric effect, the same phenomenon at play when someone walks over a carpet in socks and then touches a metal doorknob, generating a spark. In fact, that is about the same level of discharge as what a Martian dust devil might produce.

“Triboelectric charging of sand and snow particles is well documented on Earth, particularly in desert regions, but it rarely results in actual electrical discharges,” said Baptiste Chide, a member of the Perseverance science team and a planetary scientist at L’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in France. “On Mars, the thin atmosphere makes the phenomenon far more likely, as the amount of charge required to generate sparks is much lower than what is required in Earth’s near-surface atmosphere.”

Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument carries a microphone to analyze the sounds of the instrument’s laser when it zaps rocks, but the team has also captured the sounds of wind and even the first audio recording of a Martian dust devil. Scientists knew it could pick up electromagnetic disturbance (static) and sounds of electrical discharges in the atmosphere. What they did not know was if such events happened frequently enough, or if the rover would ever be close enough, to record one. Then they began to assess data amassed over the mission, and it did not take long to find the telltale sounds of electrical activity.

Crackle, pop

“We got some good ones where you can clearly hear the ‘snap’ sound of the spark,” said coauthor Ralph Lorenz, a Perseverance scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. “In the Sol 215 dust devil recording, you can hear not only the electrical sound, but also the wall of the dust devil moving over the rover. And in the Sol 1,296 dust devil, you hear all that plus some of the particles impacting the microphone.”

Thirty-five other discharges were associated with the passage of convective fronts during regional dust storms. These fronts feature intense turbulence that favor triboelectric charging and charge separation. This occurs when two objects touch, transfer electrons, and separate—the part of the triboelectric effect that results in a spark of static electricity.

Researchers found electrical discharges did not seem to increase during the seasons when dust storms that globally increase the presence of atmospheric dust, are more common on Mars. This result suggests that electrical buildup is more closely tied to the localized, turbulent lifting of sand and dust rather than high dust density alone.

Profound effects

The proof of these electrical discharges is a discovery that dramatically changes our understanding of Mars. Their presence means that the Martian atmosphere can become sufficiently charged to activate chemical reactions, leading to the creation of highly oxidizing compounds, such as chlorates and perchlorates. These strong substances can effectively destroy organic molecules (components of life) on the surface and break down many atmospheric compounds, completely altering the overall chemical balance of the Martian atmosphere.

This discovery could also explain the puzzling ability of Martian methane to vanish rapidly, offering a crucial piece of the puzzle for understanding the constraints life may have faced and, therefore, the planet's potential to be habitable.

Given the widespread availability of dust on Mars, the presence of electrical charges generated by particles rubbing together would seem likely to influence dust transport on Mars as well. How dust travels on Mars plays a central role in the planet’s climate but remains poorly understood.

Confirming the presence of electrostatic discharges will also help NASA understand potential risks to the electronic equipment of current robotic missions. That no adverse electrostatic discharge effects have been reported in several decades of Mars surface operations may attest to careful spacecraft grounding practices. The findings could also influence safety measures developed for future astronauts exploring the Red Planet.

Managed for NASA by Caltech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.

Learn more about NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute (SSI)

Duration: 7 seconds
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Planets #Mars #Meteorology #Weather #DustDevils #ElectricalDischarges #TriboelectricEffect #PerseveranceRover #Mars2020 #JezeroCrater #Robotics #SpaceTechnology #SpaceEngineering #JPL #Caltech #SSI #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Bright Bluish Supergiant Stars: Alnitak, Alnilam & Mintaka in Orion

The Bright Bluish Supergiant Stars: Alnitak, Alnilam & Mintaka in Orion

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka are the bright bluish stars from east to west (upper right to lower left) along the diagonal in this cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie from 700 to 2,000 light-years away, born of Orion's well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the upper right. The famous Orion Nebula itself is off the right edge of this colorful starfield. The telescopic frame spans almost 4 degrees on the sky.

Image Credit & Copyright: Aygen Erkaslan

Aygen's website: 

https://app.astrobin.com/u/a.erkaslan#gallery
Image Date: Nov. 20, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Nebulae #HorseheadNebula #Barnard33 #FlameNebula #NGC2024 #Sh2277 #Stars #Supergiants #Alnitak #Alnilam #Mintaka #Orion #Constellations #MilkyWayGalaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Astrophotography #AygenErkaslan #Astrophotographers #GSFC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #APoD

North Africa: Rings of Rock in The Sahara | International Space Station

North Africa: Rings of Rock in The Sahara | International Space Station

A top-down view shows circular rocky formations rising from a flat, sandy-brown landscape. Darker brown sand encircles the rocky rings, with lighter patches of outwash spreading across the terrain.

In southeastern Libya, Jabal Arkanū’s concentric rock rings stand as relics of past geologic forces that churned beneath the desert.

In northeastern Africa, within the driest part of The Sahara, dark rocky outcrops rise above pale desert sands. Several of these formations, including Jabal Arkanū, display striking ring-shaped structures.

Jabal Arkanū (also spelled Arkenu) lies in southeastern Libya, near the border with Egypt. Several other massifs are clustered nearby, including Jabal Al Anaynat (or Uweinat), located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the southeast. Roughly 90 kilometers to the west are the similarly named Arkenu structures. These circular features were once thought to have formed by meteorite impacts, but later fieldwork suggested they resulted from terrestrial geological processes.

Arkanū’s ring-shaped structures also have an earthly origin. They are thought to have formed as magma rose toward the surface and intruded into the surrounding rock. Repeated intrusion events produced a series of overlapping rings, their centers roughly aligned toward the southwest. The resulting ring complex—composed of igneous basalt and granite—is bordered to the north by a hat-shaped formation made of sandstone, limestone, and quartz layers.

This photograph, taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station on September 13, 2025, shows the massif casting long shadows across the desert. The ridges stand nearly 1,400 meters above sea level, or about 800 meters above the surrounding sandy plains. Notice several outwash fans of boulders, gravel, and sand spreading from the mountain’s base toward the bordering longitudinal dunes.

Two wadis, or typically dry riverbeds, wind through the structure. However, water is scarce in this part of The Sahara. Past research using data from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's now-completed Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) indicated that southeastern Libya, along with adjacent regions of Egypt and northern Sudan, receives only about 1 to 5 millimeters of rain per year. Slightly higher accumulations, around 5 to 10 millimeters per year, occur near Jabal Arkanū and neighboring massifs, suggesting a modest orographic effect from the mountains.

This is an astronaut photograph, taken by a member of the Expedition 73 crew. It was taken with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 800 millimeters. 

The Sahara is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.

The name "Sahara" is derived from Arabic: صَحَارَى, romanized: ṣaḥārā /sˤaħaːraː/, a broken plural form of ṣaḥrā' (صَحْرَاء /sˤaħraːʔ/), meaning "desert".

The desert covers much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and the Sudan.

It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna around the Niger River valley and the Sudan region of sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara can be divided into several regions, including the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, and the Libyan Desert.

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov, Sergey-Kud Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev

NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center

Article Credit: Kathryn Hansen
Image Date: Sept. 13, 2025
Release Date: Nov. 28, 2025

#NASA #Space #ISS #Earth #Sahara #Libya #Africa #JabalArkanū #Geology #Astronauts #Cosmonauts #HumanSpaceflight #SpaceLaboratory #JSC #UnitedStates #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #Japan #JAXA #Expedition73 #Expedition74 #STEM #Education

U.S. & Canadian Cities: Great Lakes, Aurora+Moonrise | International Space Station

U.S. & Canadian Cities: Great Lakes, Aurora+Moonrise | International Space Station

Three new residents are living aboard the space station following the arrival of the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev will stay in space until July 2026, conducting advanced space research benefiting humans living on and off Earth.

On Dec. 8, the orbital outpost will return to seven members and become the Expedition 74 crew when NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky enter the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft, undock from the Prichal module, and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan. Kim, Ryzhikov, and Zubritsky are nearing the end of an eight-month space science mission that began on April 8, 2025.

The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario (though hydrologically, Michigan and Huron are a single body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac). 

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Sergey Ryzhikov (Roscosmos)

JAXA Flight Engineer (Japan): Kimiya Yui

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Zubritskiy, Oleg Platonov, Sergey-Kud Sverchkov, Sergei Mikaev

NASA Flight Engineers: Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Chris Williams

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Video Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/J. Kim
Video Details: Nikon Z9 | 15mm | ISO 25600 f1.8 1/4s
Duration: 35 seconds
Capture Date: Sept. 2, 2025
Release Date: Dec. 2, 2025

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Close-up: Spiral Galaxy NGC 4535 in Virgo | Hubble

Close-up: Spiral Galaxy NGC 4535 in Virgo | Hubble

This Hubble picture features the spiral galaxy NGC 4535. It is located about 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (The Maiden). This galaxy has been nicknamed the ‘Lost Galaxy’ because it is extremely faint when viewed through a small telescope. With a mirror spanning 2.4 meters across, Hubble is well equipped to observe dim galaxies like NGC 4535 and pick out features like its massive spiral arms and central bar of stars.

On full display in this Hubble image are NGC 4535’s young star clusters that dot the galaxy’s spiral arms. Many of the groupings of bright blue stars are enclosed by glowing pink clouds. These clouds, called H II (‘H-two’) regions, are a sign that the galaxy is home to especially young, hot, and massive stars that are blazing with high-energy radiation. By heating the clouds in which they were born, shooting out powerful stellar winds, and eventually exploding as supernovae, massive stars certainly shake up their surroundings. 

This Hubble image incorporates data from an observing program that will catalogue roughly 50,000 H II regions in nearby star-forming galaxies like NGC 4535. A previous image of NGC 4535 was released in 2021. Both the 2021 image and today’s image incorporate observations from the PHANGS program that seek to understand the connections between young stars and cold gas. This  current image adds a new dimension to our understanding of NGC 4535 by capturing the brilliant red glow of the nebulae that encircle massive stars in their first few million years of life.

Image Description: A close-in view of a spiral galaxy that faces the viewer. Brightly lit spiral arms swing outwards through the galaxy’s disc, starting from an elliptical region in the center. Thick strands of dark reddish dust are spread across the disc, mostly following the spiral arms. The arms also contain many glowing pink-red spots where stars form. The galaxy is a bit fainter beyond the arms, but speckled with blue stars.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Nov. 17, 2025

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Close-up: NGC 4490 & NGC 4485 Dwarf Galaxies in Canes Venatici | Webb Telescope

Close-up: NGC 4490 & NGC 4485 Dwarf Galaxies in Canes Venatici | Webb Telescope

The NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has spied a pair of dwarf galaxies engaged in a gravitational 'dance.' These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 (left) and NGC 4485 (top right). They are located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Aside from the Milky Way’s own dwarf companions (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), this is the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf system where astronomers have directly observed a gas bridge and resolved stellar populations. Together NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form the system Arp 269, featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. At such a close distance (and with Webb’s impressive ability to peer through dusty cosmic clouds) these galaxies allow astronomers to witness up close the kinds of galaxy interactions that were common billions of years ago.

Dwarf galaxies likely share many similarities with young galaxies in the early Universe: they are much less massive than galaxies like the Milky Way, they typically have small amounts of metals (what astronomers call elements heavier than helium), and they contain a lot of gas and relatively few stars. When nearby dwarf galaxies collide, merge, or steal gas from one another, it can tell us how galaxies billions of years ago might have grown and evolved. 

The nearby dwarf galaxies NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form an intriguing pair. Nearly three decades ago, astronomers discovered a wispy bridge of gas connecting the two galaxies, showing that they have interacted in the past. Despite many studies with powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, the history between NGC4490 and NGC 4485 has remained mysterious.

Recently, Webb observed this curious galactic pair as part of the Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers (FEAST) program (#1783; PI: A. Adamo). The FEAST program used Webb’s sensitive infrared eyes to reveal the formation of new stars in different types of nearby galaxies.

This image was developed using data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), as well as a single narrow-band filter from Hubble (657N). It reveals NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 in never-before-seen detail and illuminates the bridge of gas and stars that connects them. NGC 4490 dominates the image as the larger object occupying the left side of the image, while NGC 4485 is the smaller galaxy that hosts the top-right portion of the image. By dissecting these galaxies star by star, researchers were able to map out where young, middle-aged, and old stars reside, and trace the timeline of the galaxies’ interaction.

Roughly 200 million years ago, these galaxies whirled close to one another before waltzing away. The larger galaxy, NGC 4490, ensnared a stream of gas from its companion, and this gas now trails between the galaxies like dancers connected by outstretched arms. Along the newly formed bridge of gas and within the two galaxies, this interaction spurred a burst of new stars. The concentrated areas of bright blue that appear throughout the field indicate highly ionized regions of gas by the recently formed star clusters. Just 30 million years ago, these galaxies burst alight with stars once more, with new clusters coalescing where the gas of the two galaxies mixed together.

By capturing the history of the galactic dancers NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, Webb has revealed new details in how dwarf galaxies interact, giving us a glimpse of how small galaxies near and far grow and evolve.

Image Description: This Webb image shows two interacting galaxies. NGC 4490 occupies the left side of the image, while NGC 4485 appears as a white glowing hue in the top right of the field. Both galaxies are connected by a bright stream of red stretching from the top left of the image, through the bottom center, and ending at the right under galaxy NGC 4485. There are regions of bright blue ionized gas visible in concentrated areas of the red stream. The background is black with multiple galaxies in various shapes throughout.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University), G. Bortolini, and the FEAST JWST team

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Dec. 2, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Galaxies #NGC4490 #NGC4485 #ARP269 #InteractingGalaxies #CanesVenatici #Constellations #Cosmos #Universe #JWST #InfraredAstronomy #NIRCam #MIRI #SpaceTelescopes #ESA #CSA #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video