NASA
Every Cosmic Herald story on NASA — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
-
NASA & Agencies
NASA Cuts the Ribbon on Its First New Wind Tunnel in 40 Years
NASA opened the Flight Dynamics Research Facility at Langley on July 31, 2026 — its first newly built wind tunnel in over four decades, aimed at aircraft, autonomous flight, and Artemis-era spacecraft testing.
-
NASA & Agencies
Five University Teams Are Flying Balloons Into an Eclipse's Shadow for NASA
NASA has set its coverage plan for the August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse over Greenland, Iceland and Spain, while five NASA-funded university teams launch roughly 80 balloons into the eclipse shadow to study how the atmosphere reacts when the Moon briefly cuts off the Sun.
-
NASA & Agencies
NASA Astronaut, Two Cosmonauts Land in Kazakhstan After 241-Day Mission
Soyuz MS-28 parachuted onto the Kazakh steppe on July 26, closing out a 241-day Expedition 73/74 stint that carried NASA's Chris Williams and two Roscosmos cosmonauts more than 102 million miles around Earth.
-
NASA & Agencies
Wildfires Force NASA to Evacuate Its Madrid Deep Space Station, Shifting Voyager Tracking to California
Wildfires near Madrid forced NASA to evacuate one of only three Deep Space Network complexes on Friday; all 90 workers got out safely and mission support, including the Voyager 1 downlink, shifted seamlessly to Goldstone in California.
-
NASA & Agencies
NASA Lost 4,000 Civil Servants Last Year. GAO Says 25 of Its 36 Biggest Projects Are Already Feeling It
GAO's annual NASA project assessment is usually a story about hardware. This year it's a story about people: a 22 percent workforce cut, Goddard down 34 percent, Psyche delayed a year, and a proposed FY2027 budget that would cut another 20 percent.
-
NASA & Agencies
Mauritius Signs the Artemis Accords, and Talks About the Ocean Instead of the Moon
Mauritius became the 70th Artemis Accords signatory on July 17, 2026 — the seventh African nation and the 11th country to sign this year — and framed its accession around protecting oceans and coastlines rather than lunar exploration.
-
NASA & Agencies
Serbia Signs the Artemis Accords, Becoming the 69th Nation — and the Latest to Straddle Two Rival Lunar Camps
Serbia became the 69th Artemis Accords signatory on July 16, 2026, and the 10th nation to join this year — while also holding membership in China's rival lunar station program, a growing pattern of dual participation.
-
NASA & Agencies
Fifty Days Up: Shenzhou-23 Crew Deepens Microgravity Research Aboard Tiangong
Nearly 50 days into a planned one-year stay, Shenzhou-23's three-person crew — including Hong Kong's first astronaut — is running biomechanics and brain-function studies aboard China's Tiangong space station.
-
NASA & Agencies
Former SpaceX Flight Surgeon Anil Menon Set for First Launch — on a Russian Soyuz
NASA confirms astronaut Anil Menon, a former SpaceX flight surgeon and Space Force colonel, will make his first spaceflight July 14 aboard Soyuz MS-29, pending a critical spacewalk to fix the ISS robotic arm.
-
NASA & Agencies
Mystery Metal Spheres Wash Up on Queensland Beach — Australian Space Agency Says They're Rocket Debris
Six silver spheres that washed ashore near Townsville over the weekend are pressure vessels from a foreign rocket body, the Australian Space Agency says, warning residents not to touch any similar debris.
-
NASA & Agencies
Congress Presses NASA and NOAA on Space Weather Readiness as Solar Cycle 25 Peaks
Lawmakers grilled NASA's and NOAA's top space weather officials on grid, GPS, and communications risks the same week an X1.1 flare and G3 storms lit up July 4th skies with aurora.
-
NASA & Agencies
NASA Wants Volunteers to Spend a Year Pretending to Fly to the Moon and Mars
NASA has opened a volunteer call for a roughly yearlong ground analog at Johnson Space Center that, for the first time, fuses its HERA "spacecraft" and CHAPEA "base" into one integrated Moon-and-Mars mission starting no earlier than August 2027.
