APOD

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

M83: The Southern Pinwheel

Explanation: Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, the Southern Pinwheel. Still, reddish star forming regions that dot this cosmic pinwheel’s spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp, groundbased telescopic view also features foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies.

APOD’s main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod
Tomorrow’s picture: lunar sun catcher

Date	September 11, 2026
Credit & Copyright	Aldo Zanetti
Authors & editors:	Jerry Bonnell, Robert Nemiroff, Cecilia Chirenti, Keighley Rockcliffe
A service of:	ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.

Source: science.nasa.gov

The science from every Moon rock sample, lunar dataset, and discovery produced through NASA’s Artemis program will be shared by the agency with the global scientific community. That commitment is upheld by all 71 countries that have signed the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for safe and transparent civil space exploration.

NASA put those principles into practice by hosting a two-part virtual workshop series that began July 28 and concluded Sept. 8, focusing on one key tenet of the Artemis Accords: the timely release of scientific data to the public and the international scientific community.

“As we return humans to the Moon, our Artemis efforts will help us unlock the full potential of scientific discovery through transparency, collaboration, and accessibility,” said Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist at NASA. “We are making data, tools, and results freely available, and inviting the Artemis Accords partners to innovate with us and share their data as well, accelerating our understanding of lunar processes and laying the groundwork for human space exploration for the Moon, Mars and beyond.”  

The two recent workshops added to discussions led by the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) in May, when signatories first explored ways to advance open data practices and created common ground for deeper conversations on open data. NASA split its follow‑on discussion about data sharing into two virtual sessions, so technical experts around the world could take part.

The agency hosted its first session on open science principles and implementation practices. It promoted interoperability and collaboration among signatories and advanced reproducibility, accessibility, and transparency in scientific work, including in NASA’s Artemis program.

The second session focused on tools for open science, providing Artemis Accords signatories with a working model to reference as they build or refine their own data-sharing frameworks.

“NASA is committed to leading by example when it comes to open science,” said Andrew Mitchell, deputy chief science data officer for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, whose office leads the agency’s open science efforts. “These workshops gave our Artemis Accords partners practical tools and a shared foundation to build on as we move forward together.”  

NASA presented the Planetary Data System, one of the agency’s primary archives for planetary science data, openly available lunar data, data visualization and analysis tools, and the system’s data information model standard, offering a real-world example of how NASA structures, curates, and shares scientific data with the world.

Across both sessions, NASA shared practices developed over years of stewarding scientific data and opened the floor to technical experts across the Artemis Accords community, reflecting a deliberate effort to build alignment at the working level.

“Advances in technology help enable open science, but technology alone is insufficient,” said Mitchell. “Open science requires a shift to a more transparent and collaborative scientific process, which will increase the pace and quality of scientific progress. Scientific processes and results should be as open and repeatable as possible to encourage further study.”

In 2020, NASA and the State Department joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords in response to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. They introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety and coordination between like-minded nations as they explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond, committing nations to:

• explore peaceably and transparently
• render aid to those in need
• enable access to scientific data
• ensure activities do not interfere with those of others
• preserve historically significant sites and artifacts by developing best practices

By signing the Artemis Accords, nations open the door to opportunities for future lunar exploration with NASA, advancing humanity’s return to the Moon, and shaping the Golden Age of space exploration and innovation.

Learn more about the Artemis Accords at: 

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords

Source: www.nasa.gov

Two galaxies merge at a furious rate in this Aug. 25, 2026, image of the II Zw 096 system. This and several other images of both visually and scientifically interesting galaxies were released by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes.

Chandra X-ray data (magenta) pinpoint powerful black hole activity and hot gas, while optical data (blue and white) from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope illuminate vast stellar nurseries hidden behind interstellar dust. Systems like II Zw 096 show us how powerful galaxy collisions shaped the early universe.

See more galaxy photos from Chandra.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major

Source: www.nasa.gov

3 Min Read

NASA’s Life-Saving Technology Where Cell Signals Can’t Go

Memorial Day weekend 2024 started with a blue sky and a mild three- to four-foot chop in the water off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi — a perfect day for a fishing competition. A team of five was about 40 miles offshore checking their sonar, and 30 seconds later the boat was gone. They were in the water struggling to pull on life jackets and grab the coolers as they bobbed up. When a boat sinks, survivors can be virtually invisible amid the vast expanse of water.

When their fishing trip went wrong, Easton Barrett had the only mobile phone and no cell service. He recorded a brief farewell, planning to put his phone in a cooler in hopes someone would find it.

Another team member activated a personal locator beacon (PLB) that had been stowed at the last minute, which sent a distress signal to the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SARSAT) technology carried by multiple satellites in Earth orbit. In the SARSAT system, developed partly by NASA, an emergency signal containing the transmitter’s location is directed to the nearest available ground station.

A mission control center then alerts rescue coordination centers to mobilize search and rescue crews. For Barrett and his crew, that was a Florida Coast Guard boat.

“Ever since, I have tried to teach others about safety on the water and in the outdoors by using a PLB,” said Barrett. “If that will save one life, it’s worth the effort.”

A beacon like the one that saved his crew, a registered ResQLink PLB developed by ACR Electronics Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also notifies the device owner’s emergency contact, indicating a distress call was activated. All emergency beacons must meet the same requirements to ensure they work when needed. Every rugged, buoyant, handheld devices have a five- to 10-year battery life.

SARSAT began operations in 1982, becoming an international collaboration in 1985. The flight and ground technologies used globally were originally developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Now there are 62 satellites in the program and 45 nations contributing services, from operating ground stations to providing rescue crews. More than 63,000 lives have been saved.

SARSAT by the Numbers

The Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking system developed over several decades by NASA and other government agencies saves lives on land or at sea.

• 1982 — the start of U.S. operations
• 1985 — the start of international operations
• 62 operational satellites
• 45 nations contributing services
• 63,000+ lives saved

One rescue in 2024 demonstrates how it all comes together.

• 40 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast
• 5-person team participating in a fishing competition 
• 30 seconds for a boat to sink
• 200 pounds of bait dumped to make a cooler buoyant
• 3 close encounters with wildlife, likely sharks and eels
• 4 hours in the water
• 1 personal locator beacon
• 1 Coast Guard rescue boat
• 5 lives saved

“If it has anything to do with NASA, it's got to be awesome.”

EASTOn Barrett

ACR Customer

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Source: www.nasa.gov

Media are invited to hear from NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts during a news conference beginning at 2:45 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Sept. 16, from the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will discuss their upcoming return to Earth. Learn where to watch online:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

Media interested in participating must contact the newsroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston no later than 5 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 15, at 281-483-5111 or [email protected]. To ask questions, media must dial into the news conference no later than 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.

Crew-12 joined Expedition 74/75 crew members aboard the space station and contributed to hundreds of experiments to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and to benefit humanity on Earth. Research included studying pneumonia-causing bacteria to improve cardiovascular treatments, on-demand intravenous fluid generation for future space missions, and how physical characteristics may affect blood flow during spaceflight.

The crew will depart the space station after the arrival of Crew-13 and a short handover period. Ahead of Crew-12’s return, mission teams will review weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of California prior to departure from station.

For more than 25 years, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station helps NASA understand and overcome the challenges of human spaceflight, expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit, and build on the foundation for long-duration missions to the Moon, as part of the Artemis program, and to Mars.

Learn more about the International Space Station, its research, and crew, at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
[email protected]

Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
[email protected]

Source: www.nasa.gov

NASA is bringing artificial intelligence to the study of the Moon, helping researchers transform how they analyze the Moon’s surface. In an ongoing collaboration with IBM Research and several academic institutions, NASA has launched the NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model, among the first open-source AI models built specifically for lunar science. The model, trained primarily on data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), is hosted publicly on Hugging Face for anyone to use, with the complete codebase available on GitHub for testing and experimentation.

The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model supports the next generation of lunar science by helping researchers quickly analyze vast quantities of data to better understand the Moon’s surface. Using the model as a mapping tool, researchers can rapidly develop actionable strategies for evaluating the Moon’s rugged surface, understanding its geological past, and planning future lunar research.

“NASA has spent decades building an extraordinary scientific record of the Moon, but collecting data is only part of the job,” said Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer and acting chief data and AI officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We also have to make data easier for scientists to explore and use. The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model shows what’s possible when we bring AI to NASA’s petabytes of scientific data. That’s a real opportunity we see with AI: turning large-scale data into new discoveries.”

Unlike traditional models that require building and training specialized algorithms from scratch for specific tasks, foundation models are pre-trained on vast, unlabeled datasets. The broad knowledge they acquire through pre-training allows them to generalize across multiple scientific domains through quick fine-tuning, making foundation models both versatile and efficient in accelerating scientific research.

Data collected by NASA’s LRO over the past 17 years was well-suited for training this foundation model because it covers most of the lunar surface in detail. The data produced from the LRO mission is larger than all other NASA planetary missions combined, capturing an almost seamless, high-resolution mosaic of the entire Moon. The NASA-IBM model was trained on roughly 2 million image tiles from this dataset, comprising more than 1 million high-resolution camera images at 1-meter resolution and nearly 964,000 multispectral images at 100-meter resolution. The model also was trained on high-resolution Moon imagery and terrain data from multiple other missions such as NASA’s GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory), NASA’s Lunar Prospector, and JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Selenological and Engineering Explorer.

Because the foundation model is already pre-trained on this dataset, planetary scientists can adapt the model to many different lunar research tasks such as mapping craters, spotting young volcanic features, and estimating where ice may exist near the lunar poles by using only small amounts of labeled data. For researchers who study the Moon’s polar ice, the NASA-IBM model can help them estimate where ice patches are likely to be stable, on and below the surface. Dark areas like the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions remain cold enough to trap and preserve ice for up to billions of years. Studying these areas offers insight into the Moon’s history and presents an opportunity to map potentially usable resources for future space exploration.

While the Moon is thought to no longer be volcanically active, it once experienced dynamic geological processes. For researchers studying lunar volcanism, the NASA-IBM model accelerates the identification of unusual looking volcanic features known as irregular mare patches. Because these structures appear relatively young, they challenge established timelines for lunar cooling, and mapping them could help scientists piece together a more accurate understanding of the Moon’s thermal evolution.

The model also can map surface features, such as craters, more efficiently than manual methods. Every crater is formed by an impact, making crater counts and measurements essential for dating the lunar surface and reconstructing solar system history. The foundation model helps speed up the process of identifying and measuring craters, allowing scientists to focus on interpreting findings and determining their implications for exploration.

Overall, the model matched or exceeded the performance of several other strong baseline models across all evaluated tasks, achieving comparable results on crater mapping and segmentation of irregular mare patches, while demonstrating a clear advantage on estimating polar ice stability.

The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model is part of the agency’s Office of the Chief Science Data Officer’s strategy for AI for science — a larger, ongoing collaboration between NASA and IBM aimed at using advanced AI to explore our planet and solar system. It joins a growing collection of AI models developed through this partnership, including:

• The Prithvi Models: a family of models pre-trained on Earth observation data and designed to support applications such as disaster monitoring, flood mapping, crop yield prediction, and hurricane prediction.
• The Surya Model: a heliophysics model trained on high-resolution solar observation data to predict space weather phenomena such as solar flares which can disrupt power grids and satellite operations.

Within NASA, the Impact AI team at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, collaborated with scientists in the agency’s Science Mission Directorate Planetary Science Division, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, to build the NASA-IBM model. The model is an example of open science in action, uniting experts from NASA, industry, and academia to turn raw data into a resource for lunar discovery. To support the global research community, the team released comprehensive machine learning-ready pre-training datasets and benchmark collections alongside the model, which is integrated into the open-source TerraTorch toolkit. Supported by a companion paper available on Hugging Face, this open release ensures reproducible research and equips scientists worldwide to build, compare, and refine AI models for the future of lunar exploration.

The science team, assembled by NASA Headquarters, included experts from the Universities Space Research Association in Huntsville, Alabama; the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley, California; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Catonsville, Maryland; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Planetary Science Division; NASA Ames; and NASA Goddard.

For more information about NASA’s strategy of developing foundation models for science, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/artificial-intelligence-science

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After the 9/11 attacks, watching from the tarmac was no longer enough for Army Lt. Col. Julie Kendrick. She traded in her airline uniform for camouflage — stepping forward to enlist as a unit supply specialist and to fuel the fight from the front lines.

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Maryland had four delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Charles Carroll had the most to lose. 

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Retired Air Force Col. Rolando Aguilar, a former Texas Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot, remembers the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a day off that turned into a scramble to intercept an inbound aircraft he didn’t yet know was Air Force One. 

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To commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the National Museum of the United States Army opened an exhibit that chronicles what the Army and the Army Corps of Engineers did in the minutes, days and months following the tragedy to help the nation rebuild.

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