Haygen Warren

Following a six-month battle to regain communication with its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft around Mars, NASA announced the conclusion of the MAVEN mission on June 3rd. The mission, which launched to the red planet in 2013, studied the Martian atmosphere and its evolution for 11 years — over a decade longer than initially expected.

SpaceX is set to launch a demonstration mission for its Starfall reentry vehicle early on Tuesday morning. Falcon 9 is scheduled to liftoff at 6:43 AM EDT (10:43 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Weather is 95% “go” for launch, with the only concerns being the cumulus cloud rule.

NASA's next space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, arrived at Kennedy Space Center in late June ahead of its scheduled launch on Aug. 30 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A. Since its arrival at the Cape, the telescope has achieved several launch-processing milestones, including being moved to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility and flipped vertical.

Following two flybys of Jupiter's innermost Galilean moon Io, teams using data from NASA's Juno spacecraft have revealed the first measurements of the temperature below Io's surface. The flybys revealed substantial subsurface heating on the moon, as well as a surface that is extremely smooth and composed of low-density materials.

With a scheduled launch date of Aug. 30, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is quickly approaching launch. In preparation for the launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, teams have achieved several notable pre-launch milestones since its arrival at the Cape in June. These milestones include cleaning and inspecting the telescope's solar panels, fueling the telescope's tanks, and integrating operations with SpaceX launch equipment.

NASA and SpaceX have launched NASA's next great space observatory — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Launched atop a Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Roman will travel to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, where it will use two instruments — the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument — to search for exoplanets, dark energy, and other astrophysical phenomena.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched on Sunday, Aug. 30, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While the telescope still has several weeks of travel before reaching its orbital destination at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), teams have been busy commissioning the telescope — activating communications systems, bringing instruments online, and more.

Using NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a team of scientists has discovered the largest, newly formed crater ever found in the solar system. Identified during a routine data-quality check as a bright spot with a dark halo, the discovery highlights the ever-changing landscape of our celestial neighbor.

Teams using the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope — both jointly operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, with the Canadian Space Agency also participating in Webb — have recently released several dazzling photos highlighting the complex and ever-changing uniqueness of our universe. Webb’s images highlight a stellar nursery and galaxy cluster, while Hubble’s images show an out-of-sync galaxy and a bubble-like nebula.