What’s up for April? ☄️
Don’t miss Mercury at its brightest for the year, the Lyrid meteor shower, and your best chance to see comet c/2025 R3.
Tag your stargazing buddies below!
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” -Carl Sagan
This iconic image, which would come to be known as the Pale Blue Dot, was taken by Voyager 1 on Valentine’s Day 1990.
The spacecraft, which had launched in 1977, was speeding out of the solar system — beyond Neptune and about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun — when mission managers commanded it to look back toward home one final time.
In it, the Earth appears as a single pixel in a dark expanse — small, fragile, and irreplaceable.
After snapping the Pale Blue Dot and other “family photos,” Voyager 1 powered off its cameras forever.
Can you think of another single image that has inspired as much love for our home planet?
#PaleBlueDot #Voyager #ValentinesDay #OTD #history #NASA #JPL
Sometimes you grow up to meet your heroes – and sometimes, you grow up to join them.
Meet Kathleen Harmon, @NASAArtemis II interface manager for the Deep Space Network. Deeply inspired by the Apollo missions as a child, Kathleen helped lead humanity’s return to deep space, and prepared the Deep Space Network to support the Artemis II spacecraft before launch.
Percy is roving the “Western Frontier” of Mars 🤠
It’s the farthest west our Perseverance rover has explored since landing in Jezero Crater in 2021, and it’s an ancient landscape that may predate the crater itself.
Assembled from 61 individual images, this selfie shows the rover beside a circular abrasion patch on a nearby rock. By grinding away the rock’s outer surface, the rover gives the science team back on Earth a closer look at what lies beneath.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
#NASA #Mars #Perseverance #WildWest
NASA’s #MissionToPsyche – on its way to explore a mysterious, metal-rich asteroid – is about to get a major speed boost from the Red Planet.
On May 15, the Psyche spacecraft will pass within about 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) of the Martian surface.
The maneuver will save propellant and also give the Psyche team a chance to calibrate the science instruments and grab some close-up snapshots of Mars!
Next stop: the asteroid Psyche, where the mission will enter orbit in 2029.
NASA is pushing the limits of flight on Mars – by spinning helicopter rotor blades so fast they break the sound barrier. 🚁
In a recent test, the rotor tips reached the supersonic speed of Mach 1.08.
The faster a Mars helicopter’s rotors spin, the more science instruments it can carry and the farther it can fly, helping scientists and mission planners pave the way for the next era of exploration.
Got something weighing you down? Shake it off (like Curiosity)!
The Martian explorer unintentionally picked up a rock while drilling a recent sample, but the team was able to dislodge it by having the rover move its robotic arm and vibrate the drill until the rock fell off.
The rock was roughly six inches thick and weighed about 28 pounds (about 13 kilograms).
What’s up for May? 🔭
Look up this month to see meteors from the tail of Halley’s comet, a Moon-Venus conjunction, and to top it off, a rare Blue Moon!
Which of these cosmic events do you plan to see?
The ground beneath Mexico City is slowly sinking, and now, the NISAR satellite can track it from space.
New data shows parts of the city (in blue) that sank more than half an inch (more than 2 cm) per month from Oct. 2025 to Jan. 2026. The findings are not surprising because Mexico City is already known as one of the fastest-sinking capitals in the world, but they do show how quickly and reliably NISAR can track changes across Earth’s surface. Several generations of space-based radar have tracked Mexico City, and NISAR is now advancing these efforts.
NISAR is a collaboration between @NASA and @isro.dos
Powering the next giant leap.
A novel electromagnetic thruster that runs on lithium metal vapor was successfully fired up for the first time during initial tests at JPL. The prototype achieved power levels more than 25 times that of the highest-power electric thrusters on any current NASA spacecraft.
Fully developed and paired with a nuclear power source, lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thrusters could reduce launch mass and support payloads required for human Mars missions.
One planet. Two timelines. ⏳
You probably know that NASA has two rovers on Mars – but did you know they’re exploring entirely different chapters of the planet’s past?
Separated by 2,300 miles, the two rovers are uncovering clues from very different moments in Martian history. Perseverance is on the rim of Jezero Crater, where it’s studying some of the oldest Martian terrain ever explored while searching for signs of ancient microbial life. Meanwhile, Curiosity is climbing Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, where layers of rock reveal how Mars’ climate changed as water dried up from its surface.
Together, the missions are helping scientists reconstruct how Mars formed, when and where water existed, and the planet’s history of having the right conditions to support life. Their discoveries are offering a clearer picture of how Mars became the dry and dusty world we know today.
This week, @NASAAdmin Jared Isaacman announced that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on track to launch in early September!
Flying aboard the telescope is the Roman Coronagraph, which was designed and built at JPL. The instrument will block starlight to help scientists better image distant exoplanets.
Let the countdown begin!
