NASA
First Steps: America’s Grueling Second Spacewalk
First Steps: America’s Grueling Second Spacewalk
One year after Gemini IV astronaut Edward H. White completed NASA’s first spacewalk the agency prepared for a demanding second excursion. Originally scheduled for Gemini VIII, the extravehicular activity (EVA) was reassigned to Gemini IX-A after that mission ended early, with Gene Cernan taking on the task.
On June 5, 1966—the mission’s third day—Cernan exited the spacecraft and quickly found himself fighting his own equipment. His spacesuit was so rigid that even simple movements required intense effort. He struggled to complete the simplest maneuvers.
Within minutes, Cernan was exhausted and sweating profusely. His spacesuit was cooled only through the circulation of oxygen and as he worked to complete the goals of the EVA, his helmet fogged over completely, obstructing his view and his heart rate rose to about 180 beats per minute. As concerns grew that he might lose consciousness, the EVA was called off and Cernan’s spacewalk ended after two hours and eight minutes.
When Gemini IX-A returned to Earth, doctors found that Cernan had lost 13 pounds during the three-day mission, most of it water lost during his EVA.
The challenges Cernan faced that day reshaped NASA’s approach to spacewalking. His experience directly influenced improved training methods, refined EVA procedures, and precipitated advances in spacesuit design—key steps in preparing astronauts for lunar surface missions just a few years later.
Credit: NASA
First Steps: America’s Grueling Second Spacewalk
One year after Gemini IV astronaut Edward H. White completed NASA’s first spacewalk the agency prepared for a demanding second excursion. Originally scheduled for Gemini VIII, the extravehicular activity (EVA) was reassigned to Gemini IX-A after that mission ended early, with Gene Cernan taking on the task.
On June 5, 1966—the mission’s third day—Cernan exited the spacecraft and quickly found himself fighting his own equipment. His spacesuit was so rigid that even simple movements required intense effort. He struggled to complete the simplest maneuvers.
Within minutes, Cernan was exhausted and sweating profusely. His spacesuit was cooled only through the circulation of oxygen and as he worked to complete the goals of the EVA, his helmet fogged over completely, obstructing his view and his heart rate rose to about 180 beats per minute. As concerns grew that he might lose consciousness, the EVA was called off and Cernan’s spacewalk ended after two hours and eight minutes.
When Gemini IX-A returned to Earth, doctors found that Cernan had lost 13 pounds during the three-day mission, most of it water lost during his EVA.
The challenges Cernan faced that day reshaped NASA’s approach to spacewalking. His experience directly influenced improved training methods, refined EVA procedures, and precipitated advances in spacesuit design—key steps in preparing astronauts for lunar surface missions just a few years later.
Credit: NASA
Fighting Fire With Fire
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Fighting Fire With Fire
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NASA Hosts 2026 Review on Advanced Composite Manufacturing
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Boeing assembles a composite aircraft fuselage section in one of its production facilities. Composite materials are used in major portions of modern aircraft, including sections of the fuselage and wings on aircraft such as the Boeing 787. NASA’s HiCAM project aims to help accelerate manufacturing processes for future composite aircraft. BoeingNASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project brought together its full team of Advanced Composites Consortium partners for a 2026 spring review at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The meeting took place May 5-7, bringing together about 150 people from the consortium, a 22-member public-private partnership.
The review gave NASA and industry partners a chance to look at recent progress and plan for the work ahead. NASA announced recent portfolio decisions, selecting technologies that can have the greatest impact on manufacturing rate for the next airplane program.
During the meeting, teams reviewed the latest results from the project’s Development Phase and discussed early progress under Phase 2, known as the Demonstration Phase. This phase will scale up key manufacturing technologies in the coming years.
A major part of the event included full-day workshops focused on assembly demonstrations of two large aircraft structures: the wing and fuselage. These sessions brought together NASA researchers, industry engineers, and partners to share updates, exchange ideas, and discuss long-term plans. Many teams said they noticed stronger collaboration and coordination across the group this year.
That collaboration supports HiCAM’s goal of large-scale manufacturing demonstrations of a composite fuselage barrel and wing box in 2028 and 2029. These demonstrations represent major project milestones and will help show how advanced composite materials and processes could support faster, lower cost aircraft production.
NASA and its partners continue to make steady progress toward the project’s goals. The project’s work could help pave the way for new manufacturing methods for lightweight composite structures that make future aircraft easier to build and more efficient to operate.
Kimiko Booker
NASA Langley Research Center
NASA Hosts 2026 Review on Advanced Composite Manufacturing
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Boeing assembles a composite aircraft fuselage section in one of its production facilities. Composite materials are used in major portions of modern aircraft, including sections of the fuselage and wings on aircraft such as the Boeing 787. NASA’s HiCAM project aims to help accelerate manufacturing processes for future composite aircraft. BoeingNASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project brought together its full team of Advanced Composites Consortium partners for a 2026 spring review at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
The meeting took place May 5-7, bringing together about 150 people from the consortium, a 22-member public-private partnership.
The review gave NASA and industry partners a chance to look at recent progress and plan for the work ahead. NASA announced recent portfolio decisions, selecting technologies that can have the greatest impact on manufacturing rate for the next airplane program.
During the meeting, teams reviewed the latest results from the project’s Development Phase and discussed early progress under Phase 2, known as the Demonstration Phase. This phase will scale up key manufacturing technologies in the coming years.
A major part of the event included full-day workshops focused on assembly demonstrations of two large aircraft structures: the wing and fuselage. These sessions brought together NASA researchers, industry engineers, and partners to share updates, exchange ideas, and discuss long-term plans. Many teams said they noticed stronger collaboration and coordination across the group this year.
That collaboration supports HiCAM’s goal of large-scale manufacturing demonstrations of a composite fuselage barrel and wing box in 2028 and 2029. These demonstrations represent major project milestones and will help show how advanced composite materials and processes could support faster, lower cost aircraft production.
NASA and its partners continue to make steady progress toward the project’s goals. The project’s work could help pave the way for new manufacturing methods for lightweight composite structures that make future aircraft easier to build and more efficient to operate.
Kimiko Booker
NASA Langley Research Center
NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll
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Wildfire smoke is stoking a new challenge for cleaner air. A NASA-supported study published Thursday found that, over the last decade, wildfires have worsened ground-level ozone pollution across much of the contiguous United States, creating unhealthy air far from active flames.
Wildfires have become an increasingly important contributor to ground-level ozone, or smog, across much of the United States, researchers report June 4 in the journal Science. Nationally, fires offset nearly four years’ worth of ozone-control gains, with larger setbacks in the West and Midwest.
Smoke often is associated with the soot, ash, and other fine particles that make the air look hazy. But wildfires also emit gases such as carbon monoxide, which can help form surface ozone in sunlight when other pollutants are present. Surface ozone is an invisible pollutant harmful to human health, plants, and crops. As smoke plumes travel and mix with other pollution, those reactions can drive ozone increases hundreds or even thousands of miles from active fires.
“NASA Earth observations, along with ground monitoring networks, help reveal air quality risks from wildfires that can cross state lines, giving air quality managers better decision-making information as wildfire smoke affects more communities,” said John Haynes, manager of NASA Earth Action’s Health and Air Quality program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “This is a strong example of NASA science serving communities here in the U.S.”
Building a clearer ozone pictureHigh in the atmosphere, ozone shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Near the ground, however, ozone can irritate lungs, worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases, and increase health risks for children, older adults, outdoor workers, and people with existing health conditions.
To track surface ozone changes, researchers turned to deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that finds patterns across large datasets. They used it to build a first-of-its-kind dataset estimating daily surface ozone from 2003 to 2024 on a kilometer-by-kilometer grid — about 0.6 miles on each side — across the contiguous U.S. The work received support from NASA’s Health and Air Quality program and other NASA grants.
The scientists combined data from about 1,000 ground-based air quality stations with atmospheric model data, weather information, wildfire pollution data, and satellite-derived information, including products from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments.
Smoke from Canada’s 2023 wildfires spread across North America. Tan to deep red colors show smoke intensity, estimated from black carbon in NASA’s GEOS-FP model. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) and NASA’s Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO)Their analysis revealed two distinct periods. From 2003 to 2015, U.S. ground-level ozone generally declined as emissions of ozone-forming pollutants decreased. After 2015, however, those gains slowed or reversed in many places. By comparing estimated ozone levels with scenarios that removed wildfire influence, the researchers found that pollution from wildfires was a main factor in that shift.
Without the wildfire contribution, ground-level ozone in the Midwest, for example, would likely have continued to decline. Instead, wildfires erased about 5.3 years’ worth of ozone-control progress since 2015.
“People in the Midwest may think fires burning far away will not affect them,” said the study’s corresponding author Jun Wang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “But once wildfire pollution is in the air, it can move across regions. Pollution from one place can affect air quality in another.”
Measuring the health tollThe study also found that wildfire-driven ozone increased exposure to unhealthy air and likely contributed to premature deaths. Premature deaths associated with long-term wildfire-related ozone exposure in the U.S. increased by an estimated 318 deaths per year after 2013, with the post-2013 average 46% higher than in the previous decade. The researchers calculated premature deaths using average lifespan, ozone exposure estimates, and population density.
The 2023 Canadian wildfires showed how widely those risks can spread, with smoke-driven ozone increases stretching across the Midwest and into parts of the Northeast and South. Overall, from 2022 to 2024, wildfires exposed an additional 43 million people in the U.S. to conditions that did not meet current federal air quality standards for ozone, the researchers estimated.
Capturing that national picture is difficult from ground monitors alone. Ground monitors remain the backbone of U.S. air quality tracking, but they do not cover every community. NASA’s scientifically validated satellite observations and models help researchers and agencies see air quality patterns across states, regions, and fire seasons.
That broader air quality work includes newer missions such as TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution). Launched in 2023, TEMPO is NASA’s first mission to use a space-based spectrometer to provide hourly daytime measurements of air quality over North America. Its view is sharp enough to distinguish pollution patterns, including surface ozone, across areas only a few square miles wide, a major improvement over earlier satellites.
Together, these capabilities help researchers and agencies see smoke-related ozone patterns that might otherwise be harder to detect, especially in rural and remote areas.
The work also points toward a practical use of NASA science during fire season. Wang’s team has used NASA support to develop FireAQ, a decision-support system that brings satellite observations, model forecasts, and fire and aerosol products into weekly briefings with state and local air quality officials. The goal is to help officials see where smoke-related pollution may move next and give communities better information.
Discover more about NASA’s air quality observations
About the Author Emily DeMarco Writer/Editor (IV), Earth Science Division
Share
Details Last Updated Jun 05, 2026 Contact Emily DeMarco emily.p.demarco@nasa.gov Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Explore More 3 min read Fighting Fire With FireIn fire-prone ecosystems in Australia’s Northern Territory, prescribed burns are lit to minimize the severity…
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NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll
- Earth
- Explore
- Science at Work
- Multimedia
- Data
- For Researchers
- About Us
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Wildfire smoke is stoking a new challenge for cleaner air. A NASA-supported study published Thursday found that, over the last decade, wildfires have worsened ground-level ozone pollution across much of the contiguous United States, creating unhealthy air far from active flames.
Wildfires have become an increasingly important contributor to ground-level ozone, or smog, across much of the United States, researchers report June 4 in the journal Science. Nationally, fires offset nearly four years’ worth of ozone-control gains, with larger setbacks in the West and Midwest.
Smoke often is associated with the soot, ash, and other fine particles that make the air look hazy. But wildfires also emit gases such as carbon monoxide, which can help form surface ozone in sunlight when other pollutants are present. Surface ozone is an invisible pollutant harmful to human health, plants, and crops. As smoke plumes travel and mix with other pollution, those reactions can drive ozone increases hundreds or even thousands of miles from active fires.
“NASA Earth observations, along with ground monitoring networks, help reveal air quality risks from wildfires that can cross state lines, giving air quality managers better decision-making information as wildfire smoke affects more communities,” said John Haynes, manager of NASA Earth Action’s Health and Air Quality program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “This is a strong example of NASA science serving communities here in the U.S.”
Building a clearer ozone pictureHigh in the atmosphere, ozone shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Near the ground, however, ozone can irritate lungs, worsen asthma and other respiratory diseases, and increase health risks for children, older adults, outdoor workers, and people with existing health conditions.
To track surface ozone changes, researchers turned to deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that finds patterns across large datasets. They used it to build a first-of-its-kind dataset estimating daily surface ozone from 2003 to 2024 on a kilometer-by-kilometer grid — about 0.6 miles on each side — across the contiguous U.S. The work received support from NASA’s Health and Air Quality program and other NASA grants.
The scientists combined data from about 1,000 ground-based air quality stations with atmospheric model data, weather information, wildfire pollution data, and satellite-derived information, including products from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments.
Smoke from Canada’s 2023 wildfires spread across North America. Tan to deep red colors show smoke intensity, estimated from black carbon in NASA’s GEOS-FP model. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) and NASA’s Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO)Their analysis revealed two distinct periods. From 2003 to 2015, U.S. ground-level ozone generally declined as emissions of ozone-forming pollutants decreased. After 2015, however, those gains slowed or reversed in many places. By comparing estimated ozone levels with scenarios that removed wildfire influence, the researchers found that pollution from wildfires was a main factor in that shift.
Without the wildfire contribution, ground-level ozone in the Midwest, for example, would likely have continued to decline. Instead, wildfires erased about 5.3 years’ worth of ozone-control progress since 2015.
“People in the Midwest may think fires burning far away will not affect them,” said the study’s corresponding author Jun Wang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “But once wildfire pollution is in the air, it can move across regions. Pollution from one place can affect air quality in another.”
Measuring the health tollThe study also found that wildfire-driven ozone increased exposure to unhealthy air and likely contributed to premature deaths. Premature deaths associated with long-term wildfire-related ozone exposure in the U.S. increased by an estimated 318 deaths per year after 2013, with the post-2013 average 46% higher than in the previous decade. The researchers calculated premature deaths using average lifespan, ozone exposure estimates, and population density.
The 2023 Canadian wildfires showed how widely those risks can spread, with smoke-driven ozone increases stretching across the Midwest and into parts of the Northeast and South. Overall, from 2022 to 2024, wildfires exposed an additional 43 million people in the U.S. to conditions that did not meet current federal air quality standards for ozone, the researchers estimated.
Capturing that national picture is difficult from ground monitors alone. Ground monitors remain the backbone of U.S. air quality tracking, but they do not cover every community. NASA’s scientifically validated satellite observations and models help researchers and agencies see air quality patterns across states, regions, and fire seasons.
That broader air quality work includes newer missions such as TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution). Launched in 2023, TEMPO is NASA’s first mission to use a space-based spectrometer to provide hourly daytime measurements of air quality over North America. Its view is sharp enough to distinguish pollution patterns, including surface ozone, across areas only a few square miles wide, a major improvement over earlier satellites.
Together, these capabilities help researchers and agencies see smoke-related ozone patterns that might otherwise be harder to detect, especially in rural and remote areas.
The work also points toward a practical use of NASA science during fire season. Wang’s team has used NASA support to develop FireAQ, a decision-support system that brings satellite observations, model forecasts, and fire and aerosol products into weekly briefings with state and local air quality officials. The goal is to help officials see where smoke-related pollution may move next and give communities better information.
Discover more about NASA’s air quality observations
About the Author Emily DeMarco Writer/Editor (IV), Earth Science Division
Share
Details Last Updated Jun 05, 2026 Contact Emily DeMarco emily.p.demarco@nasa.gov Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Explore More 3 min read Fighting Fire With FireIn fire-prone ecosystems in Australia’s Northern Territory, prescribed burns are lit to minimize the severity…
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Air pollution is a significant threat to human health and our environment. Instruments on NASA satellites, along with airborne and…
Wildfires
Landsat satellites monitor wildfire extent, burn severity, and post-fire recovery since the 1970s, helping managers assess damage, improve safety, estimate…
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Colorful, Chaotic Jupiter
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this color-enhanced view of Jupiter’s northern hemisphere during its 61st close flyby of the giant planet on May 12, 2024.
Citizen scientist Gary Eason made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument, applying digital processing techniques to enhance color and clarity. It provides a detailed view of chaotic clouds and cyclonic storms in an area known to scientists as a folded filamentary region. In these regions, the zonal jets that create the familiar banded patterns in Jupiter’s clouds break down, leading to turbulent patterns and cloud structures that rapidly evolve over the course of only a few days.
Learn more about opportunities to do NASA science with citizen science projects.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Gary Eason © CC BY
Colorful, Chaotic Jupiter
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this color-enhanced view of Jupiter’s northern hemisphere during its 61st close flyby of the giant planet on May 12, 2024.
Citizen scientist Gary Eason made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument, applying digital processing techniques to enhance color and clarity. It provides a detailed view of chaotic clouds and cyclonic storms in an area known to scientists as a folded filamentary region. In these regions, the zonal jets that create the familiar banded patterns in Jupiter’s clouds break down, leading to turbulent patterns and cloud structures that rapidly evolve over the course of only a few days.
Learn more about opportunities to do NASA science with citizen science projects.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Gary Eason © CC BY
Colorful, Chaotic Jupiter
A Moonlit Earth as Seen From Artemis II
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A Moonlit Earth as Seen From Artemis II
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4908-4912: Goodbye Campo Marte, It’s Been Fun!
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4908-4912: Goodbye Campo Marte, It’s Been Fun! NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the inlet on its Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction instrument (CheMin), which is about the size of a laptop computer and sits inside rover’s body, where it analyzes the chemical composition of rocks and soil. Curiosity captured the image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a close-up camera located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, on May 28, 2026 — Sol 4908, or Martian day 4,908 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission — at 11:14:14 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSBy Susanne P. Schwenzer, Professor of Planetary Mineralogy at The Open University, UK
Earth planning date: Friday, May 29, 2026
Drilling always keeps the rover in place for a little while, and our 47th successful drill, “Campo Marte,” was no exception. The team used the time wisely and on top of the drilling, we also have many observations. Thinking for a long time about a workspace always gets me attached to the area — some more than others; at the shorter stops, especially — when I am on shift several times during this time. I was Science Operations Working Group chair three times while we were here, so it’s a real “Goodbye” for me today as we are driving onward to reach the next area up the hill on Mount Sharp.
The Campo Marte drill was successful, as my colleague Abigail Fraeman reported last week. This week was spent investigating the aftermath of the drilling, which means running the CheMin instrument to get mineralogical data and the SAM instrument to inspect the volatile releases. ChemCam, APXS, MAHLI and Mastcam were also busy documenting the drill hole and the drill fines, as well as how much sample there was available overall.
Of course, Curiosity also had a very good look at the other interesting targets in the area! Besides all the work on the drill hole, ChemCam carried out an expert’s targeting exercise by setting two targets up to aim at two different layers on adjacent spots on the finely laminated sediments. That involves aiming at millimeter-sized targets, named “Corcovado” and “Junakas,” respectively, about 3 meters away (about 10 feet)! We are curious if the layers are chemically different, which would tell us about different formation conditions, or if they are similar and the conditions when those layers formed were more similar. ChemCam is also looking at the target “Palcaya” to get more data on the chemistry of the layered bedrock, and will investigate the target “Alcamachi,” which is a float rock that looks intriguingly dark. Maybe that tells us it’s got a different chemistry? We will find out when we get the data!
In addition to the chemistry measurements, ChemCam will also carry out a spectral investigation on the target “Magallanas,” which was a little too far away to also point the laser at it, but is intriguingly dark. This last week, ChemCam also planned three long-distance RMIs to document the sedimentary structures — younger and older ones — in the surrounding area. One of them drew the suspicion that it might break a record: it might be the longest strip of RMI images we have taken in one mosaic! The jury is out, it’s 24 frames and this way links up with an earlier, shorter set of images. The reason the mosaic is so long is because it images a small ridge with sedimentary textures that could tell us about the depositional conditions when the rock layers formed. But how cool is that — at 13+ years to still break our own records?
Since our arrival, Mastcam has been very busy getting the entire region around us imaged. In addition, some higher-resolution mosaics have been taken, most notably one of the locations where the remaining sample was dropped, and then of the workspace to see again how much sample might — or might not — have been left in the drill stem and fallen out when Curiosity did the motions that are designed to shake any remaining sample out of the drill, to leave it prepared for the next time. Another imaging task, but for MAHLI, is to always image the sample inlets, also, to see if they are clean and prepared for the next sample. I included the MAHLI image of the CheMin inlet — don’t worry about the little rock, it’s with us for a while, and the CheMin team now calls it “our pet rock.”
APXS joined the drill-hole investigations and has been focused on it even more than usual. The team decided that this is a very good opportunity to increase counting statistics beyond the usual and well-tested levels by significantly increasing the measurement time. To achieve that, it measured the Campo Marte drill fines in all plans of this week. And on the last night of that, MAHLI gets out its LED lights to finish the experiment with a sparkling nighttime MAHLI experiment to document it all.
Our environmental team has kept the rover busy by looking at atmospheric opacity, dust activity, dust-devil activity and, of course, also monitoring the environment in general. With all this finished, the rover will continue its way up the hill to the next interesting area. I heard something like “cross-bedding” during the discussions, but as a mineralogist, I just note that that decision was taken by people who know more about sediments than I do, while I am itching to see the CheMin mineralogy results!
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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4908-4912: Goodbye Campo Marte, It’s Been Fun!
- Curiosity Home
- Science
- News and Features
- Multimedia
- Mars Missions
- Mars Home
5 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4908-4912: Goodbye Campo Marte, It’s Been Fun! NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the inlet on its Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction instrument (CheMin), which is about the size of a laptop computer and sits inside rover’s body, where it analyzes the chemical composition of rocks and soil. Curiosity captured the image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a close-up camera located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, on May 28, 2026 — Sol 4908, or Martian day 4,908 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission — at 11:14:14 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSBy Susanne P. Schwenzer, Professor of Planetary Mineralogy at The Open University, UK
Earth planning date: Friday, May 29, 2026
Drilling always keeps the rover in place for a little while, and our 47th successful drill, “Campo Marte,” was no exception. The team used the time wisely and on top of the drilling, we also have many observations. Thinking for a long time about a workspace always gets me attached to the area — some more than others; at the shorter stops, especially — when I am on shift several times during this time. I was Science Operations Working Group chair three times while we were here, so it’s a real “Goodbye” for me today as we are driving onward to reach the next area up the hill on Mount Sharp.
The Campo Marte drill was successful, as my colleague Abigail Fraeman reported last week. This week was spent investigating the aftermath of the drilling, which means running the CheMin instrument to get mineralogical data and the SAM instrument to inspect the volatile releases. ChemCam, APXS, MAHLI and Mastcam were also busy documenting the drill hole and the drill fines, as well as how much sample there was available overall.
Of course, Curiosity also had a very good look at the other interesting targets in the area! Besides all the work on the drill hole, ChemCam carried out an expert’s targeting exercise by setting two targets up to aim at two different layers on adjacent spots on the finely laminated sediments. That involves aiming at millimeter-sized targets, named “Corcovado” and “Junakas,” respectively, about 3 meters away (about 10 feet)! We are curious if the layers are chemically different, which would tell us about different formation conditions, or if they are similar and the conditions when those layers formed were more similar. ChemCam is also looking at the target “Palcaya” to get more data on the chemistry of the layered bedrock, and will investigate the target “Alcamachi,” which is a float rock that looks intriguingly dark. Maybe that tells us it’s got a different chemistry? We will find out when we get the data!
In addition to the chemistry measurements, ChemCam will also carry out a spectral investigation on the target “Magallanas,” which was a little too far away to also point the laser at it, but is intriguingly dark. This last week, ChemCam also planned three long-distance RMIs to document the sedimentary structures — younger and older ones — in the surrounding area. One of them drew the suspicion that it might break a record: it might be the longest strip of RMI images we have taken in one mosaic! The jury is out, it’s 24 frames and this way links up with an earlier, shorter set of images. The reason the mosaic is so long is because it images a small ridge with sedimentary textures that could tell us about the depositional conditions when the rock layers formed. But how cool is that — at 13+ years to still break our own records?
Since our arrival, Mastcam has been very busy getting the entire region around us imaged. In addition, some higher-resolution mosaics have been taken, most notably one of the locations where the remaining sample was dropped, and then of the workspace to see again how much sample might — or might not — have been left in the drill stem and fallen out when Curiosity did the motions that are designed to shake any remaining sample out of the drill, to leave it prepared for the next time. Another imaging task, but for MAHLI, is to always image the sample inlets, also, to see if they are clean and prepared for the next sample. I included the MAHLI image of the CheMin inlet — don’t worry about the little rock, it’s with us for a while, and the CheMin team now calls it “our pet rock.”
APXS joined the drill-hole investigations and has been focused on it even more than usual. The team decided that this is a very good opportunity to increase counting statistics beyond the usual and well-tested levels by significantly increasing the measurement time. To achieve that, it measured the Campo Marte drill fines in all plans of this week. And on the last night of that, MAHLI gets out its LED lights to finish the experiment with a sparkling nighttime MAHLI experiment to document it all.
Our environmental team has kept the rover busy by looking at atmospheric opacity, dust activity, dust-devil activity and, of course, also monitoring the environment in general. With all this finished, the rover will continue its way up the hill to the next interesting area. I heard something like “cross-bedding” during the discussions, but as a mineralogist, I just note that that decision was taken by people who know more about sediments than I do, while I am itching to see the CheMin mineralogy results!
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NASA Finds New Way Earth May Have Received Elements Needed for Life
Illustration: ESO
NASA-supported scientists have provided new information about how the early Earth may have acquired some elements necessary for the planet to become habitable. They also suggest a new role for Jupiter in the distribution of these elements throughout the young solar system. The study, published today in Science Advances, examines this history by looking at the ratio of phosphorus to nitrogen in iron meteorites and in younger objects known as chondrites.
The study suggests that Earth acquired its inventory of the life-essential elements phosphorous and nitrogen primarily from the inner solar system, without requiring a significant contribution from outer solar system chondritesDebjeet Pathak
Rice University
Planetary system formationOur solar system formed from gas and dust that swirled around the proto-Sun more than 4.5 billion years ago. This gas contained the raw materials needed to form planets, moons, and ultimately life as we know it. Two elements of particular importance for life are nitrogen and phosphorus.
All life on Earth needs the same elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur (CHNOPS). These elements came from space, born inside stars and spread in clouds of gas and dust. Gravity then caused this material to gather together, forming new stars and smaller objects like planets. NASAIn the earliest stages of the solar system, gas and dust coalesced into bodies known as planetesimals. As these objects orbited the young Sun in this chaotic environment, planetesimals collided, leaving shattered remnants throughout the system. Eventually, many of these pieces were incorporated into planets and moons. Other pieces survive today as asteroids, still orbiting the Sun, and – if they have impacted the Earth and been recovered – as meteorites. These meteorites provide a window into the early solar system at a time before the Earth existed. Chondrites and iron meteorites are two different classes of these meteorites.
As their name suggests, iron meteorites are dense, metallic objects and are primarily made of iron-nickel alloy. Chondrites, on the other hand, are stony objects and they are responsible for most of the meteorites that have been found on Earth.
Each type of meteorite originates from planetesimals that formed at different times in our system. The oldest generation of planetesimals are the source of iron meteorites. Chondrites came from a second generation of planetesimals that formed 2-3 million years later.
Habitable planet buildingUnderstanding how the Earth was made and the timing of its formation is important for astrobiologists who study how and when our planet became habitable for life as we know it. The young Earth needed to have a supply of life’s ingredients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, for the first living cells to form.
There is debate between scientists over where Earth’s stock of life-essential elements came from. Some evidence points to chondrites in the outer solar system traveling inward to arrive at Earth late in our planet’s formation process. However, the new study tells a different story.
Using laboratory experiments and geochemical models, the team reconstructed a map of phosphorus-nitrogen (P/N) ratios across the early solar system and found differences between the first (iron meteorites) and second (chondrites) generations of planetesimals.
An illustration of our solar system. The asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter, separating our system into what we refer to as the inner and outer regions. NASA/JPL-CaltechThe experiments and subsequent geochemical modeling showed that the first generation had a higher ratio of P/N in the outer solar system, with that ratio decreasing toward the inner solar system. This trend was reversed in the second generation of planetesimals, with higher P/N ratios in the inner solar system.
The thought is that during the formation of the first generation of planetesimals, there was an outward flow of material that raised the P/N ratio in the outer solar system. Then came Jupiter.
For our own solar system, Jupiter’s presence and growth history, indeed, seem to have played a critical role in determining the distribution of the basic chemical ingredients necessary for habitable worlds.Rajdeep Dasgupta
Rice University
As Jupiter formed and grew to a tremendous size (and gravitational influence), the planet restricted the movement of phosphorus and nitrogen from the inner to outer solar system. This meant that when the second generation of planetesimals appeared, those in the inner solar system were left with a higher P/N ratio than their cousins further out.
“For our own solar system, Jupiter’s presence and growth history, indeed, seem to have played a critical role in determining the distribution of the basic chemical ingredients necessary for habitable worlds,” said Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University in Houston and senior author on the study. “It remains an open question whether a life-essential element budget similar to Earth’s can be established without a Jupiter-like planet in the population.”
Geochemical accretion modeling further shows that Earth’s present-day P/N signature is best reproduced by the inner solar system planetesimals, either those related to iron meteorites or those related to chondrites.
“The study suggests that Earth acquired its inventory of the life-essential elements phosphorous and nitrogen primarily from the inner solar system, without requiring a significant contribution from outer solar system chondrites,” said study lead author Debjeet Pathak, graduate student at Rice University.
For more information on astrobiology at NASA, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrobiology
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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