NASA

Who is in your #NASAMoonCrew?

Three illustrations of people in orange flight suits are placed at angles against a brown wood backdrop. Each of the images has a white border like that of an instant photo; at the bottom of each, there is black text that says "#NASAMoonCrew." The top image is of the Artemis II crew smiling with their arms crossed. From left: NASA astronauts Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen are pictured. The second illustration is a group of friends smiling and taking a selfie. The group is wearing a version of the orange Orion Crew Survival System suit. The third illustration shows a family building a fort in their house. The group is wearing a version of the orange Orion Crew Survival System suit. A child inside the tent holds an SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. Credit: NASA

NASA will launch the Artemis II mission this year, sending four astronauts on an approximately 10-day journey around the Moon. The test flight will expand our presence in deep space, to set the stage for future lunar surface missions and to gain knowledge we need to send humans to Mars.

Choosing a crew for missions to the Moon requires the right mix of skills and attributes. All four astronauts not only bring different strengths and expertise to the mission, but they also must work well together in high-pressure situations.

That’s why we want to know: who is YOUR #NASAMoonCrew? Tell us who you would choose to go with you on a trip around the Moon? Who is driving? Who is bringing the snacks? Who is making the Moon-trip playlist?

Share your photos, art, videos—anything depicting your crew—with the world! Do a photoshoot decked out in your favorite NASA gear. Write a song about what your favorite TV show characters would be like on the journey. Make a stop motion animation of you and your besties flying around the Moon.

How to Show Us Your #NASAMoonCrew:

Post your chosen crew members to your preferred social media platform
Don’t forget to use the hashtag #NASAMoonCrew!

If a #NASAMoonCrew post catches our attention, we may share your post on our NASA social media accounts or during the Artemis II mission coverage. Terms and guidelines here.

Expert Mode: Want to take it to the next level? Your crew is limited to four people total, and you need to assign Artemis II roles (commander, pilot, mission specialist I, and mission specialist II) to each of your crew members. Don’t forget to name your spacecraft! (The Artemis II crew named their spacecraft Integrity.)

NASA NASAMoonCrew Artemis space Moon Artemis II

Our Next Big Eye on the Cosmos is Complete!

Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully assembled! Once it passes final tests, it will move to our Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations this summer. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026.

A view from behind of two people in head-to-toe white suits in the foreground. They are looking up at a huge spacecraft in the background in a large open room with a viewing window on the wall at the left. The spacecraft is several stories tall and has three large black solar panels deployed. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The observatory is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer who made cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space. The Roman Space Telescope will build on her legacy by sending back a flood of incredible celestial images and data.

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NASA astronomy telescope space science STEM galaxies universe Milky Way exoplanets dark matter dark energy Roman Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope James Webb Space Telescope stars nebulae black holes Youtube

An image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showing the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. The comet is a small white dot in the center of the image, with a light blue halo of light that takes up most of the image. Other stars are shown streaking across the image as diagonal blue-white lines. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third object we’ve ever seen passing through our solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy. 3I/ATLAS doesn’t pose a threat to Earth, and the closest it’ll get to our home planet (on Dec. 19) is about 170 million miles—nearly twice the distance between Earth and the Sun.

That doesn’t mean our scientists aren’t keeping a close eye on it, though! Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS give us a unique opportunity to learn more about what solar systems beyond ours are made of, so NASA spacecraft, satellites, and even our Mars rovers have been watching the comet as it arcs through our neighborhood.

This image of 3I/ATLAS was taken by our Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 30, when the comet was about 178 million miles from Earth. Follow the latest updates on our 3I/ATLAS blog.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

NASA space atlas 3iatlas comet skywatching astronomy 3i/atlas

Milky Way Anatomy

If we could see our galaxy, the Milky Way, from the outside, it would look like an enormous, bedazzled pinwheel. Vast sprays of stars form spiral arms that curl outward from a bright center that bulges like the yolk in a fried egg. Dark, dusty tendrils darken some regions, while glowing pink gas clouds light up others.

An artist’s concept of our Milky Way galaxy, highlighting its main components: the disk, bulge, stellar halo, and dark matter halo. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Alt text: Infographic labeled Milky Way Anatomy. At the left, a face-on galaxy labeled “disk, 100,000 ly across,” has three components labeled: bar, 16,000 ly long, pointing to the bright, oblong core; spiral arms, pointing to the streams of stars that wrap around the core of the galaxy counter-clockwise; and interstellar medium, thin gas, dust, and particles between stars, pointing to a place in between the spiral arms. At the top right, an edge-on view of the galaxy looks like a CD with a ping pong ball in the middle. It’s labeled thin disk, 1,000 ly thick, pointing to the middle of the disk, and thick disk, up to 6,000 ly thick, pointing to an area slightly above the main part of the disk. The brightly glowing center is labeled bulge, contains supermassive black hole and 10 billion stars. Underneath, there are two zoomed out views of the face-on galaxy – one labeled stellar halo, 300,000 ly across has the galaxy surrounded by a faint glow. The other, labeled dark matter halo, 1 million ly across, is more zoomed out and surrounded in a mottled purple glow. Credit: NASA

We have a pretty good idea of the Milky Way’s overall structure, but since we’re nestled inside it, fine details are hard to see. Those clouds of gas and dust strewn throughout interstellar space block our view, especially of the far side of the galaxy. Astronomers have used observations from different telescopes to piece together our galaxy’s anatomy. Let’s scrub up and dive in!