NASA said Wednesday it will brief reporters at 2 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Oct. 23, at Kennedy Space Center, on plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2028. The advisory says Artemis III will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test systems needed for later landings. Administrator Jared Isaacman, Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, and Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons are listed. The briefing has not happened. In-person media have to apply by noon Eastern on Friday, Oct. 16.
NASA said its Perseverance rover has driven farther on another world than any vehicle before it. On Oct. 11 the odometer hit 28.10 miles, or 45.22 kilometers, passing the 28.06 miles, or 45.16 kilometers, that Opportunity drove on Mars between 2004 and 2018. Perseverance reached the mark on its 2,006th Martian day. A drive of 299.6 feet that day, about 91 meters, put it over the line. The lab says more than 90 percent of the distance was driven with the rover choosing its own path between points picked on Earth.
NASA said Tuesday that astronaut Christina Koch will be the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer starting Nov. 1. She replaces Katherine Van Hooser, who retires Oct. 21 after more than 35 years. Koch will move to management-astronaut status, which means she will not be assigned to another flight. NASA says she spent 328 days on the space station, the longest single flight by a woman, and flew on Artemis II in April.
A paper in Nature on Monday describes a bacterial defense, called DRT10, that fights viruses by writing long strings of repeated DNA. The enzyme is a reverse transcriptase, a protein that copies RNA into DNA, and it works with a short RNA that is not itself a gene. The authors say the way it adds repeats matches telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens the ends of chromosomes in people and other animals and plants. A family tree of these enzymes, they write, puts telomerase in the same branch as this bacterial group, which they read as a shared origin. The finding is the paper’s. This desk read the abstract.
The World Health Organization on Monday launched a five-year strategy for its Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. The aim, it says, is a world in which every country can detect and understand a new health threat within 24 hours of its appearance by 2030. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced it at the opening of the World Health Summit in Berlin. The 24-hour mark is the goal. The announcement does not say countries can do it now.
The World Health Organization on Monday welcomed the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of a
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U.N. political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response
A United Nations General Assembly text adopted on Oct. 12, 2026. The World Health Organization says it recommits countries to prepare for pandemics. It is a political declaration, not a criminal law.
. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to finish the
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Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing annex
The unfinished piece of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. The director-general says countries have to finish it before that agreement can be signed and become international law.
An agreement the World Health Organization says countries have adopted but that is not yet in force. The director-general says it can be opened for signature only after they finish a pathogen-sharing annex.
can be opened for signature and, after ratification, become international law. The declaration is a political text. The agreement is not yet in force. This desk did not open the declaration file.
The sea ice around Antarctica reached its biggest size of the year on Sept. 14, but that peak was the third-smallest since satellites began tracking it in the late 1970s, NASA said Monday. At its height the ice covered about 6.79 million square miles (17.59 million square kilometers), by an estimate from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. NASA says the ice “likely reached” that peak on Sept. 14, and that the figures can be revised. The smallest peak on record came in 2023.
NASA, the U.S. space agency, on Friday released its final request for proposals for commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, the next step toward replacing the International Space Station with privately run outposts. Proposals are due Dec. 8. NASA expects to award contracts in spring 2027. It plans to pick two or more companies for early work, then hold a competition among them for final design, testing, and certification.
7-OH, or 7-hydroxymitragynine, is an opioid that occurs naturally in small amounts in the plant kratom. The Justice Department said Friday that the Drug Enforcement Administration will issue new notices of its intent to place 7-OH, and a related substance called MGPI, in
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Schedule I
The strictest drug category under the Controlled Substances Act, for substances the government says have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.
, the most restricted drug category. The new notice uses Health and Human Services thresholds meant to spare ordinary kratom products. It would cover products with more than 1 milligram per gram, or per milliliter, of the substances, or with too little of the plant's natural alkaloid relative to them. Two related opioids, MGM-15 and MGM-16, stay banned on an emergency basis while a new 30-day notice runs. The notices were not yet published.
Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo ship left the International Space Station on Friday when the station's robotic arm let it go at 12:44 p.m. Eastern, NASA said. It had been docked for nearly six months. Flight controllers plan to steer it into the atmosphere on Monday, where it will burn up with trash from the station. NASA will not show that live. On board are 12 small test capsules carrying new heat-shield materials. They will gather data as the ship falls.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. The committee said she has been instrumental in seeing that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted. Pillay grew up under apartheid in Durban, South Africa, and defended Nelson Mandela and others. She later served as a judge at the international tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court, and as the United Nations' top human rights official.
At a White House science summit on Thursday, the administration announced what it called more than $6 billion in investments from government, industry, universities, and philanthropy. The White House said eleven companies pledged $2.4 billion in science tools and computing credits for a federal push to use advanced artificial intelligence in research. NVIDIA pledged $1 billion, AMD $500 million, OpenAI $200 million, and Anthropic and Google $150 million each. NASA and the Energy Department also signed an agreement on nuclear power for space. The White House says that includes a reactor-powered spacecraft to Mars expected to launch in 2028.
The four Crew-12 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, NASA said, ending 237 days at the International Space Station. They are NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Recovery teams picked up the SpaceX capsule and crew shortly afterward. The crew will hold a news conference in Houston on Oct. 15.
The Swedish Academy awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday to Canadian writer Anne Carson. The academy cited her “bold and inventive oeuvre” that, “in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” The announcement came at 7:00 a.m. Eastern, after Thursday's edition had locked. She receives the full prize.
Four Crew-12 astronauts undocked from the International Space Station at 8:05 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule, NASA said. They are NASA's Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. NASA is aiming for a splashdown off the California coast at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern today, Thursday, with live coverage starting at 10:20 a.m. That splashdown has not been reported here. It is still the plan.
Researchers at Stanford grew small pieces of human lung in the lab that keep their own immune cells for months, and those cells fought the virus that causes COVID-19. When the team first exposed the tissue to bits of the virus, much like a vaccine, later infections were weaker. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published Wednesday in Nature, suggests the lung's own defenses may do a lot of the protecting. The models could also stand in for some tests that now use animals. This was not a trial in people.
Henri B. Kagan of France and Kenso Soai of Japan won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Many molecules come in two mirror-image forms, like a left hand and a right hand. Living things use only one of them. For more than a century, chemists could not explain how that one-sidedness could arise on its own. Their reactions kept making equal amounts of both. Kagan found a way to tip the balance in 1986. Soai then built a reaction that makes only one form. The Nobel committee says their work has been decisive for chemists who make medicines.
Editor’s note: New York announced this on Oct. 5, and Tuesday’s edition missed it. Sixteen states and Pennsylvania’s governor are on a federal lawsuit against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over January’s change to the childhood vaccine schedule. New York Attorney General Letitia James said Monday that her state had joined. The states say the change skipped the expert review and public comment the law requires. They want a judge to throw out the new schedule. The case is not new. The caption says it was filed Feb. 24, 2026.
Editor’s note: The Food and Drug Administration posted this on Oct. 5, and our desk was blocked from fda.gov, so Tuesday’s edition missed it. The agency is asking researchers, doctors, and the public how early human trials of ibogaine should be run. Ibogaine is a psychedelic that some patients seek out for addiction and other hard-to-treat conditions. The FDA laid out approaches it is weighing, including how to choose and raise doses, where patients should be treated, how to watch for heart and nerve problems, who can enroll, and when to stop a trial. Comments are due Nov. 20. The agency says the step follows President Trump’s April executive order,
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Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness
An executive order signed April 18, 2026. It tells the FDA and other agencies to speed research on psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine, for people whose serious mental illness has not gotten better with standard care. It also directs a path for some patients to get these drugs under the federal Right to Try law.
Editor’s note: The Food and Drug Administration posted this on Oct. 1, and our desk was blocked from fda.gov, so it did not run until today. The agency approved a replacement heart valve for children that doctors can widen as the child grows, which may spare some kids repeat open-heart surgery. The Autus Size-Adjustable Valve can go in as small as about 13 millimeters, a size for a toddler. Later it can be stretched with a small balloon on a thin tube, up to about 22 millimeters, close to adult size. It is also the first valve approved in the U.S. with flaps made of a man-made material instead of animal tissue.
NASA said early Wednesday that the four Crew-12 astronauts would close the hatch to their SpaceX Dragon at about 6:20 a.m. Eastern. The capsule is set to undock from the International Space Station on its own at 8:05 a.m. That would start a trip home of about 27 hours. NASA and SpaceX are aiming for a splashdown off California at about 11:34 a.m. Thursday. Jessica Meir is to command Dragon. Jack Hathaway is to pilot it. Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev ride with them. This is the plan. Undocking is after this edition locks.
Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin–Madison won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics alone. He saw that the clear ice under the South Pole could catch neutrinos, tiny particles that pass through the Earth, and through us, almost without a trace. He led IceCube, a cubic kilometer of that ice fitted with light sensors. It was finished in 2011. With it, researchers found high-energy neutrinos from far outside the solar system. The Nobel committee says the work opens a new kind of astronomy.
NASA now plans to undock the Crew-12 capsule from the International Space Station at 8:05 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 7, seven hours later than the 1:05 a.m. time it gave on Saturday. If that holds, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will splash down off California at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 8. On Sunday, Meir handed command of the station to cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov.
Three scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for optogenetics. The method lets researchers turn single nerve cells on or off with light inside a living brain. Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel found the key protein, channelrhodopsin, in a one-celled pond alga. Karl Deisseroth turned it into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells, first in cells from rats in 2005 and then in living mice two years later.
Google said its Project Suncatcher prototype satellite, built with Planet, reached orbit on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare and is working as expected. Over the coming weeks the company will collect data on how its Tensor Processing Units, its in-house AI chips, handle launch stress, radiation, and heat swings in space. On Sept. 25, The File reported the planned launch.
In Kyoto on Sunday, the United States and 16 other countries endorsed a joint declaration, the
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Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science
A joint declaration the United States and 16 other countries endorsed on Oct. 4, 2026, at the Science and Technology in Society Forum in Kyoto. The White House says it calls for new ways to fund labs, wider use of super intelligence in research, and more training.
. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, led the American side at the Science and Technology in Society Forum.
NASA and SpaceX now plan to undock the Crew-12 capsule no earlier than 1:05 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Oct. 7. If that holds, splashdown off California is about 11:25 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 8. This morning, station commander Jessica Meir is scheduled to hand command to cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov at a ceremony that starts at 10:20 a.m. Eastern.
The United States and Japan signed a protocol in Tokyo on Friday that keeps their science and technology agreement going with no end date, and amends it. Michael Kratsios signed for the United States. Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu signed for Japan. The agreement itself dates to 1988.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 lifted off at 11:10 a.m. Eastern on Oct. 1 from Space Launch Complex 40. The Dragon docked at the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. Eastern, 7 hours and 55 minutes after launch, the fastest U.S. launch-to-dock with the International Space Station. The hatch opened at 9:19 p.m. Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk, and Sergey Teteryatnikov joined Expedition 75.
On Oct. 1, 2026, the National Science Foundation said its Technology, Innovation and Partnerships directorate is putting $6 million over three years into the University of Oklahoma’s Shale 2.0 project. The work is on recovering critical minerals from oil and gas wells.
On Sept. 30, NASA and SpaceX finished their launch readiness review and polled “go” for Crew-13. Liftoff is no earlier than 11:10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 1, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. The crew is NASA’s Jessica Watkins, commander, and Luke Delaney, pilot, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Cape weather officers put the chance of favorable weather at 55 percent, down from the Sept. 29 briefing of 60 percent, citing showers and mid-level clouds. Live coverage was set to begin at 9:20 a.m. Eastern on Oct. 1. This edition locks before launch.
On Sept. 29, 2026, NASA’s commercial crew blog said the Crew-13 astronauts — Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency, and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos — completed a dry dress rehearsal at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. A second same-day blog said the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron gives a 60 percent chance of favorable weather for launch. Liftoff is still no earlier than 11:10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 1. Primary weather concerns are the cumulus cloud rule and flight through precipitation.
On Sept. 28, 2026, NASA’s commercial crew blog said a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-13 mission rolled out Sept. 27 and were raised vertical at Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40. Liftoff is no earlier than 11:10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 1. The crew is Jessica Watkins as commander, Luke Delaney as pilot, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency, and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos. Separately, a Sept. 28 NASA Science article said the commercial Swift Boost servicing demo ended without raising the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory’s orbit; NASA ended its involvement Sept. 3, and the LINK spacecraft re-entered Sept. 25.
NASA’s Earth Observatory made its September 28 Image of the Day a new map of bedrock under the Greenland Ice Sheet. Using Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis — reading faint bumps and dips on the surface as ice flows over buried terrain — researchers manually mapped 1,943 subglacial valleys; about one third are newly identified. About half of the valleys already in BedMachine Greenland, mostly near the ice edge, are now shown to run farther inland, in some cases by hundreds of kilometers. The NASA-led paper is in Geophysical Research Letters (Chartrand et al., 2026; DOI 10.1029/2026GL122028).
On Sept. 25, 2026, the National Science Foundation said the NSF Open Knowledge Network is live and public at okn.us. It links 43 interconnected knowledge graphs and tens of billions of facts across health, environment, justice, manufacturing, and national security, built to give AI systems a shared, auditable knowledge layer. It grew from a $26.7 million Prototype Open Knowledge Network program with the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the National Institute of Justice, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and others.
NASA said Crew-13 — Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, the Canadian Space Agency’s Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos’s Sergey Teteryatnikov — was set to arrive at Kennedy Space Center about 1 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, Sept. 26, to begin final preflight work for the mission to the International Space Station. The arrival plan was posted Friday, Sept. 25. This desk does not have a later NASA post confirming the crew was on the ground.
NASA said the Republic of San Marino became the 76th country to sign
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Artemis Accords
A non-binding set of principles, started by NASA and the State Department with founding partners in 2020, that commits signatory countries to peaceful, transparent, and cooperative civil space exploration and to sharing scientific data. San Marino became the 76th signatory on Sept. 25, 2026, in Rimini.
on Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, in Rimini. NASA and the State Department took part.
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Artemis Accords
A non-binding set of principles, started by NASA and the State Department with founding partners in 2020, that commits signatory countries to peaceful, transparent, and cooperative civil space exploration and to sharing scientific data. San Marino became the 76th signatory on Sept. 25, 2026, in Rimini.
On Sept. 24, 2026, Google said Project Suncatcher is set for its first test in orbit: a prototype satellite to see how the company’s Tensor Processing Units perform in space. Google said the satellite is on an upcoming Transporter-18 rideshare with SpaceX and was developed with Planet. The post describes vibration, radiation, and cooling in a vacuum, and points to later satellite-link tests aimed at 2027. This is a hardware flight test, not a new frontier model.
On Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, the National Institutes of Health launched Linked Discoveries, an experimental tool from the National Library of Medicine. From a PubMed citation, a reader can open a neighborhood of closely related papers, including replication studies. More than 29 million PubMed publications are in the tool at launch. It does not grade a study or declare that a finding was successfully replicated.
On Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, Anthropic published early results from a new Bay Area life-sciences lab. Claude agents scanned about 1.9 billion protein clusters and flagged array-associated reverse transcriptases — called ART — in bacteriophages: a reverse transcriptase, a partner gene, and a long DNA repeat array that looks like CRISPR. The company does not yet know what ART does. A company preprint says the agents have not shown that the reverse transcriptase is active or that the unit RNAs are its substrates. This is a science result, not a new frontier-model launch.
On Sept. 23, 2026, the National Institutes of Health announced a PsychAD Consortium single-cell atlas of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using more than 6.3 million nuclei from 1,494 donors, spanning Alzheimer’s-related dementias, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Nature news covered the same-day collection of studies.
On Sept. 23, 2026, the National Institutes of Health said the experimental drug kamuvudine-9, called K-9, reversed pre-existing vision loss and paralysis in mouse models of multiple sclerosis, likely by blocking inflammasome activation. A U.S. claims look at more than 3 million patients linked ordinary nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor use to lower multiple-sclerosis diagnosis and relapse rates. K-9 has been in eye-disease trials. Human multiple-sclerosis trials are hoped for in the release. They have not started.
NASA reported on Sept. 23, 2026, that Arctic sea ice reached its 2026 minimum on Sept. 12. The ice covered an estimated 1.78 million square miles (4.6 million square kilometers), tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record. The last 20 years, 2007 through 2026, hold the 20 lowest minima.
Nature News dated Sept. 22, 2026, reports that instrument maker Bruker plans to ship GAIA — a scanning transmission electron microscope that cools samples with liquid helium near absolute zero for 30 hours or more — to labs in Canada, Germany, and the United States early next year. A second Nature News piece the same day covers a PLoS ONE study that burned sample papyrus scrolls and used neutron and X-ray tomography to read lead-bearing ink, a path that may help carbonized Herculaneum scrolls. Separately, a Nature World View by Zeke Hausfather dated Sept. 22 warns that early-September Pacific temperatures and forecasts point to a possibly record-strong El Niño and urges fast drought, fire, and flood prep. The El Niño piece is Confirmed as Hausfather’s authored view; it is not a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advisory fetched here.
A non-binding set of principles, started by NASA and the State Department with founding partners in 2020, that commits signatory countries to peaceful, transparent, and cooperative civil space exploration and to sharing scientific data. San Marino became the 76th signatory on Sept. 25, 2026, in Rimini.
on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 73rd country to join. Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha signed for Albania. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Environment Connor Tomlinson took part. Anderson said the partnership now extends into space.
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Artemis Accords
A non-binding set of principles, started by NASA and the State Department with founding partners in 2020, that commits signatory countries to peaceful, transparent, and cooperative civil space exploration and to sharing scientific data. San Marino became the 76th signatory on Sept. 25, 2026, in Rimini.
NASA’s Monday Earth Observatory Image of the Day reports a NASA-led study finding that while the Arctic sea-ice melt season lengthened dramatically since satellite records began in 1979 — and is now about 40 days longer than in 1979 — that lengthening trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010. Most of the increase came before 2010. Since then, the average melt-season length has stayed comparatively steady even with large year-to-year swings. Researchers used satellite observations from 1979 through 2023. Co-author Linette Boisvert of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says thinner ice means more year-to-year variability. The piece cautions that the pause may be temporary.
NASA awarded SpaceX three more crew rotation missions to the International Space Station — Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 — under a modification to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. The modification is valued at $946 million and brings SpaceX’s total missions under that contract to 17. NASA says the change brings the total contract value with SpaceX to $5.92 billion, with work running through 2030 and mission readiness dates in 2027 and 2028.
NASA’s Earth Observatory Image of the Day for Friday shows Lake Powell near Glen Canyon Dam at record-low levels after a weak Upper Colorado snowpack in 2025–26 and unusual warmth. A Landsat 8 comparison of Sept. 1, 2017, and Sept. 10, 2026, puts the 2026 water surface at 3,517.24 feet — after the lake dipped below the prior record low of 3,519.92 feet set April 13, 2023. The story says the lake first hit a record low on Aug. 15, 2026, and kept falling into early September. Lake Mead also hit record lows in August 2026 in the same piece.
NASA says astronomers have confirmed Elias 2-24 b as the youngest known planet — less than a million years old — using data from NASA-funded archives and the W. M. Keck Observatory coronagraph in Hawaii. The world is still inside its natal disk of dust and gas around the star Elias 2-24, about 450 light-years from Earth, and is roughly as massive as Jupiter. A NASA Science article dated Sept. 16 says a team led by Andrea Bernardi at Universidad Diego Portales published the result Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Prior record holders cited in the piece were more than 5 million years old. The find sits in a disk gap, where planets are expected to carve paths as they form.
The National Science Foundation announced three additional NSF X-Labs topics on Sept. 16 as part of a $1.5 billion investment it started in May, completing the topic list for 2026. The new funding window invites proposals in artificial intelligence for physical systems, including work on sensors, robotics, and other machines that have to act in the real world. NSF is also previewing two later topics it is not yet taking proposals for: From Sequence to Function, and Computation at the Limit of Physics. Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director, said the labs are meant to put researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs on the same teams. An introductory webinar is listed for Oct. 14, 2026, at 1 p.m. Eastern. A request for information on future topics is due Oct. 30, 2026.
NASA says the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s main science camera is now on. A Sept. 15 Goddard blog post says the team activated the Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera built to scan large stretches of sky in fine detail. Engineers also ran an early checkout of the Coronagraph Instrument, a system meant to block star glare so faint planets can be seen. The post says the Wide Field Instrument cooled to about minus 225 degrees Fahrenheit before its 18 detectors came online, and that a first test image captured out-of-focus starlight as expected while the optics are still being aligned. Josh Schlieder, the Wide Field Instrument scientist at Goddard, called the in-space activation a huge milestone. NASA says the mission remains on track to release first science images by early 2027 as Roman continues toward the Sun-Earth L2 point.
Scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health showed a brain-computer interface that can turn thoughts into speech and upper-body gestures at the same time. An NIH news release dated Sept. 14 says a University of California, San Francisco team used machine learning to read brain activity in three patients with paralysis. The system guided a full-body virtual avatar for two participants. Edward Chang, a UCSF neurosurgery professor and the study’s corresponding author, said conversation is more than words and that the work is a proof of concept for restoring more natural expression. The release says past devices often handled speech or gestures separately, and that training on simultaneous speech-and-gesture data worked better than training on each alone. The study appears in Nature Neuroscience. Debara Tucci, director of NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, said the results give hope that people with severe paralysis could regain more of everyday communication. The team plans to test a fully implantable wireless version next.
NASA says accurate flying has more than doubled the potential working life of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. A Sept. 14 Goddard blog post says the first mid-course correction on Aug. 31 used less than 10 percent of the fuel budgeted for that burn — about 40 pounds instead of 441 — and was more than 99 percent accurate. Extra fuel loaded at launch, because the spacecraft flew lighter than the conservative weight used for planning, adds more years. Jamie Dunn, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of potential science operations. The design life had been a five-year primary mission plus a five-year extension. A second burn is planned later this month before the observatory settles into orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point about 100 days after launch.
Fall color arrived early in far northern Canada. NASA’s Earth Observatory Image of the Day for Sept. 14 shows reds, yellows, and oranges already sweeping across low shrubs and tundra along the Coppermine River in Nunavut, upriver of Kugluktuk. The paired Landsat 9 images compare July 27, when the same area was still green, with Sept. 6, when autumn color is visible. The Observatory notes that foliage in the region often begins to change in early September and peaks mid-month — among the first places on the continent to turn.
NASA flew another science balloon from New Mexico. A Wallops blog post says the Balloon Optimization Opportunity Payload, or BOOP!, launched from Fort Sumner at 8:03 a.m. Mountain time (10:03 a.m. Eastern) on Sept. 13. The flight carried technology instruments for future missions, reached about 123,000 feet, and lasted 4 hours 29 minutes. It was the fourth balloon of the Fort Sumner campaign.
NASA’s Sun diver phoned home after another close approach. A Sept. 10 Parker Solar Probe blog post says the spacecraft completed its 29th close approach to the Sun on Sept. 4. It again matched its record speed and distance from the solar surface. This time the craft pointed its camera at structures and activity near the Sun’s north pole. A beacon tone said systems were operating normally. Separately, this desk still has no NASA post confirming that Progress 96 docked on Friday as scheduled; the station coverage page still uses schedule language and was last updated Sept. 8.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says animal bites and rabies shots are up. On Sept. 10 the agency posted a statement that it had issued a Health Alert Network advisory for clinicians, health departments, and the public after summer 2026 reports of more animal exposures and rabies post-exposure vaccinations across the country. The statement tells people to avoid mammals that look sick or act strangely, including wildlife, and to get medical care after bites or scratches.
A Russian cargo ship is still on NASA’s clock for Friday. The agency’s coverage release says Progress 96 was scheduled to launch at 12:15 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Sept. 9, from Baikonur and to dock on its own at the Poisk module’s space-facing port at 2:37 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Sept. 11. Arrival coverage was set to start at 1:45 p.m. The spacecraft is to bring about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies and stay about five months. Liftoff is unverified from NASA primaries. The coverage page still reads as a schedule (last updated Sept. 8). Docking is still due 2:37 p.m. Eastern Friday.
NASA still has Progress 96 on the clock for Friday docking. The agency’s coverage release said the unpiloted cargo ship was scheduled to lift off at 12:15 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Sept. 9, from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Docking is set for Friday, Sept. 11, at 2:37 p.m. Eastern at the Poisk module. This desk could not confirm a post-launch NASA page at lock. The coverage release still reads as a schedule and was last updated Sept. 8. This file does not treat liftoff as a fact.
OpenAI put a math claim on the table that has sat open for about ninety years. On Sept. 8 the company published a research post saying an internal system — one it says is far more capable than GPT-6 Astra — produced a proof that smooth three-dimensional fluid motion can blow up into a singularity in finite time. That is statement “C” (and also “D”) in the Clay Mathematics Institute’s official Navier–Stokes problem. The company posted a writeup PDF and a formalization in Lean, the proof-checking language. In plain terms: the equations that describe how fluids move can start smooth and still run to infinite speed in finite time, even with viscosity smoothing the flow, while energy stays finite. OpenAI describes the solution as a vortex that spirals inward and stretches like spaghetti. The desk confirmed the company page and the PDF link. OpenAI says it does not intend to claim the Millennium Prize. Clay has not announced a prize award in this pass. Outside mathematicians have not been independently verified here as accepting the Lean proof.
Fresh supplies are headed to orbit this afternoon if the clock holds. NASA said the unpiloted Progress 96 craft is scheduled to lift off at 12:15 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Sept. 9, on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It carries about three tons of food, fuel, and gear for the International Space Station crew. NASA planned live coverage from noon Eastern. Docking is set for Friday, Sept. 11, at 2:37 p.m. Eastern at the Poisk module. Progress 94 was scheduled to undock Monday to make room. The new ship is to stay about five months before a fiery Pacific re-entry.
From orbit, Vasquez Rocks look like gray bands between the mountains of Southern California. NASA Earth Observatory made them the Image of the Day for Sept. 8. Landsat 9 took the picture on July 28 over the Soledad Basin, where the rock layers tilt about 50 degrees. Adam Voiland wrote the story. Michala Garrison made the pictures from U.S. Geological Survey Landsat data. NASA notes the site has been a Star Trek filming location since the first season, when Captain James T. Kirk climbed the jagged ground. An editor’s note says this post answers the September Puzzler.
Jennifer Homendy, who chairs the National Transportation Safety Board, walked the Miami ground Monday where an Amazon cargo jet had left the runway. Sunday around 2 p.m., a Boeing 767 flown by 21 Air came in from San Juan and ran off the pavement at Miami International. Homendy told reporters the airplane went about 1,300 feet past the end. It wrecked navigation gear, tore through a Professional Ocean Service Corp. cleaning van that held seven people, broke fencing, and hit an SUV outside the airport. The five who died, she said, were in those two vehicles. She called the scene “utter devastation.” The Associated Press said three people were critically hurt and two more were in the hospital. Homendy said more may come Tuesday, including perhaps the speed from the data recorder. Amazon said it was heartbroken and would cooperate. Two of Miami’s four runways were still closed Monday. No one has named a cause.
Mount Michael sits on Saunders Island, far down in the South Atlantic. A Landsat 8 pass on Aug. 24 caught heat from a persistent lava lake in the summit crater. NASA Earth Observatory made it the Image of the Day for Sept. 7. Lindsey Doermann wrote the story. Michala Garrison made the pictures from U.S. Geological Survey Landsat data. Scientists watch this place mainly from orbit.
The X-59 left Edwards, California, on Aug. 21 and stayed up 72 minutes. It reached Mach 1.2 and about 49,000 feet. A chase plane flew alongside. That was flight 25. The boom measurements come later this year.
NASA Earth Observatory’s Image of the Day for Sept. 4, 2026, describes a Sept. 1 picture from the EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite. It shows three Pacific tropical cyclones — Lowell, Karina, and Marie — plus Atlantic Tropical Storm Edouard. As of Sept. 3, the Northeast Pacific had 15 named storms and six hurricanes. The Atlantic had five named storms and no hurricanes. Lowell reached Category 5 for several hours Sept. 2 while Karina hit Category 4 — a rare pair of Category 4 and 5 storms at the same time in the area. Atlantic accumulated cyclone energy was 4.4, about 9 percent of normal for the date. Northeast Pacific energy was 130, about 50 percent above normal, per Colorado State University statistics cited by NASA. Story by Adam Voiland. Image by Lauren Dauphin.
On Sept. 2, 2026, NASA said recent Hubble observations revealed a giant, evolving 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole — the first large regular-sided jet pattern observed in the southern hemisphere. Results published Wednesday in Science Advances. The feature appears similar to the long-lived northern hexagon but is distinct and may be strengthening. Lead author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega (University of the Basque Country); co-authors include Amy Simon (NASA Goddard, OPAL principal investigator) and Michael Wong (UC Berkeley). Hubble OPAL program data; ground-based observers first noticed an undulating band. Further study needed on longevity and drivers.
On Sept. 2, 2026, the American Medical Association reported that the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America issued immunization recommendations for the coming respiratory virus season, informed by a Vaccine Integrity Project evidence review (CIDRAP / University of Minnesota) launched with the American Medical Association in February 2026. Recommendations and evidence summaries are posted at SpreadTheFacts.org. The association cites interim Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates for 2025–26 season burden (flu at least 390,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths; RSV and COVID ranges given). This is physician-organization guidance based on a published evidence review — not a new CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices schedule rewrite. Label as Confirmed for what the groups published; do not claim the CDC endorsed the joint site.
NASA contract release C26-010 dated Sept. 1, 2026, said NASA awarded Blue Origin a firm-fixed-price contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million to develop the Mars Telecommunications Network and deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter no later than Dec. 31, 2028. NASA said the network, managed by SCaN, is expected to be operational at Mars by 2030. Follows an RFP issued in May.
National Institutes of Health researchers reported Sept. 1, 2026, that they identified rare antibodies that could inform an intervention for alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tick-bite-associated condition that can cause allergic reactions to a molecule in red meat and other animal products. In laboratory tests, the antibodies blocked human allergic antibodies from binding to red-meat allergens. NIH said about 110,000 suspected U.S. cases have been identified since 2010. No clinical trial is claimed.
On Sept. 1, 2026, FDA said it approved revisions to the labeling for ferric carboxymaltose injection (currently marketed as Injectafer) that add a boxed warning, the agency’s most prominent safety warning, describing the risk of symptomatic hypophosphatemia and recommending phosphate monitoring in patients at risk and in any patient who receives a repeat course of therapy within three months of the prior course.
NASA’s space station blog said U.S. spacewalk 99 ended at 3:29 p.m. EDT on Sept. 1, 2026. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot were outside for 6 hours 49 minutes. NASA said they installed a new retroflector on Harmony’s forward port, replaced a high-definition camera, and swabbed the station’s exterior for microorganisms. Some jumper-cable and AMS radiator tasks were deferred.
NASA said the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The agency said the observatory is on a three-month, million-mile trip to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2). Science operations have not begun.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Aug. 31, 2026, that it launched the CDC Overdose Prevention Data Channel, combining fatal and nonfatal overdose data, prevention strategies, and program information. CDC said the latest monthly provisional NVSS data predicts 67,798 drug overdose deaths in the United States during the 12 months ending in March 2026, a 12.3 percent decrease from the same period a year earlier.
CDC, in an investigation update dated Aug. 24, 2026, said it and officials in several states are investigating a multistate outbreak of E. coli and Salmonella infections linked to alfalfa sprouts. The agency reported 55 total cases in 15 states, 4 hospitalizations among 48 people with information available, and 0 deaths.