Imagine spending all day, every day, practicing trick shots with a shotgun, taking out 10 moving targets with a pistol in six seconds flat, or perfecting your shot toward a target the size of a period.
Source: www.war.gov
Blog
-
Delivering Peace Through Strength
From defending America’s borders and fighting drug trafficking to changes in culture and business operations to better build the nation’s arsenal of freedom, President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are ushering in a new era characterized by peace through strength.
Source: www.war.gov
-
Honors for Valor
For service members who carry out the bravest and most selfless acts in combat, the military bestows its most esteemed valor awards: the Medal of Honor, the Service Crosses and the Silver Star.
Source: www.war.gov
-
9 Things to Know About NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. While you wait to watch the launch, brush up on some key facts about this wide-view mission.
Teams inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope within the payload fairing on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Encapsulation shields the spacecraft during rollout, ascent, and the early phases of flight. Roman will investigate dark energy and dark matter, conduct a statistical census of planetary systems, and enable a broad range of additional astrophysics research. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)-
01
The mission is named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman.
Roman is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018), NASA’s first chief of astronomy. She championed space-based observatories that could study the universe above Earth’s hazy atmosphere while making their data broadly available to the scientific community.
While she’s known as the “mother” of the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman played an even broader role as the driving force behind NASA’s entire Great Observatories program, which included Hubble along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the retired Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.
Her vision and leadership helped establish NASA as a world-class scientific institution and laid the foundation for generations of space telescopes that continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. -
02
Roman will transform our view of the cosmos by showing us the bigger picture.
Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to scan vast, deep swaths of sky. This flagship mission is designed to help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.
Since each of Roman’s surveys will sample such a large volume of the cosmos, the mission will also offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to conduct a broad range of additional science. From objects in our outer solar system and exploding stars to growing black holes and galaxies by the billions, very little will be beyond Roman’s reach. Roman’s data will be made public as soon as it’s processed, allowing many teams to analyze it simultaneously. -
03
The observatory will journey a million miles to join Webb at Lagrange point 2.
Roman will orbit 1 million miles away at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), the same location as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. At L2, gravity from the Sun and Earth works together with an object’s motion around the Sun to hold it roughly in place. This balance will give Roman a relatively steady orbit without using much fuel.
Like Webb, Roman will trace out a large orbit around the actual L2 point — much larger than the Moon’s orbit around Earth — and the two will easily be kept far apart. -
04
The spacecraft carries the names of more than a million people.
This summer, everyone was invited to submit their name to be added to a memory card attached to a plaque on the Roman spacecraft. More than 1.3 million people did so and will have their names carried all the way to L2.
-
05
Roman will scan the skies for at least five years.
Roman will have a primary mission lifetime of five years and is designed to support an additional five-year extended mission. Fuel is expected to be the mission’s life-limiting resource, and while NASA does not currently have an ability to service observatories at L2, Roman is designed to be refuelable.
-
06
Two instruments will enable myriad discoveries.
The observatory’s Wide Field Instrument is a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will give Roman the same sharpness (angular resolution) as Hubble but with a field of view at least 100 times larger. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky about 1.5 times bigger than the apparent size of a full Moon.
Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument is designed to demonstrate the most advanced technologies ever flown in space for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from stars and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them, revealing giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far. -
07
Roman joins an international cohort of teamworking telescopes.
Roman will work in tandem with many other NASA-led and international missions to provide the most complete view of our universe yet. Roman’s large panoramas will uncover interesting targets that Hubble could follow up on using infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light to offer a more comprehensive view. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can then use its larger mirror and more powerful vision to deliver even more detailed, ultra-sharp observations. And Roman can view regions around objects Hubble or Webb observe to offer context.
Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with key contributions from NASA, will observe a larger area of the sky than Roman, though with less detail. Since their survey areas will overlap, scientists can use Roman’s higher-quality data to apply corrections to Euclid’s, then extend these refinements over Euclid’s much larger area.
Scientists can also pair Roman’s infrared data with visible-light observations from the ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a National Science Foundation–Department of Energy collaboration. That will allow astronomers to inch closer to achieving Roman-like quality over Rubin’s much greater sky coverage.
By showcasing technology to directly photograph Jupiter-like exoplanets, Roman will also provide a crucial stepping stone for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept, a flagship space telescope that would be designed to photograph Earth-like planets in other solar systems for the first time ever. -
08
Watch the Roman launch live from anywhere.
NASA will stream this event live through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online: nasa.gov/live. The launch broadcast will continue until approximately one hour past launch to follow the first several critical milestones post-launch.
-
09
NASA expects to share Roman’s first images by early 2027.
The Roman team will complete a carefully orchestrated series of deployments, calibrations, and tests in the three months following launch before the observatory reaches its final orbit. Science operations begin once this commissioning period is completed, starting with the release of Roman’s first science images.
To learn more about the Roman mission, visit:
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
[email protected]
301-286-1940Share
Details
Last UpdatedAug 27, 2026EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley BalzerRelated Terms
Explore More
Source: science.nasa.gov
-
-
Civil Servants Sworn in at NASA Ames
Brandon Torres NavarreteNew civil servants and guests pose for a group photo with NASA and center leadership in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) 80-by-120-foot test section, N221 on Aug. 24, 2026. The civil servants were sworn-in the same day in the largest swearing-in ceremony ever hosted at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley since its inception nearly 87 years ago.
Learn more about wind tunnels at NASA Ames.
Image credit: Brandon Torres Navarrete
Source: www.nasa.gov
-
NASA Invites Media to Turkey Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony
Credit: NASATurkey will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 2:30 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 31, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 71st country signatory.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır for the ceremony, together with U.S. Department of State officials.
This event is in person only. Media interested in attending must RSVP no later than 11 a.m. on Aug. 31, to: [email protected]. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.
The Artemis Accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords
-end-
Camille Gallo / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
[email protected] / [email protected]Source: www.nasa.gov
-
The Forested Floodplains of Congaree National Park
Among the 63 U.S. national parks, few are as defined by a single river’s floodplain as Congaree National Park in South Carolina. While the features are also prominent in other parks, a full 80 percent of Congaree National Park lies within the Congaree River floodplain.
It’s a place home to one of the largest intact tracts of old-growth bottomland hardwood forests in the United States. In this image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, the river winds through the forested plain, along with curving bands of green that trace old channels, ridges, and swales left behind as the river gradually migrated across it. Slight differences in elevation in these paleochannels and other landforms affect how frequently they flood, producing distinct ecosystems that appear in contrasting shades of green.
The river flows through flat, soft terrain, which encourages the formation of bends and meanders. Water typically flows faster on the outside of bends, leading to more rapid erosion as the channel carves into the outer riverbank. It moves more slowly on the inside of bends, resulting in the deposition of sediment and the growth of sandy features called point bars. Over time, this process can cut off a bend from the main river channel, forming U-shaped oxbow lakes.
The National Park Service lists Weston Lake, 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) from the visitor center, as one of the park’s most permanent oxbow lakes, noting that it is relatively deep and lacks the shallow clay and silt layer found in most of the park’s other oxbow lakes, such as Devil’s Elbow. On the right side of the image is Bates Old River, a roughly 4-mile-long abandoned channel of the Congaree River and one of the longest oxbow lakes in South Carolina. Over time, abandoned channels and oxbow lakes can fill with sediment and become shallow wetlands. Some of these low-lying, water-filled features are known as sloughs, where flood-tolerant cypress-tupelo forests tend to grow.
While loggers targeted forests along the Congaree in the 1880s, challenges such as frequent flooding, interminably muddy roads, and mosquito-plagued conditions meant that most of the floodplain forests escaped the widespread logging that transformed other parts of the Southeast. By the 1950s, conservationists had begun to recognize how rare old-growth forests of this type had become in the region. Congress designated the area a national monument in 1976, and it became a national park in 2003.
As the river snakes its way through the park’s mostly flat terrain, it overflows its banks several times per year, usually in the winter and early spring but also in the summer and fall after hurricanes and major rainstorms. These floods distribute broad layers of nutrient-rich silt throughout the floodplain, nourishing the forests and contributing to the high concentration of unusually large trees in the park.
Over the decades, Congaree National Park has harbored a remarkable array of giant “champion” trees that have held national and state size records for their species. Though individual trees have gained and lost champion status as they have been damaged, have died, or been surpassed by newly measured trees elsewhere, Congaree trees such as the possumhaw (Ilex decidua), water hickory (Carya aquatica), loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), swamp tupelo (Nyssa biflora), and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) have held records at times.
During this National Park Week, celebrate by exploring Earth Observatory’s U.S. National Parks from Space collection. You can also check out the offerings of Earth to Sky, a collaborative program that connects NASA science with park service rangers across the nation.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
References & Resources
- American Forests (2009) Congaree: Where The Trees Are Still Tall. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- Atlas Obscura (2025, May 12) How One Biologist Drew a Hyper-Accurate, Ranger-Approved Map of Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- Discover South Carolina, Champion Trees are Star Attraction at Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Parks Conservation Association (2024, March 27) Congaree: ‘Champion’ Trees, Synchronous Fireflies and More. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Parks Conservation Association (2017) The Wild Congaree. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Park Maps, Congaree Forest Map. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Park Service, Last Stand for Floodplain Forests. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Park Service, Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- National Park Service (2014) Congaree National Park: Geologic Resources Inventory Report. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Bottomland Hardwoods. Accessed August 27, 2026.
- U.S. Geological Survey Ecology of Congaree National Park. Accessed August 27, 2026.
You may also be interested in:
Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.
Minute Man National Historical Park3 min readSites relevant to the start of the American Revolutionary War are interspersed throughout the modern-day Boston metropolitan region.
Article
Colonial National Historical Park2 min readThe colonial communities of “America’s historic triangle” played defining roles in the road to American independence.
Article
Belts of Green in the Washington Suburbs3 min readAlong the northeast side of the Capital Beltway in Maryland, green spaces weave through the developed landscape.
ArticleSource: science.nasa.gov
-
APOD: 2026 August 28 – The Sky Turns Above Paranal
APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
The Sky Turns Above Paranal
Explanation: At the latitude of ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, about 25 degrees south, Earth’s rotation moves the planet’s surface eastward at over 1,500 kilometers per hour. And while that’s faster than the speed of sound at sea level, the motion is imperceptible. Still, that motion can be revealed in the apparent rotation of the night sky by photographing star trails. This star trail image was composed from a digital stack of 300 consecutive 25-second exposures made with a camera fixed to a tripod to trace the star trail arcs. The graceful arcs are concentric and centered at the south celestial pole, the southern hemisphere extension of Earth’s axis of rotation into space. One of the observatory’s operating 1.8 meter auxiliary telescopes, AT 3, appears beneath the south celestial pole, faintly illuminated in the foreground of this well-planned scene from a rotating planet.
APOD’s main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod
Tomorrow’s picture: pixels in space
Date August 28, 2026 Credit & Copyright: Osvaldo Castillo Authors & editors: Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, Robert Nemiroff, Keighley Rockcliffe A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.Source: science.nasa.gov
-
NASA Awards First Prize in Phase 2 of Agency’s LunaRecycle Challenge
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team won NASA’s LunaRecycle Challenge competition for their project, Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek (CERBERUZ).Credit: NASA/Savannah BullardNASA named a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first prize winner for Phase 2 of the agency’s LunaRecycle Challenge, which focused on developing solutions for reducing waste during missions to the Moon or deep space by recycling common materials, like fabrics, plastics, foam, and metals.
The Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek (CERBERUZ) team, comprised of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at MIT, received a total of $775,000 in awards.
The technology grinds mixed trash into a fine powder, repurposing materials such as Zotek foam as reinforcement rather than treating it as contamination that needs to be sorted out. The powder becomes feed for use as injection-mold finished parts or 3D-printing filament. The MIT team won in both the competition’s prototype development track and in the track focused on developing virtual models, known as “digital twins,” of recycling systems.
“The LunaRecycle Challenge finale is the culmination of two years of innovation spurred by this competition,” said Jennifer Edmunson, program manager for Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “It’s incredible to see these technologies go from concept to prototype and digital twin demonstrations in that time. Driving rapid and creative innovation is what NASA challenges are all about.”
LunaRecycle is a $3 million, two-phase competition in partnership with The University of Alabama Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering. Phase 2 of the competition required U.S. teams to submit a prototype, with an optional digital twin serving as a virtual model of it.
For Phase 2, 14 finalist teams from across the United States gathered at The University of Alabama’s Lee J. Styslinger Jr. College of Engineering, in Tuscaloosa, from Aug. 24 to Aug. 28 to demonstrate their technology prototypes. The digital twin models submitted by some teams were also presented alongside their respective prototypes.
The competitors’ backgrounds ranged from university students and faculty to entrepreneurs and space technology enthusiasts. Teams were encouraged to envision solutions that not only addressed recycling in deep space, but that also could have applications on Earth.
Along with the first prize winner, nine teams received prizes:
Prototype track winners:
- Second place overall ($225,000): Terasynth from Orlando, Fla. with Lunar Re-Forge System
- Most Innovative ($50,000): RECLAIM from Penn State University with the Resource Extraction and Conversion from Lunar Anthropogenic Inputs with Microwaves (RECLAIM) system
- Highest Mass Efficiency ($50,000): Cislune from Rosemead, Calif. with the Carbon Recovery and Feedstock Transformation for Extraterrestrial Reuse (CRAFTER) system
- Most Trash Types Recycled ($50,000): Team Lovegrove from Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. with LunaBrix
Additional digital twin track winners:
- Second place overall ($125,000): Moon Made from Boulder, Co. with Fiber Forge
- Most Innovative ($25,000): RECLAIM from Penn State University with the RECLAIM system
- Best Visualization ($25,000): Waste Parrot Technologies from New York, N.Y.
People’s choice winner ($25,000):
- Terasynth from Orlando, Fla. with Lunar Re-Forge System
“This competition highlights how collaborations can lead to incredible solutions,” said Chris Frangione, who manages the LunaRecycle Challenge in support of NASA Centennial Challenges contracted through Amentum Space Exploration Division. “Between the solver teams, The University of Alabama, and NASA, this finale showcases what can be achieved when we bring together resources and great ideas towards a common goal.”
The Phase 2 awards follow the success of the competition’s Phase 1, which received record-breaking interest from the global innovator community with more than 1,200 registrations – more than any competition in the 20-year history of NASA Centennial Challenges. For Phase 1, which concluded in 2025, participants from around the world could submit designs in either or both of the prototype or digital twin tracks. A panel of 50 judges evaluated nearly 200 Phase 1 submissions, selecting 17 teams representing five countries and nine U.S. states as winners. Phase 2 entries were required to be unrelated to Phase 1.
The LunaRecycle Challenge is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center by Centennial Challenges, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Centennial Challenges have a legacy of more than 20 years engaging the public to solve complex problems that benefit NASA’s broader initiatives. Past challenges have spurred advances in robotics, additive manufacturing, power and energy, textiles, chemistry, and biology.
LunaRecycle is also supported by subject matter experts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and NASA’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia.
To learn more about LunaRecycle, visit:
Source: www.nasa.gov
-
NASA’s Artemis II Crew Receives Congressional Space Medal of Honor
President Donald J. Trump awarded NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Aug. 28, 2026, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.NASA/John KrausFrom left to right: NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Donald J. Trump on Aug. 28, 2026, for their service during the Artemis II mission.
The Congressional Space Medal of Honor was authorized by Congress in 1969 to recognize an astronaut who in the performance of duties has distinguished himself or herself by exceptionally brave and meritorious efforts, and contributions to the welfare of the nation and humanity. There now are 34 recipients of the award since the beginning of the space program, including the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia who received the award posthumously.
Image credit: NASA/John Kraus
Source: www.nasa.gov
