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NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Begins Rotorcraft Integration, Testing Stage
March 10, 2026 2:03PM
NASA Dragonfly’s integration and testing – the activities involved in assembling the mission’s rotorcraft lander and testing it for the rigors of launch and extreme conditions of space – is officially underway in clean rooms and control rooms at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
In partnership with teams across government, industry and academia, APL is building the car-sized, nuclear-powered drone for NASA.
Dragonfly is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Saturn’s moon Titan, where it will explore a range of diverse sites to study the chemistry, geology, and atmosphere of the terrestrial moon and ultimately advance our understanding of life’s chemical origins.
Primary activities during the first weeks of this effort included power and functional testing on two critical components: the Integrated Electronics Module (IEM) and the Power Switching Units (PSUs).
Think of the IEM as Dragonfly’s “brain,” containing the spacecraft’s core avionics (such as command and data handling, guidance and navigation, and communications) in a single space-saving and power-efficient box.
The IEM and both PSUs were connected to Dragonfly’s wiring system and passed their first power-service checks.
“This milestone essentially marks the birth of our flight system,” said Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator from APL.
“Building a first-of-its kind vehicle to fly across another ocean world in our solar system pushes us to the edge of what’s possible, but that’s exactly why this stage is so exciting.
The team is doing an outstanding job, and every component we install and every test we run brings us one step closer to launching Dragonfly to Titan.”
Much work has led up to this point. The aeroshell and cruise-stage assemblies are moving forward with integration and testing at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.
The team completed a thorough aerodynamic test series in the wind tunnels of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Testing continues in the Titan Chamber at APL of the foam coating that will insulate the rotorcraft from Titan’s frigid temperatures.
The science payload is coming together at locations around the country and internationally. The flight radio has been delivered, and additional flight systems are scheduled for delivery and testing within the next six months.
Dragonfly integration and testing will continue at APL through this year and into early 2027, when system-level testing is planned at Lockheed Martin.
Late next year, the lander returns to APL for final space-environment testing before heading to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in spring 2028 for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that summer.
“Starting integration and testing is a huge milestone for the Dragonfly team,” said Annette Dolbow, the Dragonfly integration and test lead at APL.
“We’ve spent years designing and refining this amazing rotorcraft on computer screens and in laboratories, and now we get to bring all those elements together and transform Dragonfly into an actual flight system.”
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/dragonfly/2026/03/10/nasas-dragonfly-mission-begins-rotorcraft-integration-testing-stage/
Computational Modeling of Failure at the Fabric Weave Level in Reentry Parachute Energy Modulators
Mar 10, 2026
Energy modulators (EM) are textile mechanical devices designed to dissipate snatch loads that occur when parachutes are deployed.
Although critical for mitigating shock loads, recent flight testing has shown increasing variability in EM behavior, raising concerns about their performance predictability and potential failure under dynamic loading conditions.
In response, a novel approach was implemented to create a computational model of an EM at the fabric weave level using the simulation software, LS-DYNA.
This work was organized into two primary objectives: (1) development of a per-unit stitch model capturing the geometry and material behavior of the EM stitching pattern, and (2) implementation of a Python script to duplicate the unit model along the full length of an EM ear, simplifying the process of generating complex, patterned geometries in LS-DYNA.
EMs typically consist of a long strip of structural Kevlar webbing that is folded and stitched together with a nylon zigzag stitching pattern to form an EM “ear.”
As an EM is pulled above a threshold load during deployment, the nylon stitching rips, unfolding the EM and dissipating shock forces. This process is illustrated in Figure 1, exemplifying stages of EM extension during stroking.
In nominal cases, the EM cleanly tears with little damage to the Kevlar webbing. However, anomalous cases have been observed where the nylon stitches along the ear are skipped during loading, i.e., when a row of stitches do not tear in sequence.
This results in failure of the surrounding Kevlar webbing, referred to as EM shredding. The inherent unpredictability of the fabric behavior and the high variability of flight loading conditions make a root cause challenging to identify through mechanical testing.
In this study, development of a computational model of an EM in LS-DYNA was used to gain deeper insight into the cause of EM shredding.
While similar studies of fabric webbing have modeled fabrics at a global level, this approach represents each thread of the Kevlar weave and nylon stitching as individually modeled 3D solid elements.
Modeling each thread individually within the weave is essential not only for analyzing the failure mechanisms of the nylon stitching as it rips, but also for understanding the Kevlar weave failure during the EM shredding events.
The first phase of this work focused on modeling individual Kevlar and nylon threads within a representative stitch geometry. A 3D model of the Kevlar weave was first generated using TexGen, an open-source software developed at the University of Nottingham.
Using computer-aided design (CAD) software, nylon stitching passing through two layers of the Kevlar fabric weave was added.
The nylon stitching pattern consisted of a bobbin thread and a needle thread that looped through the top and bottom layers, respectively, of the Kevlar weave pattern and twisted together at the end of every stitch between the two layers.
The unit model was meshed in Hypermesh with 3D tetrahedral solid elements.
In LS-DYNA, the material properties, contact, failure conditions, and boundary conditions were defined to assess the dynamic response of a stitch during tensile loading.
Material behavior for both fabric types was defined using MAT_ELASTIC (MAT_001), and two-way, surface-to-surface contact with erosion was implemented to capture progressive failure of the Kevlar weave and nylon threads.
Boundary conditions were applied to replicate in-flight tensile loading scenarios. Additionally, several case studies were conducted to reduce computation time, including manual mass scaling, characteristic length analysis, and mesh quality optimization.
Preliminary results from the EM per-unit model validated the use of solid elements to capture EM behavior, particularly the interaction between Kevlar and nylon threads.
To streamline the construction of full-length EM models, the second phase of this work focused on developing a Python script to replicate the per-unit LS-DYNA model along the length of an EM ear.
This eliminated the need for large CAD assemblies by generating the full model directly from duplicating the unit model. This model is applicable to both solid and shell 2D and 3D elements.
Overall, these results will not only aid in identifying the root cause of EM shredding but also support the evaluation of new EM design variations.
This modeling approach has broader implications for other work involving fabrics, enabling more accurate simulations and efficient design workflows in aerospace textile applications.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/nesc/computational-modeling-of-failure-at-the-fabric-weave-level-in-reentry-parachute-energy-modulators/
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/techup2025-pg62-innov-tech-parachute-energy-modulators.pdf
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/chandra/nasa-discovers-crash-of-extreme-stars-in-unexpected-site/
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025arXiv251015867D/abstract
NASA Discovers Crash of Extreme Stars in Unexpected Site
Mar 10, 2026
A fleet of NASA missions has likely uncovered a collision between two ultradense stars in a tiny galaxy buried in a huge stream of gas.
Astronomers have never seen this type of explosive event in an environment like this before — and it may help solve two outstanding cosmic mysteries. A paper describing these results was published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Neutron stars are the cores left behind after a star much heavier than the Sun runs out of fuel, collapses on itself, and then explodes.
They are small (only a dozen or so miles across) but slightly more massive than the Sun, making them amazingly dense. Astronomers consider them to be some of the most extreme objects in the universe.
In recent years, astronomers have collected data on collisions, or mergers, of two neutron stars inside of moderately sized or large galaxies. This latest discovery, however, shows that a neutron star collision may take place inside a tiny galaxy.
“Finding a neutron star collision where we did is game changing,” said Simone Dichiara of Penn State University, who led the study. “It may be the key to unlocking not one, but two important questions in astrophysics.”
The first puzzle this unprecedented location for a neutron star collision may explain may explain is the fact that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which can be produced by the collapse of two neutron stars, sometimes do not appear within the core of a galaxy, or any galaxy at all.The other question this result could address is how elements like gold and platinum have been found in stars located at large distances from the centers of galaxies.
This neutron star collision is unexpectedly located in a tiny galaxy, about 4.7 billion light-years away, embedded within a stream of gas that stretches some 600,000 light-years long.
(For context, our Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across.) This stream was likely created when a group of galaxies collided hundreds of millions of years ago, stripping gas and dust from the galaxies and leaving it in intergalactic space.
“We found a collision within a collision,” said co-author Eleonora Troja of the University of Rome in Italy. “The galaxy collision triggered a wave of star formation that, over hundreds of millions of years, led to the birth and eventual collision of these neutron stars.”
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To discover the event dubbed GRB 230906A, which occurred on 2023 September 6th, astronomers needed several NASA telescopes including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Hubble Space Telescope.
Fermi discovered the neutron star collision by picking up the distinctive signal of a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, explosion.
After using the InterPlanetary Network to derive a preliminary location for the Fermi source, astronomers then needed the sharp vision of Chandra, Swift, and Hubble to more precisely pinpoint the location of the object.
NASA’s missions are part of a growing, worldwide network that watches for these changes, to solve mysteries of how the universe works.
“Chandra’s pinpoint X-ray localization made this study possible,” said co-author Brendan O’Connor, a McWilliams Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Without it, we couldn’t have tied the burst to any specific source. And once Chandra told us exactly where to look, Hubble’s extraordinary sensitivity revealed the tiny, extremely faint galaxy at that position. We were only able to make this discovery after we put all the pieces together.”
This finding may explain why some GRBs do not appear to have host galaxies. This result implies that some host galaxies are too small and faint to be seen in most optical light images from ground-based observatories.
The unusual location of GRB 230906A may also help explain how astronomers have spotted elements like gold and platinum in stars at relatively large distances from galaxies.
Such stars are generally expected to be older and to have formed from gas that had less time to be enriched in heavy elements from supernova explosions.
Through a chain of nuclear reactions, a collision between two neutron stars can produce heavy elements like gold and platinum, which astronomers witnessed in a well-documented collision seen in 2017 .
Events like GRB 230906A could generate elements like these and spread them throughout the outskirts of galaxies, eventually appearing in future generations of stars.
An alternative explanation for the explosion is that it is located in a much more distant galaxy that is behind the galaxy group. The team considers this to be a less likely explanation than the tiny galaxy idea.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
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Ice to Fuel: NASA Tests Technology for Refueling Landers
Mar 10, 2026
The farther the destination, the more fuel a rocket needs. The more fuel the rocket carries, the heavier the spacecraft.
The heavier the spacecraft, the more fuel it requires to launch. Experts at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland are testing technology that could solve this problem.
The CryoFILL (Cryogenic Fluid In-Situ Liquefaction for Landers) project could transform the way NASA fuels future space exploration missions, reducing costs and extending the duration of planetary surface operations.
“If you think about how much fuel your spacecraft would need to go to Mars and come home, it’s quite a lot,” said Evan Racine, CryoFILL project manager at NASA Glenn.
“If we can produce and liquefy oxygen on the Moon or Mars, we can fuel landers on the surface where they land, reducing the amount of propellant needed to launch from Earth.”
Through the Artemis program, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly ambitious missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build a foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
To sustain a long-term presence on the lunar surface, NASA aims to use the Moon’s resources to make products like propellant.
Oxygen, a key ingredient of rocket fuel, can be extracted from water ice found in permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.
This oxygen would be mined in a gas form, but to be used as a propellant, it must be cooled and condensed into liquid form.
NASA Glenn experts are using a flight-like cryocooler, developed by Creare LLC through NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program, to remove heat from the system that extracts the oxygen.
This allows the oxygen to condense and remain at extremely cold temperatures below minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
“We’re testing with flight-like hardware to see how oxygen liquefies and how the system responds to different scenarios,” said Wesley Johnson, CryoFILL lead engineer. “These are critical steps toward scaling up and automating future in-situ refueling.”
Over the course of the next three months, NASA engineers will study how oxygen condenses under various conditions, use the data to validate temperature computer models, and demonstrate how NASA can scale the technology for larger applications.
Once the test is complete, the data will inform designs of these technologies for use on the Moon, Mars, or other planetary surfaces.
The Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project is a cross-agency team based at NASA Glenn and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The cryogenic portfolio’s work is part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and is comprised of more than 20 individual technology development activities.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-tests-lander-refueling-tech/
Why NASA sent 2,478 jellyfish to space to study gravity
March 11, 2026
In the early 1990s, NASA launched thousands of baby jellyfish into space.
Not just a few specimens in a lab container, but about 2,500 tiny jellyfish polyps, sealed in bags of artificial seawater and sent aboard the space shuttle Columbia.
By the time the mission ended nine days later, the number had exploded, with tens of thousands of jellyfish having developed in orbit.
The experiment had nothing to do with marine biology, though. Researchers were trying to answer a much stranger question.
What would happen if humans were born in space? More specifically, they wanted to understand how living organisms develop a sense of gravity when gravity is almost absent.
Jellyfish, oddly enough, offered a useful model.
Engineering an Upside-Down World
When a jellyfish matures into the familiar umbrella-shaped form—the stage scientists call the medusa—it grows tiny calcium sulfate crystals inside its bell, the pulsing dome that makes up its main body.
These crystals sit inside small pockets lined with microscopic hairs. When gravity pulls the crystals downward, the hairs detect the shift and send signals to the jellyfish’s nervous system.
That mechanism helps the animal figure out which way is up.
Humans use something strikingly similar. Within the inner ear are small mineral structures that move in response to gravity and stimulate sensitive hair cells. Those signals tell the brain how the body is oriented.
So the NASA team wondered: if jellyfish grew up in microgravity, would that system still develop properly?
During the shuttle flight, astronauts accelerated the jellyfish life cycle so the polyps would mature quickly in orbit.
By the time Columbia returned to Earth, the experiment had produced roughly 60,000 jellyfish. Back on the ground, scientists began comparing them with jellyfish that had grown normally on Earth.
That’s when things got strange.
The space-grown jellyfish could still swim, but not well. Their movements looked irregular and clumsy, with strange pulsing patterns that researchers hadn’t seen in the control group. Some scientists described the behavior as the jellyfish equivalent of vertigo.
The crystals responsible for detecting gravity had formed normally in space. But the animals appeared to struggle in handling Earth’s gravity once they returned. For researchers studying long-term space habitation, the result was unsettling.
If simple organisms raised in microgravity struggle to adapt once they return to normal gravity, it raises an obvious question: What might happen to humans born far from Earth if they ever tried to come back?
The jellyfish experiment didn’t answer that question. But it suggests that the human body may depend on gravity more than scientists once assumed.
https://geekspin.co/why-nasa-sent-2478-jellyfish-to-space-to-study-gravity/
Former CEO of Space and Rocket Center dies at 73
Mar. 11, 2026 at 8:01 AM PDT
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - The former CEO of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Deborah Barnhart, died Wednesday morning.
Members of her family told WAFF 48 News that she passed away at Huntsville Hospital following a recent cancer diagnosis.
Barnhart led the USSRC for nine years before stepping down in 2019.
She also served as director of Space Camp from 1986 to 1990.
Her career spans three decades of service in commercial industry, government, areospace and defense.
A retired Navy Captain (0-6), she was one of the first ten women assigned to duty abroad ships and commanded five units in her 26-year career.
Barnhart was also heavily involved in the arts in Huntsville.
She grew up in Westlawn and was the artist who designed the park and welded the statues and exhibits for Rose Park.
“Deborah was a great friend. I am glad her sculptures in the Westlawn neighborhood will live on indefinitely as a permanent memorial to her,” Huntsville City Councilman Bill Kling said.
https://www.waff.com/2026/03/11/former-ceo-space-rocket-center-dies-73/
https://news.mit.edu/2026/new-photonic-device-efficiently-beams-light-free-space-0311
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10038-6
New photonic device efficiently beams light into free space
March 11, 2026
Photonic chips use light to process data instead of electricity, enabling faster communication speeds and greater bandwidth. Most of that light typically stays on the chip, trapped in optical wires, and is difficult to transmit to the outside world in an efficient manner.
If a lot of light could be rapidly and precisely beamed off the chip, free from the confines of the wiring, it could open the door to higher-resolution displays, smaller Lidar systems, more precise 3D printers, or larger-scale quantum computers.
Now, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new class of photonic devices that enable the precise broadcasting of light from the chip into free space in a scalable way.
Their chip uses an array of microscopic structures that curl upward, resembling tiny, glowing ski jumps. The researchers can carefully control how light is emitted from thousands of these tiny structures at once.
They used this new platform to project detailed, full-color images that are roughly half the size of a grain of table salt. Used in this way, the technology could aid in the development of lightweight augmented reality glasses or compact displays.
They also demonstrated how photonic “ski jumps” could be used to precisely control quantum bits, or qubits, in a quantum computing system.
“On a chip, light travels in wires, but in our normal, free-space world, light travels wherever it wants. Interfacing between these two worlds has long been a challenge.
But now, with this new platform, we can create thousands of individually controllable laser beams that can interact with the world outside the chip in a single shot,” says Henry Wen, a visiting research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT, research scientist at MITRE, and co-lead author of a paper on the new platform.
He is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Matt Saha, of MITRE; Andrew S. Greenspon, a visiting scientist in RLE and MITRE; Matthew Zimmermann, of MITRE; Matt Eichenfeld, a professor at the University of Arizona; senior author Dirk Englund, a professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and principal investigator in the Quantum Photonics and Artificial Intelligence Group and the RLE; as well as others at MIT, MITRE, Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of Arizona. The research appears today in Nature.
A scalable platform
This work grew out of the Quantum Moonshot Program, a collaboration between MIT, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the MITRE Corporation, and Sandia National Laboratories to develop a novel quantum computing platform using the diamond-based qubits being developed in the Englund lab.
These diamond-based qubits are controlled using laser beams, and the researchers needed a way to interact with millions of qubits at once.
“We can’t control a million laser beams, but we may need to control a million qubits. So, we needed something that can shoot laser beams into free space and scan them over a large area, kind of like firing a T-shirt gun into the crowd at a sports stadium,” Wen says.
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Existing methods used to broadcast and steer light off a photonic chip typically work with only a few beams at once and can’t scale up enough to interact with millions of qubits.
To create a scalable platform, the researchers developed a new fabrication technique. Their method produces photonic chips with tiny structures that curve upward off the chip’s surface to shine laser beams into free space.
They built these tiny “ski jumps” for light by creating two-layer structures from two different materials. Each material expands differently when it cools down from the high fabrication temperatures.
The researchers designed the structures with special patterns in each layer so that, when the temperature changes, the difference in strain between the materials causes the entire structure to curve upward as it cools.
This is the same effect as in an old-fashioned thermostat, which utilizes a coil of two metallic materials that curl and uncurl based on the temperature in the room, triggering the HVAC system.
“Both of these materials, silicon nitride and aluminum nitride, were separate technologies. Finding a way to put them together was really the fabrication innovation that enables the ski jumps.
This wouldn’t have been possible without the pioneering contributions of Matt Eichenfield and Andrew Leenheer at Sandia National Labs,” Wen says.
On the chip, connected waveguides funnel light to the ski jump structures. The researchers use a series of modulators to rapidly and precisely control how that light is turned on and off, enabling them to project light off the chip and move it around in free space.
Painting with light
They can broadcast light in different colors and, by tweaking the frequencies of light, adjust the density of the pattern that is emitted. In this way, they can essentially paint pictures in free space using light.
“This system is so stable we don’t even need to correct for errors. The pattern stays perfectly still on its own. We just calculate what color lasers need to be on at a given time and then turn it on,” he says.
Because the individual points of light, or pixels, are so tiny, the researchers can use this platform to generate extremely high-resolution displays.
For instance, with their technique, 30,000 pixels can be fit into the same area that can hold only two pixels used in smartphone displays, Wen says.
“Our platform is the ideal optical engine because our pixels are at the physical limit of how small a pixel can be,” he adds.
Beyond high-resolution displays and larger quantum computers with diamond-based qubits, the method could be used to produce Lidars that are small enough to fit on tiny robots.
It could also be utilized in 3D printing processes that fabricate objects using lasers to cure layers of resin. Because their chip generates controllable beams of light so rapidly, it could greatly increase the speed of these printing processes, allowing users to create more complex objects.
In the future, the researchers want to scale their system up and conduct additional experiments on the yield and uniformity of the light, design a larger system to capture light from an array of photonic chips with “ski jumps,” and conduct robustness tests to see how long the devices last.
“We envision this opening the door to a new class of lab-on-chip capabilities and lithographically defined micro-opto-robotic agents,” Wen says.
This research was funded, in part, by the MITRE Quantum Moonshot Program, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies.
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Bald eagle with 'an attitude' released at Cape Canaveral
March 11, 2026, 5:05 a.m. ET
A bald eagle launched Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
It was the second eagle released of the four bald eagles already admitted to Florida Wildlife Hospital in Palm Shores this year.
Eagle with 'an attitude' recovered from trauma
Judging by its size, FWH staff suspects the eagle is a female.
She was transported to FWH on Jan. 8 by CCSFS staff. Her initial exam revealed soft-tissue trauma and a minor wing injury.
paywall
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/environment/2026/03/11/rehabilitated-bald-eagle-set-free-cape-canaveral-space-force-station/89087107007/
https://www.floridatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2026/03/11/bald-eagle-released-on-cape-canaveral-space-force-station/89088033007/
Polish brain-computer interface confirmed 'to work in space’
Mar 12, 2026
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have successfully controlled a computer interface using only brain signals during the PhotonGrav experiment, part of Poland’s IGNIS mission.
Despite physiological changes caused by microgravity, the system achieved an average control accuracy exceeding 80 percent.
The PhotonGrav experiment was conducted under the IGNIS technological and scientific mission to test whether a brain–computer interface (BCI) can function reliably in orbit.
BCIs enable users to communicate with and control software directly through brain activity, bypassing muscular movement.
The research team used a proprietary functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device developed by Cortivision.
The technology operates similarly to consumer pulse oximeters but is applied to the skull. It emits near-infrared light through the skull to the cerebral cortex and measures changes in blood oxygenation in specific brain regions.
When a region of the brain becomes more active, for example, during mental arithmetic, its oxygen demand increases.
The device detects these changes in oxygenation patterns and translates them into signals that can be interpreted by control algorithms.
Researchers were uncertain how the system would perform in orbit.
“We did not know how the signal from the device would behave in space; firstly, due to interference in the station's modules, and secondly, because blood is a fluid that behaves differently in microgravity than on Earth.
However, our analyses showed that the quality of the data collected in space was no different from that on Earth,” Dariusz Zapała of Cortivision told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Two astronauts participated in the in-orbit study: Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and another, unnamed crew member of the Ax-4 mission. Each astronaut completed three sessions aboard the ISS, with each session lasting about 30 minutes.
In the first phase of each session, the system’s algorithm learned the astronaut’s individual brain activity patterns.
In the second phase, participants were instructed to move a colored bar displayed on a screen using only their mental state – by intentionally entering states of focus or relaxation.
According to the researchers, signals recorded in microgravity were stronger than comparable measurements taken on Earth.
In orbit, body fluids shift toward the upper body and head, increasing cranial blood volume and bringing the brain slightly closer to sensors positioned on the scalp.
Zapała said these changes were noticeable during preparation.
“We observed this in the experiment: the team had to provide sensor caps in various sizes because the astronaut's head volume actually increased. Caps perfectly fitted on Earth became too tight in orbit,” he said.
The fluid shift effect was also visible in facial appearance, with astronauts showing subtle changes compared to pre-flight images.
The research team defined operational success as at least 70 percent accuracy in recognizing the astronaut’s intended mental state. Results exceeded that benchmark.
“The accuracy of the predictions in the case of the astronauts was significantly above this threshold, averaging 82%. This means they were able to effectively control the object's movement without using muscles.
This was the first time this type of study was conducted in space,” Zapała said.
The next phase of the project will attempt to reproduce the findings under simulated microgravity conditions on Earth.
Participants will use the device while lying down with their legs elevated above the head, a position that shifts body fluids upward and mimics some effects of spaceflight.
Researchers say the technology could support autonomous monitoring of neurological health in extreme environments. If effective without direct medical supervision, fNIRS-based systems could improve safety for individuals working in isolation.
“This technology could save the life of a polar explorer or diver by informing the base if they are overloaded or their health is deteriorating,” Zapała said.
He added that the work also contributes to studying brain function in naturalistic, operational settings rather than strictly controlled laboratory conditions.
“We are currently the only company in the world that can boast such a 'Flight Heritage' (space flight experience) in the field of near-infrared spectroscopy in space.
Our support services for experiments on the ISS are already part of Axiom Space's core offerings,” Zapała said.
https://ampoleagle.com/polish-braincomputer-interface-confirmed-to-work-in-space-p19511-96.htm
https://usaherald.com/spacexs-starship-v3-test-delayed-as-nasa-pushes-faster-lunar-lander-development/
SpaceX’s Starship V3 Test Delayed as NASA Pushes Faster Lunar Lander Development
March 9, 2026
The countdown clock has shifted again for SpaceX's Starship V3 test, as the company delays the first launch of its newest-generation rocket while facing growing pressure from NASA to accelerate work on a lunar landing system.
Like a rocket sitting on the pad while engineers chase the final loose bolts, the schedule for Starship’s next leap has been nudged back — even as the race to return astronauts to the moon intensifies.
Launch Timeline Slides to Early April
Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, announced in a social media post early March 7 that the first flight of the vehicle’s third iteration — known as version 3 or V3 — is expected to occur “in about four weeks.”
Counting forward from that announcement places the target date around April 4.
The updated projection comes nearly six weeks after Musk offered a different estimate. On Jan. 26, he wrote that the next Starship launch would take place “in six weeks,” which pointed to roughly March 9.
Neither Musk nor SpaceX explained the cause of the effective four-week delay. But observers tracking development activities at Starbase, the company’s sprawling launch and manufacturing complex in Texas, had already noted that a launch did not appear imminent.
Testing schedules, along with the absence of maritime and airspace notices typically issued before launches, hinted that the timeline was slipping.
Testing Continues at Starbase
SpaceX said March 7 that it had completed a “cryoproof” test of the upper stage planned for the next flight — known internally as Ship 39.
The test is designed to demonstrate that the vehicle can safely handle cryogenic propellants while maintaining structural integrity.
Although the company confirmed that milestone, it stopped short of providing a firm launch date.
The previous Starship mission took place in October during the final flight of version 2 of the rocket system.
At that time, SpaceX said it would soon shift to the upgraded V3 model, which features improvements intended to boost performance and increase the vehicle’s long-term reusability.
In early November, a company executive suggested that V3 would become “our production rocket,” with the first launch potentially arriving as soon as January.
Booster Damage Set Back Plans
Those ambitions ran into trouble on Nov. 21, when the first V3 Super Heavy booster suffered damage during testing.
Following that incident, SpaceX said Starship’s twelfth flight test remained targeted for the first quarter of 2026, though the setback cast uncertainty over the timeline.
Starship — towering and stainless-steel clad — is designed as the backbone of SpaceX’s future ambitions, from Mars exploration to serving as a landing craft for NASA astronauts.
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NASA Urges Faster Progress for Artemis
While SpaceX fine-tunes its next launch, pressure is mounting from NASA, which is relying on the company to build a lunar landing system for the Artemis program.
SpaceX and Blue Origin both hold contracts under NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program to develop crewed landers capable of delivering astronauts to the lunar surface.
In October, then-acting NASA administrator and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the agency would reopen SpaceX’s contract for the first crewed lunar landing mission — then called Artemis 3 — and seek proposals from both companies on how they might accelerate development.
The companies have since submitted those plans. According to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the agency has accepted them, though details have not been made public.
Artemis Mission Plans Shift
NASA has also revised the broader architecture of its Artemis program.
On Feb. 27, the agency announced that Artemis 3 will now take place in mid-2027 as a mission in low Earth orbit, where the Orion spacecraft will dock with lunar landers developed by SpaceX and potentially Blue Origin.
Actual attempts to land astronauts on the moon will follow later missions — Artemis 4 in early 2028 and Artemis 5 in late 2028.
Isaacman said both companies have presented ideas to move faster while maintaining the program’s long-term goals.
“Both HLS providers have offered solutions to accelerate their plans without compromising on the grander objective,” he said during the Feb. 27 announcement.
“We need to build out an enduring presence so that, when we return to the moon, we have the capability to stay.”
Still, Isaacman declined to outline the specifics of those acceleration proposals.
Launch Rate Seen as Key Indicator
During a Jan. 17 briefing tied to the rollout of the Artemis 2 mission, Isaacman suggested that the public will be able to gauge progress by watching how frequently rockets lift off.
“The way the public can best follow along and probably measure progress is just observing launch rate,” he said.
In the end, the rhythm of liftoffs — like drumbeats before a giant leap — may signal whether the massive Starship system can deliver what NASA needs: a spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts from lunar orbit down to the dusty surface of the moon.
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Rocket City Rising: U.S. Space Command deputy commander to keynote GEOHuntsville Summit
Published on March 10, 2026
Stan Tillman and the board of directors of GEOHuntsville host a news conference announcing the 2026 GEOHuntsville Summit keynote speakers.Lt. Gen. Richard L. Zellmann, Deputy Commander, U.S. Space Command, will be a keynote speaker at the GEOHuntsville Summit on Thursday, March 26, at 9 a.m. at the Huntsville Botanical Garden.
The Summit’s theme, “Rocket City Rising,” will spotlight conversations at the intersection of geospatial, space and artificial intelligence. Organizers noted the Summit will award scholarships to local students.
“The GEOHuntsville Summit is all about shaping the next frontier of artificial intelligence, space innovation and geospatial intelligence. This collaboration accelerates solutions and open new opportunities for the people who power Huntsville’s future,” Mayor Battle said.
The Summit will convene industry leaders, government partners, academic innovators and students to explore emerging technologies, workforce development and real‑world applications.
Keynote Speakers
Breakfast Keynote: Lt. Gen. Richard L. Zellmann, Deputy Commander, U.S. Space Command
Midday Keynote: Mr. Bill Caniano, West Executive, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (Invited)
Afternoon Keynote: Mr. Justin Langlois, Deputy Director, Office of Commercial Systems, National Reconnaissance Office
Panels include: How Commercial Companies Are Solving Threats in Space; Beyond Automation – How Next‑Gen AI Is Reshaping GEOINT Collection & Analysis; Why Geospatial Ethics & Standards Matter in AI & Space; and Preparing Students for the 2035 National Security Workforce.
Launched in 2012 as part of Mayor Battle’s Exemplar City initiative, GEOHuntsville connects government, industry and academia to advance geospatial innovation, strengthen public safety and support economic and workforce development across the region.
The initiative supports Huntsville as a national leader in the design, development and deployment of practical geospatial solutions.
https://www.huntsvilleal.gov/rocket-city-rising-u-s-space-command-deputy-commander-to-keynote-geohuntsville-summit/
https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/2026/03/space-command-deputy-commander-to-speak-at-huntsville-conference.html
https://www.geohuntsville.org/conference
https://www.vandenberg.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4430999/daf-space-medicine-leaders-civilian-partners-strategize-policy-at-inaugural-spa/
DAF space medicine leaders, civilian partners strategize policy at inaugural Space Force Medicine Summit
March 11, 2026
As Guardians work to maintain an advantage in an increasingly contested space domain, Air Force medical leaders hosted the inaugural Space Force Medicine Stakeholder Summit, Feb. 23-26, to align efforts to improve Guardian medical support.
The Air Force Surgeon General’s Space Force Medical Operations Directorate hosted more than 100 Department of the Air Force leaders and civilian partners to discuss the space warfighter’s unique operational demands and the partnerships required to close medical readiness gaps. The leaders discussed themes including medical standards, cognitive performance, occupational health, the Space Force’s Holistic Health Approach and interagency collaboration.
Defining the operational reality
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Sean T. Collins, director of the Space Force Medical Operations Directorate, challenged attendees to identify critical gaps and workshop solutions through partnership.
“This can't be done alone,” Collins said. “We need to architect integrated capabilities, and that's why you're all here to help collaborate, design and identify those innovative solutions that will enhance Guardian lethality and mission success.”
Since the Space Force was established in 2019, Guardians have demonstrated that installation readiness is inseparable from combat effectiveness in the space domain.
Guardians regularly work in a high-stakes domain requiring sustained attention and rapid decision-making on a day-to-day basis regardless of their operational location.
Emphasizing this, the USSF created a three-phase Space Force Generation model, which is uniquely designed for an employed-in-place force, said U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Amanda Manship, Combat Forces Generation division chief, Combat Forces Command.
The rotational model requires synchronized support throughout the phases to sustain performance.
Developed in tandem with this operational model is the medical support needed to strengthen Guardian resilience and holistic well-being for the future fight.
U.S. Space Force Senior Master Sgt. Ky Covert, USSF Combat Forces Command Training and Force Generation Directorate senior enlisted advisor, shared the command’s Guardian Heartbeat Initiative - an effort that integrates mental health metrics and collaboration with Guardian Resilience Teams to better understand operational stressors and inform prevention.
Experts from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing shared efforts to improve cognitive agility and human performance with research that employs predictive modeling, wearable technologies and tracking various biomarkers.
Col. Lidia Ilcus, command surgeon for U.S. Space Command, tied research and readiness to operational risk in a distributed fight where the medical needs may not be fully identified.
Using the Space Force Medical Operations Directorate as an example, she said the U.S. Air Force Surgeon General established the directorate in March 2023 to address Guardian readiness and challenges Space Force personnel face due to their unique mission sets.
“The expectation is you figure out how to care of them,” she said, urging leaders to proactively build medical support where it does not yet exist.
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Translating mission into policy
Throughout the summit, leaders agreed on the need to standardize Guardian qualifications and access to medical resources, particularly in geographically separated units, while leveraging data-informed insight from the operational field and research partners.
This collaborative effort aims to balance mission effectiveness with occupational safety and long-term health outcomes.
Leaders demonstrated how data tools such as the Guardians Aggregate Medical Operations Readiness Application, known as GAMORA, can package space-unique readiness data trends for commanders, reducing actionable gaps and informing resource decisions.
U.S Air Force Lt. Col. Kieran Dhillon, director of USSF psychological health, reiterated the value of mission immersion and evaluating observations during site visits to understand real-world conditions.
“It is one thing to see what a mission is on paper, and it is quite another to actually go to a physical location and see how that mission is being executed,” she said.
U.S. Space Force Brig. Gen. Nick Hague, assistant deputy chief of Space Operations and former NASA astronaut, reinforced the human dimension of space operations.
“Human performance is holistic. It’s multi-faceted. If we don’t acknowledge that, then we’re failing,” he said.
Drawing on his astronaut cognitive training, Hague advised Airmen and Guardians to deepen self-care practice, which for him, cultivated resilience and adaptable behavior for high-stress missions.
“I can’t help somebody if I’m not trying to take care of myself,” he said. “So, it’s driving home that culture and letting people know that’s the expectation.”
Strengthening partnerships
Leaders also said partnerships play an important role in expanding space medicine knowledge.
Whether it’s working with Air Force Medical Command leaders to prioritize Space Force readiness, Uniformed Services University staff to develop space medicine curriculum, or the Defense Health Agency for collaboration on Guardian access to care, relationships are critical.
Dr. Vincent Michaud, NASA deputy chief health and medical officer, reinforced the importance of collaboration in developing civil space medical standards that aided NASA’s rapid expansion of commercial space activity.
He said integrating medical expertise early in system design helps mitigate risk and avoids costly restructuring.
As the summit closed, leaders agreed space medicine must evolve collectively - integrating policy, research and partnerships to sustain combat-ready and resilient Guardians.
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Space RCO Adopts New Approach to Fielding Cloud-Based, Consolidated C2 System
March 10, 2026
The Space Force has adopted a more incremental approach to migrating new and legacy orbital warfare systems onto a consolidated, cloud-based command and control platform, according to the head of the Space Rapid Capabilities Office.
The program, dubbed Rapid Resilient Command and Control, or R2C2, was established in 2023 to operate Space Force satellites that are highly maneuverable and designed to respond to threats in orbit.
That mission has become more important in recent years as U.S. Space Command calls for satellites to be even more responsive to a contested and congested space environment, a concept called dynamic space operations.
The Space RCO, led by Kelly Hammett, is spearheading the R2C2 development effort.
The organization had hoped to start onboarding new programs to the baseline platform this year by focusing on rapidly developing and fielding software. But challenges transitioning legacy ground systems have slowed that progress.
Speaking with reporters at AFA’s Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo., Hammett described the original R2C2 strategy as “very audacious.”
The program saw some early successes, like transitioning systems to a commercial cloud environment, and quickly bringing on a pool of nontraditional companies to help manage the effort.
But the goal to migrate between 15 and 25 legacy programs onto the new platform in two years, while simultaneously developing the baseline system, proved too big a challenge, Hammett said.
“That didn’t pan out exactly the way we wanted,” he said. “We have not been able to effectively bring those flying programs in.”
The Space Force has long struggled to deliver ground command and control systems on time and on budget. Well-known examples include the GPS Next-Generation Operational Control Segment, or OCX, and the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System.
Space acquisition leaders have called for reforms to ground system development and procurement, including the adoption of commercial best practices like incremental development and delivery.
To course correct on R2C2, Hammett and his team have spent the last year “retooling” the R2C2 migration strategy. The Space RCO hired Space Dynamics Laboratory, a nonprofit research center owned by Utah State University, as its lead systems integrator.
It also increased its delivery cadence from every eight weeks to a two-week cycle and it plans to use an existing contract mechanism called Marvin to hire more software developers who may not have a traditional space background and train them to operate in unclassified and classified environments.
“We hired these guys because the experiment was, these are not space ground people, they were software experts,” Hammett said. “We have got to get them on the team giving us more capacity to write code and bring in new mission partners.”
Hammett didn’t provide a timeline for completing the legacy transition and integrating newer systems as they come online.
He stressed that the scope of the effort won’t change—R2C2 will still integrate all orbital warfare on one C2 platform—but the process will be more piecemeal and will take “a little longer” than originally planned.
Meanwhile, the Space Force is moving ahead with plans to develop a fleet of small, maneuverable satellites to augment and eventually replace one of its more well-known orbital warfare constellations, the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program.
The service is on the verge of selecting an initial pool of providers for that acquisition effort, called RG-XX.
Col. Bryon McClain, who leads that effort as Space Systems Command’s Program Executive Officer for Space Combat Power, told reporters in January that his team is working closely with orbital warfare operators within Mission Delta 9 to define ground system requirements.
McClain indicated that as the Space RCO works through R2C2 development, SSC is considering whether RG-XX will leverage some “temporary capabilities” used by classified programs in other mission areas.
“I do not intend to procure a new ground system for RG-XX that competes with any other common ground system,” he said. “We are working through internally what is the right answer using things that already exist.”
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/space-rco-new-approach-r2c2/
extra Space Force
https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/4428483/us-space-command-recognition/
https://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/2026/03/11/u-s-military-uses-space-cyber-and-missile-defense-systems-in-operation-epic-fury/
https://x.com/USSpaceForce/status/2031448352676581559
STARCOM opens headquarters annex at Patrick Space Force Base
March 10, 2026
Space Training and Readiness Command leaders and installation partners held a ribbon-cutting ceremony March 10, 2026, to mark the opening of STARCOM’s headquarters annex.
Community leaders, industry partners and Guardians from across STARCOM and Space Launch Delta 45 joined together to celebrate the milestone.
“This is a symbol of momentum as we move in,” said Maj. Gen. James E. Smith, commander of STARCOM. “We now have a place we can call home. It’s going to enable us to continue to get after our mission.”
Smith explained that the new facility allows the team to work in one place instead of being more spread out across offices on base.
The project represents a $28 million investment that includes office space, parking and supporting infrastructure to accommodate STARCOM personnel as the command continues expanding its presence on the Space Coast.
Currently, 142 personnel occupy the facility, with capacity for approximately 75 additional workspaces, providing room for continued hiring and the relocation of remaining personnel from Colorado.
Col. Brian Chatman, commander of SLD 45, noted the project moved from acquisition strategy to contract award in less than three months, which was made possible through collaboration between SLD 45, civil engineering teams and industry partners.
“Today marks a very special occasion,” said Chatman. “We couldn’t be more excited to welcome our newest mission partner Space Training and Readiness Command here to Patrick Space Force Base.
We’re not only crushing records on the launch schedule, we’re crushing records on growing the Guardian mission on the Space Coast, the STARCOM personnel we’re welcoming onto our patch is a great reflection of that.”
STARCOM’s headquarters moved to Florida’s Patrick SFB in July 2025.
The command is responsible for preparing the Space Force’s 14,000 military and civilian Guardians throughout their careers via five deltas focused on accessions, training, education, testing and wargaming.
https://www.starcom.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4430448/starcom-opens-headquarters-annex-at-patrick-space-force-base/
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