NASA and the US Department of Agriculture signed a memorandum of understanding on October 24 to broaden cooperation on Earth observation and agricultural data, NASA announced October 26. The agreement sets out areas for exploration; it does not establish that crop yields or farm profits have already increased.
A NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory report released October 26 describes fine and ultrafine dust sticking to material samples on Perseverance. The measurements give US mission designers information about particles that future suits and habitats would need to keep out. They are rover observations, not evidence of illness in astronauts on Mars.
NASA’s October 26 Earth Observatory report shows how satellite measurements can follow changing leaf pigments across the United States, while field photographs help scientists interpret what those measurements mean. Its Vermont example is an October 3 Landsat 9 image; the report does not provide a live guarantee of colour at a particular viewpoint today.
NASA’s Dragonfly team has completed a comprehensive real-time simulation of the rotorcraft’s first flight at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. The October 23 update describes flight-like avionics working with simulated sensor inputs. Dragonfly has not flown on Titan; launch is scheduled no earlier than 2028, with arrival planned for 2034.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville hosts the 2026 von Braun Space Exploration Symposium from October 26–28, according to NASA’s October 22 media advisory. Its agenda brings U.S. government, industry and academic participants together around lunar operations, propulsion and the future space workforce.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory made its final observation on October 20, ending a science mission that began after its 2004 launch. NASA said October 23 that increasing atmospheric drag had left the spacecraft unable to hold its telescopes steadily on targets and that re-entry was expected in the coming weeks.
U.S. skywatchers planning their next evening outdoors have a Moon-and-star-cluster pairing to look for on October 27 into October 28. NASA’s October observing guide identifies the Pleiades as the cluster the Moon will pass close to and advises looking east in the evening as they climb higher.
NASA’s October 23 analysis traces the developing 2026 El Niño from elevated sea levels across the equatorial Pacific to coastal signals off Mexico and Baja California. For U.S. West Coast communities, the concern is how a higher ocean baseline could combine with high tides and storm surges; the satellite findings do not guarantee flooding or a repeat of earlier erosion losses at any particular beach.
NASA has outlined different routes to the Moon for SpaceX and Blue Origin, replacing a shared rendezvous-orbit approach as it works toward a 2028 crewed landing. The October 23 update leaves the choice of the first landing provider dependent on readiness, rather than assigning either company a specific lunar landing mission now.
U.S. viewers following the next steps in the Artemis program can watch NASA's scheduled update at 2 p.m. EDT on Friday, October 23. The briefing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is due to address Artemis III's planned low Earth orbit test flight next year and the agency's goal of returning American astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is now using its solar-electric propulsion system almost continuously on the journey to its metal-rich asteroid target, according to an October 22 mission update. The sustained cruise phase began September 28, following the Mars gravity assist, with arrival still targeted for summer 2029.
Residents near Amarillo, Texas, may see low-flying research aircraft as NASA schedules FarmFlux flights over agricultural land from October 22 through November 9. The agency’s updated October 20 notice says a Dynamic Aviation A200 will measure gases and particles associated with animal-feeding operations.
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