NASA Minute: Sept.26, 2025

Ten new astronaut candidates, a new name for our Artemis II Orion spacecraft, and a trio of satellites launching to study the sun. Welcome to this week’s jam-packed NASA Minute!

What is said in the film

Ten new astronauts, a new name for our Orion spacecraft, and a trio of satellites launching to study the sun. Welcome to this week’s jam-packed NASA Minute! On Monday, we introduced a brand new, all-American class of NASA astronaut candidates! From all over the nation, these 10 explorers were chosen from more than 8,000 applicants. From test pilots to doctors, from engineers to scientists, our astronaut candidates just began a nearly two-year journey of training.

Who knows? Maybe one of these ten astronauts will be the very first person to step foot on Mars. On Wednesday morning, we launched three missions from Kennedy to study space weather. IMAP, Carruthers, and NOAA’s SWFO L-1 are all headed about a million miles from Earth, looking towards the Sun. This launch strengthens America’s readiness for space weather - helping protect our satellites, interplanetary missions, and, most importantly, our astronauts.

Also down on the space coast, we are making steady progress on the hardware for Artemis II – a 10-day crewed mission around the Moon launching early next year. Teams recently added the launch abort system for the Orion spacecraft and moved the Orion stage adapter, which will connect the spacecraft to the rocket, in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Down in Houston at the Johnson Space Center, media got a closer look at the Artemis II mission and heard from the crew as they train for their mission. On Wednesday, Commander Reid Wiseman announced the Artemis II Orion spacecraft’s name: “Integrity. ” The name reflects a core value shared by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency.

It speaks to trust, respect, candor, and humility – values carried by the crew, values carried by the crew, the mission teams, and the global effort coming together to return us to the Moon. Over in Alabama at Marshall, a winning team from NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge recently tested their lunar rover in a vacuum chamber. It showed how the rover handles extreme temperatures and terrain, and how it could dig up ice at the Moon's South Pole. Research like this will be incredibly helpful as we return to the lunar surface in the coming years. On Thursday, we released the first images from NISAR, our joint radar satellite with India.

They’re an early preview of the amazing science ahead, as the mission nears full operations this fall. NISAR’s data will help leaders worldwide respond to natural disasters and mitigate other challenges. And finally, NASA’s fifth Dream with Us design challenge opened today, giving middle- and high-schoolers the opportunity to submit their ideas for aviation innovations that can benefit U. S. agriculture.

Working with the FAA, NASA will be looking for submissions focusing on drone design and new ways to detect agricultural threats. Interested students can learn more at the NASA Aeronautics Dream with Us website. And that’s a wrap. See you next week!

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