Channel Islands National Park, a chain of five ecologically rich islands off the coast of mainland California, is known for its diversity of plant and animal species, earning it the nickname "North America's Galapagos." For part of May 2026, Santa Rosa Island--the park's second-largest island--was closed to the public as firefighters worked to contain a wildland fire burning through grassland, coastal sage scrub, and areas of island chaparral.

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Dr. Kelly Korreck is the program scientist for the Living with a Star (LWS) program within the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. She leads the strategic planning and programmatic management of the LWS mission portfolio, which focuses on the Sun-Earth system and its impact on life and society. In this role, she ensures that missions providing predictive understanding of space weather meet technical, budgetary, and scientific milestones to protect technology, communication systems, and human exploration in space.

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On May 15, M.A. in Climate and Society and M.S. in Climate Finance students gathered to celebrate their accomplishments....

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Federal water managers yesterday (May 18, 2026) began pushing a pulse of water through New Mexico's rapidly drying Middle Rio Grande to try to encourage the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow to spawn.

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Editor's Note: Today's story is the answer to the May Puzzler.About 15,000 years ago, southeastern Manitoba sat beneath tens of meters of frigid water. Lake Agassiz--which once encompassed present-day Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg, and Lake of the Woods--covered an area larger than all of the Great Lakes combined. It formed in front of the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet, which dammed rivers that otherwise might have drained into Hudson Bay, producing an expansive body of water 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) long by 300 kilometers wide that spanned parts of today's Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Minnesota.

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One reason I was so happy to be invited to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History to talk about horned dinosaurs is because the museum has two of the coolest ones on display: Aquilops, the smallest and earliest ceratopsian in North America...

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Q: Does a NASA Center have to be involved in the proposal? 

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This year, professors Kristina Guild Douglass and Michel Sadelain will both hold the ceremonial role....

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The outermost layers of Earth's atmosphere, the thermosphere and exosphere, are relatively busy places. In these layers, tens of thousands of trackable objects, including satellites and various types of debris, orbit the planet. They are also where dozens of tons of meteoric material enter daily, occasionally producing bright fireballs as the pieces burn up.

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It's now fairly well established that the remains of the Krayt Dragon that C-3PO and R2-D2 walk past in an early Tatooine scene of Star Wars (1977) were re-used from the knockabout Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975).

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The loss of fertilizer shipments coming from the Persian Gulf as a result of the Iran war got me thinking about the chemist Justus von Liebig, a prominent 19th century proponent of the mineral theory of plant nutrition. Li...

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At 6:37 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of the International Space Station's Harmony module, carrying nearly 6,500 pounds of food, supplies, and equipment for the Expedition 74 crew. This is the 34th SpaceX commercial resupply services mission to the space station for NASA.

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ExEP...Meetings/EventsAbSciConExEP HomeOverviewTeamMissionsScienceOverviewDecadal SurveysExoExplorersTechnologyTechnology OverviewNeeds and Gap ListsStrategic Astrophysics Technology (SAT) Awards ExEP Technology Colloquium SeriesIn-Space Servicing an...

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Last Friday night I was at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History to talk about horned dinosaurs, for the launch of the "Bizarre Headgear" exhibit. But last Saturday I was there for "Curiousiday", to talk about Sauroposeidon. I wa...

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On Friday, NASA's Calibration Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder (CLARREO Pathfinder) instrument launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of SpaceX's 34th commercial resupply se...

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The IXPE GO Program solicits proposals for investigations in any area of astrophysics (not constrained to IXPE's prime science areas). IXPE Cycle 4 observations will commence on or about February 1, 2027, and continue for a nominal period of 12 months. Individuals may submit proposals for observations that will advance the IXPE mission science return. Observing proposals may be for "standard," "Target-of-Opportunity (ToO)", "Large Program (LP)" or "Multi-cycle" observations. Theory proposals are not solicited. For ToO observations, IXPE anticipates executing approximately 1 high (observations begin within 9 days of trigger) and 7 medium (observations begin between 9 days and 4 weeks of trigger) priority triggers in this GO cycle, hence proposers must strongly justify the response time required to meet the scientific objectives.

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As threatened, I was in Oklahoma at the tail end of last week and over the weekend, mostly to give talks. My Friday evening public lecture was on horned dinosaurs, and it was tied in with the launch of a temporary exhibit called "Bizarre Headgear: Ceratopsians and the Evolution of Extraordinary Skulls". I'll cover the talks in another post; this one is about that exhibit.

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A model Mars capsule flew through the air. Alien ships likely didn't....

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Although NASA's X-59 is designed to fly supersonic, its test flight schedule is about more than just going gradually faster and higher - sometimes, to make sure the aircraft is fully mission-ready, slower and lower is the way to go.

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Scientists estimate that Indonesia will lose its two remaining glaciers by 2030--a warning for glaciers around the world....

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My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures is from our move across the country from Utah to New York. Along the way we visited 13 National Parks as well as some other sites. This was the 12th National Park along the way.

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The bill keeps NASA funding flat with the currently enacted budget, but reprioritizes funding levels across the agency, including a 17% cut to Science to offset increases elsewhere....

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Thawing may be a welcome sight for Alaskans following a remarkably cold winter and early spring in much of the state. But with melting comes the threat of rapid flooding in low-lying areas as river ice breaks up and periodically jams.

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One of my earliest blog posts (in 2008) was a list of my favorite depictions of geologists in movies. I've revisited it once or twice. It came to mind as we prepare to offer a showing of "Tremors" as a geology field studies fundraiser at the State Th...

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