As NASA fosters technologies needed to live and work farther away from home than ever before, the agency’s Technology Transfer program.

NASA engineers have completed first cold-flow tests of a full-scale nuclear thermal propulsion reactor, validating designs for future deep-space missions.

SpaceWorks Enterprises and Stratolaunch will utilize their respective X-60 and Talon-A platforms for the program.

In late 2025, scientists reported that for the first time, they were able to detect concentrations of plastic pollution on land using NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) sensor aboard the International Space Station.

Using high-resolution imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the AI analyzed the bedrock and boulder fields. It processed the same data humans use, but it worked faster, stringing together ten-meter segments into a continuous, safe path.

Cold-flow tests at NASA Marshall demonstrated the stability of a nuclear propulsion design aimed at reducing travel times to the moon and Mars.

Nuclear propulsion and power technologies could unlock new frontiers in missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA has reached an important milestone advancing nuclear propulsion that could benefit future deep space missions by completing a cold-flow test campaign of the first flight reactor engineering development unit since the 1960s.

During the demonstration, NASA engineers used vision-language models, or VLMs, to create waypoints on Mars for Perseverance.

NASA’s EMIT sensor uses imaging spectroscopy and spectral libraries to support large-scale tracking of plastic and other marine debris from space.

China’s Mengzhou is putting pressure on NASA’s lunar timeframe