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Station Nation: Meet Carlos Fontanot, the Imagery Manager Leaving a Legacy of Visual Storytelling
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By NASA
The Axiom Mission 4 and Expedition 73 crews join together for a group portrait inside the International Space Station’s Harmony module. In the front row (from left) are Ax-4 crewmates Tibor Kapu, Peggy Whitson, Shubhanshu Shukla, and Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski with Expedition 73 crewmates Anne McClain and Takuya Onishi. In the rear are, Expedition 73 crewmates Alexey Zubritskiy, Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Jonny Kim, and Nichole Ayers.Credit: NASA NASA will provide live coverage of the undocking and departure of the Axiom Mission 4 private astronaut mission from the International Space Station.
The four-member astronaut crew is scheduled to undock from the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at approximately 7:05 a.m. EDT Monday, July 14, pending weather, to begin their return to Earth and splashdown off the coast of California.
Coverage of departure operations will begin with hatch closing at 4:30 a.m. on NASA+. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland, and HUNOR (Hungarian to Orbit) astronaut Tibor Kapu of Hungary, will have spent about two weeks in space at the conclusion of their mission.
The Dragon spacecraft will return with more than 580 pounds of cargo, including NASA hardware and data from over 60 experiments conducted throughout the mission.
NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Monday, July 14
4:30 a.m. – Hatch closing coverage begins on NASA+.
4:55 a.m. – Crew enters spacecraft followed by hatch closing.
6:45 a.m. – Undocking coverage begins on NASA+, Axiom Space, and SpaceX channels.
7:05 a.m. – Undocking
NASA’s coverage ends approximately 30 minutes after undocking when space station joint operations with Axiom Space and SpaceX conclude. Axiom Space will resume coverage of Dragon’s re-entry and splashdown on the company’s website.
A collaboration between NASA and ISRO allowed Axiom Mission 4 to deliver on a commitment highlighted by President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send the first ISRO astronaut to the station. The space agencies participated in five joint science investigations and two in-orbit science, technology, engineering, and mathematics demonstrations. NASA and ISRO have a long-standing relationship built on a shared vision to advance scientific knowledge and expand space collaboration.
The private mission also carried the first astronauts from Poland and Hungary to stay aboard the space station.
The International Space Station is a springboard for developing a low Earth orbit economy. NASA’s goal is to achieve a strong economy off the Earth where the agency can purchase services as one of many customers to meet its science and research objectives in microgravity. NASA’s commercial strategy for low Earth orbit provides the government with reliable and safe services at a lower cost, enabling the agency to focus on Artemis missions to the Moon in preparation for Mars while also continuing to use low Earth orbit as a training and proving ground for those deep space missions.
Learn more about NASA’s commercial space strategy at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-space
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Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Anna Schneider
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 11, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA instruments and aircraft are helping identify potential sources of critical minerals across vast swaths of California, Nevada, and other Western states. Pilots gear up to reach altitudes about twice as high as those of a cruising passenger jet.NASA NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have been mapping the planets since Apollo. One team is searching closer to home for minerals critical to national security and the economy.
If not for the Joshua trees, the tan hills of Cuprite, Nevada, would resemble Mars. Scalded and chemically altered by water from deep underground, the rocks here are earthly analogs for understanding ancient Martian geology. The hills are also rich with minerals. They’ve lured prospectors for more than 100 years and made Cuprite an ideal place to test NASA technology designed to map the minerals, craters, crusts, and ices of our solar system.
Sensors that discovered lunar water, charted Saturn’s moons, even investigated ground zero in New York City were all tested and calibrated at Cuprite, said Robert Green, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He’s honed instruments in Nevada for decades.
One of Green’s latest projects is to find and map rocky surfaces in the American West that could contain minerals crucial to the nation’s economy and security. Currently, the U.S. is dependent on imports of 50 critical minerals, which include lithium and rare earth elements used in everything from rechargeable batteries to medicine.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are searching nationwide for domestic sources. NASA is contributing to this effort with high-altitude aircraft and sensors capable of detecting the molecular fingerprints of minerals across vast, treeless expanses in wavelengths of light not visible to human eyes.
The hills of Cuprite, Nevada, appear pink and tan to the eye (top image) but they shine with mica, gypsum, and alunite among other types of minerals when imaged spectroscopically (lower image). NASA sensors used to study Earth and other rocky worlds have been tested there.USGS/Ray Kokaly The collaboration is called GEMx, the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment, and it’s likely the largest airborne spectroscopic survey in U.S. history. Since 2023, scientists working on GEMx have charted more than 190,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers) of North American soil.
Mapping Partnership Started During Apollo
As NASA instruments fly in aircraft 60,000 feet (18,000 meters) overhead, Todd Hoefen, a geophysicist, and his colleagues from USGS work below. The samples of rock they test and collect in the field are crucial to ensuring that the airborne observations match reality on the ground and are not skewed by the intervening atmosphere.
The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
For example, geologic maps of the Moon made in the early 1960s at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, helped Apollo mission planners select safe and scientifically promising sites for the six crewed landings that occurred from 1969 to 1972. Before stepping onto the lunar surface, NASA’s Moon-bound astronauts traveled to Flagstaff to practice fieldwork with USGS geologists. A version of those Apollo boot camps continues today with astronauts and scientists involved in NASA’s Artemis mission.
Geophysicist Raymond Kokaly, who leads the GEMx campaign for USGS, is pictured here conducting ground-based hyperspectral imaging of rock in Cuprite, Nevada, in April 2019.USGS/Todd Hoefen The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
Rainbows and Rocks
To detect minerals and other compounds on the surfaces of rocky bodies across the solar system, including Earth, scientists use a technology pioneered by JPL in the 1980s called imaging spectroscopy. One of the original imaging spectrometers built by Robert Green and his team is central to the GEMx campaign in the Western U.S.
About the size and weight of a minifridge and built to fly on planes, the instrument is called AVIRIS-Classic, short for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer. Like all imaging spectrometers, it takes advantage of the fact that every molecule reflects and absorbs light in a unique pattern, like a fingerprint. Spectrometers detect these molecular fingerprints in the light bouncing off or emitted from a sample or a surface.
In the case of GEMx, that’s sunlight shimmering off different kinds of rocks.
Compared to a standard digital camera, which “sees” three color channels (red, green, and blue), imaging spectrometers can see more than 200 channels, including infrared wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye.
NASA spectrometers have orbited or flown by every major rocky body in our solar system. They’ve helped scientists investigate methane lakes on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and study Pluto’s thin atmosphere. One JPL-built spectrometer is currently en route to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, to help search for chemical ingredients necessary to support life.
“One of the cool things about NASA is that we develop technology to look out at the solar system and beyond, but we also turn around and look back down,” said Ben Phillips, a longtime NASA program manager who led GEMx until he retired in 2025.
The Newest Instrument
More than 200 hours of GEMx flights are scheduled through fall 2025. Scientists will process and validate the data, with the first USGS mineral maps to follow. During these flights, an ER-2 research aircraft from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, will cruise over the Western U.S. at altitudes twice as high as a passenger jet flies.
At such high altitudes, pilot Dean Neeley must wear a spacesuit similar to those used by astronauts. He flies solo in the cramped cockpit but will be accompanied by state-of-the-art NASA instruments. In the belly of the plane rides AVIRIS-Classic, which will be retiring soon after more than three decades in service. Carefully packed in the plane’s nose is its successor: AVIRIS-5, taking flight for the first time in 2025.
Together, the two instruments provide 10 times the performance of the older spectrometer alone, but even by itself AVIRIS-5 marks a leap forward. It can sample areas ranging from about 30 feet (10 meters) to less than a foot (30 centimeters).
“The newest generation of AVIRIS will more than live up to the original,” Green said.
More About GEMx
The GEMx research project will last four years and is funded by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. The initiative will capitalize on both the technology developed by NASA for spectroscopic imaging, as well as the agency’s expertise in analyzing the datasets and extracting critical mineral information from them.
Data collected by GEMx is available here.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
2025-086
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Last Updated Jul 10, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured a stunning image of a rare red lightning phenomenon known as a “sprite” from the International Space Station on July 3. The jellyfish-shaped electrical burst was seen rising above a massive thunderstorm over Mexico and the southern U.S., including parts of California and Texas.
Sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high in the mesosphere, triggered by positive lightning strikes.
Part of a group of upper-atmosphere events called Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), sprites are still not fully understood, despite decades of research.View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:38 On 11 June, engineers at OHB’s facilities in Germany joined together the two main parts of ESA’s Plato mission.
They used a special crane to lift Plato’s payload module, housing its 26 ultra-sensitive cameras, into the air and carefully line it up over the service module. The supporting service module contains everything else that the spacecraft needs to function, including subsystems for power, propulsion and communication with Earth.
With millimetre-level precision, the engineers gently lowered the payload module into place. Once perfectly positioned, the team tested the electrical connections.
Finally, they securely closed a panel that connects the payload module to the service module both physically and electronically (seen ‘hanging’ horizontally above the service module in this image). This panel, which opens and closes with hinges, also contains the electronics to process data from the cameras.
Now in one piece, Plato is one step closer to beginning its hunt for Earth-like planets.
In the coming weeks, the spacecraft will undergo tests to ensure its cameras and data processing systems still work perfectly.
Then it will be driven from OHB’s cleanrooms to ESA’s technical heart (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. At ESTEC, engineers will complete the spacecraft by fitting it with a combined sunshield and solar panel module.
Following a series of essential tests to confirm that Plato is fit for launch and ready to work in space, it will be shipped to Europe’s launch site in French Guiana.
The mission is scheduled to launch on an Ariane 6 in December 2026.
Access the related broadcast quality video footage.
ESA’s Plato (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) will use 26 cameras to study terrestrial exoplanets in orbits up to the habitable zone of Sun-like stars.
Plato's scientific instrumentation, consisting of the cameras and electronic units, is provided through a collaboration between ESA and the Plato Mission Consortium. This Consortium is composed of various European research centres, institutes and industries, led by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The spacecraft is being built and assembled by the industrial Plato Core Team led by OHB together with Thales Alenia Space and Beyond Gravity.
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