NASA 28 September 2025 - 4 December 2025

NASA: In late September, NASA’s focus was on its upcoming Artemis II Moon mission. The four astronauts held a media briefing on Sept. 24 to announce the name of their Orion spacecraft: “Orion Integrity” nasa.gov. They explained “Integrity” symbolizes the trust and collaboration needed for the mission. This 10-day crewed lunar test flight is slated for no later than April 2026. Meanwhile, NASA science made headlines with a major Mars discovery: analyses of a Perseverance rover sample from Jezero Crater suggest it “could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life” nasa.gov. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy called it “the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars,” calling the potential biosignature finding “groundbreaking” nasa.gov. These NASA findings underscore a busy month: Artemis II preparations, Mars science, and continued deep-space probes. Also from NASA/NOAA: on Sept. 26 NOAA announced a partnership with Raytheon to study a new weather satellite design under its NEON program nesdis.noaa.gov. Irene Parker of NOAA said she was “excited for this new opportunity to use NOAA’s OTA [Other Transaction Authority] to advance weather imagery” with commercial partners nesdis.noaa.gov. The Stratus concept will field a small LEO satellite with an optical imager to test rapid-refresh cloud and