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NYT Top Stories - Latest Updates

Trump Calls A.I. Fears a Hoax. Inside the White House, the Debate Is More Complex.

The president seems driven chiefly by the sense that A.I. is the way to economic growth, and nothing can be allowed to stand in its way.

How Trump Became an A.I. Evangelist

President Trump had little interest in artificial intelligence until a fateful meeting in Las Vegas two years ago. Now, Mr. Trump sees A.I. as the defining technology of our age. Our White House correspondent Jonathan Swan tracks Trump’s journey to A.I. evangelist.

Anthropic Pursues IPO Despite Its A.I. Safety Warnings

The company is expected to generate $100 billion in annualized revenue this year, even as chief executive Dario Amodei calls for slowing down development of some advanced A.I. models.

Iran and China Create First-of-Their-Kind Autonomous A.I. Influence Campaigns

The countries, along with Israeli firms, combined Chinese open-source A.I. models and A.I. agents for the campaigns, foreshadowing future online manipulation.

BBC World News - Latest Updates

Russian hybrid attacks against Europe intensifying, says Macron

The French president says he has tasked the government with protecting critical infrastructure and defence industry sites.

Trump says he is banning CNN and Politico from White House

The US president has had a tense and fiery relationship with the US media throughout his political career.

Is the Kennedy Center losing 'hundreds of millions of dollars'?

Records in 2024 show the venue had a surplus of millions of dollars once contributions and grants had been factored in.

At least 21 killed after vehicle loaded with explosives rams Pakistan mosque

A four-year-old child is among those killed in the attack, during which gunmen also opened fire on a police facility.

NPR National - Latest Updates

Alaska's salmon-feasting bears face off in biggest Fat Bear Week ever

A mother bear and two cubs in Brooks River, where brown bears living in Katmai National Park and Preserve are entered into a tournament celebrating bears that have put on pounds to survive the winter. <br>

This year's single-elimination tournament will see 16 competitors face off, compared to 12 in past years. Officials report more cubs in Katmai National Park than they've seen in recent memory.

(Image credit: C. Loberg)

Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House

President Trump speaks Thursday during a dinner in the Rose Garden at the White House.

The president chalked the ban up to what he called unfavorable coverage, and he threatened that bans on other media companies could be coming.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon)

When Trump and Xi meet they will discuss AI. 'Track Two' talks are already buzzing

Chinese and US flags wave outside a technology company in Beijing, on April 17, 2025. (Photo by PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images)

An informal network of dialogues at think tanks and universities is bringing together experts from the U.S. and China to talk about the shared perils of AI — and possible paths forward.

Syrian regime planned American journalist's kidnapping for weeks

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New reporting finds the abduction of journalist Austin Tice was planned by the Syrian government for weeks.

Wired - Latest Updates

Apple Watch Ultra 4 Review: The Series 12 Is Closing the Gap

The Ultra 4 gets smarter about health tracking and lasts longer between charges. But for most people, the Series 12 gets close enough.

Here’s How an AI Slowdown Could Actually Be Enforced

Even if big AI companies agree to a pause, ensuring that nobody tries to sneak ahead could prove tricky.

An Undercover Google Analyst Infiltrated a Notorious Supply-Chain Hacking Gang

TeamPCP pulled off the worst-ever software supply-chain hacking spree and breached thousands of companies. Now Google’s threat intelligence group says it had a mole inside the hackers’ inner circle.

AI PACs Have Dumped Nearly $1 Million Into an Obscure Senate Race

The reliably Republican South Dakota senate seat has an incumbent on the ballot. But PACs associated with AI labs and investors have already spent more money on the race than actual residents have.

NASA Breaking News - Latest Updates

NASA Invites Media to Albania Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony

NASA meatball
Credit: NASA

The Republic of Albania will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 12 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 21, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, becoming the 73rd country signatory.

NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Albania’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ferit Hoxha and Ambassador of the Republic of Albania to the United States Ervin Bushati for the ceremony, together with U.S. Department of State officials.

This event is in person only. Media interested in attending must RSVP no later than 10 a.m. on Sept. 21 to: hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.

In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.

The Artemis Accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords

-end-

Camille Gallo / Elizabeth Shaw 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1600 
camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov 

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Last Updated
Sep 18, 2026
Editor
Jennifer M. Dooren

NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’

5 min read

NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’

Using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star’s outflow, called a stellar wind, being captured by its compact companion and providing the power source for strong X-ray flares. The research is part of NASA’s exploration of the extreme universe to better understand how the cosmos works.
 
“We’ve never before seen clear indications of wind plasma falling onto a compact object,” said Roi Rahin, a researcher at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now test our understanding of these processes in much greater detail.”
 
A paper describing the findings published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
 
The target system is BP Crucis, a high-mass X-ray binary located about 13,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Crux. The primary star, known as Wray 977, is a blue hypergiant about 40 times the Sun’s mass and 60 times its size. It’s so big, hot, and luminous that ionized gas constantly streams away from it, a phenomenon astronomers call a stellar wind.

This artist’s concept of the BP Crucis system follows the pulsar on a passage through the dense stream of plasma flowing from its companion, a blue hypergiant 40 times the Sun’s mass. During each four-day passage, the pulsar’s X-ray brightness flares as it pulls in some of the gas. At first, the gas forms a messy, turbulent accretion disk around the pulsar, and plasma spirals down to it. But as the pulsar moves deeper into the stream, there’s not enough angular momentum to support the disk, and it breaks up. At this point, plasma falls straight onto the pulsar. Later, as the pulsar near the end of its passage, a messy accretion disk rebuilds, this time spinning in the opposite direction of the earlier disk due to the stream’s flow.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Laboratory

The supergiant’s companion is a tiny-but-mighty neutron star called GX 301-2. The crushed core of a star that long ago exploded as a supernova, it packs more than the Sun’s mass into a ball roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. Rotating every 11 minutes, it sweeps an X-ray beam toward Earth, which classifies it as a pulsar.   
 
Twice during the pulsar’s 41.5-day orbit, near its closest and farthest points from the primary star, strong X-ray flares occur for several days. Astronomers think the pulsar’s gravitational influence on the star creates an especially dense stream of plasma. Flares occur when the pulsar traverses this stream and captures some of its matter. The strongest eruptions happen closer to the star, where the stream is denser. 
 
The researchers targeted the system with XRISM on Feb. 1, 2025, observing it for about 16 hours near the end of one of these stronger flares. The observatory’s Resolve instrument, jointly developed by NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), captured highly detailed X-ray spectra, revealing rapidly changing emission and absorption lines. In particular, absorption lines from highly ionized iron revealed the speed and direction of plasma relatively close to the pulsar. 

Watch to learn about spectroscopy, the dance between matter and light, and how NASA missions using it help scientists answer big questions about our universe. 
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

When Rahin first saw these spectra, he realized he hadn’t seen anything like them before. He scoured the scientific literature for similar observations and came up empty-handed.

“It was clear that these observations were groundbreaking, but at the same time this meant the analysis had to be especially detailed,” said Nazma Islam, a co-author formerly at UMBC and NASA Goddard and now an assistant professor at Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, India. “We could see how the dense stream of plasma acts very close to the neutron star.”

XRISM Resolve absorption spectrum of BP Crucis
The Resolve instrument aboard the NASA-JAXA XRISM observatory captured this high-resolution X-ray spectrum of BP Crucis. Prominent iron absorption lines (dashed) have shifted to lower energies (red lines), which indicates both the direction and velocity of the gas. The observations indicate the gas is moving toward the pulsar at about 335,000 mph (540,000 kph). Data and error bars are shown in gray, with a model spectrum in light blue. Roman numerals indicate the ionization state of iron atoms (the number of electrons they’ve lost to produce each spectral line).
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, JAXA/NASA, Rahin et al. 2026

Rahin and his team show that the iron absorption lines they observed are displaced to lower energies than they would be if measured in a laboratory. This displacement, called a redshift, indicates motion away from the observer, which means the gas is flowing toward the pulsar. The extent of the redshift indicates the plasma’s velocity. The team’s analysis indicates gas is racing toward the pulsar at speeds of around 335,000 mph (540,000 kph).
 
Here’s what the researchers think is going on: As the pulsar enters the stream, it sweeps up gas into a thick, messy, turbulent disk. This gas spirals down to the pulsar, heats up, and emits X-rays to power the flares.
 
As the pulsar pushes farther into the stream, the turbulent disk breaks down. Astronomers suspect that as the pulsar moves more directly into the flow, the stream no longer has the angular momentum required to maintain the disk. Once the disk dissipates, plasma flows directly onto the neutron star. Observations with XRISM occurred near the end of this phase.

Then, as the pulsar nears the end of the stream, a messy disk briefly returns, this time spinning in the opposite direction. And then it, too, disappears as the pulsar exits. In all, the pulsar takes about four days to transit the stream.

“The BP Crucis system is an ideal laboratory for studying wind-fed pulsar accretion, and XRISM’s sensitive, high-resolution Resolve spectrometer is an ideal instrument for advancing our understanding of the processes involved,” said Brian Williams, the mission’s project scientist at NASA Goddard.  

To learn more about the XRISM mission, visit:

https://nasa.gov/xrism

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Last Updated

Sep 18, 2026

Editor
Francis Reddy
Contact
Location
Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA Awards SpaceX Three Crew Flights to Space Station

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov onboard, Friday, March 14, 2025, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission is the tenth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov launched at 7:03 p.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A at the NASA's Kennedy Space Center to begin a six month mission aboard the orbital outpost.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft launches NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station on March 14, 2025.
NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Editor’s note: This feature was updated on Sept. 18, 2026, to add additional details on mission readiness dates.

To continue regular crew transportation to the International Space Station, NASA has awarded SpaceX three additional missions through a contract modification.

As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, this change brings the total missions for SpaceX to 17 and helps NASA to maintain access to the space station with two unique commercial crew industry partners.

This is a firm fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification for the Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17. The value of this modification for all three missions and related mission services is $946 million. The amount includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station. The period of performance runs through 2030, with mission readiness dates in 2027 and 2028, and brings the total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $5.92 billion.

The award follows the agency issuing a notice of intent in May to purchase the additional missions. The current sole source modification does not preclude NASA from seeking future contract modifications for additional transportation services, as needed.

In 2014, NASA awarded the CCtCap contracts to Boeing and SpaceX through a public-private partnership as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Under CCtCap, NASA certifies that a provider’s space transportation system meets the agency’s requirements prior to flying missions with astronauts.

SpaceX was certified by NASA for crew transportation in November 2020. The company’s twelfth crew rotation mission for the agency, the Crew-12 mission, is currently in orbit docked to the space station. As part of the missions, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket transport up to four astronauts, along with critical cargo, to the space station.

For information about NASA’s Commercial Crew Office, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew

COSI Telescope Comes Together

A group of five people wearing cleanroom suits, hairnets, and masks watch a small gold and silver box suspended by a small crane in a laboratory. In the background, slightly out of focus, two more people watch through a window. Next to the window is a large decal of the COSI mission patch.
UC Berkeley/Alan Toth

UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch as the COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) detector assembly is slowly raised from a table in this July 8, 2026, image. The four pieces of silver material on the top of the detector box cover the flex circuits, which carry signals from the detectors to the readout electronics.

COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope that will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. The mission is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory; the University of California, San Diego; the Naval Research Laboratory; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Northrop Grumman; Space Dynamics Laboratory; the Italian Space Agency; and a number of research institutions.

Image credit: UC Berkeley/Alan Toth