High-End Computing Schedules Planned Outage for June 4-5
NASA’s High-End Computing portfolio provides crucial supercomputing services across multiple NASA directorates, including the Science Mission Directorate.
On June 4, 2025, several of NASA’s High-End Computing facilities will experience planned outages. A suspend/resume is scheduled for Pleiades, Electra, Cabeus (gh200 nodes), and Lou. Dedicated time is scheduled for Aitken and Cabeus (a100 and v100 nodes). Learn more about the planned outages.
NASA Exoplanet Archive Nears 6,000 Planets and Releases Light Curve Dataset
NASA’s Exoplanet Archive added 17 new confirmed planets in May. This brings the data archive’s total planet count to 5,905 — less than 100 away from hitting 6,000 confirmed exoplanets.
In addition, the archive added the Robotic Observations of Microlensing Events/Reactive Event Assessment (ROME/REA) dataset from Street et al. (2024). This dataset contains approximately 8 million light curves in three optical passbands from 20 fields in the Galactic bulge over a three-year period. Access the ROME/REA dataset here.
For more recent NASA Exoplanet Archive updates, read the 2025 Exoplanet Archive News page.
Earthdata Advises Switching from MODIS to VIIRS Data Products
NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, launched in 1999 and 2002 respectively, each carry a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). For 25 years, the MODIS instrument has continually collected data in 36 spectral channels with global coverage every one to two days, enabling studies that touch nearly every aspect of Earth science. However, the Terra and Aqua satellites are scheduled to shut down operations in early 2026/late 2027.
In advance of this change, users are encouraged to switch from MODIS data to equivalent data products collected by the newer Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The VIIRS instrument flies aboard the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and NOAA-platforms. It serves as a successor to MODIS, ensuring a continuity of global Earth observations that enable vital studies about our planet.
For more information, read the full MODIS data alert on the Earthdata website.
SPDF Moves from Daily to Hourly Ephemeris
NASA’s Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) hosts ephemeris data to track the orbits of heliospheric objects such as heliophysics satellites, comets, and other planetary bodies.
The daily ephemeris dataset provided by the SPDF archive and CDAWeb (Coordinated Data Analysis Web) system has now been replaced with an hourly ephemeris dataset. Users who still wish to track daily ephemeris can achieve the same goal by looking at the hourly orbit data values at the beginning of each day (hour = 0).
Find more SPDF announcements on the SPDF News page.
LROC Group Releases Apollo 14 Mapping Data
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Apollo mapping group examines Apollo-era data in the context of high-resolution LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images. On May 22, the group released a dataset that tracks the movements of Apollo 14 Commander Alan Shepard and Lunar Module Pilot Ed Mitchell.
The dataset includes the time-stamped locations of astronaut movements, photograph acquisition points, sample collection sites, temporary resting positions of geology tools for each extravehicular activity (EVA), and the station and deployed scientific equipment locations for that mission.
To learn more about the new Apollo 14 mapping data, read the news release on the LROC website.