A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched two powerful communications satellites today (July 22), then aced its landing on a ship at sea.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT), carrying SES' O3b mPOWER 9 and 10 satellites toward medium Earth orbit (MEO), about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) above our planet.

That was a day later than originally planned. SpaceX tried to launch the mission Monday (July 21) but aborted the try 11 seconds before liftoff, for reasons that the company did not immediately explain.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today roughly 8.5 minutes after launch, touching down on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read the Instructions," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

According to a SpaceX mission description, it was the sixth launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1090.

If all goes according to plan today, the Falcon 9's upper stage will continue carrying the two mPOWER satellites to MEO, deploying them there across a seven-minute stretch about two hours after liftoff.

Luxembourg-based SES's mPOWER constellation currently consists of eight high-throughput satellites, which reached orbit on four Falcon 9 launches from December 2022 to December 2024.

mPOWER is operational now, providing internet service to customers around the world. But the constellation will continue growing, to a total of 13 satellites. Each is built by Boeing and weighs about 3,750 pounds (1,700 kilograms).

"The remaining three O3b mPOWER satellites are currently being manufactured and are scheduled for launch over the next 12 months," SES representatives wrote in a brief update earlier this month.

Today's launch was the 89th Falcon mission of the year already. SpaceX also has three other liftoffs under its belt this year — test flights of its Starship megarocket, which took place in January, March and May.

The structure, named the Midpoint cloud, is an example of a Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC). It was discovered by the team using the Green Bank Telescope. Peeling back the layers of the Midpoint cloud, they found dynamic regions including several potential sites of new star formation and dense lanes of dust feeding the heart of our galaxy.

"No one had any idea this cloud existed until we looked at this location in the sky and found the dense gas," team leader and National Radio Astronomy Observatory scientist Natalie Butterfield said. "Through measurements of the size, mass, and density, we confirmed this was a giant molecular cloud."

The active region of the GMC and its thick lanes of matter could reveal how material flows from the Milky Way's disk to the very heart of our galaxy.

"These dust lanes are like hidden rivers of gas and dust that are carrying material into the center of our galaxy,” Butterfield continued. "The Midpoint cloud is a place where material from the galaxy’s disk is transitioning into the more extreme environment of the galactic center and provides a unique opportunity to study the initial gas conditions before accumulating in the center of our galaxy."

The gas within the Midpoint cloud exists in a turbulent state, which mirrors conditions found within gas at the Milky Way's center. This chaotic motion could be triggered by material flowing along dust lanes itself or by clashes between the Midpoint cloud and other molecular clouds.

Also within the Midpoint cloud are several clumps of dense gas and dust that could be about to collapse and birth new stars.

One clump, designated Knot E, appears to be a small but dense cloud of gas that is in the process of being eroded by the radiation blasted at it by stars in its proximity. Formations like this are referred to as free-floating evaporating gas globules (frEGGs).

The astronomers also discovered a new source of intense microwave radiation called a "maser" that could be further evidence of intense star formation within the Midpoint cloud.

The researchers didn't just discover evidence of stellar birth with this GMC, however. A shell-like structure in the Midpoint cloud appears to have been caused by the explosive supernova deaths of massive stars.

The research conducted by the team suggests the Midpoint cloud is vital to the flow of matter from the disk of the Milky Way to its heart.

This would feed star formation in the thick central stellar bar that churns around the center of our galaxy. Similar structures of dense stars are found in other barred spiral galaxies.

That means further investigation of this cloud and its surroundings could help develop a clearer picture of how the building blocks of stars gather at the center of galaxies.

"Star formation in galactic bars is a bit of a puzzle," team member and Green Bank Observatory scientist Larry Morgan said. "The strong forces in these regions can actually suppress star formation.

"However, the leading edges of these bars, such as where the Midpoint is located, can accumulate dense gas and trigger new star formation."

The team's research was published on Wednesday (July 16) in The Astrophysical Journal.

Look east around 4 a.m. local time, just before dawn, to see the slender form of the crescent moon climb above the horizon. Jupiter, appearing as a bright "star" will sit about 5 degrees to the right of the moon — roughly the combined width of your index, middle and ring fingers held at arms length against the night sky!

Venus will shine to the upper right of Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky, forming a fleeting cosmic triangle with the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, which will appear low on the eastern horizon before vanishing in the light of the rising sun.

A telescope with an aperture of 6 inches or more will allow viewers to observe Jupiter's four brightest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, as well as the planet's gargantuan banded cloud layers. However, care must be taken to never point a telescope or binoculars in the direction of the rising sun, as doing so could result in a permanent loss of vision.

On the nights surrounding the new moon on July 24, you might notice a soft light suffusing the lunar disk This phenomenon, often referred to as Earthshine or the 'Da Vinci Glow', occurs when sunlight bounces off Earth and illuminates the moon's nightside and is often visible when the moon is a thin crescent.

This gentle glow reveals the vast basaltic plains of the lunar seas darkening swathes of the lunar surface. The formations were created billions of years ago when ancient lava flows flooded a network of gigantic impact basins left behind by cataclysmic asteroid strikes, which later hardened to renew the lunar surface.

The dark nights on either side of the new moon phase present a perfect opportunity to spot the diffuse light cast by the Pleiades open star cluster — a gravitationally bound collection of over 1,000 stellar bodies that orbits within the Milky Way some 410 light-years from Earth. The Pleiades will be visible as a hazy smudge of light from a dark sky location to the upper right of Venus on the night of July 23. A pair of 10x50 binoculars will allow viewers to pick out the most prominent of the blue-white stars, while a small telescope will help resolve a far greater number.

Stargazers hoping to explore the wonders of the night sky should read our guide to the top telescopes and binoculars available in 2025. Those new to the hobby should also check out our roundup of the best smartphone astronomy apps, which use augmented reality technology to pinpoint the locations of the stars, constellations, planets and deep sky objects that populate the night sky.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

With its astonishing neon-saturated visuals and throbbing electronic score by Nine Inch Nails, a new trailer for Disney's "Tron: Ares" has arrived.

Erupting in a rush of ruby reds and rampant A.I. paranoia, this extended "Tron: Ares" trailer exposes humankind's initial contact with an agent from the cyberscape realm, and from the shocked onlookers, it's a meet-and-greet event that might have some devastating ramifications for both sides. The vibrant worldbuilding, design aesthetics of the futuristic vehicles, and the apocalyptic tone feel spot-on and are further punctuated by Jared Leto's charismatic role as a rogue digital soldier. The trailer is already generating speculation that this $150-170 million film powering up on Oct. 10, 2025 will enthrall "Tron" faithful.

"So much talk of A.I. and big tech today," states Evan Peters' sinister Julian Dillinger character in the thrilling trailer. "Virtual worlds, what are they going to look like, when will we get there? Well folks, we're not going there. They are coming here."

Directed by Joachim Rønning ("Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), "Tron: Ares" is now seemingly confirmed as a sequel to 2010's "Tron: Legacy" and stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, and Cameron Monaghan, with cameos by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges.

The film's screenplay is based on a story by David Digilio and Jesse Wigutow and centers around Ares (Leto), a revolutionary sentient program conceived by Julian Dillinger. This next-generation creation makes the hazardous leap from the digital Grid to the real world on a crucial mission to discover something it doesn't yet fully comprehend. That might sound ambiguous at the moment but we're sure that further trailers and previews will elaborate more.

"Tron: Ares" is produced by Sean Bailey, Jeffrey Silver, Justin Springer, Jared Leto, Emma Ludbrook, and Steven Lisberger, with Russell Allen as executive producer.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' Grammy Award-winning industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails composed the energetic score "Tron: Ares" . The original soundtrack's debut single, "As Alive As You Need Me To Be," is the group's first material in half a decade and is now available though Interscope Records. We surely won't soon forget Daft Punk's driving score for "Tron: Legacy" but this pulsating soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails certainly provides the proper accompaniment to the sequel.

Directed by Joachim Rønning, "Tron: Ares" will be presented in both IMAX and standard theatrical formats starting on Oct. 10, 2025.

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and the night sky.

Last year, at the end of summer, we had a vibrant comet visiting the northern skies, so I took this opportunity to capture a few images over the course of several nights.

On the final night, I caught the comet in a time lapse showing C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas flying across the background starry skies of Dark Sky Alqueva territory in Portugal.

It was visible during a moonless winter night, which revealed both the Milky Way and the comet as it bid farewell to Earth for the next 80,000 years.

Fine art prints

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and if you want to support my work as an independent artist, you can buy one of my images as a print and a piece of art or a wall decor for your sweet home! Explore the size options and different types available on my Print gallery. Meanwhile, you can sign-up my newsletter to get early access of future releases.

Although we may not see it with our eyes or in the photos we capture with our standard cameras or phones, the sun is constantly changing. Structures on the surface or lower atmosphere of the sun can vary from day to day, or even from hour to hour. In this guide, we'll outline what you'll need to safely photograph our ever-changing sun and what structures you can hope to image.

Safety: Take precautions

It is important not to look directly at the sun. Doing so for even short durations can permanently damage your eyes. If you want to look up at the sun for reference, use a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses. Check out some of the best solar viewing gear, but note that some products allow you to photograph the sun safely through a camera or a telescope, but are not rated for direct observation with your eyes. See our guide on how to observe the sun safely.

Cameras, lenses and settings

No matter how you adjust the settings, even on the best cameras for astrophotography, the sun will remain too bright for you to successfully image any detail if you don't use the right equipment. Therefore, to photograph the sun, you must significantly reduce its effective brightness.

You can do this with a neutral-density filter, which attaches to the end of your camera lens. Neutral-density filters are used in all kinds of photography, but many will not have the power to block out enough sunlight to image the sun. Therefore, you should look for a neutral-density filter designed especially for solar photography.

With this filter attached to your camera, you will be able to successfully photograph the sun in optical light. Different filters may also change the apparent color of the sun in your image, with gray/white and orange/yellow being common filter options.

It's important to note that although a purpose-made filter can reduce the sun's brightness enough to image the star, it is not enough to protect your eyes from sunlight. Therefore, while using a neutral-density filter for solar photography, do not look into the optical viewfinder on your camera (if you have one). Instead, use the digital display. Similarly, do not use the filter to look directly at the sun.

The size of the sun in your image will depend on the focal length of your camera lens. At a minimum, you'll need a 200-millimeter telephoto lens. However, as shown in the images below, this will leave a lot of empty space in your camera frame. The longer the focal length, the larger the sun will appear in your image, and thus the higher the resolution of the sun will be. The images below show how the sun looks in a selection of focal lengths on the Nikon D850, a full-frame DSLR camera.

Once your lens and filter are sorted, you can play around with your camera settings.

1. Set your camera to aperture-priority mode. Typically, an aperture between f/5.6 and f/8 will give the best performance for most lenses, but you can play around with it to see what works best for your setup.

2. Adjust your exposure time. The exposure time you set may depend on several factors. If you do not have a tripod or you are using a tripod in strong wind, you will want to shorten your exposure time. This will reduce the total wobble throughout the exposure and lead to a sharper image. If you have a strong tripod and wind is not an issue, you can afford to increase the exposure time, which will decrease the noise levels.

3. Set your ISO. You do not want an ISO sensitivity high enough to saturate the image, but you need it high enough to avoid adding noise. A longer exposure time will allow for a shorter ISO, without introducing too much noise. Play around with these settings to find a combination that works for you. As with nighttime astronomy, another good tip is to not take the photograph immediately by clicking the capture button (if you're using a tripod), as your interaction with the camera will cause the system to wobble. Instead, set a timer for 10 seconds or longer, or use a remote control to take the shot.

Photographing the sun with telescopes

If you are feeling more ambitious, you can photograph the sun with one of the best telescopes. We won't dive much into the camera setup here, as it will be similar to that used in nighttime astronomy. You can either mount your usual camera to the telescope directly or use a purpose-made eyepiece camera. Either way, the important pieces of equipment typically sit at the other end of the telescope that's pointing at the sun.

Different filters allow us to see different layers of the sun, so let's quickly recap these layers of our local star. The surface of the sun is called the photosphere. This is the layer of the sun that emits the sunlight visible to the human eye. Above the photosphere, which has a temperature of around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius), is a layer called the chromosphere. The chromosphere is cooler and less dense than the photosphere, with a temperature around 7,200 F (4,000 C). Above the chromosphere, temperatures rapidly increase through a thin transition region, before reaching the solar corona. The corona is the tenuous outer atmosphere of the sun, with temperatures of around 1.8 million F (1 million C), which becomes visible to us during a total solar eclipse.

Just like on your camera, you can attach a purpose-made solar filter to the end of your telescope. Alternatively, you can use a dedicated solar telescope, which utilizes a system of internal filters. Filters block the majority of sunlight, allowing only a small amount of light into your telescope. Different filters allow in light from different layers of the sun, thus changing the features of interest available to your photography. The three primary filter types are white light, H-alpha and Ca K.

A white-light filter removes over 99.9% of the intensity of incoming sunlight, but it does not filter by wavelength. With a white-light filter, you will receive sunlight from the sun's surface. If you have a larger telescope aperture or you plan to point at the sun for a long time, an ultraviolet and infrared (UV/IR) filter is also recommended. This will not affect your photo, but it will remove excess light to prevent it from heating up your telescope system.

Unlike white-light filters, which image the photosphere, H-alpha and Ca K filters image a higher layer of the sun, the chromosphere. These filters work by filtering light by wavelength, instead of just intensity, to allow in light from a narrow part of the solar spectrum.

H-alpha is light emitted by hydrogen plasma at a specific energy level that is dominant in the chromosphere. This light is at a wavelength of 656.28 nanometers, which sits in the red part of the visible spectrum. When you use an H-alpha filter, the sun therefore appears red. H-alpha filters can be broadband (about 1 Å) or narrowband (0.5 Å). These will alter the view of the chromosphere slightly. Some filters are also tunable, which allows you to adjust the wavelength range of the filter. Ca K filters filter a wavelength of light emitted by calcium plasma at 393.4 nm, which appears blue to the human eye.

When you're using an external filter on your telescope, do not remove the eyepiece from the viewfinder scope. Whether you're using a dedicated solar telescope or an external filter on a nighttime telescope, different filters will show different features on the sun. The images below show the sun photographed through the H-alpha and Ca K filters discussed above. White-light images are shown earlier in this article.

Features on the sun

Now that you have your full setup, let's take a look at the structures you can hope to see on the sun.

Sunspots

The easiest feature on the sun to photograph are sunspots. Sunspots are cooler parts of the photosphere created by strong regions of concentrated magnetic field. The intense magnetic field above sunspots is what creates solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

A sunspot looks like a dark structure with a darker inner section (the umbra) and slightly lighter (yet still darker than the surrounding photosphere) penumbra around it. Sunspots can exist for weeks or months, but they can change significantly over a few hours as new magnetic fields emerge, or cancel out, within the region. Sunspots are visible in the photosphere through white-light filters and solar telescopes. They are still visible in chromospheric filters (H-alpha and Ca K), but the contrast is not as stark.

Filaments

At higher altitudes, a different type of magnetic structure is visible. Filaments are twisted magnetic structures full of chromospheric material. They are rooted in the lower solar atmosphere, but they stretch into higher altitudes in the corona. Because they are composed of material from the chromosphere, filaments are not visible with standard white-light filters. Instead, they require either H-alpha or Ca II filters to be seen. At these wavelengths, filaments appear dark against the bright solar disk.

Prominences

Whereas filaments are viewed against the sun's surface, prominences are the same structure but seen over the edge of the sun. Against the background of space, prominences appear bright. They can be photographed with the same filters as filaments, and they can also be seen with the naked eye during the totality phase of a total solar eclipse. A tunable narrow H-Alpha filter will really make prominences and filaments pop against their background. You can also play around with the exposure time to change the contrast of the prominences against the dark background.

Solar eclipses

Although the advice outlined in this article can be used to photograph the sun anytime, it is also valid during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, when the sun is partially blocked by the moon. The moon's edge provides a new feature to photograph, with the intricate irregularities of craters along the moon's silhouette visible. For further advice on photographing the partial or total phases of a solar eclipse, check out our guide on how to photograph a solar eclipse.

If you want to read more about the science of observing the sun and the history of our relationship with it, check out my book "The Sun: Beginner's guide to our local star (Collins, 2023).

The Sony A7R V is on sale for $3198 at Walmart.

We gave the Sony A7R V four and a half stars in our full Sony A7R V review, where we praised the AI-powered autofocus system, versatile LCD screen and notable upgrades from the Sony A7R IV. The A7R V has a huge 61MP sensor and performed well during our photography testing apart from some noise on higher ISO images of stars.

• We have guides for a range of skywatching gear and astrophotography optics including the best telescopes, best binoculars and best cameras for astrophotography.

In our Sony A7R V review, we were seriously impressed with the advanced autofocus that is now able to identify more objects and makes the camera perfect for versatile subjects. It has exceptional resolution and a robust build quality for detailed shots wherever you are. This camera is also frequently highlighted in our guides to the best cameras for photo and video and the best mirrorless cameras due to its cutting-edge features and outstanding performance, which are crucial for capturing fast-moving meteors and faint nebulas

This Walmart deal on the Sony A7R V is a great saving for anyone serious about upgrading their photography kit, especially with the Perseid meteor shower peaking soon. The Sony A7R V offers unparalleled detail with interval shooting, both of which are essential for capturing the streaks of light in the night sky.

The Sony A7R V is a powerhouse full-frame mirrorless camera, boasting a 61MP full-frame sensor that delivers breathtaking resolution and Sony's latest-generation BIONZ XR image processing engine, which provides phenomenal speed and enhanced image quality. The camera also includes an upgraded 8-stop 5-axis in-body image stabilization system, crucial for handheld shooting in low-light conditions. The new multi-angle LCD monitor offers unprecedented flexibility for composing shots from various angles and weather sealing ensures durability in difficult environments.

Key features: 61MP full-frame sensor, dual BIONZ XR processor, AI tracking, 693-point autofocus, 8-stop in-body image stabilization, multi-angle LCD Monitor, 8K video capability, dual memory card slots (1xCFexpress, 1xSD), wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.

Product launched: December 2022

Price history: The Sony A7R V typically retails around $4200 on Amazon but this Walmart deal brings the price to $3200, with $1000 off the Amazon listed price.

Price comparison: Walmart: $3198 | Amazon: $3798 | BHPhotoVideo: $3798

Reviews consensus: In our full Sony A7R V review we highlight its incredible 61MP resolution, advanced AI autofocus and versatile LCD screen, making it a top choice for professional photographers and astrophotographers.

Space.com: ★★★★½ | TechRadar: ★★★★½ | LiveScience: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: best cameras, best mirrorless cameras, best Sony cameras, best cameras for low light

✅ Buy it if: You're a serious photographer looking for a powerful camera capable of outstanding high-resolution stills with super-powered autofocus.

❌ Don't buy it if: You only shoot tripod-mounted astrophotography. There are other models which perform better at higher ISOs. Take a look at the best cameras for astrophotography.

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, lego and much more.

NASA announced on Monday (July 21) that Makenzie Lystrup, director of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, will leave the agency on Aug. 1.

It will be the second high-profile departure for the agency in just a two-month span; Laurie Leshin, head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, left her post in June.

Goddard is home to the nation's largest concentration of space scientists and engineers, according to NASA. The center, which was named after rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, features a workforce of more than 8,000 employees and contractors.

These people do a wide variety of work. Goddard is home to Hubble Space Telescope operations, for example, and served as a proving ground for that iconic observatory's successor, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope.

The center has particular expertise in Earth observation, but its researchers study objects and phenomena across the solar system and beyond.

"Goddard scientists stare into the sun, grind up meteorites for signs of life's building blocks, look into the farthest reaches of space and untangle the mysteries of our own changing world," NASA officials wrote in a description of the center. "Goddard engineers construct sensitive instruments, build telescopes that peer into the cosmos and operate the test chambers that ensure those satellites' survival."

Lystrup has led Goddard since April 2023. She earned a doctorate in astrophysics from University College London and has used space- and ground-based telescopes to study planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres.

"Having served in a variety of science and aerospace civilian and government roles in her career, Makenzie has led development of, and/or contributed to, a variety of NASA's priority science missions, including successful operations of our James Webb Space Telescope and Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, as well as development of the agency's Roman Space Telescope, and more," Vanessa Wyche, acting NASA associate administrator, said in a statement on Monday.

"We're grateful to Makenzie for her leadership at NASA Goddard for more than two years, including her work to inspire a Golden Age of explorers, scientists and engineers," Wyche added.

Cynthia Simmons, currently Goddard's deputy director, will take over from Lystrup in an acting capacity, NASA officials said in the statement. The release did not say what Lystrup plans to do next.

The departures of Leshin and Lystrup come during a turbulent time for NASA.

President Donald Trump's proposed 2026 budget, for instance, would slash the agency's overall funding by 24% and cut the money for its science programs nearly in half. The budget, if enacted by Congress, would slash the agency's workforce by about one-third and lead to the cancellation of dozens of missions, including a number that are currently operational.

JPL and Goddard are two of NASA's 10 major research centers. The others are Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California; Glenn Research Center in Ohio; Johnson Space Center in Texas; Kennedy Space Center in Florida; Langley Research Center in Virginia; Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama; and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

Save up to 46% on Disney Plus subscriptions when you sign up via their site.

If you're looking to stream the Marvel movies in order in anticipation of the new Fantastic Four movie, now is your last chance. Disney Plus is among the best streaming services and you can save over 40% on a range of bundles and streaming options in one of the best streaming deals available. You can also watch the Alien movies in order ahead of "Alien: Earth" as Hulu is included in every bundle, and of course, Disney Plus is the home of all Star Wars content, both movies and TV shows.

• We're constantly checking the best prices on our pages for big discounts on the best telescopes, binoculars, star projectors, cameras, drones, Lego, streaming and more.

With Fantastic Four: First Steps coming out on July 24, now is the last chance for you to catch up on Marvel content before its release. If you're a sci-fi fan, then the Disney and Hulu bundle is exactly what you want as it gives you access to all Marvel content, apart from Spider-Man movies, all Star Wars content and the Alien franchise, ahead of Alien: Earth. Disney is also home to a multitude of other big-name titles, blockbuster movies and TV shows to keep sci-fi superfans glued to the couch.

Of course, the prices of subscriptions change based on which option you opt for. You can have Disney and Hulu, but you can also add ESPN Plus or Max. You can also opt for an ad-supported plan or an ad-free option. Fortunately, all bundle options are over 40% off, so you're saving big whichever option you choose.

Key features: Key features: Access to Disney Plus, Hulu and Max/ESPN Plus if you choose to. Stream Star Wars, Marvel, Alien, other huge titles backed by a massive library of classics and original content.

Price history: Before this deal, the price of having these subscriptions individually would cost you over double what you would if you opted for a bundle.

✅ Buy it if: You want to watch the Marvel movies ahead of Fantastic Four, or the Star Wars movies in order, or if you want to have a cheap way to stream hundreds of top-tier titles from huge libraries of content.

❌ Don't buy it if: We can't think of why you wouldn't buy this, but if you're already subscribed to this bundle, then you will be ineligible for the deal.

Check out our other guides to the best telescopes, binoculars, cameras, star projectors, drones, lego and much more.

The declaration, organized by Stand Up For Science, criticizes steep budget cuts, the cancellation of missions in development, terminated contracts and grants, and organizational changes that undermine NASA's ability to conduct critical space and Earth science research. One major concern is the weakening of NASA's Technical Authority — a vital internal safety oversight system created after the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster to prevent avoidable accidents, according to the declaration.

In the Voyager Declaration, the 287 signatories warn that political interference and abrupt budget reductions could jeopardize decades of progress in space exploration, aeronautics and climate science. They argue that the Trump administration's efforts to slash NASA's science funding — which includes cutting more than $120 million in grants and proposing nearly a 50% reduction to the agency's Science Mission Directorate budget by 2026 — undermines Congress-approved priorities and threatens the agency's mission.

The declaration, issued on Monday (July 21), also highlights the loss of thousands of civil servant positions and a growing "culture of organizational silence," where employees feel unable to voice concerns without retaliation — which is also why over 150 signatories opted to remain anonymous. This atmosphere, they argue, poses risks not only to scientific discovery but also to astronaut safety and mission success.

Stand Up For Science, a nonprofit advocacy group founded in 2025, has made the full declaration public and opened a petition inviting others to support the agency's employees in their stand for science and safety. The petition emphasizes that NASA's work is a public good that cannot be replaced by private companies and calls on leadership to resist political pressure.

This statement from NASA personnel marks one of the most significant acts of internal dissent in recent years, underscoring the importance of protecting science from political influence. The declaration, list of named signatories and more information can be found online.

We've known since the teaser trailer that Predator: Badlands has strong ties to the Alien universe in the shape of Weyland-Yutani-owned synthetics. Now, the full trailer shows the movie will follow a young Predator warrior as he teams up with a synth who's seen better days.

After watching the new trailer, it's safe to say writer-director Dan Trachtenberg – who revived the movie series with Prey in 2022 – wasn't lying when he said the entire pitch behind Predator: Badlands was telling a Conan-like story through the eyes of a Yautja hunter (subtitles for the alien language included). It's a bold angle for a new entry in the long-running Predator movie franchise, but at this point, you either reinvent yourself or die slowly chasing the safety and warmth of nostalgia.

Last month, Predator: Killer of Killers – an animated anthology-format movie with a twist – proved Prey wasn't the result of the beginner's luck. This is why we're quite optimistic about Badlands and what it's gunning for. Let's break down the hottest and biggest moments in this new trailer, shall we?

Things are off to a strong start when the first thing we see is Elle Fanning's Thia (or her long-rumored twin character) being repaired in a Weyland-Yutani lab after encountering what we can only guess was a gnarly beast. The MU/TH/UR (Mother) system from the Alien movies is back too, and we see mention of Weyland-Yutani's huge bio-weapons division, which suggests both the Predator protagonist (Dek) and the company's synths might be after the same thing on this alien planet.

The pace picks up right after with all sorts of exciting shots of the young Yautja preparing for his biggest hunt yet. It all looks properly badass, with new weapons like a bow and a sword with a heat blade. Then, the big twist is he comes across Thia, who appears to be far friendlier than the other synths deployed to capture aliens on the "most dangerous planet in the universe." It appears that Thia's lower half is entirely missing, which creates an even more interesting dynamic as she attempts to collaborate with a Yautja who's trying to regain his honor.

There are no humans in sight, which might also confirm Trachtenberg's claims of having zero Homo sapiens in this movie. Can Predators and synths alone carry a brutal action-adventure rollercoaster ride? We say signs point to yes.

At some point (we don't know if it's a flashback or part of the central journey), an elder Predator is battling Dek, but by all accounts, the main objective seems to be a massive monster that could tear even a Xenomorph apart. Plus, bulky mechs are being brought over from the Alien timeline too.

Disney and 20^th Century Studios have also shared an all-new poster with Dek jumping straight into the maw of the unknown alien beast:

At this moment it's hard to predict whether Predator: Badlands will make big moves towards setting up a new Alien vs. Predator movie (that some voices at 20th Century Studios have been teasing for a while). For now, we're just excited to have another great-looking Predator flick with a fresh twist looming on the horizon.

Predator: Badlands releases in cinemas on November 7, 2025.

NASA's TRACERS mission is set to blast off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday (July 23), after a 24-hour delay caused by an airspace closure.

TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) is composed of twin satellites that will study how surges in the solar wind trigger magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere; such reconnection leads to charged particles being funneled down the magnetic cusps over the poles, sparking auroral lights and geomagnetic storms. By having two satellites in close proximity to one another, TRACERS will be able to see how areas of Earth's magnetic field that are undergoing reconnection — the snapping and recombining of field lines — change over short time frames. This reconnection happens as activity between the sun's solar wind (a continual stream of charged particles from our star) occasionally moves around denser patches stemming from coronal mass ejections. Meanwhile, Earth's magnetic field waxes and wanes during this process.

You can watch the TRACERS launch on SpaceX's website and X account, with the 57-minute launch window opening at 2:13 p.m. EDT (1813 GMT; 11:13 a.m. local California time). We will also be carrying the stream right here on Space.com. It will start 15 minutes prior to the launch window opening.

SpaceX and NASA had originally targeted Tuesday (July 22) for the liftoff but called that attempt off due to concerns about crowded airspace over Vandenberg.

TRACERS will launch to low Earth orbit, targeting an altitude of 367 miles (590 kilometers), on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket alongside three additional NASA missions. These include the Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat, which will demonstrate a new way of more efficiently placing remote-sensing (or rather, Earth-observing) instruments into orbit.

Another mission flying on the same Falcon 9 rocket is the Polylingual Experimental Terminal, which is a new technology that will demonstrate how spacecraft can roam between communication networks in space, improving satellite connectivity.

Finally, a cubesat called the Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss (REAL) mission will explore how high-energy particles in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts are scattered into the atmosphere, with the aim of eventually mimicking this natural scattering to remove potentially harmful particles from getting in the way of satellites and damaging their circuitry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:15 p.m. ET on July 22 with the new launch date of July 23.

A giant parachute built for Europe's beleaguered ExoMars mission has aced a drop test with a mock lander during a test campaign in the Arctic.

The double parachute system consists of a 50-foot-wide (15-meter) first-stage chute and a secondary 118-foot-wide (35m) chute, which is, according to ESA, the largest ever designed to land an object on Mars.

If all goes well, it will lower the 683-pound (310-kilogram) Rosalind Franklin rover to the surface of the red planet in 2028, so that it can commence its delayed search for traces of Martian life.

The parachute system had had a complicated journey with many test failures but was deemed ready for the planned launch in 2022 before the mission was suspended after Russia invaded Ukraine. Since Europe withdrew from its collaboration with Russia, who had provided the landing platform and a few other bits of technology for the mission, the parachute has been stored waiting for a new landing platform to be built in Europe.

"We are running this campaign to confirm our readiness for Mars, and to verify that the parachutes are still performing as expected after the long storage," Luca Ferracina, ESA's ExoMars Entry Descent and Landing Module system engineer, said in a statement.

That's good news for the mission, which has been in limbo since the Trump administration's draft NASA budget was released in May. NASA committed to provide a few hundred million dollars to help ESA get ExoMars off the ground in 2028, but the Trump budget culled that funding as part of its widespread science mission cuts. But the U.S. Senate's Appropriations Committee rejected those cuts in its report published on Friday, July 18, suggesting that Trump's budget may not find support among legislators.

ESA is surely following the discussions closely as NASA's withdrawal would likely cause further delays to the heavily delayed mission.

Earlier this year, ESA signed a $194 million contract with the European aerospace giant Airbus to build the new landing platform. During the parachute tests, its mock-up descended to the ground at Sweden's Esrange Space Center in Kiruna from the altitude of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) after having been dropped from a high-altitude balloon. The capsule, according to ESA, experienced about 20 seconds of free fall before the first of the parachutes unfurled.

Although the atmosphere of Mars has only about 1% of the density of Earth's atmosphere, the engineers fine tuned the test to recreate the forces the landing assembly will experience on Mars.

"The combination of velocity and low atmospheric density in this test is exactly the same as what the parachutes will experience on Mars," Ferracina said.

During the Mars landing, the capsule will hit the red planet's tenuous atmosphere at a mind-boggling speed of 13,050 mph (21,000 km/h) but will slow down to about 1,000 miles per hour from natural drag before the first parachute opens. During the tests, the mock-up capsule reached about that speed after its short freefall through the thin stratospheric air.

"We are happy to confirm that we have a parachute design that can work on Mars — an ambitious system with the largest parachute ever to be flown outside Earth," Ferracina said.

In June 2021, Sun — the billionaire founder of the blockchain platform Tron — won an auction for a seat aboard Blue Origin's first-ever crewed spaceflight.

That mission launched on July 20 of that year, carrying Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and three other people to and from suborbital space on the company's reusable New Shepard vehicle. Sun was not on board, however; he had to back out due to scheduling conflicts, the company said at the time.

Sun had not identified himself as the winning bidder when that flight lifted off. The big reveal came in December 2021, when the crypto billionaire went public and said he now planned to fly in 2022 with five other "space warriors."

That didn't happen, either. But Sun's long-deferred spaceflight is now just around the corner: He is officially on the manifest for NS-34, New Shepard's next human spaceflight, Blue Origin announced on Monday (July 21). The company has not yet disclosed a target launch date for the flight but is expected to do so soon.

Here's a brief profile of the 34-year-old Sun and his five NS-34 crewmates, using information provided by Blue Origin.

• Arvinder (Arvi) Singh Bahal, a real estate investor and adventurer who was born in India but is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has visited every country in the world, as well as both the north and south poles.
• Gökhan Erdem, a Turkish businessman, photographer and space enthusiast who "dreams of one day traveling to the International Space Station and possibly even beyond," Blue Origin wrote.
• Deborah Martorell, a journalist and meteorologist from Puerto Rico who has taken a microgravity-inducing airplane flight and reported on a number of space missions, including NASA's Artemis 1 moon flight. She's also a Solar System Ambassador for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Lionel Pitchford, an Englishman who has long lived in Spain and traveled the world. After losing his sister and her family in a 1992 plane crash in Nepal, he founded a nonprofit in the nation devoted to helping disadvantaged children. Pitchford has also run an orphanage in Kathmandu for the last 30 years.
• James (J.D.) Russell, an entrepreneur who founded the venture capital firm Alpha Funds. He also established the Victoria Russell Foundation, a nonprofit that honors the memory of his deceased daughter by "supporting children's education and assisting the families of first responders," Blue Origin wrote. Unlike the other NS-34 passengers, Russell is not a spaceflight rookie; he flew on the NS-28 mission in November 2024.
• Justin Sun, who is worth about $8.5 billion, according to Forbes. In addition to his Tron work, Sun is the ambassador and former Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization and serves as an advisor to the HTX crypto exchange. "A protege of Alibaba's Jack Ma, Sun was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine in April 2025, where he was recognized as one of the most dynamic and outspoken figures in crypto and earning the moniker 'Crypto's Billionaire Barker' for his bold approach to innovation, advocacy and industry leadership," Blue Origin wrote. Sun's winning $28 million bid for the New Shepard seat in 2021 was donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin's education nonprofit.

NS-34 will be the 14th crewed New Shepard flight to date, and the fifth such mission of 2025. The most recent, NS-33, lifted off on June 29.

New Shepard missions fly from Blue Origin's launch site in West Texas, near the town of Van Horn. Each one lasts 10 to 12 minutes from launch to the parachute-aided touchdown of the New Shepard crew capsule. (New Shepard's rocket also comes back down to Earth for a safe landing and eventual reuse.)

New Shepard is an autonomous vehicle, so the passengers can sit back and simply enjoy the flight. That experience includes a few minutes of weightlessness and great views of Earth against the blackness of space, from an altitude of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers).

What is it?

The Vera Rubin Observatory is designed to study dark matter, which makes up 85% of our universe but is still unknown to scientists. Dark matter can create various effects in space thanks to its gravity, such as lensing, which astronomers can capture with the observatory's telescopes, hoping to find more about what makes up dark matter.

Astronomers are also using these telescopes to study dark energy as well as the Milky Way galaxy and other structures in our universe.

Where is it?

The Vera Rubin Observatory is located in Cerro Pachón in Chile at an elevation of 5,200 feet (1,600 meters) above sea level.

Why is it amazing?

In this image, the observatory's opening can be seen thanks to the glow of its its calibration LEDs. As the telescope scans the skies once every three days with the world's largest digital camera, the calibration process helps ensure all the equipment is working properly.

The observatory has just begun its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission, where it will repeatedly scan the southern sky. Using the largest camera, the observatory captures detailed images that are so large they require a "data butler" to help manage them. Despite the size, the images could be the key to cracking the case of what dark matter truly is.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about the Vera Rubin Observatory, the legacy of Vera Rubin, and the hunt for dark matter.

Prior to 3I/ATLAS, the previous two "interstellar invaders" were 1I/'Oumuamua, spotted in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, detected in 2019. Both have now left the solar system, though other interstellar bodies are predicted to dwell undetected in our cosmic backyard.

As Space.com reported on July 11, recent research suggested that 3I/ATLAS could be even more exciting than initially perceived, as its trajectory through the solar system indicates it comes from a region of the Milky Way older than our 4.6 billion-year-old solar system. With an estimated age of 7 billion years, that would make 3I/ATLAS the oldest comet we've ever seen.

Astrophysics undergrad student astrafoxen alerted his followers to the Hubble images of 3I/ATLAS via this Bluesky feed.

"Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... " the post reads.

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea... 🔭

— @astrafoxen.bsky.social (@astrafoxen.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T09:45:35.680Z

One such paper is already available, albeit as a preprint. Describing optical and near-infrared spectroscopy performed on 3I/ATLAS, the research reveals that: "3I/ATLAS is an active interstellar comet containing abundant water ice, with a dust composition more similar to D-type asteroids than to ultrared trans-Neptunian objects."

D-type asteroids are space rocks packed with organic molecule-rich silicates and carbon with water ice in their interiors.

The arrival of 3I/ATLAS into the solar system has initiated an exciting period for astronomers. Since the solar system interloper was spotted on July 1, 2025, by the ATLAS survey telescope, an array of other instruments have attempted to get in on the act by spotting the comet.

One project that will be trying to get a good look at 3I/ATLAS is the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which observes the universe near and far with the largest digital camera ever built. That is fitting, as the comet from beyond the solar system was actually first spotted as scientists were preparing to make observations with Rubin.

The new observatory, which released its first images of the cosmos on June 23, 2025, is expected to discover between 5 and 50 interstellar objects as they zip through the solar system during the observatory's decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

In the meantime, 3I/ATLAS can enjoy the undivided attention of astronomers aiming to study interstellar bodies with a view to painting an intimate picture of planetary systems beyond our own.

The Hubble images of 3I/ATLAS are available to download from this database.

SpaceX aborted the launch of two communications satellites just before liftoff on Monday evening (July 21).

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with two of SES' O3b mPOWER internet spacecraft was set to launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:27 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT) on Monday.

But it didn't quite happen: SpaceX called an abort just 11 seconds before liftoff. The launch window extended for another 90 minutes or so, but the company soon decided to stand down for the day.

"Standing down from today’s launch of the @SES_Satellites O3b mPOWER mission and now targeting tomorrow, July 22 for liftoff. Vehicle and payload remain healthy," SpaceX said via X on Monday evening.

At the time of this article's publication, the company had not yet explained what caused the abort.

The two-hour launch window on Tuesday opens at 5:12 p.m. EDT (2112 GMT). SpaceX will stream the action live via its website and X account, beginning about 15 minutes before liftoff.

Luxembourg-based SES' mPOWER constellation consists of eight satellites in medium-Earth orbit, all of which have been launched by SpaceX.

The network is already operational, but it's not complete; it will eventually feature 13 spacecraft.

For decades, scientists pictured Europa's frozen surface as a still, silent shell. But the new observations reveal that it's actually a dynamic world that's far from frozen in time.

"We think that the surface is fairly porous and warm enough in some areas to allow the ice to recrystallize rapidly," Richard Cartwright, a spectroscopist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory and lead author of the new study, said in a statement.

Perhaps even more exciting is what this surface activity reveals about Europa's subsurface ocean. The presence of geologic activity and ongoing cycling between the subsurface and surface make "chaos terrains" — highly disrupted regions where blocks of ice seem to have broken off, drifted and refrozen — especially valuable as potential windows into Europa's interior.

The study focused on two regions in Europa's southern hemisphere: Tara Regio and Powys Regio. Tara Regio, in particular, stands out as one of the moon's most intriguing areas. Observations from JWST detected crystalline ice both at the surface and deeper below — challenging previous assumptions about how ice is distributed on Europa.

Related: Explore Jupiter's icy ocean moon Europa in NASA virtual tour (photos)

By measuring the spectral properties of these "chaos" regions using remotely sensed data, scientists could gain valuable insight about Europa's chemistry as well as its potential for habitability, they explained in the paper, which was published May 28 in The Planetary Science Journal.

"Our data showed strong indications that what we are seeing must be sourced from the interior, perhaps from a subsurface ocean nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) beneath Europa's thick icy shell," Ujjwal Raut, program manager at the Southwest Research Institute and co-author of the study, said in the statement.

Hidden chemistry

Raut and his team conducted laboratory experiments to study how water freezes on Europa, where the surface is constantly bombarded by charged particles from space. Unlike on Earth, where ice naturally forms a hexagonal crystal structure, the intense radiation on Europa disrupts the ice's structure, causing it to become what's known as amorphous ice — a disordered, noncrystalline form.

The experiments played a crucial role in demonstrating how the ice changes over time. By studying how the ice transforms between different states, scientists can learn more about the moon's surface dynamics. When combined with fresh data from JWST, these findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that a vast, hidden liquid ocean lies beneath Europa's icy shell.

"In this same region […] we see a lot of other unusual things, including the best evidence for sodium chloride, like table salt, probably originating from its interior ocean," Cartwright said. "We also see some of the strongest evidence for CO₂ and hydrogen peroxide on Europa. The chemistry in this location is really strange and exciting."

These regions, marked by fractured surface features, may point to geologic activity pushing material up from beneath Europa's icy shell.

JWST's NIRSpec instrument is especially well suited for studying Europa's surface because it can detect key chemical signatures across a wide range of infrared wavelengths. This includes features associated with crystalline water ice and a specific form of carbon dioxide called ¹³CO₂, which are important for understanding the moon's geologic and chemical processes.

NIRSpec can measure these features all at once while also creating detailed maps that show how these materials are distributed across Europa's surface. Its high sensitivity and ability to collect both spectral and spatial data make it an ideal tool for uncovering clues about what lies beneath Europa's icy crust.

The team detected higher levels of carbon dioxide in these areas than in surrounding regions. They concluded that it likely originates from the subsurface ocean rather than from external sources like meteorites, which would have resulted in a more even distribution.

Moreover, carbon dioxide is unstable under Europa's intense radiation environment, suggesting that these deposits are relatively recent and tied to ongoing geological processes. "The evidence for a liquid ocean underneath Europa's icy shell is mounting, which makes this so exciting as we continue to learn more," Raut said.

Another intriguing finding was the presence of carbon-13, an isotope of carbon. "Where is this ¹³CO₂ coming from? It's hard to explain, but every road leads back to an internal origin, which is in line with other hypotheses about the origin of ¹²CO₂ detected in Tara Regio," Cartwright said.

This study arrives as NASA's Europa Clipper mission is currently en route to the Jovian moon, with an expected arrival in April 2030. The spacecraft will perform dozens of flybys, with each one bringing it closer to Europa's surface to gather critical data about the ocean hidden beneath the moon's icy crust.

Totality lasts only a couple of minutes, but planning the perfect eclipse trip can take months or years. So we asked eclipse experts and seasoned eclipse chasers from around the world what it takes to witness totality in all its glory.

Whether you're a first-timer or a returning "umbraphile," this guide will help you prepare for one of nature's greatest events.

Why location is everything

To witness a total solar eclipse, you must be within the narrow path of totality — the strip of land where the moon completely blocks the sun. Even a 99% eclipse leaves the dazzling solar disk exposed, and the magic of the corona — the sun's ghostly outer atmosphere — is lost.

Those in eastern Greenland are likely to be on a cruise ship and almost certainly in Scoresby Sund, which is entirely within the path of totality. In Iceland, only the west coast is in the path. For Spain, the path narrowly misses both Madrid and Barcelona, but it crosses some of the country's most remote and beautiful regions. However, in Spain, the eclipse occurs shortly before sunset, so there's a risk that it will be too low to be seen.

Related: Where can I see the total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, 2026?

"Many national parks are in mountainous regions, which could block your view — not ideal for this eclipse," said Oscar Martín Mesonero, an astrotourism expert and eclipse chaser who runs Startrails in Salamanca, just south of the path. "But Spain has many beautiful rural areas with open skies, old towns, Roman aqueducts and castles — perfect for combining eclipse chasing with travel."

Cruise ships and Greenland

There will also be thousands of people on cruise ships; many typically sail into the Mediterranean anyway and have tweaked their itineraries to be off the coast of Spain. However, it may be trickier to find a clear view.

"The prospects are better on land than over the ocean," said Jay Anderson, a Canadian meteorologist and veteran eclipse chaser who provides eclipse-related climatology and weather information on Eclipsophile. "But even with high average cloud cover, satellite images often show that there are always some areas of clear skies." Images from the geostationary Eumetsat satellites will be crucial for finding a clear spot.

It will matter where the ship is. The places on the track that are most likely to be cloudy are along the Greenland coast and anywhere in the Atlantic, but clear skies are more likely off northern Spain and highly likely in the Mediterranean.

Related: Best total solar eclipse 2026 cruises for the ultimate adventure

For the adventurous, Greenland offers pristine Arctic landscapes, and for those on expedition-style cruises in Scoresby Sund, there will be a total solar eclipse of up to 2 minutes, 17 seconds, with the sun about 25 degrees above the western horizon. This is a bucket-list trip about more than just the eclipse, and travel costs are high — it's something for experienced eclipse chasers who want something new and exciting. With travel and logistics in hand, the only issue is the weather.

"It's not too unreasonable to expect decent conditions because air flowing off the ice cap and down to the ocean tends to dry out and clear the clouds," Anderson said of Scoresby Sund. "However, if a large weather system moves in, it can blanket the whole sky and stick around for days." Let's hope not; Scoresby Sund hasn't seen a total solar eclipse since 1187 and, after 2026, won't witness one again until 2911.

Iceland

Iceland offers one of the most photogenic landscapes on Earth — including waterfalls, volcanoes and geothermal spas — and boasts the longest totality on land, at 2 minutes, 13.7 seconds. It will be Iceland's first total solar eclipse since 1954. The eclipse also occurs 25 degrees above the southwest horizon, so there's no need to worry about sight lines.

"The path passes over the most populated areas of the country, about 290,000 people," said Sævar Helgi Bragason, Iceland's most famous eclipse chaser, who offers maps and more on Eclipse2026.is. Only the west of the country — the Reykjanes Peninsula, the Snaefellsnes Peninsula and the Westfjords — are in the path. The main roads are excellent, but mobility could be an issue.

"Tourism has taken its toll on many of the single-lane roads, and we're expecting heavy traffic," Sævar said. "Eclipse chasers won't be the problem because they will know where to go. But the eclipse is on a Wednesday, and locals will probably stop working at around noon and then drive to wherever they want to go."

That means lots of traffic, so get in the path as early in the day as possible. Arriving late for an eclipse aligns with Icelandic culture. "Nature is so unpredictable here — we could have a volcanic eruption happening the same day; it's a real possibility, Sævar said, "so we usually don't prepare for anything until very late."

Another issue with Iceland is the weather. "There's a saying in Iceland that if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes, and it'll change completely," Sævar said. "Even storms are sometimes broken up in patches. When we chase the northern lights in winter, we are bombarded by a blizzard for a few minutes, and then it clears up again." Iceland has exceptional weather forecasts from the Icelandic Met Office, which also provides aurora forecasts.

"Iceland is very seldom completely overcast in August — there's always a hole somewhere," Anderson said. He thinks it will likely be possible to stay in Reykjavik, which is in the path, and take a morning drive north for up to two-and-a-half hours to where clear weather is forecast. "Western Iceland is the sunniest part, but there's a lot of moisture, so get close to the water on one of these peninsulas to have a bit of an onshore flow."

Spain

Most travelers will head to Spain for the 2026 total solar eclipse. The path of totality — the first in Spain since 1905 — cuts a diagonal track across the northeast of the country, from Galicia to Catalonia, with the longest duration (about 1 minute, 44 seconds) occurring just before sunset.

Terrain matters. "Spain is the second-most mountainous country in Europe, after Switzerland," Eduard Masana Fresno, an astronomer at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences in Barcelona. "There are the Cantabrian Mountains in the north of the path, the Meseta plateau north of Madrid and the Iberian System in the east of the path."

In eastern regions and Mallorca, even modest hills could block the eclipse entirely. However, the new Eclipse Viewing Map from Spain's Geographic Institute accounts for the terrain, atmospheric refraction and azimuth (place on the horizon) of the sun to help observers avoid blocked sight lines. There's another reason to avoid shaded valleys and eastern slopes of mountain ranges: Late-day storms are common in August, although average August cloud cover across the path is less than 50%.

Travel in and around Spain will be fairly easy, but bear in mind that there will be a lot of locals traveling into the path on eclipse day, particularly from Madrid and Barcelona. "The Spanish love road trips, and many will be on holiday in the path," Mesonero said. "People from all over Spain will head to the path, and accommodation could be tricky — it's peak vacation season." He expects there to be eclipse events throughout the path, even in places near the edge that only get 30 seconds of totality.

From speaking to eclipse chasers in Spain, one thing is clear: Do not attempt to drive back to Madrid or Barcelona right after the eclipse, or you'll be queuing with perhaps millions of people. Instead, stay overnight in the path. Another reason to do so is the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks Aug. 12-13, just a few hours after the eclipse. Rural skies will also showcase the Milky Way arching across the southern sky.

Think like an eclipse chaser

Wherever you go, eclipse experts agree on three key strategies: Plan ahead, check weather forecasts and stay mobile. Whether you chase the eclipse from Spain's plains, Iceland's wild coast or Greenland's icy fjords, witnessing the 2026 total solar eclipse will be a moment you'll carry for life. And if you miss this one or you want to plan your next adventure, there will be another chance fairly soon: Spain will experience another total solar eclipse exactly one lunar year later, on Aug. 2, 2027.

The proposed mission, called CosmoCube, aims to "listen" for these ancient signals from the far side of the moon. It will target the "cosmic dark ages" — a critical-but-mysterious era roughly 50 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when the first stars, galaxies and black holes in the universe formed.

"It's incredible how far these radio waves have travelled, now arriving with news of the universe's history," David Bacon, a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. who's involved with the mission, said in a statement. "The next step is to go to the quieter side of the moon to hear that news."

Observing this distant epoch is notoriously difficult, astronomers say. At that time, the universe was filled with a dense fog of neutral hydrogen gas that blocked visible light from traveling freely through space, rendering the early cosmos opaque.

However, hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe, emits a characteristic radio signal at a frequency of 1,420 megahertz, corresponding to a wavelength of about 8.3 inches (21 centimeters). As the first luminous objects ignited, they subtly transformed the hydrogen around them, altering the strength and profile of this signal. Capturing these variations could offer a pristine view into how the first luminous objects formed, according to the statement.

While this signal has been studied extensively in the nearby universe, detecting its much fainter counterpart from the universe's earliest days is far more challenging. Capturing these ancient signals requires near-total radio silence, which is virtually impossible to achieve on Earth, where electronic devices and atmospheric interference create a constant background hum.

"It's like trying to hear that whisper while a loud concert is playing next door," Eloy de Lera Acedo, an associate professor of radio cosmology at the University of Cambridge who's involved with the CosmoCube mission, said in the statement. "This makes it really hard to pick up those faint signals from billions of years ago."

The CosmoCube mission would take advantage of the moon's far side, which acts as a natural shield from Earth's radio emissions, according to the statement. From this unique vantage point, the probe aims to deploy a sensitive radiometer designed to detect low-frequency radio signals.

The mission data could also help to resolve the Hubble tension, the long-standing puzzle in cosmology involving conflicting measurements of the universe's expansion rate based on observations of the early universe versus the local universe.

Lab prototypes of the instruments are already undergoing environmental testing. The team plans to launch CosmoCube within the next four to five years, with the goal of reaching lunar orbit by the end of the decade, the team said in the statement.

NASA's X-59 "quiet" supersonic jet continues to make its way toward the runway.

The X-59 was designed from the ground up to fly faster than the speed of sound without generating the thunderous sonic booms typically associated with supersonic flight. The 99-foot (30-meter) aircraft features a radical elongated design, which eliminates a front windscreen; pilots instead see what's ahead through an augmented reality-enabled closed circuit camera system that NASA calls the External Vision System, or XVS.

This month, NASA took the experimental aircraft out for a drive, performing what are known as taxi tests. During these tests, NASA test pilot Nils Larson drove the X-59 across a runway at low speeds so crews could ensure the jet's steering and braking systems work as intended. Next, NASA and Lockheed Martin will perform high-speed taxi tests in which the X-59 will accelerate to close to the speed at which it will take off.

The taxi tests took place at the U.S. Air Force's Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California. The Air Force and its contractors use the plant to manufacture and test classified aircraft; the X-59 is being developed by Lockheed Martin, whose legendary "Skunk Works" facility is found at Plant 42.

Some of the U.S. military's most advanced aircraft were developed to some extent at Plant 42, including the F-22 Raptor, the B-2 Spirit, and the uncrewed RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone.

NASA's recently-retired SOFIA airborne observatory aircraft, the "flying telescope," also called Plant 42 home. The agency's space shuttles, the world's first reusable spacecraft, were also assembled and tested at the facility.

These taxi tests are only the most recent tests that have taken place over the last several months. Earlier this month, NASA teamed up with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to test a scale model of the X-59 in a supersonic wind tunnel in order to measure the noise produced beneath the aircraft.

Months prior, in May 2025, NASA fed data into the aircraft's computers that simulated being in flight, including experiencing failures. A month before that, NASA ran the X-59 through an "engine speed hold," similar to a car's cruise control, to ensure its engine can maintain a specific speed.

But 2025 began with the most photogenic of all: afterburner tests, during which extra fuel was injected into the aircraft's hot exhaust.

If the X-59's upcoming tests continue to be successful, NASA will soon conduct a flight test campaign that will see the jet fly over selected populated areas to collect data on how the aircraft's quieter sonic "thumps" are perceived on the ground.

The ultimate goal is to develop technologies that can help bring supersonic flight back to the continental United States. Commercial supersonic flight has been banned for decades because of how disruptive the associated sonic booms can be.

If the X-59 and other supersonic aircraft can find ways to mitigate these loud sonic booms, supersonic flight could indeed return, greatly reducing flight times for civilian travel, disaster response, medical transport and other applications.

Now, scientists have discovered that these celestial bodies may have more in common than once thought. The star clusters may share a common origin mechanism, they say, despite the fact that the three clusters are all different ages and are located at different distances from Earth.

This new research suggests looking at the three star clusters is like looking at three snapshots taken of the same person at three different stages of their life, from infancy to old age.

The youngest of these open clusters is the ONC at 2.5 million years old. Located around 1,350 light-years away and packed with thousands of young stars embedded in the stellar cloud that created them, it is one of the most active star-forming regions in the Milky Way.

Located 444 light-years from Earth, the Pleiades is less densely packed than the ONC, but it is much more ancient at 100 million years old. However, the Hyades, located 151 light-years away, has fewer stars that are even more thinly spread out and is around 700 million years old.

Yet, as diverse as these star clusters seem, the team's new research suggests they share a particular kind of ancestor.

"Our highly precise stellar dynamics calculations have now shown that all three star clusters originated from the same predecessor," team member and University of Bonn researcher Pavel Kroupa said in a statement.

Star clusters on the same cosmic family tree

The team compares the varied ages and conditions in these three star clusters to looking at the same human being through photos that document the stages of their life. The densely packed ONC is the baby, the more dispersed Pleiades is the adolescent, and the Hyades is the elderly person.

Though the three clusters didn't form from the same molecular cloud of dense gas and dust, they can be compared to the same person being born three times in different parts of the globe.

"From this, we can learn that open star clusters seem to have a preferred mode of star formation," Kroupa explained. "It appears that there is a preferred physical environment in which stars form when they evolve within these clouds."

The question is: How does a cluster like the ONC develop into one like Pleiades and then age into a cluster like the Hyades? Kroupa and colleagues, including team leader Ghasem Safaei from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences, set about answering this question with computer simulations.

Star clusters grow old gracefully

The team's simulations revealed the forces acting between stars in a cluster. This allowed the scientists to model the life cycle of such a collection of stars from a gas-rich, dense infancy through gradual expansion and gradual gas and star loss over the course of 800 million years.

The results obtained by the team closely reflected the changes in structure and composition between the phases we see exemplified by the ONC, the Pleiades and the Hyades.

"This research shows that it is entirely plausible that star clusters such as the ONC follow a development path that transforms them into systems like Pleiades and later on Hyades," Hosein Haghi, study team member and a researcher at the University of Bonn, said in the statement.

The team's results indicated that clusters like the ONC can lose up to 85% of their stellar population and yet hang on to coherent structures when they reach ages similar to that of the Hyades while passing through a stage that resembles the Pleiades.

The team's research also suggests that the fact these three clusters appear close together in the night sky over Earth, despite being widely separated in the cosmos, may be more than a mere coincidence. This positioning could, in fact, be related to the way star clusters form and evolve in relation to our galaxy.

"This research gives us a deeper understanding of how star clusters form and develop and illustrates the delicate balance between internal dynamics and external forces such as the gravitational pull of the Milky Way," team member Akram Hasani Zonoozi of the University of Bonn said in the statement.

Beyond the research's importance for our understanding of star clusters and their evolution, the team's work demonstrates the power of combining simulations with astronomical observations.

This research was published on Friday (July 18) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

New evidence found in shavings from a meteorite known as Northwest Africa 12264 — a 50-gram (1.8 ounces) piece of space rock that is believed to have formed in the outer solar system — suggests that rocky planets like Earth and distant icy bodies may have formed at the same time. This challenges the long-standing belief that planets closer to the sun formed before those in the outer solar system, the ones that lie beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Planets form within the rotating disks of gas and dust that surround young stars, where particles collide and stick together through a process known as accretion. As developing rocky planets heat up, they begin to differentiate, forming separate internal layers known as the core, mantle and crust.

Scientists have thought that our solar system's inner rocky planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars —formed first (around 4.566 billion years ago), while gas giants and icy bodies in the outer solar system came together slightly later (4.563 billion years ago), due to the colder temperatures at a greater distance from the sun. Rocky planets farther out were also thought to form more slowly because their higher water and ice content would have delayed internal heating and core development.

Analyzing the composition of the meteorite (which was purchased from a dealer in Morocco in 2018) revealed a ratio of chromium and oxygen that indicates it came from the outer part of the solar system. Using precise isotopic dating methods, the researchers found that the rock formed 4.564 billion years ago — just two to three million years after the solar system’s earliest solid materials.

Until now, such early formation was thought to be limited to bodies from the inner solar system, according to a statement announcing the new study.

Evidence that rocky planets beyond Jupiter formed as rapidly, and at the same time, as the inner planets could transform our understanding of how planets take shape — not only in our solar system, but in planetary systems throughout the universe, the researchers said.

Their findings were published on July 4 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

To say that this is a momentous occasion for sci-fi collectors is a supreme understatement, as this is the main dueling lightsaber used during the shooting of two Star Wars movies — "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi."

It will be presented as the premier item in Propstore's upcoming Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction in Los Angeles, launching from September 4-6, 2025.

Pre-sale estimates for the incredible film-used weapon of the intimidating Sith Lord are running between $1,000,000 - $3,000,000, but it could go even higher if a heated bidding war erupts.

The lightsaber can be seen held by the performers in the dramatic third-act clashes between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in both director Irvin Kershner's 1980 sequel and director Richard Marquand's 1983 follow-up to close out the space opera trilogy.

Per the official catalog description, "It is constructed from a vintage British press camera flash handle that was transformed into Vader’s infamous weapon through the fitting of dressing components such as plastic grips, calculator bubbles, and cosmetic wiring. This specific prop was further modified with a custom blade-mounting system that facilitated the installation of a wooden rod; the rod served as the blade during the choreographed fight scenes and made the physical, on-camera dueling possible. It also later served as a guide for visual effects artists to add the hand-animated glow for the final shots."

Slight damage to the iconic prop's hilt identifies it as the primary lightsaber filmed in those historic cinematic sequences. According to Propstore, this is very likely the only hero lightsaber prop ever emerging from the original "Star Wars" trilogy with bona fide screen use and has been kept in a single private collection.

"I grew up deeply inspired by 'Star Wars,'" Propstore COO Brandon Alinger tells Space.com.

"It wasn't just a movie, it was the movie of generations. The original trilogy is what sparked my lifelong fascination with filmmaking and screen-used props. The lightsaber, especially, holds a near-mythical place in my imagination. The fact that this exact lightsaber still exists, and that it screen-matches those iconic moments, is extraordinary. To see it and even hold it, you can feel the gravity of what 'Star Wars' means to millions of people. And now, for the first time ever, this legendary artifact is heading to public auction, ready to find a new home where it can continue to inspire."

Vader's deadly lightsaber will also be on display for the public when it's sent out on a multi-city press preview tour next month, along with other highlights from Propstore's September Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction. Cities involved in the road show are: London (August 6), Beverly Hills (week of August 18), and New York City (week of August 25).

For more info, visit the Propstore website.

After a long wait, astronomers have finally seen the stellar companion of the famous star Betelgeuse. This companion star orbits Betelgeuse in an incredibly tight orbit, which could explain one of Betelgeuse's longstanding mysteries. The star is doomed, however, and the team behind this discovery predicts that Betelgeuse will cannibalize it in a few thousand years.

The fact that Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky over Earth, visible with the naked eye, has made it one of the most well-known celestial bodies. And ever since the first astronomers began inspecting this fixture in the night sky, they have been baffled by the fact that its brightness varies over periods of six years.

This mystery is now solved.

The six-year dimming of this red supergiant star is not to be confused with an event that saw it drop sharply in brightness over 2019 and 2020. This event, known as the "Great Dimming," sparked intense interest across the globe. The Great Dimming was so unexpected that it led some scientists to theorize that it could signal Betelgeuse was approaching the supernova explosion that will one day mark the end of its life.

That supernova speculation was well-founded. After all, though it is only around 10 million years old, the fact that Betelgeuse is 700 times the size of the sun means it has burned through its nuclear fuel much faster than our 4.6 billion-year-old star. That means its supernova death is likely approaching. However, in 2023, the Great Dimming was explained by a giant obscuring cloud of dust emitted by Betelgeuse.

Even though the mystery of the Great Dimming was solved, this event spurred a renewed interest in this ever-so familiar star, the tenth brightest in the night sky. That renewed interest included the desire of astronomers to solve the less dramatic but more regular periodic dimming of Betelgeuse.

The lesser dimming of Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse has a primary period of variability that lasts around 400 days, as well as a second, more extended dimming period lasting around six years.

Unlike the Great Dimming, which perplexed scientists for only a few years, this regular "heartbeat" of Betelgeuse has baffled humanity for millennia!

It was while reviewing archival data that scientists began to theorize that the six-year variability of Betelgeuse could be the work of a hidden companion star. However, deeper investigation with the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's X-ray space observatory Chandra left scientists coming up empty-handed in terms of a companion star.

Undeterred, NASA Ames Research Center scientist Steve Howell led a team of astrophysicists who set about investigating Betelgeuse with the Gemini North telescope and its 'Alopeke (Hawaiian for "fox") instrument.

"Gemini North's ability to obtain high angular resolutions and sharp contrasts allowed the companion of Betelgeuse to be directly detected," Howell said in a statement. "Papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it."

The 'Alopeke instrument uses a technique in astronomy called "speckle imaging" that uses short exposure times to remove distortions from images that are caused by Earth's atmosphere. This provided the Gemini North telescope with the high-resolution capability to detect the faint companion of Betelgeuse for the first time ever.

Howell and colleagues were able to do more than just image the companion star of Betelgeuse; they were also able to determine some of its characteristics.

What do we know about Betelgeuse's companion?

The team thinks the star has a mass around 1.5 times that of the sun and that it is a hot blue-white star orbiting Betelgeuse at a distance equivalent to four times the distance between Earth and the sun, fairly close for binary stars. That means it exists within the extended atmosphere of Betelgeuse. This represents the first time a companion star has been detected so close to a red supergiant.

The team also theorizes that this star has not yet begun to burn hydrogen in its core, the process that defines the main sequence lifetime of a star. Thus, the Betelgeuse system appears to consist of two stars that exist at opposite ends of their lives, despite the fact that both stars formed at the same time!

That's because larger and more massive stars don't just burn through their nuclear fuel more rapidly; they also initiate the fusion of hydrogen to helium earlier. However, in this case, this delay doesn't mean that Betelgeuse's companion is in for a long life; the intense gravity of Betelgeuse is likely to drag the smaller star into it, devouring it.

The team estimates this cannibalistic event could happen within the next 10,000 years.

In the meantime, astronomers will get another look at the stellar companion of Betelgeuse in November 2027 when it achieves maximum separation from the infamous red supergiant star.

Beyond this research's implications for Betelgeuse and its ill-fated companion, it tells scientists more about why red supergiants undergo periodic changes in brightness how periods of many years.

"This detection was at the very extremes of what can be accomplished with Gemini in terms of high-angular resolution imaging, and it worked," Howell said. "This now opens the door for other observational pursuits of a similar nature."

The team's research was published on Monday (July 21) across two papers in The Astrophysical Journal.

ESA has chosen five rocket companies to pass through to the next round of its competition to encourage and support the development of new launch vehicles.

The agency announced on July 7 that it had selected German companies Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), Maiaspace from France, Spain's PLD Space and Orbital Express Launch, or Orbex, which is based in the United Kingdom, to proceed to the next stage of its European Launcher Challenge.

The European Launcher Challenge (ELC) is a new scheme to promote new small and medium-sized launch vehicles and boost competitiveness in Europe, which for decades has relied on large Ariane rockets.

The challenge was announced in November 2023, followed by a request for information and a formal call for proposals in March 2025, leading to ESA announcing the preselected challengers. The ELC has two components. The first is for launch services to be performed for ESA from 2026 to 2030, while the second is for development and demonstration of larger, upgraded launchers.

Each chosen company will be eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million US) in support to cover one or both of these components. The ESA member states will finalize funding decisions in November at the agency's crucial ministerial council, which will set funding for projects for the next three years.

Both Isar Aerospace and RFA have made it to the pad already. Isar's Spectrum rocket had a first, short-lived flight in March from Norway, with the launcher exploding seconds in flight. RFA's RFA One rocket exploded on the pad in the Shetland Islands back in August 2024 during a static fire test.

PLD Space conducted a suborbital flight of its Miura 1 rocket in 2023, as a stepping stone toward launching the orbital Miura 5. Orbex, meanwhile, is working on its Prime microlauncher, while Maiaspace is developing its reusable Maia rocket.

These are not the only European companies engaged in developing new rockets, with Skyrora (U.K.), Latitude (France) and HyImpulse (Germany) at various stages of developing their rocket concepts.

Amateur astrophotographer and full-time wildlife conservationist Tim Henderson captured a trio of breathtaking nebula scenes adorning the pristine skies above the Central Australian Desert.

Henderson was able to capture detailed portraits of the Carina Nebula, along with the emission nebulas NGC 6188 and Sh2-1 in late April and May earlier this year using an Askar SQA55 scope coupled with a high-end astronomy camera and mount.

A total of 50 separate 240-second-long exposures were captured to reveal the colossal filaments of dust and gas that comprise the emission nebula NGC 6188, which orbits within the Milky Way some 4,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Ara. The complex shapes are evocative of duelling monsters, granting it the unofficial nickname "the Dragons of Ara". The bright form of a second nebula, NGC 6164, can be seen towards the bottom of the image, surrounded by a faint gaseous shell.

"The skies here have zero light pollution (apart from the moon) and the nights are cloudless 90% of the time, especially during winter," Henderson told Space.com in an email. "It's such an amazing place to enjoy the night sky! I've been slowly progressing my astrophotography journey over the last two years, starting with a DSLR camera + lens setup, to something more dedicated for astro. There's some great targets in the southern hemisphere, including the Carina Nebula."

Located 7,500 light-years from Earth, the Carina Nebula is a vast stellar nursery, which is home to at least a dozen stars with a mass between 50-100 times that of our sun, according to NASA. The intense radiation blasted out from these stellar monsters ionizes the surrounding nebula, causing it to glow. Henderson was delighted to find that his view of the Carina Nebula — captured over the course of 50 minute-long exposures — happened to take on the vague outline of Australia!

Henderson's view of Sh2-1 — also known as Sharpless 1 — reveals the complex cloud-like structures and cavities of the emission nebula embedded in the constellation Scorpius, close to the magnitude +2.8 star Pi Scorpii.

"These images were all captured next to my house (which is a small cabin on a remote wildlife station), which allows for easy access to power, internet and clear skies," said Henderson. "I often work nights, as the animals I work with (e.g. Bilby) are nocturnal. This allows me to set-up my astrophotography rig before work and schedule it to take photos until I get home."

Stargazers interested in capturing the night sky for themselves should check out our roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography available in 2025. Those new to the night sky should also see our guide to the top smartphone astronomy apps, which use augmented reality to help you navigate the night sky.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

What is it?

As part of a project to look at how microgravity affects cellular health, ISS Commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and NASA Expedition 73 Flight Engineer Nichole Ayers collect blood samples from the astronauts on the space station.

Given that gravity is almost nonexistent on the ISS, it can make things like blood collection somewhat challenging, as things float away or have to be tied down.

Where is it?

This photo was taken aboard the ISS, around 250 miles (402 km) from Earth in low-Earth orbit.

Why is it amazing?

The blood being collected in this image is part of the larger Immunity Assay human research investigation project, which looks at any signs of possible space-caused stress on cells in the body. Microgravity, radiation, confinement and a change in sleep-wake cycles and can exert pressure on cells, driving lower immune systems and making astronauts more susceptible to being sick during or after missions.

By collecting and analyzing blood, experts can look for possible stress markers, immune cell levels and other signs that can see how being in space alters a person's overall health. This can help doctors adjust regimens in real time to ensure the best results for crew members on the ISS.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about spaceflight health and studies on microgravity's effects on the human body.

Astronomers have seen what appears to be a forming planet carving out a complex pattern in a disk of gas and dust around a young star. The discovery of this spiral architect could help us better understand how planetary systems like the solar system came to be.

The infant extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," is creating a spiral arm pattern in the planet-forming protoplanetary disk of the 10 million-year-old star HD 135344B, also known as SAO 206462, located in the Scorpius OB2-3 star-forming region. If 10 million years old doesn't seem particularly young, remember the sun is considered middle-aged — and its around 4.6 billion years old.

The discovery of the potential planetary culprit for this swirling spiral pattern was made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph ERIS) instrument. It may represent the first time astronomers have witnessed a planet actively forming within a protoplanetary disk.

"We will never witness the formation of Earth, but here, around a young star 440 light-years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time," Francesco Maio, study team leader and a researcher at the University of Florence, said in a statement.

Maio and colleagues estimate this budding planet is around twice as large as Jupiter. It orbits HD 135344B at a similar distance to Neptune's orbit around the sun. That's about 30 times the distance between Earth and the sun.

And as this potential planet seems to carve channels into the protoplanetary disk of HD 135344B, it is gathering material to further facilitate its growth.

Baby exoplanet sweeps up stellar leftovers

Stars form from overly dense cool patches in vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which collapse under their own gravity. As these stars continue to grow, swirling clouds of gas and dust called protoplanetary disks settle around them. It is within this disk that planets will be born.

Astronomers predict that when this happens, these infant worlds sweep up material to build their own masses, creating intricate structures like rings and channels similar to the grooves in a record, and spirals resembling the spiral arms of the Milky Way. However, catching these exoplanet sculptors has been challenging.

Exemplifying this is the fact that astronomers had previously detected the spiral structure of HD 135344B's protoplanetary disk, using the VLT Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument — but had missed evidence of a planet causing it.

However, ERIS allowed the VLT and its operators to dive deeper into this protoplanetary disk, revealing a prime suspect for its shape: a hidden exoplanet sculptor.

This potential baby planet lurks at the base of one of the disk's spiral arms. That is exactly where scientists have predicted such a spiral-sculpting infant planet should dwell.

"What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we are able to directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disk,” Maio explained. "This gives us a much higher level of confidence in the planet’s existence, as we’re observing the planet's own light."

The team's research was published on Monday (July 21) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The difference will be just 1.34 milliseconds less than the standard 24 hours — not something you'll notice — but it's part of a puzzling trend in Earth's rotational behavior that has been unfolding in recent years. If it continues, a second may need to be subtracted from atomic clocks around 2029 — a so-called negative leap second, which has never been done before.

The speed of Earth's rotation isn't fixed. Long ago, a day was much shorter than the 24 hours — or 86,400 seconds — we're now accustomed to. According to a 2023 study, a day on Earth was approximately 19 hours for a significant part of Earth's early history, due to a balance between solar atmospheric tides and lunar ocean tides. However, over deep time, a day on Earth has become consistently longer. The primary culprit has been tidal friction from the moon, which has caused it to gradually move farther away from Earth. As it moves away, the moon saps Earth's rotational energy, causing Earth's rotation to slow and days to lengthen.

So why the sudden reverse?

From when records began (with the invention of the atomic clock) in 1973 until 2020, the shortest day ever recorded was 1.05 milliseconds less than 24 hours, according to Timeanddate.com. But since 2020, Earth has repeatedly broken its own speed records. The shortest day ever measured occurred on July 5, 2024, when Earth's rotation was completed 1.66 milliseconds faster than usual.

Looking ahead to 2025, scientists predicted that July 9, July 22, and Aug. 5 could be the shortest days of the year. However, new data suggests that July 10 took the lead as the shortest day so far in 2025, clocking in at 1.36 milliseconds less than 24 hours. On July 22, Earth is expected to complete its spin 1.34 milliseconds early, making it a close runner-up. If current predictions hold, Aug. 5 will be about 1.25 milliseconds shorter than usual, leaving July 22 as the second-shortest day of the year.

There are signs the acceleration may be easing. The rate of decrease in day length appears to be slowing, but the underlying cause of the recent rotational changes remains elusive.

One 2024 study suggested that the melting polar ice and rising sea levels may be influencing Earth's spin. However, rather than driving the acceleration, this redistribution of mass might be moderating it. A more likely culprit is deep below our feet — the slowing of Earth's liquid core, which could be redistributing angular momentum in a way that makes the mantle and crust spin slightly faster.

"The cause of this acceleration is not explained," Leonid Zotov, a leading authority on Earth rotation at Moscow State University, told Timeanddate.com. "Most scientists believe it is something inside the Earth. Ocean and atmospheric models don't explain this huge acceleration."

Zotov predicts Earth’s rotation may soon decelerate once again. If he’s right, this sudden speeding-up could prove to be just a temporary anomaly in the planet’s long-term trend toward slower rotation and longer days.

The nation wants to build a moon base by 2045, The Korea Times reported on Thursday (July 17), citing a long-term exploration road map that the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) laid out that same day during a hearing at the National Research Foundation of Korea in Daejeon.

That road map "outlines five core missions, including low Earth orbit and microgravity exploration, lunar exploration, and solar and space science missions," The Korea Times wrote.

KASA, which was established just last year, aims to develop homegrown lunar landing and roving technology, as well as the ability to extract and exploit moon resources such as water ice.

Some of this work is already underway. For example, the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources recently deployed prototype lunar rovers in an abandoned coal mine, testing tech that could be used for space mining down the road.

And South Korea already has some experience at and around the moon. In August 2022, the nation launched its first moon probe — called the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter or Danuri — atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Danuri reached lunar orbit four months later and is still going strong, studying the moon with its suite of instruments.

South Korea had already been aiming for the lunar surface; officials have said they want to put a robotic lander on the moon by 2032. But the newly revealed road map ups the ante. The nation plans to develop a new, presumably more capable moon lander by 2040, "with the goal of building a lunar economic base by 2045," The Korea Times wrote.

South Korea isn't the only nation with moon-base ambitions. The United States also plans to build one or more lunar outposts in the next decade or so, via NASA's Artemis program. China is working toward the goal as well, in partnership with Russia and other nations. And India has said it wants to build a moon base by 2047.

The moon isn't KASA's only distant destination, by the way; the agency also wants to pull off South Korea's first-ever Mars landing by 2045.

As interest in human missions to Mars grows, scientists are focusing on how to sustain life in space without constant resupply from Earth. A team of researchers led by Robin Wordsworth of Harvard University demonstrated that green algae can not only survive but thrive inside bioplastic chambers designed to mimic the extreme environment of the Red Planet.

"If you have a habitat that is composed of bioplastic, and it grows algae within it, that algae could produce more bioplastic," Wordsworth said in a statement. "So you start to have a closed-loop system that can sustain itself and even grow through time."

In laboratory tests, Wordsworth and his team cultivated a common type of green algae called Dunaliella tertiolecta inside a 3D-printed chamber made from polylactic acid, which is a biodegradable plastic derived from natural sources. The chamber was engineered to replicate the thin, carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere of Mars, which has a surface pressure less than 1% that of Earth.

Despite these extreme conditions, the algae were able to perform photosynthesis, according to the statement.

"We have demonstrated that habitable conditions can be maintained in extraterrestrial environments using only biologically produced materials," the researchers wrote in a paper published earlier this month in the journal Science Advances. "The results reported here represent an important step forward, but many additional steps are needed to enable robust ecosystems to be sustained long-term beyond Earth."

Wordsworth and his team attribute the experiment’s success to the bioplastic chamber, which shielded the algae from harmful ultraviolet radiation while still allowing sufficient light to penetrate. Though liquid water cannot normally exist at such low pressures, the team created a pressure gradient within the chamber that stabilized liquid water, enabling biological activity.

The results suggest that bioplastics could be a viable material for constructing habitats on Mars and other celestial bodies, scientists say. Unlike conventional industrial materials, which are expensive to transport and difficult to recycle off-Earth, bioplastics can potentially be produced and reused on-site using biological processes, according to the statement.

The latest proof of concept experiment builds on earlier work by Wordsworth’s team, which showed that silica aerogels could replicate Earth’s greenhouse effect to support life in cold, low-pressure environments. By combining algae chambers for bioplastic production with aerogels for heat and pressure regulation, the researchers say they are making real progress toward self-sustaining space habitats.

Next, the team plans to test their bioplastic systems in vacuum conditions relevant to moon and deep-space missions.

"The concept of biomaterial habitats is fundamentally interesting and can support humans living in space," Wordsworth said in the statement.

"As this type of technology develops, it's going to have spinoff benefits for sustainability technology here on Earth as well."

Armstrong's words, spoken less than seven hours before he and fellow NASA astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin took humanity's first steps on the surface of another world, marked a watershed moment in human history. However, the now famous phrase could easily have been uttered from the opposite side of the lunar disk from Tranquility Base.

In February 1968, NASA's Apollo Site Selection Board revealed five potential landing sites for Apollo 11 — whittled down from a list of 30 — including two that were on the opposite side of the lunar disk from Tranquility base, in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms).

Each of the 3-by-5-mile (5-by-8-kilometer) landing zones were subject to intensive orbital imaging and were ultimately selected based on a number of diverse criteria. For example, each site had to be located within 5 degrees of the lunar equator in order to expend the least amount of fuel and have no large hills or deep craters along the lander's approach, which could have confused its landing radar. Each site also had to have a slope of less than 2 degrees, with relatively few craters and excellent lighting during the selected landing windows.

Site 2 in the Sea of Tranquility was eventually selected as the prime landing site, while two of the remaining shortlisted zones were designated as contingency landing zones to be targeted should the launch of Apollo 11's gigantic Saturn V rocket be delayed.

Read on to discover the locations of the five landing zones considered as the setting for humanity's first steps on another world. The general lunar region containing each site can be found easily with the naked eye during the correct moon phases, but we've also included a more precise map for those observing the moon through a telescope. A 6-inch scope will allow you to spot the larger craters needed to hone in on the locations of the candidate sites. Happy hunting!

Candidate Site 1 —Mare Tranquillitatis (34° East, 2°40" North)

The first shortlisted site for the Apollo 11 landing can be found on the southern shore of the Sea of Tranquility and is best viewed as the moon approaches its first quarter moon phase, or during the full moon, when the entirety of the lunar surface is lit from the perspective of Earth.

First, locate the dark expanse of the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis) located slightly above the lunar equator in the eastern region of the lunar surface. If you struggle, simply take a look at the graphic below! This lunar feature is an enormous basaltic plain, which formed billions of years ago when lava flows flooded gigantic impact basins, before hardening in the frigid space environment.

The Sea of Tranquility is large enough to be seen easily with the unaided eye. Using a telescope, you can also locate the prominent Maskelyne Crater (shown below) and draw an imaginary line east until you hit a brighter patch of terrain jutting up from the south. Apollo 11's first candidate landing zone can be found in the patch of lunar mare bordering this outcrop to the east.

Candidate Site 2 —Tranquility Base (23°37" East, 0°45" North)

Tranquility Base, the site of Apollo 11's historic 1969 landing — can be found to the southwest of the Sea of Tranquility and, like its predecessor, is best viewed in the buildup to the first quarter and full moon phases.

For a closer look, first find the tightly clustered Ritter and Sabine craters on the western edge of the lunar sea. Next, draw an imaginary line three times the width of the Sabine Crater from the lower edge of the impact site leading to the right. This will give you the approximate location of humanity's first footprints on another world.

Candidate Site 3 —Sinus Medii (1°20" West, 0°25" North)

Our third Apollo 11's landing site candidate is situated in the Sinus Medii region smack in the center of the Earth-facing lunar surface. The region containing the landing zone is almost equidistant between the northern edge of Ptolemaeus, and the smaller Ukert crater to the north is best viewed during the weeks straddling a full moon.

Sinus Medii would have been the site of the Apollo 11 landing had the mission's Saturn V launch been delayed by just two days from its historic date of July 16, 1969 to July 18.

Candidate Sites 4 & 5 —Oceanus Procellarum (36°25" West, 3°30" South, 41°40" West, 1°40" North)

Oceanus Procellarum plays host to the final two Apollo 11 landing zones considered in the runup to the historic mission, which are best viewed during the moon's third quarter, or full moon phases. Both can be found below the bright impact ejecta thrown out in the creation of the Kepler Crater to the north and to the right of the Flamsteep P formation.

Had the Apollo 11 Saturn V launch slipped to July 21 1969, then humanity's first steps on the moon would have been left in the regolith coating Oceanus Procellarum instead. 'Procellarum Base' just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it.

Editor's Note: If you capture the site of Apollo 11's shortlisted landing sites and want to share them with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Recent research has suggested that Roman, currently set to launch no later than May 2027, will discover as many as 100,000 powerful cosmic explosions as it conducts the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey observation program.

These powerful and violent events will include supernovas that signal the deaths of massive stars, kilonovas, which happen when two of the universe's most extreme dead stars, or "neutron stars," slam together, and "burps" of feeding supermassive black holes. Roman could even detect the explosive destruction of the universe's first generation of stars.

These explosions could help scientists crack the mystery of dark energy, the placeholder name for the strange force that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, and a multitude of other cosmic conundrums.

"Whether you want to explore dark energy, dying stars, galactic powerhouses, or probably even entirely new things we’ve never seen before, this survey will be a gold mine," research leader Benjamin Rose, an assistant professor at Baylor University, said in a statement.

Roman will hunt white dwarfs that go boom!

The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will obtain its explosive results by scanning the same large region of space every five days for a period of two years.

These observations will then be "stitched together" to create movies revealing a wealth of cosmic explosions.

Many of these will be Type Ia supernovas, a type of cosmic explosion that occurs when a "dead star" or white dwarf feeds on a companion star so ravenously that it blows its top.

These cosmic explosions are vital to astronomers because their light output and peak brightness are so regular from event to event that they can be used to measure cosmic distances. This regularity means astronomers refer to Type Ia supernovas as "standard candles."

This new research, which simulated Roman's entire High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, suggests the space telescope could reveal up to 27,000 new Type Ia supernovas. That is about 10 times as many of these white dwarf destroying explosions as the combined harvest of all previous surveys.

By looking at standard candles across differing vast distances, astronomers are essentially looking back into cosmic time, and that allows them to determine how fast the universe was expanding at these times.

Thus, such a wealth of Type Ia supernovas should reveal hints at the secrets of dark energy. This could help verify recent findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) that suggest this strange force is actually weakening over time.

"Filling these data gaps could also fill in gaps in our understanding of dark energy," Rose explained. "Evidence is mounting that dark energy has changed over time, and Roman will help us understand that change by exploring cosmic history in ways other telescopes can't."

Dying stars tell the tale of the stellar life cycle

The team estimates that as many as 60,000 of the 100,000 cosmic explosions that could be detected by Roman will be so-called "core collapse supernovas."

These occur when massive stars at least 8 times heavier than the sun reach the end of their nuclear fuel and can no longer support themselves against gravitational collapse.

As these stars' cores rapidly collapse, the outer layers are blasted away in supernovas, spreading the elements forged by these stars through the cosmos to become the building blocks of the next generation of stars, their planets, and maybe even lifeforms dwelling on said planets. Core collapse supernovas leave behind either neutron stars or black holes, depending on the mass of the progenitor star.

This means that while they can't help unravel the mystery of dark energy like Type Ia supernovas may, they can tell the tale of stellar life and death.

"By seeing the way an object's light changes over time and splitting it into spectra — individual colors with patterns that reveal information about the object that emitted the light—we can distinguish between all the different types of flashes Roman will see," research team member Rebekah Hounsell from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained. "With the dataset we've created, scientists can train machine-learning algorithms to distinguish between different types of objects and sift through Roman's downpour of data to find them.

"While searching for Type Ia supernovas, Roman is going to collect a lot of cosmic 'bycatch'—other phenomena that aren't useful to some scientists, but will be invaluable to others."

Rare cosmic gems and pure gold kilonovas

One of the rarer events that Roman could also detect occurs when black holes devour unfortunate stars that wander too close to them.

During these tidal disruption events (TDEs), the doomed star is ripped apart by the tremendous gravitational influence of the black hole via the immense tidal forces it generates.

Though much of the star is consumed by the black hole, these cosmic titans are messy eaters, meaning the vast amount of that stellar material is vomited out at velocities approaching the speed of light.

This jet of matter and the stellar material of the destroyed star that settles around the black hole in a flattened swirling cloud called an accretion disk generate emissions across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Roman will hunt these emissions to detect TDEs, with this team predicting that the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will turn up around 40 of these star-destroying events.

Even more elusive than TDEs are kilonovas, explosive bursts of light that occur when two neutron stars smash together and merge.

The team estimates that Roman could uncover around 5 new kilonovas, and while this is a small harvest, these observations could be vital to understanding where precious metals like gold and silver come from.

Though most of the elements we see around us are generated at the heart of stars, even these stellar furnaces lack the pressures and temperatures needed to form elements heavier than iron. The environments around neutron star collisions are thought to be the only furnaces in the cosmos extreme enough to generate elements like gold, silver and plutonium.

These would start life as even heavier elements that are unstable and rapidly decay. This decay releases the light seen as kilonovas, and thus studying that light is vital to understanding that process.

The study of kilonovas could also help determine what types of celestial bodies are created when neutron stars merge. This could be an even larger neutron star that rapidly collapses into a black hole, an immediately formed black hole, or something entirely new and unthought of.

Thus far, astronomers have only definitively confirmed the detection of one kilonova, meaning even another five would be a real boon to science.

Roman looks for instability in the first stars

Perhaps the most exciting cosmic explosion discovery that Roman could make would be the observation of the strange explosive death of the universe's first stars.

Currently, it is theorized that these early massive stars may have died differently than modern stars.

Rather than undergoing the core collapse described above, gamma-rays within the first stars could have generated matter-antimatter pairs in the form of electrons and positrons. These particles would meet and annihilate each other within the star, and this would release energy, resulting in a self-detonation called a "pair-instability supernova.”

These blasts are so powerful that it is theorized that they leave nothing behind, barring the fingerprint of elements generated during that star's lifetime.

As of yet, astronomers have dozens of candidates for pair-instability supernovas, but none have been confirmed. The team's simulation suggests that Roman could turn up as many as ten confirmed pair-instability supernovas.

"I think Roman will make the first confirmed detection of a pair-instability supernova," Rose said. "They're incredibly far away and very rare, so you need a telescope that can survey a lot of the sky at a deep exposure level in near-infrared light, and that's Roman."

The team intends to perform a further simulation of Roman's study of the cosmos, which could indicate its capability to spot and even wider array of powerful and violent events, maybe even some that haven't yet been theorized.

"Roman's going to find a whole bunch of weird and wonderful things out in space, including some we haven't even thought of yet," Hounsell concluded. "We're definitely expecting the unexpected."

This research was published on Tuesday (July 15) in The Astrophysical Journal.

Earlier this year, there were two other moon-Pleiades encounters. On the evening of January 9th, an 82%waxing gibbous moon temporarily hid the Pleiades for parts of the U.S., Canada and Central America and then during the overnight hours of February 5-6, a 61% waxing gibbous moon passed in front of the cluster. If you caught one, or both of the first two events (or if you didn't), make a note on your calendar to watch this final moon-Pleiades rendezvous of the year.

In this upcoming case, you will either have to stay up through the night (to await moonrise, which will occur around 1:00 a.m. local daylight time) or set your alarm for the predawn morning hours.

In addition, since the moon will be a lovely waning crescent, as opposed to a waxing gibbous in January and February, stars will disappear first along the bright lunar crescent.
You'll need at least a small telescope, for binoculars probably won't be enough for following stars in the final minutes or seconds as the moon's glare, sunlit edge creeps up to them. But practically any telescope will magnify enough to do the trick. Use 50x magnification, perhaps more if your scope has a solid mount that allows easy tracking.

Stars will reappear about an hour later from behind the moon's dark limb in dramatic fashion: appearing to suddenly "pop-on" as if someone threw a switch. Here, binoculars should do fine, especially if you mount them on a tripod, provided you're watching at exactly the right moment.

In Canada's Maritime Provinces and the northeastern U.S., advancing morning twilight will be an issue, since the eastern sky will be brightening as the moon approaches the Pleiades. As a result, the disappearance of some stars will not be visible because the sky will be too bright. Nonetheless, the view in binoculars of the crescent moon sitting to the upper right of the star cluster will still make for a very pretty sight.

Farther west, the sky will be darker, but the moon and the Pleiades will be lower. This will be especially true for the far-western states and the Canadian province of British Columbia; therefore, a clear and unobstructed view toward the east-northeast is recommended.

Below are two timetables giving local circumstances for the disappearance and reappearance of the four brightest members of the Pleiades that will be occulted. The information is based in part on data generated by the International Occultation Timers Association (IOTA) and is valid for fourteen U.S., two Canadian and one Mexican city. Keep in mind, however, that many other stars not listed here will also be occulted.

If the disappearance or reappearance of a star takes place during dawn twilight, the time is provided in italic font. Also, take note that if the disappearance or reappearance of a star occurs near or soon after the start of civil twilight (roughly 40 minutes before sunrise), it is assumed that the sky would probably be too bright to easily see it. In addition, the moon might miss the star entirely. In both such cases, the time is omitted. All times are in local civil time.

Specific times and zones of visibility

Courtesy of IOTA, detailed prediction pages are available for each of the four brightest stars — Alcyone, Atlas, Electra, and Maia. These include Universal Time (UT) disappearance and reappearance data, as well as Mercator maps showing where each occultation will be visible.

For example, from St. Louis, Missouri (in Central Daylight Time, UTC–5), Maia will disappear at 4:06 a.m. CDT and reappear at 4:51 a.m. CDT. At the moment of reappearance, the sun will be about 11 degrees below the horizon, meaning Maia should reappear in a twilight sky.

In addition to the timetable, a world map (Mercator projection) is provided, showing the region where the occultation will be visible. The boundaries are in different colors. The Cyan boundaries show the curves of the occultation disappearance or reappearance at moonrise or moonset. A continuous white line marks the nighttime northern and southern limits of the occultation. A continuous blue line denotes the occultation limits occurring during twilight, while a dotted red line depicts the occultation limits occurring in daylight.

For Alcyone, the occultation takes place over much of the western U.S. For Atlas, visibility occurs over the northwest U.S., western Canada and Alaska. For Electra, visibility will be over much of the U.S. and Canada, while the occultation of Maia will be visible primarily over the central and southern U.S. and Mexico.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

On Episode 169 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Rob Manning, JPL's Chief Engineer Emeritus, to look back at the Mariner 4 Mars mission 60 years later.

Six decades ago this week, the Mariner 4 probe sped past Mars, the first to succeed in this then-brash undertaking. The technology was unbelievably primitive, yet effective, sending back 22 low-resolution video frames of the Red Planet. On that day, the wee hours of July 15 at JPL in Pasadena, the Mars of the romantics died. What had long been viewed as a slightly colder, somewhat drier, near-twin of Earth ended up having just a trace of an atmosphere and looked more like the moon--bone dry and pummelled by craters.

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• 50 years after a historic handshake in space, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project's legacy still resonates
• 'Doghouse' days of summer — Boeing's Starliner won't fly again until 2026, and without astronauts aboard
• The largest Mars rock on Earth is up for auction in NYC — it could be yours for $4 million (or more)
• Biggest chunk of Mars on Earth! Take a tour at Sotheby's
• Mars Probes
• Five Ways Mariner 4 Changed Mars Exploration
• Hand-Colored Mars Photo from Mariner 4
• John Casani, Former Manager of Multiple NASA Missions, Dies

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

You can even combine the "eclipse of the century" with "Star Wars" film sets, a recently discovered "lost city" of ancient Egypt, the Rock of Gibraltar, and Andalusia's most splendid Moorish palaces. Here are 10 unique experiences to consider for the 2027 total solar eclipse.

Related: 16 best places to see the 2027 total solar eclipse

Midday at an oasis

Many organized tours are going to Luxor for the maximum totality, but there are other choices in Egypt. One is this nine-day expedition with Astro Trails from July 27 to Aug. 4, 2027, which will witness the total solar eclipse in the remote Siwa Oasis. Close to the Great Sand Sea in the Western Desert — and only 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of the border with Libya — Siwa Oasis will get 5 minutes, 25 seconds of totality. The tour also includes Cairo (with the Giza pyramids, Sphinx and the new Grand Egyptian Museum), Alexandria, and El Alamein.

Totality in a "Lost Golden City"

Would you like to witness the eclipse from Egypt but avoid the crowded temples, cruise ships and hotels in Luxor? Why not view the event as a VIP in the 3,000-year-old "lost golden city" of Aten? Built by the pharaoh Akhenaten, who was dedicated to worshipping the sun's disk, the ancient city was discovered in 2020 near Luxor by Zahi Hawass, one of the world's most famous archaeologists and former minister of tourism and antiquities in Egypt. On this expensive tour from Archaeological Paths, Hawass will take you to see the lost city, which was previously closed to tourists, to view the entire eclipse.

From Tatooine to totality

This eight-day odyssey from Astro Trails through Tunisia blends ancient culture, cinematic nostalgia and one of nature's greatest spectacles. After exploring the medinas of Tunis and Kairouan, Tunisia, travelers head deep into the Sahara to visit iconic "Star Wars" filming locations, including Mos Espa and the Sidi Idris Hotel (Lars' homestead). Visits include the Kerkennah Islands and the largest colosseum in North Africa, with a total solar eclipse visible for 5 minutes, 40 seconds from Chaffar Beach.

A British eclipse in Gibraltar

When you're looking at locations within the path of totality, it's tempting to choose somewhere dramatic. One such option is the Rock of Gibraltar, in the British overseas territory on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Imagine standing next to Barbary macaques while watching the eclipsed sun above the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

One big risk for the eclipse, though, is that it's often very cloudy there. Be at sea level on the eastern side for 4 minutes, 32 seconds of totality. There are no organized tours, but Gibraltar is getting ready.

Birds and baboons in Saudi Arabia

Both Jeddah and Mecca in Saudi Arabia are in the path of totality. However, the 10-day "Wings and Wonders" tour from Saudi Birding is conducted through southwest Saudi Arabia, where endemic and rare migrant species are abundant. The tour begins in Jeddah and then travels down the Red Sea coast, where totality will be enjoyed on the second day from a resort. It will be followed by birding and animal spotting across wadis, mangroves and desert highlands, with targets including pelicans, flamingos, kingfishers, hamadryas baboons and gazelles. Visits include Thee Ain Heritage Village, the Hanging Village of Al Habala, and the Farasan Islands.

Red Sea resort

Hurghada, a beach resort town on Egypt's Red Sea coast, renowned for scuba diving, is just north of the path and gets only a 98.5% partial eclipse. However, a long stretch of the Red Sea coast to the south will experience totality. Red Sea Diving Safari has three coastal resorts in the path — Marsa Shagra (5 minutes, 8 seconds), Marsa Nakari (5 minutes, 42 seconds) and Wadi Lahami (6 minutes, 14 seconds). All can be booked through the German tour operator Beluga Reisen. If you'd prefer a solitary totality, it's even possible to reserve a "liveaboard" — floating accommodation — for a trip to a remote dive site.

Sustainability in the shadow

Eclipse chasing is about seeing the world according to a celestial timetable, but it's also a way to visit places you never knew existed. This unique 10-day journey — from Cairo's pyramids, museums and Coptic landmarks to the Bahariya Oasis in the Western Desert — blends ancient wonders and astronomy with something unexpected: sustainability. It begins with a few days at the pioneering SEKEM initiative — Egypt's acclaimed biodynamic farming and education project — before visiting Cairo, Bahariya Oasis, the White and Black Deserts, ancient tombs and the famed "Golden Mummies." Totality will be experienced from the grounds of a hotel and will last 6 minutes, 16 seconds.

Tapas and casbahs across the Strait of Gibraltar

Ask many eclipse chasers about the 2027 eclipse, and all you'll hear about is Egypt, where totality will last the longest. However, the path also crosses southern Spain and northern Morocco. This 13-day trip from Travel Leaders explores Madrid, Córdoba and Seville before crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to Tangier and visiting the blue-hued Chefchaouen Medina. It peaks with a totality of 4 minutes, 51 seconds from the centerline of the path of totality near M'diq on Morocco's Mediterranean coast.

Astrophotography in Andalucía

This exclusive 10-day photo workshop from Backcountry Journeys is all about photography, with two subjects: Spain's gorgeous region of Andalucía and the sun's corona above it. Beginning in Málaga, the journey winds through Andalucía's cultural gems — Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba — offering golden-hour shoots at iconic sites like La Alhambra and Plaza de España. But the real highlight comes on Aug. 12, when the group positions in a quaint village in the Spanish countryside to witness and photograph the total solar eclipse.

Medinas and the moon's shadow

From the spice-laden souks of Marrakech to the tiled courtyards of Fes, this 14-day cultural odyssey through Morocco with TravelQuest will be a feast for the senses. It gets started quickly, with a few days in coastal Tangier — complete with a pre-eclipse briefing from an eclipse expert — followed by totality for just shy of five minutes from close to Tétouan. Next is a fabulous journey through Chefchaouen and on to Fes, Meknes, Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech, with a community visit, camel rides, glamping and a visit to the Atlas Mountains.

The twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) Mars probes had been scheduled to launch last October, on the first-ever flight of Blue Origin's huge, partially reusable New Glenn rocket.

But NASA took the two spacecraft off that flight in September, citing the possibility of a cost-increasing launch delay. That delay did in fact come to pass; New Glenn ended up debuting on Jan. 15, successfully carrying a test version of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft platform to Earth orbit. The company aimed to land New Glenn's first stage on a ship at sea as well but failed in the attempt.

The ESCAPADE mission, meanwhile, continued in its state of limbo, without a publicly announced launch date.

But that has now been cleared up. On Thursday (July 17), Blue Origin announced that ESCAPADE will launch the second-ever flight of New Glenn, which is targeted for no earlier than Aug. 15 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

That's later than the company had originally planned; Blue Origin had been eyeing late spring for the flight, known as NG-2, but pushed it back last month.

"This will be an exciting mission for New Glenn and Mars exploration. ESCAPADE is not only New Glenn’s first interplanetary mission, it’s also the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to study the Martian magnetosphere. And, we hope to land and recover our booster for the first time. Mars, here we come. Thank you to @NASA for riding with us to space," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said via X on Thursday.

ESCAPADE won't be the only payload flying on NG-2; the 320-foot-tall (98 meters) New Glenn will also carry a technology demonstration for satellite-communications company Viasat, according to Blue Origin.

The two ESCAPADE probes were built by California-based company Rocket Lab. They're known as Blue and Gold, the colors of the University of California, Berkeley, whose Space Sciences Laboratory will manage the $80 million mission for NASA.

That mission "will analyze how Mars’ magnetic field guides particle flows around the planet, how energy and momentum are transported from the solar wind through the magnetosphere, and what processes control the flow of energy and matter into and out of the Martian atmosphere," NASA wrote in a description of ESCAPADE.

"The observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time," they added.

NASA's Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS for short, mission represents a pair of satellites that will fly in a sun-synchronous orbit — meaning they are always over the dayside of the Earth — and pass through the polar cusps. The cusps are, in essence, two holes in Earth's magnetosphere, where the field lines dip down onto the magnetic poles.

When an influx of solar wind particles slam into Earth's magnetosphere, they can overload the magnetic-field lines, causing them to snap, disconnect and then reconnect. Magnetic reconnection, as the process is called, can release energy that accelerates charged particles down the funnel-shaped cusps and into our atmosphere, where they collide with molecules and, if a solar storm is intense enough, generate auroral lights.

When TRACERS launches — expected to be no earlier than late July — it will seek to learn more about the magnetic-reconnection process and how space weather affects our planet.

"What we'll learn from TRACERS is critical for understanding, and eventually predicting, how energy from our sun impacts not only the Earth, but also our space- and ground-based assets, whether it be GPS or communications signals, power grids, space assets or our astronauts working in space," said Joe Westlake, Director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, in a NASA teleconference.

Historically, the problem in studying magnetic reconnection has been that when a satellite flies through the region of reconnection and captures data, all it sees is a snapshot. Then, 90 minutes or so later on its next orbit, it takes another snapshot. In that elapsed time, the region may have changed, but it's impossible to tell from those snapshots why it's different. It could be because the system itself is changing, or the magnetic-reconnection coupling process between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere is moving about — or maybe it is switching on and off.

"These are fundamental things that we need to understand," said TRACERS' principal investigator, David Miles of the University of Iowa, in the same teleconference.

That's why TRACERS is important, because it is two satellites working in tandem rather than being a lone magnetic explorer.

"They're going to follow each other at a very close separation," said Miles. "So, one spacecraft goes through, and within two minutes the second spacecraft comes through, and that gives us two closely spaced measurements."

Together, the twin spacecraft will measure the magnetic- and electric-field strengths where magnetic reconnection is taking place, as well as what the local ions and electrons trapped in the magnetosphere are doing.

"What TRACERS is going to study is how the output of the sun couples to near-Earth space," said Miles. "What we're looking to understand is how the coupling between those systems changes in space and in time."

TRACERS will not be alone out there, and will be able to work with other missions already in operation, such as NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMM), that studies reconnection from farther afield than TRACERS' low-Earth orbit 590 kilometers above our heads. There's also NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), which both study solar-wind interactions with our planet from low-Earth orbit.

"TRACERS joins the fleet of current heliophysics missions that are actively increasing our understanding of the sun, space weather, and how to mitigate its impacts," said Westlake.

The $170 million TRACERS is set to launch no earlier than the end of July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will be carrying several other small missions into orbit at the same time. The answers that TRACERS could provide about how magnetic reconnection works will allow scientists to better protect critical infrastructure for when solar storms hit.

"It's going to help us keep our way of life safe here on Earth," said Westlake.

SpaceX added 24 new Starlink satellites to its orbital network on a Friday night (July 18) launch from California.

The company's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 8:52 p.m. local (11:52 p.m. EDT or 0352 GMT on July 19) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. At about nine minutes into the flight, the booster's upper stage delivered the two dozen satellites to space.

The flight deployed the Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit an hour later, according to a SpaceX update posted to the X social media network.

The Falcon 9 first stage successfully completed its 14th mission by landing on "Of Course I Still Love You," an autonomous droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

The launch was the was SpaceX's 88th Falcon 9 launch of 2025 and 516th completed mission.

With Friday's group (17-3), the Starlink network now includes over 7,965 active units out of the more than 9,200 satellites launched since 2019. SpaceX's service provides broadband internet access to areas where other connectivity is not available, as well as direct-to-cell capabilities for select phones and providers.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 10:00 a.m. EDT on July 19, 2025 to add SpaceX's confirmation that all 24 satellites were deployed as planned.

The object, designated 2020 VN40, is part of a family of distant solar system objects called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). 2020 VN40 is the first object discovered that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune makes. Considering that one Neptunian year lasts 164.8 Earth years, that means 2020 VN40 has one heck of a long year, lasting around 1,648 years or 19,776 months on Earth!

The team behind this research thinks that 2020 VN40's ponderous orbital dance with Neptune may have come about when it was temporarily snared by the gravity of the ice giant planet. Thus, this discovery could help researchers better understand the dynamics of bodies at the edge of the solar system.

"This is a big step in understanding the outer solar system," team leader Rosemary Pike from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian said in a statement. "It shows that even very distant regions influenced by Neptune can contain objects, and it gives us new clues about how the solar system evolved."

The orbital rhythm of 2020 VN40 was discovered in data from the Large inclination Distant Objects (LiDO) survey. LiDO uses the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope with backup from the Gemini Observatory and the Walter Baade Telescope to search the outer solar system for weird objects.

In particular, LiDO specializes in hunting TNOs with orbits that take them far above and below the orbital plane of Earth around the sun. These are regions of the solar system that have thus far only been sparsely explored by astronomers.

"It has been fascinating to learn how many small bodies in the solar system exist on these very large, very tilted orbits," LiDO team member and University of Regina researcher Samantha Lawler said.

The highly tilted path of 2020 VN40 finds it at an average distance from the sun equivalent to 140 times the distance between Earth and our star.

However, the most interesting element of the orbit of 2020 VN40 is its resonance with the orbit of Neptune. Other bodies rhythmically aligned with Neptune make their closest approaches to the sun, their perihelion, when Neptune is at its greatest distance from our star, or its aphelion.

Defying this trend, 2020 VN40 is at perihelion when Neptune is also close to the sun. That's if one were looking at it from above the solar system, with the tilt of 2020 VN40 meaning that this TNO and Neptune are not actually close together; the TNO is actually far below the solar system.

This also separates 2020 VN40 from other resonant TNOs, which tend to stay within the plane of the solar system when they make close approaches to the sun.

"This new motion is like finding a hidden rhythm in a song we thought we knew," team member and University of California Santa Cruz scientist Ruth Murray-Clay said. "It could change how we think about the way distant objects move."

Revealing the orbital strangeness of 2020 VN40 suggests that solar system objects with highly tilted orbits can adopt novel and unexpected types of movement.

The hunt is now on for more bodies like 2020 VN40, with the newly operating Vera C. Rubin Observatory set to play a key role in this investigation.

"This is just the beginning," team member and Planetary Science Institute researcher Kathryn Volk said. "We're opening a new window into the solar system's past."

The 2020 VN40 results were published on July 7 in The Planetary Science Journal.

CHIME J1634+44, also known as ILT J163430+445010 (J1634+44), is part of a class of objects called Long Period Radio Transients (LPTs). LPTs are a newly found and mysterious type of celestial body that emits bursts of radio waves that repeat on timescales of minutes to hours. That's significantly longer than the emission of standard pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron star stellar remains that sweep beams of radiation across the cosmos as they spin.

But as strange as all LPTs are, CHIME J1634+44 still stands out. Not only is it the brightest LPT ever seen, but it is also the most polarized. Additionally, its pulses of radiation seem highly choreographed. And what really stands out about CHIME J1634+44 is the fact that it is the only LPT astronomers have ever seen whose spin is speeding up.

"You could call CHIME J1634+44 a 'unicorn' even among other LPTs. The bursts seem to repeat either every 14 minutes or 841 seconds — but there is a distinct secondary period of 4206 seconds, or 70 minutes, which is exactly five times longer," team leader Fengqiu Adam Dong, a Jansky Fellow at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), said in a statement. "We think both are real, and this is likely a system with something orbiting a neutron star."

The team discovered the unusual traits of CHIME J1634+44 using ground-based instruments including the Green Bank Telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA), the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Fast Radio Burst and Pulsar Project, the NASA-operated space-based observatory, and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (Swift). The object was, in fact, simultaneously discovered by a separate team of astronomers at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, using the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope.

While the team led by Dong believes a stellar remnant at the heart of CHIME J1634+44 is a neutron star, the ASTRON team, captained by astronomer Sanne Bloot, refers to it as J1634+44 and think it is a white dwarf. What both teams agree on, though, is just how strange this LPT is.

This unicorn is speeding up by feeding on a star

Both white dwarfs and neutron stars are dead stars created when stars of differing masses run out of the fuel supplies they need for nuclear fusion at their cores. Once that fuel is over, the stars can no longer support themselves against their own immense gravities.

Neutron stars are stellar remnants that form when massive stars, with masses at least eight times that of the sun, reach the end of their lives and collapse. Smaller stars closer in mass to the sun leave behind a slightly less extreme stellar remnant called a "white dwarf."

Though most of the mass of these dying massive stars is shed in supernova explosions, the cores of the stars maintain a mass between one and two times that of the sun. This is crushed down to a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers), creating matter so dense that if a teaspoon of neutron star "stuff" were scooped out and brought to Earth, it would weigh 10 million tons (equal to stacking 85,000 blue whales on a teaspoon).

This collapse has another extreme consequence. The dying star maintains its angular momentum, meaning that when its radius is rapidly reduced during collapse, it speeds up greatly. Though the collapse of white dwarfs is less extreme, it also causes an increase in spin speed due to the conservation of angular momentum.

An Earth-based example of this is an ice skater pulling in their arms to increase the speed of their spin.

What this means is some young neutron stars can spin as fast as 700 times every second. However, as neutron stars and white dwarfs age, they should slow down as they lose energy. That's why no matter what CHIME J1634+44 is, the fact that it is speeding up its spin is very strange.

There is a way neutron stars or white dwarfs can increase their spin speed, or "spin up" after their birth. It depends on whether they have a close companion star.

As such, the new study's team suspects CHIME J1634+44 may actually be composed of two stellar objects orbiting each other in a tight binary format. The ASTRON team proposes that this companion is either another stellar remnant (like a white dwarf or neutron star) or is a "failed star" brown dwarf — a body that forms like a star but fails to gather enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion that defines what a star is.

As these bodies swirl around each other, they would emit ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. This carries away angular momentum and causes the two stellar bodies to move closer together. This would cause the period of the binary to appear as if it is shortening. This type of orbital tightening has been witnessed before by astronomers in white dwarf binaries.

CHIME J1634+44 gets stranger, however.

Its radio bursts are 100% circularly polarized. This means the electromagnetic waves escaping J1634+44 rotate in a circle (like a corkscrew) as they propagate.

Thus, the electromagnetic radiation escaping CHIME J1634+44 twists around in a perfect spiral as it moves away from its source. Not only is that extremely rare, but it is something that has never been seen in bursts of radiation from either neutron stars or white dwarfs.

That implies the radio wave blasts of CHIME J1634+44 are being generated in a way that is unique for this dead star.

Astronomers have a mystery on their hands with this dead star

What is also weird about these pulses is the fact that they arrive in pairs, but only when the dead star in the CHIME J1634+44 binary has spun several times without emitting a burst.

"The time between pulse pairs seems to follow a choreographed pattern," team member and ASTRON astronomer Harish Vedantham said in a statement. "We think the pattern holds crucial information about how the companion triggers the white dwarf to emit radio waves.

"Continued monitoring should help us decode this behavior, but for now, we have a real mystery on our hands."

The research conducted by these astronomers not only reveals more about neutron stars, the universe's most extreme stellar objects, but also hints at an exciting new phase for radio astronomy.

"The discovery of CHIME J1634+44 expands the known population of LPTs and challenges existing models of neutron stars and white dwarfs, suggesting there may be many more such objects awaiting discovery," Dong concluded.

Both teams' research was published on Thursday (July 17) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The Southern Delta Aquariid shower is active from July 18 to Aug. 12, as Earth passes through a trail of ancient debris that is suspected to have been shed by the 4-mile-wide (6.4 km) comet 96P Machholz. When this debris hits Earth's atmosphere, the friction created by air molecules causes the particles to ignite, creating the visible streaks we see in the sky. The shower is at its strongest in the week surrounding its peak on July 29, at which time viewers could spot up to eight faint meteors per hour, according to NASA.

Shooting stars associated with the shower will appear to emanate from a patch of sky — known as a radiant — in the constellation Aquarius, close to the bright star Delta Aquarii, from which the annual event gets its name.

When is the best time to see the Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower?

Stargazers will have their best chance of spotting a Southern Delta Aquariid in the early morning hours in the week surrounding July 29, according to the American Meteor Association. Around that time, the radiant is at its highest in the southern sky and the waxing crescent moon will be hidden well below the horizon, providing a dark sky in which to hunt for the elusive shooting stars.

As its name suggests, the Southern Delta Aquariids will be most visible to stargazers situated in the Southern Hemisphere, where the radiant is higher in the post-sunset sky. However, the shower will still be visible to those north of the equator, albeit at a lower hourly rate.

To maximize your chances of catching a Southern Delta Aquariid, first locate the bright star Delta Aquarii in the constellation Aquarius above the southern horizon (or use a stargazing app to help you find it). Then, find a patch of sky 40 degrees away from the radiant in the direction of the local zenith, which is the point directly above your head. Remember: the width of your outstretched fist from your thumb to the outside of your little finger accounts for around 10 degrees in the night sky. The shooting stars seen here will have longer trails compared to those spotted closer to the radiant!

You'll have a much better chance of spotting one of the faint shooting stars if you head away from city lights and allow your eyes 30 minutes to adapt to the darkness. After that, it's a case of lying back — ideally on a deckchair, and losing yourself in the night sky. If you see a bright meteor streak across the sky from the north, you may well have spotted a member of the Perseid meteor shower, which has been active since mid-July.

Editor's Note: If you capture a picture of a meteor and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

"Our opinion and our taste is really welcomed, not just with hair and makeup but especially with costume as well," Bush tells Space.com regarding how the entire crew supports their work.

"The people in that department are often asking, 'What feels good on you? What do you want for this? What is your vision?' We're often invited to collaborate," explains Bush. "That was something that was exciting and refreshing to me when I came on the show. They wanted to know what I wanted for the character. That gives you a sense of ownership and comfort in a situation where a lot of things are out of your control. It feels like yours."

"I think Chapel has been taken many places outside of Sick Bay and outside of her job as a nurse. In Season 3, I think that's allowed me as an actor to find new things about her through that process."

For this spin around the galaxy, Scottish actor Martin Quinn fully steps into the rather large shoes of James Doohan's Montgomery "Scotty" Scott character, playing the younger iteration of the gregarious officer with all the style and smarts you'd expect.

His version of the USS Enterprise's Chief Engineer was first seen in the "Strange New Worlds" Season 2 finale in 2023, and fans were thrilled to see more legacy icons in the cast moving forward.

Quinn is certainly up to the big challenge for Season 3, and his added screen time has emboldened his performances while attempting to integrate with the rest of the smash series’ cast and crew.

"Sometimes I really do feel like I'm thrown in the deep end," Quinn adds. "It's, 'Alright, let's roll.' I was so new to it all and have done bits of films before this, but nothing as big as this. I didn't realize I could have an opinion. It was like anything that costume put on me, I thought, 'Wow, that's brilliant.' Then I slowly but surely found my own voice, my own taste, what I like to do, and it's been a real learning curve for me."

"A couple of scenarios I didn’t see coming for Scotty and how he reacts. I'm not a great writer like the team that we've got, so I've been surprised and it's really pushed me as an actor," reveals Quinn.

"I'm trying to draw from myself as much as I possibly can, and trying not to just emulate James Doohan because that would end up becoming a really wretched impersonation. I'm trying to make it as realistic as possible, so that a modern-day Scottish person could see themselves in space one day."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season three left the docking bay on July 17 with a two-episode release, with the following episodes arriving every Thursday on Paramount+.

Dupuy set off with a cohort of three astronomy enthusiasts on April 29 to begin a grueling two-day climb up the slopes of the famous Mont Blanc mountain, located in the Alps bordering Italy and France. Carried alongside the usual mountaineering provisions was a peculiar item— a Vaonis' Vespera Pro smart telescope.

"Climbing a mountain and exploring the sky share the same spirit: a drive to rise above," said Dupuy in a statement detailing the challenging ascent. "The mountaineer defies gravity; the astronomer looks up. Both seek to reach the unreachable."

The smartphone-controlled Vaonis' Vespera Pro smart telescope has a simple outward design, eschewing the use of traditional eyepieces while featuring a single touch sensitive button on its pill-like outer shell. Pressing that button wakes the telescope up, prompting one side of its pill-like body to rotate upwards to reveal a technological eye designed to capture the planets, stars and deep-sky objects that populate the universe.

Dupuy's goal was to forge a path to the mountain's summit — some 4,806 meters (15,767 ft) above sea level — where he would set up the Vespera Pro to capture a high-altitude image of the sun's ever changing surface. The team also hoped to use the telescope's high resolution sensor to capture light from the remote Malin 1 galaxy, located roughly 1.2 billion light-years from Earth.

"Inspired by the Janssen Observatory built atop Mont Blanc in the late 19th century, I decided to follow in trailblazer Jules Janssen's footsteps and capture from the Alpine skies a unique image of the sun as well as the largest known spiral galaxy, a nod to Janssen's research - though this time armed with 21st-century technology," continued Dupuy.

Each member of the team shouldered a 35 lb (16 kg) backpack — along with the compact 11 lb (5 kg) smart telescope — and set themselves against the freezing mountain slopes. Ultimately, a dangerous snow bridge would put pay to Dupuy's bid for the summit, leading the team to deploy the Vespera Pro telescope close to the well-known Vallot shelter, 14,100 feet (4,300 meters) above sea level.

From this lofty vantage point, Dupuy was able to successfully capture the surface of our parent star in impressive detail, capturing a cluster of sunspots form on the western edge of the sun's disk, 93 million miles (150 million km) away. The team also captured the faint light of Malin 1, along with a swarm of other galaxies that share the same patch of sky between the constellations Virgo, Leo and Coma Berenices.

Be sure to check out our guides to the best smart telescopes available in 2025, which includes a range of Vespera smart scopes including the Vaonis Vespera II, which we lauded as an inexpensive beginner telescope capable of producing amazing deep-sky images.

Orbital observation

The "most magical place on Earth" as seen from a "star" above.

Expedition 73 flight engineer Anne McClain, a NASA astronaut, captured this photo of Orlando, Florida — home to the Walt Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks — during a nighttime flyover by the International Space Station.

"Orlando has a surprising amount of orange sodium vapor lighting dotted around it," wrote NASA astronaut Don Pettit, responding to McClain's photo.

Science status

Among the research that was conducted by the Expedition 73 crew aboard the space station this week was:

CIPHER — NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain took part in studies that were part of the "Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research on Varying Mission Durations." Kim and McClain used an ultrasound machine to measure blood flow, while Ayers and McClain used virtual reality googles to test how microgravity affects the sense of balance.

Muscle Stimulation — Ayers and Kim worked together on a study of whether sending electrical impulses into astronauts' legs can supplement exercise to combat muscular atrophy. Ayers wore the electrodes, while Kim operated the equipment.

Real-time scans — McClain also donned electrodes for two ultrasound scans that were monitored by doctors on the ground. The data collected is supporting an ongoing study of the cardiovascular risks of long-duration spaceflight.

Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Kirill Peskov also ran on a treadmill to determine how much physical activity is required to stay ready to perform spacewalks and be subjected to increased gravity loads on their return to Earth.

Station keeping

The Expedition 73 crew also devoted time to maintaining the space station's systems, including:

Boost — A Russian resupply craft, Progress MS-30 (91P) docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, fired its engines for about 12 minutes on Wednesday (July 16) to give the space station an orbital boost, setting up for the arrival of the next crew early next month.

Microgravity Measurement Apparatus — Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi with JAXA replaced a device that tracks how the Kibo laboratory vibrates in response to crew and spacecraft movements, motions that could impact research being conducted in the module.

Catalytic reactor — Anne McClain replaced a component of the station’s water processor assembly that adds oxygen and oxidizes organics in the collected wastewater.

Astronaut activity

Axiom Mission 4

After 18 days at the International Space Station, the Axiom Mission-4 crew on board SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft "Grace" undocked and returned to Earth this week. Commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu splashed down off the coast of California on Tuesday (July 15).

The four crew members conducted more than 60 scientific experiments from 31 countries — more than any other commercial mission — studying life sciences, conducting materials research, observing Earth and demonstrating new technologies. Whitson, Shukla, Uznański-Wiśniewski adn Kapu also took part in 20 outreach events, speaking with scientists, students and government officials.

By the numbers

As of Friday (July 18), there are 7 people aboard the International Space Station: Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim of NASA and Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Roscosmos, all flight engineers.

Ax-4 commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of ISRO and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of ESA and Tibor Kapu of HUNOR returned to Earth on SpaceX's Dragon "Grace" on Tuesday (July 15).

There are two docked crew spacecraft: SpaceX's Dragon "Endurance" attached to the forward port of the Harmony module and Roscosmos' Soyuz MS-27 attached to the Earth-facing port of the Prichal node.

There are two docked cargo spacecraft: Roscosmos' Progress MS-30 (91P) attached to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, and Progress MS-31 (92P) docked to the space-facing port of the Poisk module.

As of Friday, the space station has been continuously crewed for 24 years, 8 months and 17 days.

Geologists studying driftwood and lake sediments found in Stanton's Cave — in Marble Canyon, which lies in the eastern part of the Grand Canyon — revealed a possible connection between the area and the famous impact site known as Meteor Crater (also called Barringer Crater) in northern Arizona.

Through excavation and multiple rounds of radiocarbon dating, researchers determined the driftwood is about 56,000 years old. Yet today, the mouth of Stanton's Cave sits 150 feet (46 meters) above the Colorado River. A new study suggests the wood was carried there by an ancient paleolake, formed when a massive landslide dammed the river.

"It would have required a 10-times-bigger flood level than any flood that has happened in the past several thousand years," Karl Karlstrom, co-lead author of the study and an Earth and planetary science professor at the University of New Mexico, said in a statement from the university.

The study claims that the strike that created Meteor Crater could be linked to a paleolake — an ancient lake that existed in the past but has since dried up — in the Grand Canyon that formed at the same time. The impact would have generated an earthquake around magnitude 5.4 to 6, which could have sent a shock wave powerful enough to shake loose unstable cliffs in the Grand Canyon 100 miles (161 kilometers) away and trigger a massive landslide. That event, in turn, could have deposited enough debris to dam the river and form a lake.

Other caves high above the river have also been explored for clues about the canyon's geological past. In addition to the driftwood, ancient beaver tracks have been found in areas that would be inaccessible to the water-dwelling animals today, further supporting the idea that a paleolake once existed in the area.

With driftwood and sediment samples found in many caves as high up as 3,084 feet (940 m), the researchers estimate the paleolake would have been about 50 miles (80 km) long and nearly 300 feet (91 m) deep. Over time, the dam that blocked the Colorado River could have been overtopped and deeply eroded, eventually filling up with sediment.

While there is evidence linking the paleolake, the meteorite impact and resulting landslide, the researchers noted that further study is required to eliminate any other possible explanations for the river damming, such as random rockfall or a more local earthquake around the same time.

Their findings were published July 15 in the journal Geology.

Baumgartner died Wednesday (July 16) during a paragliding flight in coastal Italy, according to an Associated Press report citing an Italian official.

The paraglider crashed into a swimming pool edge in Porto Sant'Elpidio, AP's report added; Italian media reports cited by English-language outlets disagree as to the cause, and whether others were injured.

Baumgartner, a long-time skydiver and extreme sports enthusiast, reached world fame on Oct. 14, 2012 after skydiving 128,000 feet (39 km) from a tiny capsule suspended under a high-altitude balloon.

"I know the whole world is watching now, and I wish the world could see what I see," Baumgartner said in a Red Bull livestream of the event, before stepping out the door of his capsule. "And sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you really are."

As he plunged from an altitude three times higher than commercial flight routes, Baumgartner's body tumbled and spun in the thin air before he righted himself, popped a parachute and landed safely in the New Mexico desert. Baumgartner's record-breaking flight was superseded in 2014 when Google executive Alan Eustace made his own jump from nearly 136,000 feet (41 km).

Red Bull, who sponsored Baumgartner's jump, paid tribute to Baumgartner's life on Instagram after his death. "Felix was 'born to fly' and was determined to push the limits," the post noted, but added he did so judiciously: "He was also smart, professional, thorough and meticulous, never leaving anything to chance."

Baumgartner was born in Salzburg in 1969, the same year that humans first landed on the moon during Apollo 11. He started skydiving at 16, gaining experience through Austrian military's demonstration and competition team. He then began performing skydiving exhibitions for Red Bull at age 19, according to his official website.

By 1996, when Baumgartner was about 27, he wanted to start base jumping, or skydiving from towers and similar high objects. He achieved some fame outside of his field in 1999 after leaping from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Baumgartner's base-jumping teacher, Tracy Lee Walker, "not only taught me how to base jump, but also how to deal with risks, and the importance of very careful and thorough planning," Baumgartner said in an interview decades later, for his aviation enthusiast group

Baumgartner leaves behind his long-time partner, Mihaela Rădulescu, according to several media reports.

The brilliant planet is, of course, Venus, which outshines Aldebaran by almost five magnitudes or a light ratio difference of almost 100-fold. At this particular moment in time, both star and planet can be seen roughly one-quarter of the way up from the eastern horizon, roughly 45 minutes before sunrise.

Venus, a dazzling morning "star," rises about an hour prior to the first light of dawn and shines low in the east-northeast as dawn brightens. On Monday morning, you'll also see a delicately thin (14 percent illuminated) crescent moon hovering approximately 8 degrees above Venus. Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10 degrees in width, so on Monday morning, the slender lunar sliver will appear almost "one fist" above Venus.

In a telescope, Venus is a disappointment: just a tiny, gibbous blob, 72 percent illuminated by the sun. It has shrunk and become more nearly round in recent months as it has swung far around to the back side of the sun as seen from Earth.

And situated well to the right of both Venus and the moon will be Aldebaran. The trio will appear to form a broad isosceles triangle with Venus marking the vertex angle, while Aldebaran and the moon form the base of the triangle. It will not be a particularly "tight" array, but still should be attractive enough to catch the attention of early risers.

With the reappearance of Aldebaran, it is also a gentle reminder that while we are not yet at the midpoint of summer, the colder nights of fall and winter will be looming in the months to come. Aldebaran is crossing the meridian at midnight around Thanksgiving ... and at around 9 p.m. in mid-January.

Who knows? By then, some of you might be shoveling snow.

So take advantage of this week's opportunity to see not only an out-of-season winter star, but Venus as well, while they both "flirt" with a waning crescent moon.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

"Alien: Earth" is landing soon.

From the stimulating looks of this bloody-good new trailer for the 8-episode "Alien: Earth" series from "Fargo" creator Noah Hawley's, the visionary filmmaker has no hesitation to terrify viewers when the ambitious sci-fi series hatches on FX and Hulu starting on Aug. 12, 2025.

Starring Sydney Chandler, Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, David Rysdahl, Adrian Edmondson, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diem Camille, and Moe Bar-El, "Alien: Earth's" horrifying events play out in the year 2120 when the USCSS Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani deep space research spaceship, crashes on Earth in Prodigy City custodian of five deadly extraterrestrial lifeforms collected "from the darkest corners of the universe."

The plot focuses on Wendy (Chandler), a Prodigy Corporation-made humanoid robot synthetic and her hybrid tactical team that are dispatched to explore the crash site, search for survivors, and recover escaped specimens  —  including the notorious alien predator we all know as the eyeless, acid-spewing xenomorph.

"We don't lock them down … it will be too late," Timothy Olyphant's character Kirsh declares in the trailer. This atmospheric preview titled "Greener World" and paired with the somber song "A Greener World" by Gwilym Gold gives us a disturbing glimpse in the android-obsessed, corporate-run world of the 22nd century on Earth and the haunted house-like ship interiors. The final image of a dome-headed xenomorph crouching outside a forest cave is chilling!

"Alien: Earth" lands on FX and Hulu Aug. 12 and is executive produced by Noah Hawley, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, Joseph Iberti, Dana Gonzales and Clayton Krueger.