How awesome would it be if the sun could take on a spooky green glow for Halloween? It turns out that scientists have discovered that our star may indeed go green, but only billions of years from now after its death  — and only if it then starts eating planets like a cosmic zombie.

That's possible because scientists have discovered that white dwarfs, the type of stellar remnants sun-sized stars leave behind when they die, can actually take on a range of colors including green if they snack on their rocky planets like cosmic cannibals.

For stellar scientists, the colors of stars have always been indicative of their temperatures. Cool stars look orange, while stars like the sun look white, and the hottest stars glow pale blue. This is akin to a blacksmith's iron glowing red, then orange, then white-hot as it heats up. Researchers have always assumed that white dwarfs follow the same rule. However, new research suggests that these stellar corpses could glow in a range of colors including green, pink, cyan, yellow, and purple. That means the universe is far more colorful than we suspected.

"Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like 'perfect radiators,' so their color is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs," team leader Mark Hollands of the University of Warwick said in a statement sent to Space.com.

"It turns out these incredibly dense stars caaaaan produce colors nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me."

How white dwarfs break stellar color rules

White dwarfs get their name because when they were discovered, they appeared surprisingly hot and glowed white or pale blue. However, this new research suggests that this slightly bland and uniform appearance is because no white dwarf is close enough for Earthbound astronomers to see their true colors.

The key to the rainbow-like array of colors this team suggests white dwarfs could possess is their density. White dwarfs form when stars with a mass roughly that of the sun run out of fuel and can no longer support themselves against their own gravity, causing their cores to collapse. As a result, the matter that makes up white dwarfs is around the density of water, millions of times denser than the sun's surface, the photosphere.

In these conditions, elements like carbon, calcium, and sodium can interact with the surrounding dense helium plasma and absorb light across a wider range of colors than they would at lower densities. That shifts the colors of white dwarfs away from the white/light blue seen for a perfect radiator of heat.

The researchers found that the colors of white dwarfs would fit into distinct groups tied to the individual chemical makeup of the stellar remnant's atmosphere.

White dwarfs abundant in carbon should be pink or purple, while those that have been enriched with debris from consumed asteroids and comets, and the remains of old planetary systems, would take a more yellow hue. Cooler white dwarfs with mixed hydrogen and helium atmospheres often would glow cyan or pale blue, caused as hydrogen molecules collide with helium atoms in their dense atmospheres.

One of the most striking examples of white dwarf coloration, however, would arise when one of these living dead stars starts feeding on the planets around it like a horror movie zombie.

Zombie white dwarfs go green

The researchers found that some dead star white dwarfs can go a little green around the gills after snacking on orbiting planets.

An example of this is WD J1330+6435, a cool white dwarf located around 326 light-years away, which has been accreting rocky material from a planetary companion. This has enriched its atmosphere with calcium, lithium, and sodium, and the team's model suggests this would have led WD J1330+6435 to adopt a green hue.

But unlike the green-tinged zombies of George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, there are no hordes of these green-faced cosmic zombies ... yet.

The researchers think that no other star, living or dead, has ever been credibly reported as green. That makes WD J1330+6435 the first known genuinely green star.

"The traces of sodium in the atmosphere of this white dwarf absorb the orange part of the spectrum, leaving behind a ghostly green glow," Hollands said. "Imagine standing on a planet and looking up at a green star. It feels like something out of science fiction."

Scientists see red

The team didn't just discover that a known white dwarf is the first-ever green star; they also discovered what could be the reddest star ever in the form of the white dwarf WD J1011+2845.

Located just 48 light-years from Earth, this white dwarf has a deep convection zone that carries carbon from its core to its surface. These carbon molecules distort light from the white dwarf, causing a deep salmon-pink glow unlike anything seen in any other star.

Despite this rainbow of white dwarfs, the team theorizes that white is still the most common color for these stellar corpses. Only five of the 151 white dwarfs within around 65 light-years of Earth have extraordinary coloring. Extrapolating this to the total population of white dwarfs, the team estimates that only one in 30 of these dead stars has an unusual color.

"One in thirty might not sound like a huge fraction, but across the entire population of white dwarfs in the universe, that is still a lot of oddly colored stars out there," Boris Gänsicke, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, said. "Yet if we take the median across a representative population of white dwarfs, we found that the average white dwarf really is white."

The team's research was published on Thursday (Oct. 14) in the journal RAS Techniques and Instruments.

On Oct. 15, 1997, NASA launched the Cassini spacecraft on a mission to explore Saturn and its moons. It lifted off aboard a Titan 4B rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

It took almost seven years for the Cassini spacecraft to reach Saturn, with the spacecraft entering orbit around the ringed planet in 2004. Another smaller spacecraft called Huygens hitched a ride with Cassini, and it landed on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005.

Cassini spent 13 years studying the Saturn system up close, and the mission lasted about 20 years before coming to an epic grand finale on Sept. 15, 2017.

Running low on fuel, NASA chose to steer Cassini straight into Saturn's atmosphere, where the spacecraft was destroyed.

Why it mattered

NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn (which carried the European Space Agency's Huygens lander to Titan) was a flagship planetary mission like no other ever when it first launched toward the ringed planet.

The $3.26 billion Cassini spacecraft became the first probe ever to orbit Saturn when it arrived in 2004. It revealed Saturn's rings as active and dynamic structures, as intricate and complex as they are beautiful to observe.

And it delivered Huygens to Titan, then followed up with a series of Titan flybys that revealed the cloudy moon could have liquid hydrocarbon rain, rivers, lakes and seas.

Perhaps the most exciting discoveries were the most surprising.

Cassini discovered a strange hexagon-shaped jetstream encircling Saturn's north pole and revealed massive hurricane-like vortexes over both of the planet's poles. In 2010, Cassini watched as a giant storm formed in Saturn's northern hemisphere, then grew to encircle the entire planet through 2011.

The spacecraft also discovered icy plumes of water erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, revealing new clues into that moon's subsurface ocean of liquid water, complete with hydrothermal events like those found in Earth's oceans.

It was to protect Enceladus, Titan and other Saturn moons that NASA ultimated sent Cassini into a death dive into Saturn at the end of its mission. The space agency wanted to prevent any chance of contamination at those pristine moons.

"NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and ESA’s Huygens probe expanded our understanding of the kinds of worlds where life might exist and eight more reasons the mission changed the course of planetary exploration," NASA said in an overview.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

SpaceX will launch a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force this evening (Oct. 15), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today, on California's beautiful but frequently fog-blanketed central coast, during a four-hour window that opens at 7:44 p.m. EDT (2344 GMT; 4:44 p.m. local time).

You can watch it live via a SpaceX webcast, which is expected to begin about 10 minutes before launch.

This evening's launch will kick off the USSF-481 mission, which will deliver mysterious payloads to an undisclosed location in the final frontier.

Don't expect SpaceX to provide more info during the webcast. It will probably end just after the Falcon 9 first stage's landing, which is expected to occur about eight minutes after launch on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

USSF-481 will be the 28th flight for this particular booster, which is designated 1081. Sixteen of its previous 27 launches were devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit, according to a SpaceX mission description.

USSF-481 will be the 114th Falcon 9 mission of the year. The vast majority of the rocket's flights in 2026 — more than 70% of them — have been Starlink missions.

SpaceX has also launched its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets three times so far this year. Falcon Heavy is an operational vehicle, but the fully reusable Starship remains in the test-flight phase. It reached orbit for the first time on its most recent launch, which occurred on Sept. 28.

Vaonis has just announced its new generation of smart telescope technology, known as Atlas. Less of a single smart telescope and more of a new optical system, Atlas was designed with interchangeability and adaptability in mind. Its new SkyDock system allows two optical tubes to be connected and the telescope has live night sky monitoring to predict available observations.

You can preorder the Vaonis Atlas with a single Atlas 80 module for $3,990, or $5,490 for the twin at Adorama. But it'll also soon be available at B&H and other retailers.

Currently, there is only one optical tube, the Atlas 80, but Vaonis is planning to release add-on modules designed for looking at different night sky objects, including for planetary observation. We think this is an exciting step for smart telescope technology and is, essentially, the start of modular astronomy for amateur stargazers, allowing them to choose optics that suit their observation interests. The Vaonis Atlas with two Atlas 80 modules will be available for preorder for $5,490.

• We've got you covered with reviews and rankings of the best telescopes, binoculars, star projectors, cameras, drones, Lego, streaming and more.

The world of smart technology in stargazing optics is constantly pushing forward but it tends to move in waves in terms of actual "new" technology. Obviously, smart telescopes improve as new releases come out, usually with higher resolution and an upgraded optical design, but they are still just improvements on a base model. For years, Vaonis has improved and developed their Vespera models, but the announcement of the Atlas reveals a potential new direction for the company.

The Atlas system is the first-ever modular smart telescope system for Vaonis, with a base dock system fitted with two ports for connecting two imaging modules (an optical tube with a sensor). The Atlas 80 imaging module is an optical tube with a 3.15-in (80 mm) aperture and a Sony IMX585 8.3MP sensor, designed for imaging deep-space objects such as galaxies, nebulas and star clusters. Attaching identical imaging modules allows you to image targets quicker and with more detail, but the most intriguing part of this whole release is not actually available yet.

Vaonis has promised to expand the Atlas ecosystem after launch, including a backpack, filters, an equatorial wedge and most importantly, new imaging modules. The next planned imaging module is for planetary observation, which could be a game changer. If you have used a smart telescope for planetary observation, you will know that they produce grainy blobs when compared to their stunning deep space imagery. Vaonis might not just be introducing modularity for smart telescopes; they might also be introducing the ability to get a good photo of a planet with one.

Atlas pre-orders open today and are available from BH Photo and Video and Adorama. The special preorder pricing is available until Nov. 15, with the First shipments expected in March 2027. This release includes the SkyDock along with either one Atlas 80 or two Atlas 80 imaging modules.

Key features: Modular design, Atlas 80 imaging module with 3.15-in (80 mm) apochromatic quadruplet lens, 360 mm focal length, f/4.5 focal ratio and a Sony IMX585 8.3-megapixel sensor, app-controlled, automatic pointing and imaging (Go-To function), 16.1-in (41 cm) height when closed (excluding tripod), 14.3 lb (6.5 kg) weight, up to 6 hours of battery life.

Product launched: Oct 2026

Price comparison for Vaonis Atlas with single optical tube: B&H PhotoVideo: Likely starting at $3,990 | Adorama: Starting at $3,990

✅ Buy it if: You want to invest in a smart telescope but are interested in getting the best photographs of a wide range of night sky targets, including deep-space objects and planets.

❌ Don't buy it if: You don't care about interchangeability or adaptability from your smart telescope and are mainly interested in using it to photograph deep-sky objects.

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

NASA is accelerating the development of three helicopters that will be deployed into the sky above Mars after a voyage aboard NASA's Space Reactor‑1 Freedom spacecraft.

Slated for launch in 2028, SR-1 Freedom is the first fission nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft and is assigned the duty of dropping off the SkyFall entry capsule loaded with the trio of aerial vehicles at the Red Planet. SR-1's trajectory will deliver the SkyFall helicopters in Mars' northern hemisphere during the planet's spring season to avoid dust storms.

SkyFall is based on the success of the first aerial craft to float about the Red Planet, Ingenuity, which flew over 70 missions at Jezero Crater before it finally broke a rotor. It was designed to fly five. The SkyFall mission will consist of three identical helicopters to be deployed by an entry vehicle in the atmosphere, let loose at roughly under a mile (3,300 feet or 1,000 meters) above Mars, with each of the craft landing independently.

Regions of interest

The SkyFall mission is to conduct investigations that address objectives relevant for science and preparing for human exploration of Mars. Anticipated flights of the vehicles will travel outside of the landing ellipse to regions of interest within a broader exploration zone.

However, there are further science-focused flight paths and regions that have yet to be determined. NASA intends for the SkyFall helicopters to go to multiple regions of scientific interest on Mars.

NASA's Mars Exploration Program, along with the SkyFall project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will work together to pick those "why and where" paths to navigate.

A first workshop on potential landing sites for the SkyFall mission and adjacent exploration zones of high scientific value is slated for early next year. And as always, sites and zones on Mars for the choppers means satisfying engineering constraints imposed by the project and spacecraft design.

Given the rapid development cadence of the SkyFall mission, decisions are to be fast-paced, but are geared to maximizing science value of the endeavor.

What Mars researchers are after will be a ranked list of potential landing sites that will be studied in more detail by the SkyFall project and science community, prior to a second workshop to be held in late 2027.

Notional flight trajectories

On the table are potential science value and notional flight trajectories of individual landing sites given the capabilities and payload of the SkyFall helicopters.

Landing site selection will occur after the back-to-back landing site workshops next year, said Matthew Golombek, SkyFall Project Scientist at JPL.

"The project has identified a design reference landing site that targets subsurface water ice deposits with glacial/periglacial terrains," Golombek told Space.com.

Given their deployment, how much real estate will the aerial vessel assault study?

Golombek said that the helicopters are capable of flying one to two kilometers every other sol, so flight traverses of 125 miles to a little over 185 miles (200-300 kilometers) are possible.

"The helicopters are designed to last 6 months, with a goal of one Earth year and each can fly every other sol so multiple flights are expected," Golombek added.

Thanks to the success of the Perseverance rover's unleashing of the Ingenuity rotorcraft, Golombek said that there are a host of lessons learned, as well as engineering additions to be made to the set of SkyFall vehicles.

Nominal payload

"Although the helicopters are slightly larger than Ingenuity, they are being designed to operate in exactly the same way, so all of the experience with Ingenuity operations will be directly relevant," said Golombek.

The nominal payload to be toted around the Red Planet will be identical for all three helicopters, consisting of five instruments, plus engineering navigation cameras. Those instruments are to investigate the subsurface structure of Mars, the geomorphology and geology of surface terrains, as well as look at the meteorology of the atmosphere and the radiation environment.

Although there is no dedicated hardware to directly measure winds, the helicopters themselves can serve as on-the-spot wind sensors, even shifting to "Balloon Mode," whereby a helicopter will drift in the background wind.

Radar love

Each low-flying helicopter is outfitted with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) instrument, one that can detect layering in the near surface, at depths unobservable by orbital radar.

Those layers could be assembled from rocky material, buried ice, or combinations of the two. Detection of near-surface ice is of interest both scientifically as well as in support of future human expeditions to Mars.

Subsurface ice not only preserves a record of past Martian climate but also serves as a "high-priority environment" that might have served as a habitat of past…or Martian life resident today.

SkyFall maneuver

AeroVironment of Arlington, Virginia is partnering with JPL, selected last August to co-design and co-manufacture the SkyFall helicopters. They too are building on their experience as co‑developers of NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter that made those 72 flights at Jezero Crater on Mars.

"Now, with SkyFall, we're taking AV's high‑volume uncrewed systems mindset into planetary exploration and showing that Mars helicopters can be built as a repeatable product line, not a one‑off delivery," said Jeff Rodrian, Head of MacCready Works, AV's advanced research and development organization.

A special "SkyFall maneuver" is to be utilized in deploying the three aerial craft. They will be released directly from the carrier spacecraft into the Martian atmosphere, where they separate, deploy, descend, and land under their own power.

"By eliminating the need for a single-use lander stage or a host rover (as Ingenuity required with Perseverance), this approach significantly reduces the technical and financial risk of getting to the Martian surface," explains an AeroVironment statement.

Mountains of data

"Just like here on Earth, Mars helicopters can cover distance quickly and can go places that might be impossible to reach by ground," said Will Pomerantz, Head of Space Ventures at AeroVironment.

The science community may guide these helicopters to locations, Pomerantz said, where the ground penetrating radar can map out the specific spots of ice below the martian surface.

"The three SkyFall helicopters are going to show us parts of Mars we've never seen before and return mountains of data for scientists to pore over," said Pomerantz.

A new image from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft reveals the powerful erosive forces that have shaped and re-shaped the surface of the Red Planet over long periods of geological time.

What is it?

This new Mars Express image captures Amazonis Mensa, a large, flat mountain on the Red Planet that offers planetary scientists a glimpse into the many factors that can sculpt a world's surface.

In this photograph, several features stand out to help illustrate this. Easiest to make out are the large round craters created by ancient impacts on the surface of Mars. However, many of these craters have been at least partially filled by lava flowing across the surface of the Red Planet around three billion years ago, according a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA) accompanying the image.

More interestingly, rippled structures known as yardangs can be seen to the left and right sides of the image. These ridges "form as loose sand particles are whipped up by wind and deployed a little like a cosmic sandblaster," according to ESA.

In the image, the two groups of yardangs ripple across the Martian surface in two different directions. This is because Amazonis Mensa acts as a windbreak, pushing material blown by winds in separate orientations.

Why is it incredible?

For over 20 years, Mars Express has been providing scientists with an unparalleled look at the Martian surface, helping us better understand the forces that have shaped the Red Planet over eons.

Light pollution is the astronomer's biggest enemy, especially if you're gazing into deep space. And while some of the best telescopes can make a difference, there's no way to eliminate it. That's why, if you want to observe the cosmos without obstruction, you need to seek out darker skies, get a smart telescope or combine the two.

You don't have to book a flight to a dark sky reserve; just traveling away from suburbia can be enough. That's where portable telescopes come in. Set one up in a field, for example, and you'll get a vastly improved view of the cosmos. Galaxies, nebulas and other deep space objects become more detailed when they're not washed out by skyglow.

We've picked out six telescopes you can take on the road: Some, such as the DwarfLab Dwarf Mini, are small enough you could even put them in a backpack and hop on your bicycle.

All but one are smart telescopes, meaning that when you do get to your desired location, you can pick from a list of stellar sights to home in on. And while they may be portable, they're powerful with it.

So, beat light pollution and say hello to stunning views of the night sky.

Methanol, coming as part of the 'chemical starter kit' around young stars, has produced some unexpected surprises that could ultimately reveal some of the conditions in which planets and potentially life form around protostars.

The methanol discoveries were made by astronomers using ALMA (the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter Array) in the Atacama Desert in Chile, as part of a project called COMPASS (the Complex Organic Molecules in Protostars with ALMA Spectral Surveys).

"Our work provides insight into the complex chemistry of young star systems and is ultimately an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the origin of life," said University of Bern astrophysicist Maria Drozdovskaya, who leads the COMPASS project, in a statement.

Drozdovskaya's multinational team of more than 30 astronomers has been chasing down complex organic molecules, large molecules that include carbon atoms, in the planetary construction yards around eleven young stars.

These molecules form part of the chemical inventory that ultimately builds planets and, perhaps, even life that will one day live on those planets.

Methanol matters

Methanol (CH₃OH) is important because it is highly abundant in star- and planet-forming regions. In fact, it’s the most abundant complex organic molecule to be found in interstellar space, and is commonly found in planet-forming disks.

Its sheer abundance means that, of all the molecules found around young stars, methanol is the easiest in which to detect different forms where regular hydrogen atoms are replaced by a heavier isotope of hydrogen called deuterium.

How many molecules contain these heavier isotopes is highly dependent upon the conditions in which planets are forming within the disk.

That’s why the COMPASS team used ALMA to search for these forms of methanol in the gas belonging to the planet-forming disks around the 11 nearby low-mass protostars. The observations have also helped assess the general chemical diversity of these disks.

The unexpected discovery of a methanol molecule containing deuterium was made in the planet-forming disk around only one of those 11 stars, namely the young star IRAS 4A2, located about a thousand light-years away in the Perseus Molecular Cloud.

IRAS refers to the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which was a joint NASA–UK–Netherlands mission launched in 1983 and which first detected this young star as a source of infrared light through the thick gas and dust of the molecular cloud.

The COMPASS team also discovered methanol maser emission from more than half of the 11 protostars, favoring the youngest of the stars. A maser is a microwave version of a laser in the sense that the microwave emission is being stimulated and then amplified, but astrophysical masers occur naturally, often in shock fronts as methanol molecules collide and are excited.

Methanol masers have previously been detected in planet-forming disks around turbulent high-mass protostars, but COMPASS’ observations are the first detection of them around calmer lower-mass protostars.

"The fact that it has now also been found in a low-mass protostar shows that locally extreme physical conditions can prevail there analogously to massive stars and challenges our previous understanding of the formation of sun-like stars," said Drozdovskaya.

The finding implies that methanol masers are a common product of all planet-forming discs and therefore are produced by processes that are universal in star- and planet-birth, regardless of the protostar's mass.

For example, thermal bursts from the growing star as it accumulates gas from its surroundings could generate shocks in a planet-forming disk, stimulating maser activity in the abundant methanol.

"Both results underscore how important high-performance spectroscopic measurements like those from COMPASS with ALMA are for detecting rare and previously unknown chemical phenomena," said Drozdovskaya, referring to both the methanol masers and the deuterium-rich methanol molecules around IRAS 4A2. "They show just how much we still have to learn about the chemical processes in young protostellar systems."

The new findings have at least begun to answer some questions, such as how the diversity in this 'chemical starter kit' varies from star to star, with ALMA detecting some subtle differences, such as variations in the abundance of oxygen- and nitrogen-bearing molecular species among the eleven stars.

However, questions about how the chemistry of young star systems arises and how it influences the evolution of those systems remain unanswered.

For now, the COMPASS team is painstakingly and systematically studying the data on all the different types of molecules detected in their ALMA observations, and preparing follow-up studies with other facilities including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

"The analysis of all the collected data will take several more years," said Drozdovskaya.

The first results from COMPASS are published in seven papers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] in the October 2026 issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

SpaceX wants to start flying its Starship megarocket a lot more often.

The company has requested permission to launch Starship from its Starbase site in South Texas up to 456 times per year. That's a big jump from the currently allowed cadence of 25.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in the early stages of reviewing the request. Today (Oct. 14), the agency announced "its intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, open a public scoping period and hold public scoping meetings for SpaceX’s proposal."

Starship, which stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. It's also designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX believes will revolutionize spaceflight.

The megarocket has flown 14 times to date, all of them test flights from Starbase, which is near the Texas border city of Brownsville. On the most recent jaunt, which lifted off on Sept. 28, Starship reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites — the first members of a new broadband constellation that could eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Assembling that network will require a lot of Starship launches. And even more will be needed to build SpaceX's planned Starmind AI megaconstellation, which Elon Musk has said will harbor a million satellites. Indeed, the world's richest man has said that SpaceX is targeting more than 10,000 Starship liftoffs per year by 2030.

Not all of those flights will originate from Starbase, which hosts two orbital pads. SpaceX is working to get three Starship pads up and running on Florida's Space Coast, and the company aims to break ground on a $100 billion, 12-pad complex in Louisiana next year.

Each operational Starship launch will also feature two landings. Both of the vehicle's elements — the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage — are designed to return to the pad after liftoff, where they will be caught by the tower's "chopstick" arms. So SpaceX's proposal for 456 launches from Starbase per year includes a request for approval for 912 landings.

SpaceX plans to work up to this cadence in two phases, according to the FAA. Phase 1 "would include up to 100 annual launches and up to 200 annual landings (100 of Starship and 100 of Super Heavy)," the agency wrote. "Launches and landings could occur any day or time of the week."

Phase 2 covers 456 launches and 912 landings, which would occur only Monday through Friday, though at any time on those days.

The FAA will hold five "public scoping meetings" about the proposal next month, four of them in person in the Starbase area and one of them virtual.

There will be two in-person meetings on Nov. 17 at Texas Southmost College, one from 1-3 p.m. local (Central) time and the other from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Two in-person meetings will follow on Nov. 19, at the same two times but at a different location: the Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center.

The virtual meeting will be held Nov. 18, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Central time. Registration is required for all of these meetings, even the virtual one. You can register here.

A Dragon has settled into its nest after a more than two-day-long orbital pursuit.

SpaceX's cargo Dragon, flying the CRS-35 (35th Commercial Resupply Services) mission for NASA, rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) this morning (Oct. 15), delivering fresh food, long-term provisions, research and hardware to the orbital lab and its crew.

Coverage of Dragon's arrival at the ISS began at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT), as the spacecraft approached from approximately 2.3 miles (3.6 km) away. NASA astronaut Anil Menon served as the station's prime crew member this morning, responsible for monitoring Dragon's approach and autonomous procedures. Docking occurred with the space-face port of the station's Harmony module at 10:27 a.m. EDT (1427 GMT), as the ISS flew about 250 miles (400 km) above South Africa, traveling around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph).

Dragon's arrival brings more than 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of food, research equipment and other supplies, including flight support equipment to replace components on the Canadarm2, a toilet dose pump, a toilet pretreat quality sensor, a robot micro-conical tool used for station maintenance and the very last of eight upgraded solar panels designed to augment the station's power capabilities.

In addition to the usual provisions carried on this mission, Dragon also brought a special suprise for Menon, who is celebrating his 50th birthday today, according to NASA's broadcast spokesperson.

CRS-35 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the company's pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday (Oct. 13). Liftoff occurred at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), and the Falcon 9's upper stage deployed the Dragon in low Earth orbit (LEO) a short 10 minutes later. Thanks to the trajectory of the space station's orbit and the near-dawn hour of the launch, the Falcon 9's ascent to orbit was viewed by millions up and down the U.S. East Coast, who witnessed a rare "space jellyfish" phenomenon from the rocket's exhaust plume.

The supplies delivered on CRS-35 will largely support the station's newest astronaut inhabitants, the members of SpaceX's Crew-13 mission for NASA. The four-person crew arrived aboard the ISS on Oct. 1, relieving the members of Crew-12, who returned to Earth a week later.

Crew-12 astronauts will address the media this afternoon (Oct. 15) to discuss their mission and their return after nearly eight months on orbit. A live broadcast of that event will also be available to stream on Space.com's homepage beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT).

Cargo Dragon's nominal orbital insertion on Tuesday placed it on course to catch up with the ISS after a 51-hour LEO chase. After rendezvous this morning, Dragon will autonomously dock to the zenith port on the station's Harmony module. It will remain docked with the ISS for about a month before being packed with supplies, waste and research for its return, safe splashdown and recovery on Earth.

You can tell a lot about how a child will age by looking at their parents, and it turns out that this could be true for planetary systems, too. Scientists have performed cosmic genealogy on planetary systems in the Milky Way, finding two distinct families that influence the evolution and fate of these systems.

The study team, led by researchers at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), studied 300 of the best-understood multiplanet systems of the over 1,000 that astronomers have discovered in the Milky Way.

The team's research clarifies how the environments around infant stars directly affect planetary fates and, in turn, the survival of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that are potentially capable of hosting life. That could be crucial as astronomers search for life beyond the solar system, pointing them to systems with potentially habitable planets like Earth.

"The fundamental question we started from was: What determines the characteristics of planetary systems as we see them today? Are they established at birth or sculpted by evolution over time? The truth, in the end, turned out to lie somewhere in the middle," team member and INAF researcher Diego Turrini said in a statement sent to Space.com.

"Our results show that there is a genetic link between planetary systems and their stars, and that, depending on the star around which they are born, this link also determines their fate," Turrini added.

What is the genetic code of a planetary system?

The first "family" the scientists identified consists of wide, massive systems, often with total masses between two and 10 times that of our own solar system. The planets in these systems orbit stars more massive than the sun with lower concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium (which astronomers somewhat confusingly call metals) than seen in our star.

The second family is more compact and lower-mass systems. The members of this family are composed of planets with comparable masses and sizes, a so-called "peas-in-a-pod" configuration. They orbit stars with mass and metallicity equal to or lower than those of the sun, with orbits that are usually much tighter than those of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

One of the "genes" Turrini and colleagues selected to sort planetary systems into families was the deviations that planets make from orbiting their star in the same circular plane. That, in turn, reveals a family history of violent gravitational instability caused by events like giant collisions and planetary ejections.

Violent events were common for the first family, but much less so for the second group of planetary systems, the researchers found. They determined that the number of these turbulent events a planetary system experiences can be linked to even modest variations in the environment in which planets form. These variations arise due to different properties of the parent star of those systems.

Thus, the nature of the star in these systems doesn't just fundamentally change the formation of planets in their systems; it influences the system's future evolution, determining whether it will be characterized by phases of marked instability and giant impacts.

"The main difficulty during the data analysis was determining whether the two families of planetary systems were real or just an illusion created by the technological limits of current observational techniques," said team member Camilla Danielski, of the University of Valencia in Spain.

"At the end of the path, it became clear that selection effects acted as the tip of the iceberg, revealing the existence of much deeper structural diversities between these systems," Danielski said.

The scientists tested their conclusions by running simulations of planetary system evolution, all of which began with different conditions.

"The scenarios that best reproduce the dynamical properties of the family of wide and massive systems are those in which the systems are unstable from birth," said research supervisor and INAF researcher Danae Polychroni. "The greater abundance of material from which planets form around their host stars causes them to be born too large, preventing the system from remaining stable."

The team's research was published on Tuesday (Oct. 13) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Fall has officially arrived, and as autumn leaves blaze in vivid colors, there is no better time to plunge into the imaginative world of New York Times best-selling author Matt Dinniman's "Dungeon Crawler Carl", the wildly addictive science fantasy book series that's taking the world by storm.

Even if you haven't read them, you've probably seen folks carrying these books, emblazoned with their loud, neon-colored covers, at your neighborhood coffee house. You'll see it even more in the future, too, as a streaming adaptation of the novels is coming to Peacock, with Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door and co-showrunners Eric Heisserer and Chris Yost at the helm.

The eighth book in the series, "A Parade of Horribles," dropped in May of 2026 and continues the story of Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s precocious pussy cat named Princess Donut as they try to navigate the dangerously daunting levels of a lethal doomsday dungeon for an intergalactic television show deciding the fate of humanity and the planet Earth.

Think Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" meets "The Running Man" and "Ready Player One" in the "Dungeons & Dragons" RPG realm, and you've got a pretty good idea of the stylistic narrative you'll soon discover when you dare to enter Dinniman's slightly demented literary world.

"The genesis is that I’ve been writing my whole life, and I have a thousand story ideas," Dinniman tells Space on the origins of his sci-fi sensation. "I’ve kept a running list of ideas since childhood, and this one had been on there for some time. The line in my list for this particular one was 'Alien' game show.'"

With over 14 million copies of the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series sold to date, spooky season is the ideal jumping-on moment so you can share your favorite sadistic dungeon level kill next time you're at a cool cocktail party or fun family function!

"The success is a whole other question. I think I just happened to hit the right story at the right time," admits Dinniman. "It's about a man pushing back against impossible odds. The antagonist isn't just a single person or entity, but an entire system designed to crush any life out of him, all for the entertainment of the masses. That sort of story seems to really be resonating right now. Plus there's a talking cat in it."

Dinniman has described the most recently-released sequel as "the Carl and Donut version of Mariokart—only deadlier," with the cruel dungeon architects tightening their brutal grip. As the current king of LitRPG titles in circulation, "Dungeon Crawler Carl" is the next best thing to a living video game.

"Luckily I’m still in love with this story, and I am in love with writing it," he admits. "It hasn’t gotten old yet. The end is in sight, and I’m more sad than anything that it'll eventually be over."

An episodic series adaptation seems like a no-brainer, and Peacock has wisely tapped into the considerable talents of both Heisserer ("Arrival," "Bird Box") and Yost ("Thor: The Dark World," "Thor: Ragnarok") for this ambitious TV project.

"Both Chris and Eric have a great amount of experience in Hollywood, but more importantly, both have read the books and like them," Dinniman notes. "Chris is a mega fan, and Eric knows more about gaming than any adult probably should. That's a great combination."

Dinniman also confirmed to us that he's serving as co-executive producer on the show, and will be involved throughout the production.

"The most important thing to preserve, I think, is the tone, which will also be the most challenging," states Dinniman. "Thankfully, the team that's been assembled is up to the challenge, and I can't wait for the world to see how it turns out."

With eight books released so far (and another two to come), you've got plenty of reading to do before the Peacock show and/or the next book lands. You can find the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series in your local bookstores and on Amazon. It's also available via Kindle e-readers and as an audiobook.

Starship just reached orbit for the first time, carrying satellites for SpaceX's Starlink program. Analysts disagree on whether that's a detour or the destination — and what of the company's plans for the Red Planet?

Ten years ago, Elon Musk stood on stage at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, and unveiled plans for a giant spaceship to carry people to Mars. This past Sept. 28 — a decade and a day later — the descendant of that vehicle reached orbit for the first time, on Starship's 14th-ever test flight.

The designs and hardware evolved greatly over those 10 years. For example, the 2016 design, called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), employed carbon fiber, but this gave way to the stainless-steel Starship, which SpaceX began testing in 2019 with short hops from its Texas site. Prototypes flew to high altitude and landed, and some exploded, until SN15 stuck a landing in May 2021. That same year, NASA selected Starship as the first astronaut lander for its Artemis lunar missions.

The full Starship stack — a Super Heavy booster with a Ship upper stage on top — first flew in April 2023 and failed within minutes. Three flights followed in less than a year, each reaching space, and each ending with Ship lost on reentry. During a 2024 test flight, SpaceX moved liquid oxygen between two tanks inside one Ship, the closest it has come to the propellant transfer that any mission to the moon or Mars will require. In June of that year, the company brought both stages down in controlled splashdowns, and that October the launch tower's mechanical arms caught a returning Super Heavy booster for the first time.

Progress wasn't linear, however. After a booster catch in January 2025, a string of Ship failures followed, and one upper stage exploded during ground testing that June. A clean flight in August 2025 helped break the streak, and by that October, SpaceX flew the last of the older design. The first Starship V3 launched in May 2026. Another went up in July, and Flight 14 followed on Sept. 28.

'A different beast'

"ITS was definitely a different beast," said Matija Renčelj of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI). "Yet, we have to acknowledge two trends that both attest to SpaceX's agility and increasingly market-first rather than vision-first outlook."

"The gap between ITS and Starship is real, but I would not consider that a failure," he said.

In his view, the rocket is mainly a business tool. "The rocket is the means, not the end," Renčelj said, adding that its main role now is cutting Starlink deployment costs. SpaceX currently operates a constellation of more than 11,000 Starlink broadband satellites, almost all of which were launched by its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. But Starship Flight 14 lofted the first members of the next-gen Starlink V3 constellation, which will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft, if all goes to plan. Starlink V3 satellites are bigger and heavier than their predecessors and can only be launched efficiently by Starship.

Renčelj said the moon focus reflects Washington's priorities and SpaceX's interest in staying central to NASA's Artemis program, and in reassuring investors after the company's acquisition of xAI this past February and its IPO, which occurred in June.

Joseph Gonzalez, a University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering aerospace professor who spent about a decade working on Artemis, sees it differently.

"I think SpaceX is still very much targeting Mars," he said. "SpaceX continues to stress making humanity multiplanetary and establishing a self-sufficient city on Mars as long-term objectives." Gonzalez sees the moon as a proving ground rather than a replacement. Just days away from Earth, the moon lets engineers find problems "before committing humans to a Mars mission."

"Space exploration takes time, especially when you are developing a human spaceflight system with this level of complexity," Gonzalez said. "They build, fly, learn, make changes and fly again. That creates very visible successes and failures, but it also allows engineers to accumulate flight experience and data quickly."

Challenges remain

Reaching Earth orbit isn't the hard part for Starship. Gonzalez said that the most underrated gap is the large-scale cryogenic propellant transfer between vehicles once in orbit. SpaceX has moved propellant between tanks in one Ship before, but its architecture requires numerous transfers involving tanker ships to refill a fuel depot, which a Ship must visit in order to make journeys to the moon or Mars. Gonzalez described this depot as a gas station in space, but there are challenges typical gas stations don't face. The fuel is extremely cold, for example, and it needs to be moved in microgravity conditions.

That milestone is yet to happen, and the timeline for an attempt is not clear. It could potentially come with Flight 15 and 16. These were aspirationally scheduled for no earlier than mid and late October, respectively, but have now apparently slipped to mid-to-late November (though there has been no public confirmation of any firm target date).

In 2025, Musk said there was a "50/50" chance of Starship making a run for Mars in 2026. However, with the once-every-26-months Mars launch window — which lasts a few weeks, opening in late October — and no propellant transfer demonstration yet in the books, that is off the table. The next such low-energy orbital transfer opportunity for the Red Planet opens in late 2028, running into early 2029. At the same time, NASA is currently targeting late 2028 for its Artemis IV mission — which involves Starship — to return humans to the lunar surface after an absence of more than 50 years, giving SpaceX a challenging deadline toward which to work. The company will need to dedicate key resources to meet that timeline, including developing life support systems for crew.

For now, Starship's most immediate role is hauling Starlink satellites in orbit. Renčelj noted that startups raising billions are betting on Starship delivering low super-launch prices along with Falcon 9-like reliability. "Their business models are underpinned by what might be a single point of failure," he said.

"Starship still has major capabilities to demonstrate before it can perform the complete missions envisioned for the moon and Mars," said Gonzalez.

"So I would say the timelines are comparable considering the ambition of the vehicles," he added. "The bigger difference isn't necessarily how many years they have taken, but it's where and how each program chooses to learn during those years."

Musk has repeatedly talked of getting thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people on Mars "to make life multiplanetary." Most immediately, SpaceX has a number of business goals and lunar commitments to adhere to ahead of a first uncrewed visit to Mars. Late 2028 appears to be the next real opportunity.

On Oct. 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time!

Chuck Yeager was a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force who made history by flying an aircraft faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager made his historic flight in a Bell X-1 rocket plane that he named "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife. Yeager had broken two ribs the night before when he fell off a horse, but that didn't stop him!

His aircraft was dropped from a Boeing B-29 bomber before accelerating to a speed of Mach 1.07, which is about 821 mph (1,321 km/h). The speed of sound, Mach 1, is about 760 mph (1,223 km/h).

Why it mattered

Before Yeager made his daring Bell X-1 flight, piloted supersonic flight was only a concept.

The Bell X-1 began its life as the XS-1, a cooperative project between NASA's predecessor the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the U.S. Army Forces, which would evolve later into the U.S. Air Force. Bell Aircraft won the contract to build the experimental plane in March 1945 and was delivered in December of that year.

The final vehicle was a single-piloted aircraft that was just over 30 feet (nearly 11 meters) long, had a wingspan of about 28 feet (8.5 m) and powered by a rocket engine using liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol in water as propellant. Yeager's historic flight followed a series of unpowered glide tests, incuding three by Yeager himself in August of 1947, followed by ever faster subsonic powered flights.

"The first generation X-1 aircraft changed aviation history in numerous ways, and not simply because they were the first aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound," NASA wrote in an overview. "Rather, they established the concept of the research aircraft, built solely for experimental purposes, and unhampered by any military or commercial requirements."

According to NASA, Yeager's history-making flight wasn't immediately known to the public, a departure from the agency's X-plane tests today.

"Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.06 at 43,000 feet, becoming the first man to fly supersonic. Air Force officials designated the flight and all data as Top Secret two hours later," NASA wrote. "Not until December 1947 would word leak of the achievement, and it was not until March 1948 that the U.S. Air Force officially confirmed the achievement."

Yeager's flight and the X-1 program laid the foundation for an ever-more-ambitious X-plane program that continues at NASA and in the U.S. military today.

NASA's latest X-plane is the X-59 supersonic plane, which is designed to test supersonic flight with quieter sonic booms as way to open up supersonic travel over land for wider commercial use.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

Don't expect any of the Artemis II moon astronauts to fly again soon.

On Tuesday (Oct. 13), NASA announced that Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch will become the agency’s acting deputy chief engineer, effective Nov. 1.

"With this appointment, Koch will transition to management astronaut status and will no longer be eligible for future spaceflight assignments," NASA officials wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

Her three Artemis II crewmates had already shared their next moves, none of which put another spaceflight in play in the near future.

Mission commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both of NASA, became "emeritus" astronauts last month, a role that seems to include planning, advising and mentoring duties but no flights into the final frontier. Glover will also work full-time at his alma mater, the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo.

"I'm grateful they will continue sharing what they learned with our astronauts, flight controllers and engineers as we prepare for Artemis III in 2027 and the missions that follow," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said of Wiseman and Glover in a Sept. 9 statement.

The fourth Artemis II astronaut, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, announced a change of his own in July: He planned to become a reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he's also a colonel. That move became official last month as well.

Artemis II sent the four astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon in an Orion capsule. It was the first crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program and the first human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As Isaacman mentioned, the next mission in the program is Artemis III, a docking test in LEO scheduled to launch next year. The Artemis III crew, which was announced in June, consists of NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (pilot).

If all goes according to plan, Artemis IV will land astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2028. We don't yet know who will fly on that historic mission.

Koch will succeed current NASA Deputy Chief Engineer Katherine Van Hooser, who will retire on Oct. 21 after more than 35 years of work for the space agency.

"In her new role, Koch will help lead NASA's engineering community, supporting technical oversight, mission readiness, and engineering excellence across the agency's programs and projects," agency officials said in Tuesday's statement.

Koch is a natural choice for the job, given her education and experience. She holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's in electrical engineering, and she began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

NASA selected Koch as an astronaut candidate in 2013. She has two spaceflights under her belt: Artemis II and a 328-day-flight to the International Space Station that launched in March 2019. That's the longest space mission ever conducted by a woman, and it featured the first three all-female spacewalks, which Koch conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

"Christina has seen NASA engineering from both sides of the equation: developing complex systems on the ground and trusting them with her life in space," Isaacman said in the Tuesday statement.

"After spending nearly a year living and working aboard the International Space Station and helping lead America back around the moon on Artemis II this year, she brings an extraordinary combination of technical expertise, operational experience, and judgment to this role," he added. "I am excited to see the impact she will have across NASA as we return Americans to the lunar surface, build the Moon Base, get underway on nuclear power in space, and develop the capabilities that will ultimately take us on to Mars."

The truth is once again out there, as Disney & Hulu confirmed today that they have picked up a new "The X-Files" show for a full season.

Described as a "reimagining" of the classic series, the project comes from Ryan Coogler, the acclaimed writer and director of "Creed", "Black Panther", and "Sinners", and will star Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel.

The show's premise will sound very familiar to fans of the original, as it centers on "two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents who form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena."

"I've loved 'The X-Files' for a long time, so getting the chance to write and direct the pilot has meant a great deal to me," said Coogler. "What Chris Carter created is special, and we wanted to honor everything that made the original series connect with so many people while also finding our own way into that world."

Coogler wrote, directed, and executive produced the pilot for this new show, which impressed executives over at Hulu enough to give the show the greenlight. He's certainly got the pedigree when it comes to "spooky", as "Sinners" was a modern horror masterpiece, winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar at the 2025 Academy Awards. The X-Files is one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time, and we can't wait to see what a modern take on the classic formula looks like.

Alongside the leads, the cast will include Amy Madigan, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrand, Sofia Grace Clifton, and Hollywood legend Steve Buscemi (an inspired casting choice for any show, but especially here. He looks like a man who's seen the truth).

Both Coogler and Hulu are being coy about how this new series will fit into the continuity of the original show. It's being described as a reimagining, but they've stopped short of calling it a reboot, which could leave the door open for Mulder and Scully to return in some capacity.

The original creator of "The X-Files", Chris Carter, is also on board as an executive producer, which is great news for fans who are hoping this new incarnation keeps the spirit of the original alive.

There is no confirmed release date yet, but Ryan Coogler's The X-Files project will launch exclusively on Hulu (US) & Disney+ (UK).

Did you see a gigantic, glowing jellyfish in the night sky early on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13)? If so, it's not an alien invasion (sorry); it was SpaceX launching its latest mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

Just before dawn on Tuesday (Oct. 13), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying to space a robotic Dragon capsule filled with thousands of pounds of cargo.

The liftoff kicked off CRS-35, the 35th mission that SpaceX is flying to the ISS as part of the company's Commercial Resupply Services agreement with NASA. Under the CRS contract, SpaceX has been sending cargo including medical supplies, food, clothing, scientific experiments and more to the space station.

It will take Dragon a couple of days to reach the orbiting lab. If all goes to plan, the capsule will autonomously dock with the ISS' Harmony module around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 15).

Why is it incredible?

Imagine you wake up early in the morning. Perhaps you're rushing to get ready for work, or maybe you're just having a quiet moment with your coffee in the pre-dawn twilight. Then imagine you look out the window and see what looks like a gigantic, glowing jellyfish made up of orange and blue light and gas stretching across much of the slowly brightening sky.

If you're not expecting such a sight, or it's your first time seeing the remnants of a rocket launch, this would probably catch you off-guard. But don't worry; there isn't anything dangerous about this sight.

This "jellyfish" is created by the water vapor and carbon dioxide that are expelled by the rocket after takeoff. In the cold upper skies, those gases start to freeze into ice crystals, flowing off of and behind the rocket. If a launch occurs around dusk or dawn, sunlight hits this flowing plume of frozen gases while the ground and skies remain mostly dark, resulting in a uniquely spectacular (albeit, unusual) view.

Nearly three months after surviving its launch to space and a tumultuous trial at sea, the first Starship spacecraft to survive its ocean splashdown has returned to Starbase.

SpaceX shared new photos and video of Ship 40, the Starship upper stage that launched on the developing vehicle's 13th flight test, as it completed the final stretch of its journey back to the company's South Texas facility. Now, the towering spacecraft is upright inside Starbase's Megabay hangar alongside a trio of its successor spacecraft, themselves bound for space, but not before an evaluation of Ship 40 can lend SpaceX engineers some valuable insights.

Ship 40 is the first Starship upper stage to return to its launch site after flying in space, offering SpaceX engineers an unprecedented opportunity to study hardware that survived the intense conditions of atmospheric reentry. "It will provide first-of-its-kind data on a flown Starship heatshield, Raptor engines, avionics, and more," SpaceX wrote in a post on X Oct. 13.

The spacecraft launched atop SpaceX's Super Heavy Booster 20 on July 24, and completed a suborbital flight that ended with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Unlike previous Ship splashdowns, though, which have exploded after tipping over into the water, Ship 40 remained largely intact and afloat.

That unexpected survival prompted SpaceX to engage in an ambitious recovery effort that included towing the 171-foot (52 meter) stage though rough seas over the course of 24 days. At the time, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed doubts that the company's recovery efforts would be successful. Despite the challenging conditions, Ship arrived off the shores of Australia's Christmas Island in August.

Once in the calmer Christmas waters, SpaceX engineers took time to perform a vehicle inspection and collect a number of heat shield samples from the spacecraft's belly. From there, Ship 40 was loaded onto "Forte," a massive, semi-submersible transport ship for the long seaward journey back to Texas.

Forte arrived at the Port of Brownsville on Oct. 7, wrapping up the longest stretch of Ship 40's return nearly two months after its liftoff. The spacecraft was subsequently transported over land back to Starbase and positioned for reorientation outside the Megabay. It has since been lifted to a vertical position and moved inside the bay alongside three other Ship upper stages still under assembly.

While SpaceX has successfully recovered a trio of Super Heavy boosters using the mechanical arms of its Starbase launch tower, the company has yet to return a Starship upper stage to its launch site under its own power. The return of Ship 40 will give SpaceX engineers the opportunity to study the vehicle from top to bottom as they fine-tune the systems needed to do just that. Its return marks a milestone in SpaceX's efforts to develop Starship as a rapidly reusable launch vehicle, with lessons from the recovered spacecraft potentially informing future vehicle designs and recovery operations.

Ship 40's immediate successor, Ship 41, launched on Flight 14 before 40's return to Starbase. Although 41 didn't survive its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the mission marked Starship's first orbital flight, and included the successful deployment of 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites.

Musk has said Starship's next launch, Flight 15, could feature the first attempt to catch the Ship upper stage using the same chopstick-like arms on the vehicle's launch tower, provided the spacecraft meets the necessary conditions for a safe return. SpaceX has not announced an official launch date for Starship's next flight, but, based on the testing progress of the Ship and Super Heavy in line for the mission, it is likely to fly within the next month or so.

NASA's DART mission made a cosmic mess four years ago — and now a new spacecraft is ready to scout out exactly what the first-of-its-kind collision accomplished.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into a small space rock called Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, in humanity's first test of planetary defense. That's the field dedicated to protecting Earth from the possibility of a calamitous asteroid impact, and DART mimicked how humans could change the orbit of a threatening space rock, taking it off its collision course.

The mission definitely succeeded, shortening the little asteroid's orbit around a larger rock called Didymos by about 33 minutes. But in order to make the most of the experiment, scientists ensured a second spacecraft would follow DART at a more leisurely pace. That decision will pay off this month with the arrival of a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft dubbed Hera, which launched in October 2024, two years after DART's impact.

"Hera wants to be the detective, like Inspector Colombo, going back to the crash scene," said Patrick Michel, a planetary scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and principal investigator of the Hera mission.

Scientists have been able to do limited monitoring of the Didymos system over the years with telescopes both on the ground and in space. That's how they calculated the basic change to the orbit, and they've built a basic sketch of what happened.

"We know that there was a lot of material kicked up," said Angela Stickle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory affiliated with both missions. "We know that we probably left a pretty significant mark on Dimorphos."

But the story isn't over and scientists are far from satisfied. No one knows how big a crater the impact left, or whether it completely rearranged all the asteroid's boulders. There are hints Dimorphos is now tumbling, and material may have moved between it and the larger Didymos.

Even the change to the orbit is complicated, said Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University affiliated with both missions: The time Dimorphos took to circle Didymos was still changing some six months after impact, for reasons that aren't clear. "This thing that we thought was going to be very cut and dry turned out to be really interesting and complicated," Thomas said.

That's where Hera comes in, with its first arrival maneuver scheduled for Oct. 15. During three careful braking maneuvers, the spacecraft will slow down and approach the space rocks. Assuming everything goes smoothly, by early November, the spacecraft will come within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of the two rocks and begin its early science observations, then move even closer in early December.

Mission personnel can't wait for their first glimpses of Dimorphos — the first time scientists will visit someplace they've seen before without knowing what they'll find. "For us, it's like a new world," Michel said. "The new image won't have anything to do with the previous one, so that's really exciting."

In addition to mapping the two asteroids and seeing what kind of crater the impact left, scientists will also have their eyes peeled for any pieces of the DART spacecraft, although they don't expect to find anything. "We were coming in really fast, so typically, the whole spacecraft you would expect to just kind of shatter or melt," Stickle said. The only sliver of possibility is that part of the two long solar panels stretching off the spacecraft may have snapped off and survived. (The appendages may also have turned the crater shape into an oval.)

In January, once Hera has settled in, it will release two tiny companions that have piggybacked out to Dimorphos. One, called Milani, will identify the composition of materials on and around Dimorphos. The other, Juventas, will use radar to peer inside Dimorphos — the first time scientists have ever been able to study the interior of a space rock directly. Juventas will end its mission by landing on the small asteroid, and Milani may attempt a landing as well.

The trio of spacecraft will operate in tandem throughout early 2027, and the main spacecraft will operate at least through September 2027. All told, they will give scientists an unprecedented look at the pair of asteroids — the first binary asteroid a spacecraft has ever studied in detail. And the Didymos–Dimorphos duo is a good one to visit first. "It's very ordinary, and I mean that in the best possible way," Thomas said.

Ordinary except, of course, for that time humans punched it, opening the door for the Hera mission to explore the previously unremarkable rocks. And finally, that moment is just around the corner.

"Nothing really worries me," Michel said of the spacecraft's arrival. "It's really just excitement now."

Now you see them, now you don't. Scientists have discovered that some of the universe's most powerful explosions, hypernovas, may not happen at all.

These explosions, known as hypernovas, were first proposed to explain unusual stars in the halo of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and in a neighboring dwarf galaxy. It was suggested that these stars could only form from the debris of an explosion 10 times more powerful than the 'average' supernovas.

The team behind these new findings suggests that ordinary supernovas could actually account for these stars when the uneven or non-spherical way they fling out matter is considered.

"If we look at a supernova today, the star's materials are not spread evenly. Oxygen might predominantly fly in one direction, sulphur in another. New stars might form from a mix of pieces of the supernova, not its overall mix of elements," team leader Anmol Aggarwal of University College London (UCL) said in a statement. "We developed mathematical models that took account of this and found in all cases that stars with a very unusual mix of ingredients were most likely formed from ordinary supernovas.

"All the evidence we see for hypernovae is suddenly gone."

Hypernova vs. supernova: What's the difference?

Supernovas occur when massive stars run out of fuel for nuclear fusion, effectively ending their lives. This results in the star's core collapsing, sending shockwaves rippling through its outer layers, causing explosions we call supernovas.

Hypernovas are proposed to occur in a similar way, but for an even more massive and rapidly spinning star. This results in a vastly more energetic explosion.

When supernovas or hypernovas happen, they fling elements that the dying star has forged throughout its lifetime into their surrounding cosmic environments. These elements eventually become the building blocks of the next generation of stars.

That means analyzing the chemical signatures of stars can tell stellar scientists about their family histories.

"Just before a star goes supernova, it has layers like an onion, with heavier elements at the center and lighter ones further out. Our model looks at how much material from each layer or each region would be needed to fit the observed star," Ralph Schoenrich of Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL said. "We still don’t know how well the supernova material gets mixed before it forms new stars. That is despite decades of work in this area. Our research suggests some mixing goes on, but incomplete mixing.

"We need to take this into account in our models of how chemicals evolve in galaxies and of how the interstellar medium works."

The team began their investigation by observing four stars that are suspected to have been forged from material ejected in a hypernova explosion. Three of those stars were more likely to have been created after supernovas, the team concluded.

The scientists then studied a single red giant star in the halo of the Milky Way with an odd chemical composition, including an overabundance of heavy elements like silver and uranium. These are too heavy to be forged in the cores of all but the most massive stars, the kind of stars that go hypernova.

Such elements could also be created when two massive and dense stellar remnants called neutron stars collide and merge. However, this star doesn't have certain other heavy elements that would be present after a neutron star collision.

This team considered the origins of this star using a model of the Milky Way that has been rapidly enriched with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which astronomers call metals, via the death of the first generation of stars.

The rapid speed at which the star spins and the fact it exists at the outskirts of the Milky Way led the team to conclude that this star escaped a metal-poor dwarf galaxy and was eventually dragged into our galaxy. The event that created it, they concluded, was the combination of a neutron star merger and an ordinary supernova.

No hypernova required. An asymmetrical supernova would be enough, the scientists found.

The team's research was published as two papers in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On Oct. 13, 1773, a French astronomer named Charles Messier discovered the "Whirlpool Galaxy," also known as Messier 51, or M51.

Charles Messier was scanning the sky for objects that could confuse comet hunters when he catalogued the galaxy as M51. However, Messier wasn't able to see the spiral structure, and he didn't identify it as a galaxy.

Seventy-two years later, another astronomer named William Parsons saw the whirlpool shape, but he thought it was a spiral nebula. Eventually, Edwin Hubble found out that M51 and other features like it were actually galaxies.

Why it mattered

The Whirlpool Galaxy is located about 31 million light-years from Earth and just might be the textbook case of a spiral galaxy. But in 1773, it was just one of 51 (at the time of its discovery) of "comet-like 'objects to avoid'" in the night sky.

The Whirlpool Galaxy's designation as M51 marks it as the 51st non-comet object catalogued by Messier, who was the chief astronomer of the Marine Observatory in Paris dedicated to studying comets. According to a NASA account, Messier stumbled across his first non-comet object, M1 (also known as the Crab Nebula), while studying a comet in 1758. The objects looked like fuzzy blobs like comets, but didn't move like a comet. By 1773, at the time he first spotted M51, he had catalogued over four dozen such objects to help prevent astronomers from mistaking them for comets.

The Whirlpool Galaxy appears as a dazzling spiral in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, and has a magnitude of 8.4 on the brightness scale used by astronomers. That means it can be observed through a small telescope ("most easily during May," NASA says) in the constellation Venatici (the Hunting Dogs) in the northern sky, just below the handle of the Big Dipper star pattern.

Scientists suspsect the Whirpool Galaxy gets is striking spiral shape from a close interaction with its neighbor galaxy NGC 5195, which may have passed through M51's main disk about 500 million years ago, scientists with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have said.

"This gravitational tug of war may also have triggered an increased level of star formation in M51," they added in a statement. "The companion galaxy's pull would be inducing extra starbirth by compressing gas, jump-starting the process by which stars form."

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

Nostalgia is a hell of a thing, especially when it comes to sci-fi. For "Star Trek" fans wanting to mark the franchise's 60th anniversary this year, a geeky pilgrimage to upstate New York should be on the cards. Why? Because alongside the splendid autumnal colors, they can steer over to Ticonderoga to behold the newly installed Galileo shuttlecraft.

After a complete two-year restoration project in 2012 headed up by superfan and collector Adam Schneider, this iconic fictional spacecraft, seen by millions in seven episodes over three seasons of "Star Trek: The Original Series," was recently relocated from its former home at the Johnson Space Center Museum in Houston, Texas.

It's now on permanent loan to James Cawley and his Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in historic downtown Ticonderoga, New York, where it joins a family of painstakingly detailed sets based on the official "Star Trek" blueprints.

'Galileo is still the property of Space Center, and it was on display there since 2013," Schneider tells Space. "It went to USS Intrepid for the 50th anniversary of 'Star Trek,' displayed under the Enterprise Space Shuttle. You had the Enterprise with Enterprise's little shuttle Galileo adjacent, which was an extraordinary picture. It went back to Space Center, but it takes up an enormous amount of room, and they took it off display after 8 years."

It seemed a shame to have the shuttle out of sight, so Schneider got to work finding a new home for the shuttle. "Since I was on the board, I tried to figure out a place where it could be aimed", recounts Schneider. "The Star Trek Tour made the most sense, so I worked with Space Center to relocate it, and it arrived a couple of years ago."

Hoping to give the restored relic its own private docking bay due to its enormity, faithful fans raised hundreds of thousands of dollars via a Kickstarter campaign led by Brian Mix and David Harvey, and built a beautiful building addition for Galileo to be safely ensconced in.

"My wife Leslie and I had been tending over the Galileo for a number of years, and it's now successfully displayed there in New York for all to see," Schneider adds. "It's an extraordinary thing to see person if you have not. It's not the size of a chair, it’s the size of a bus. It looks gorgeous in its new space, and if you’re a space aficionado or Star Trek aficionado, that’s even more reason to get involved with this thing."

Opening weekend for the general public at Star Trek Tours to see the newest member of the museum was Sept. 18-20, 2026, and the Galileo was the star attraction. Branded Trekonderoga Weekend, the unveiling ceremony was attended by Assemblymen Dan Stec and Dan Simpson, and 'Trek' luminaries George Takei, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner.

"We're certainly thrilled that we were able to work with Adam and NASA to get it here permanently," Cawley tells Space. "Then to get it on display properly and share it with all the fans and make sure that it's on exhibit for many years to come. We’re just outside of the village of Lake George, so we’re part of the greater Lake George tourism region.

"You've seen it on television, and now you’re the caretaker of it. What an honor to be able to do that. It’s the simplicity of the Galileo that makes it so unique. It's Matt Jefferies' whole design ethic for the original series. Less is more. It catches your eye in a specific way. It has a blocky-type silhouette and actually it really complements the Enterprise because you really see the shape difference. Everything has that mid-century modern aesthetic. It's just timeless."

For Cawley, being custodian and host of the screen-used Galileo is like a dream. This 23-foot-long mock-up was part of the USS Enterprise's basic design and was rescued from demolition some 14 years ago when Schneider purchased it at a 2012 memorabilia auction for $61,000.

"We had a great rousing opening weekend with it, and business has been very steady into October with people asking about it. It's going to be a big cornerstone to the tour. I think people are becoming aware that it’s here and they’re making a pilgrimage to come because of it."

For more prices, hours, and more information on the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York, visit them at https://startrektour.com or call 518-503-5497. You can also see the Galileo in action in Star Trek: The Original Series on Paramount+.

NEW YORK — Set your phasers to back-to-school, space fans. Star Trek is going back to Starfleet Academy for season 2, and we finally have a release date.

The sophomore season of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" will warp back to the small screen in March 2027 when the limited series returns for its final season on Paramount+. The series, which follows a class of cadets balancing Starfleet classes, space adventures (and yes, some love) in the 32nd century, will return with its full cast and even add new faces, showrunners announced at a panel at New York Comic Con 2026 on Saturday (Oct. 10).

"Season one is about letting go of who you were in the past to start again at Starfleet Academy," executive producer and co-showrunner Noga Landau said in the Star Trek panel. "Season two is about thinking that you knew who you were, only to realize that as you grow older, your life is going to go in directions you didn't expect, and you're going to have to shift your perception of yourself. So it's really about sophomore year, right?"

Holly Hunter returns as academy chancellor Nahla Ake, a long-lived half-Lanthanite, who will have to face a familiar face in her estranged father, Nyk Ake, portrayed by Bill Nighy (Living, About Time) in season two.

"He plays my full lanthanide father, who has basically, if he wants, can achieve immortality," Hunter said, dropping a big preview about her character in season two. "He plays my dad, and I play me ... and my twin, my twin sister. Very fun."

Also joining this year's Starfleet Academy class is Rosemarie DeWitt (Untamed, The Staircase) as Laytha Sadal, the First Lady of Betazed (and mother of Academy cadet Tarima).

"We have had such a blast," Hunter said of working with the entire cast of Starfleet Academy. "It was a tremendous honor and learning experience for me to do the show for two seasons, and I just really am excited about the second season because there's so much more intimacy that we just comfortably felt with each other over those 10 episodes."

In season one, Starfleet Academy brought back Trek's favorite Emergency Medical Hologram, The Doctor (Robert Picardo), then gave the 800-year-old Star Trek: Voyager physician a daughter in the photonic Sam (Kerrice Brooks) and a Klingon medical student, Jay-Den Kraag (Karim Diané), to train.

"His future existence is forever changed. Nothing will ever be the same for the character," Picardo said in the panel. "The shock of that, and how that changed the character, [...] informs all of season two. My primary relationships are now with my daughter and of course with Jay-Den, as I'm mentoring him as a future physician, and we have some terrific scenes together as well."

Executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman promised more space action in season two of Starfleet Academy and showed an exclusive teaser clip of Academy cadets Caleb (Sandro Rosta), Genesis (Bella Shepard) and Sam as they race to recover data from a crashed spaceship on their first away mission. But the best, Kurtzman said, is yet to come when the show's cadets meet up with Nova Squadron, the elite flight team at Starfleet Academy.

"The Nova Squadron episode is amazing on a lot of different levels," Kurtzman said. "We basically did Top Gun in space. "What's available to us now technologically allowed us to go to a place that I don't think we've ever gone to on television before. Certainly not in Star Trek."

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will return to TV in March 2027 on the Paramount+ streaming platform.

The location of Earth's geographic poles has changed several times over the past 320 million years in a process known as true polar wander, according to measurements of ancient flooding brought about by sea level changes resulting from our planet's crust shifting relative to Earth's spin axis.

Such a shift can affect climate, both on local scales and globally, as regions that were by the poles find themselves moving down to lower latitudes and vice versa. This can then affect atmospheric circulation patterns, which affect climate across the world.

The changes would have affected the environments in which life developed and evolved, from the age of the dinosaurs through to some of our oldest primate ancestors.

True polar wander is not the same as a change in the rotational axis of the Earth. Currently, Earth spins at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun, and this rotational axis can vary periodically over tens of thousands of years as a result of the Milankovitch cycles caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and planets.

True polar wander is different. Here, the angle of Earth's spin axis does not change relative to its orbital plane. Instead, Earth's crust and mantle shift relative to that rotational axis. This is because Earth is not perfectly spherical. Instead, it is oblate, with Earth's rotation causing the equator to bulge out and the poles to slightly flatten. Because Earth is not spherical, it has multiple axes of inertia, the largest one being aligned with the rotational axis.

These axes need to be balanced to prevent Earth's rotation from becoming chaotic. However, plate tectonics and indeed the Milankovitch cycles can upset that balance of mass, for example by causing more continental crust to congregate in one hemisphere than another.

To rebalance things, Earth's crust and mantle must become decoupled from our planet's core, which stays aligned with the rotational axis. In physical terms, if there is more continental crust in one hemisphere, the crust and mantle might rotate in that direction relative to the rotational axis and the Earth's core in order to balance itself. This sees the geographical locations of the poles change, hence the name 'true polar wander'.

Currently, true polar wander takes place at a rate of 10 centimeters (4 inches) per year, but figuring out when and how fast true polar wander has occurred in the past is not without its difficulties, not least since plate tectonics can mask and even mimic the signal of true polar wander.

Previous studies relied on paleomagnetism, the study of residual magnetic traces in ancient rocks, since the orientation of those magnetic traces would have varied depending upon where that rock was located relative to Earth's magnetic field. Alas, it's not a terribly accurate means of measuring true polar wander and scientists arrived at substantially different conclusions using this technique.

Nevertheless, based on paleomagnetism, scientists had concluded that true polar wander had been negligible, or slow to proceed, in the distant past. However, new results from researchers at the Centre for Planetary Habitability at the University of Oslo in Norway, led by Mathew Domeier, have shown this not to be the case.

Domeier's team looked through the geological record to track how sea level has changed across millions of years. True polar wander would bring about an identifiable pattern in sea-level changes as the oceans reacted in response to changes in the mass distribution of the planet. The sea level changes would be equal but opposite between hemispheres — sea level rises on one side of one hemisphere would be matched by rises on the other side of the opposite hemisphere, creating a 'quadrupolar' effect.

By using statistical modeling on maps of sea level changes across intervals of 10 million years, Domeier's team identified four periods of true polar wander: in the early Jurassic period 190—200 million years ago, the late Jurassic — early Cretaceous period 140—150 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous 90—100 million years ago and from the Oligocene period 30 million years ago through to the Miocene 20 million years ago.

The results show that, contrary to established opinion, true polar wander can happen in bursts that are relatively fast on geological timescales, with the results showing that during the episodes of true polar wander the Earth's surface shifted by as much as 0.6 degrees per million years relative to the spin axis. This is slow by human standards, but fairly fast on geological timescales, certainly quicker than plate tectonics.

Domeier's team were also able to rule out a suspected case of true polar wander around 300 million years ago when the last great supercontinent, Pangea, migrated northwards. It turns out that Pangea's movements were entirely due to plate tectonics.

The findings were published on Oct. 1 in the journal Science.

Vision (Paul Bettany) is laying low, working the pumps at an Edinburgh pub at the outset of new eight-part Marvel Television entry "VisionQuest", and understandably so given how much the synthezoid has been through.

Resurrected and restored after being sacrificed for the greater good in "Avengers: Infinity War", albeit as an ever-more-disconnected version of what came before, he now spends every other waking hour retreating into a big white house deep within his mindspace, to chew the fat with AI agents J.A.R.V.I.S. (Brian D’Arcy), F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), D.U.M-E (Henry Lewis), U (Jonathan Sayer) and E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and a wisecracking Ultron (James Spader).

However, the threat posed by bounty hunter Paladin (Todd Stashwick) and the prospect of a reunion with his son conspire to draw him out of his stupor.

Below, we explain the cheapest ways to stream "VisionQuest" online and from anywhere with this VPN.

• Stream securely from anywhere with Surfshark VPN (80% off)

When is the "VisionQuest" streaming release?

"VisionQuest" premieres with a double-header at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, exclusively on Disney+.

The following six episodes will materialize on the streaming service at the same time on subsequent Tuesdays.

Originally, "VisionQuest" was due to make its worldwide debut on October 14 but Marvel has confirmed that it'll be out on October 13 in the States.

How To Watch "VisionQuest"

"VisionQuest" is available to stream on Disney+ in the US from October 13.

If you want to stream "VisionQuest" or any of Disney+'s other great films, TV shows and live sports while you're abroad, Surfshark VPN will let you access your subscription from anywhere in the world.

What is the plot of "VisionQuest"?

"VisionQuest" is as much about memory as it is Vision, so densely is MCU lore woven into its worlds-within-worlds plot.

At its heart, it's about Vision's identity crisis. He remains hopelessly devoted to an unreachable love, in thrall to Ultron, and at odds with these memories that will never truly be his own – and that's if they're even real to begin with.

But it's not all exposition and musings on existence, because Paladin is hired by an unknown kingpin to track Vision down so that his technological assets can be stolen.

Are there any "VisionQuest" teasers and trailers?

There are multiple "VisionQuest" trailers, which are sure to jog your memory in different ways.

The show is heavily informed not only by 2021's "WandaVision" but also by 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and 2024's "Agatha All Along", all three of which may be worth revisiting before embarking on "VisionQuest".

Who are the "VisionQuest" cast and creators?

"VisionQuest" is led by Paul Bettany and James Spader:

• Paul Bettany – Vision
• James Spader – Ultron
• Ruaridh Mollica – Tommy Maximoff/Speed & Thomas Shepherd
• Todd Stashwick – Paladin
• T'Nia Miller – Jocasta
• Lauren Morais – Lisa Molinari
• Orla Brady – F.R.I.D.A.Y.
• Diane Morgan – The Handler
• Polly Frame – Fiona Guthrie
• Henry Lewis & Jonathan Sayer – D.U.M.-E & U:
• Emily Hampshire – E.D.I.T.H.:
• James D'Arcy – J.A.R.V.I.S.

Produced by Marvel Television, "VisionQuest" was directed by Terry Matalas, Christopher J. Byrne, Gandja Monteiro and Vincenzo Natali. Matalas served as the showrunner.

• How to watch 'Disclosure Day' online

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Rockets are launching to space on a near-daily basis these days, but short of livestreaming a liftoff from the comfort of your Wi-Fi router, relatively few spectators are in the right place and time to see one with their own eyes.

That wasn't the case Tuesday morning (Oct. 13), when SpaceX launched the CRS-35 mission for NASA. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), carrying a cargo variant of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on the company's 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Following the northward path of the space station's orbit at the time, the rocket flew a trajectory along the United States' East Coast.

Falcon 9's expanding engine plume grew substantially wider than the rocket itself as it climbed in altitude into thinner, less dense air, and was illuminated by the early dawn light, making the sight visible to millions. "You can imagine my surprise when I opened my back door to let the dogs out this morning," Ellen Alence told Space.com. She snapped a pic of the rocket from her farm Colbert, Georgia.

"Many of you are talking about the 'space jellyfish' following this morning's launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida," NASA's Kennedy Space Center wrote in a post on X. The post explains the "jellyfish" phenomenon that is sometimes visible during dawn and dusk launches, and included additional photos of the launch.

"A jellyfish happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a jellyfish," the post said.

Further up the coast, Richard Mack Wilson-Leigh spotted the flight from Durham, North Carolina. His view of the rocket came just seconds before the vehicle's stage separation, which was followed immediately by the rocket's main booster performing an engine burn to right its trajectory for landing back at the Cape. Wilson-Leigh said that part caught him off guard more than the initial site of the rocket. "I thought it blew up at first," he jokingly told Space.com.

"At first, I thought it was a comet," Wilson-Leigh said. "My mind jumped between two thoughts: that is just beautiful beyond belief, and it is the end of the world.”

That stage separation came about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, and put on a dazzling display for those awake to see it this morning. As Falcon 9's booster began the journey to its landing zone, the rocket's second stage continued onward to orbit with Dragon and the capsule's 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of cargo for the ISS.

The spacecraft will spend roughly two days catching up to the ISS, where a recent personnel rotation swapped the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission with those of Crew-13. The latter arrived aboard the orbital laboratory Oct. 1, which was followed several days later by the return of Crew-12 to Earth on Oct. 8.

The Dragon carrying the contents of CRS-35's manifest will arrive at the station Thursday morning (Oct. 15), and will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). Coverage of the arrival here at Space.com beginning at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

Reentry and orbital-manufacturing provider Varda Space Industries is operating two spacecraft in orbit right now, with another expected to launch "in the coming days" and seven more next year.

The Los Angeles-area startup, which bills itself as one of just two companies that can currently do commercial reentry from space, successfully launched its latest two refrigerator-sized spacecraft aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on Oct. 1.

"It's humanity's first time launching multiple commercial reentry vehicles simultaneously," Varda CEO Will Bruey told Space.com on Tuesday (Oct. 7) of the Transporter-18 launch.

The payloads on the Transporter-18 Varda craft ranged from pharmaceuticals to demo navigation systems to exterior thermal-protection materials. The company bills its spacecraft as mini-factories, which can host the orbital production of valuable goods such as pharmaceuticals and then bring them safely down to Earth.

Another Varda vehicle is scheduled to follow them into space later this month. Assuming the third spacecraft launches nominally, all three will come down before Christmas in the Koonibba Test Range in the South Australian Outback, through coordination with Varda's long-time space-mission service provider, Southern Launch. And things are scheduled to ramp up quickly: Varda aims to fly seven more missions in 2027: two in Quarter 1 (Q1), two in Q2 and three in Q3 (the latter three being all on the same rocket).

"As we scale up, we care about our ability to fly and fly regularly," Bruey said, emphasizing that the company is now treating its missions less as one-offs and more as a series. "It is, first and foremost, taking that unique [spacecraft] technology and moving into a fleet mentality, rather than a space mission mentality."

Like any startup finding its footing, Varda's challenges in the coming months will be scaling safely and efficiently. But the company says it is well-capitalized to do so, and has a big hiring campaign underway. It also has been spending money on slight upgrades and improvements to its vehicles, as well as mission operations and other infrastructure to run several missions at the same time, with more funds having just arrived.

In September, Varda announced it had raised $251 million in "Series D" investment funding and will be hiring 100 people by the end of 2027, boosting its current 286-employee base by more than a third. Most of the employees work out of El Segundo, California, with a few in sales offices in Washington, D.C. and Huntsville, Alabama (where U.S. Space Command is gradually moving, along with some defense contractors, from Colorado Springs).

In the further future, Bruey said, the goal is to fly Varda vehicles into space daily, using a "standardized product" that would be put together on an assembly line. But to get to that point, like other companies in the industry, Varda will need to get through an anticipated rocket shortage beginning in about 2029.

SpaceX is by far the most active launcher these days, and it has been the dominant provider for companies like Varda via its Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare programs. But SpaceX is readying to retire its Falcon 9 rocket as it transitions more resources into Starship, the fully reusable megarocket the company sees as its workhorse of the future. Media reports suggest that SpaceX is pretty much out of capacity for Falcon 9 rockets flying through the end of service in 2028 or 2029, although slots are still available through third-party bookers.

There are a slew of newer rockets under production (such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and Relativity Space's Terran R), though they are far less mature and in some cases, even unflown. This is creating uncertainty about how much capacity there will be in the industry in the short term, but Varda said it is planning well ahead for that moment — and so too are its customers.

"We're stacked with launches from now through that 2029 time frame," Bruey said. The company's current generation of vehicles is "launch-agnostic," although the next generation is aiming to be even more so to nab opportunities from small rockets up to Starship.

The company said that, as long as Varda and its customers have access to microgravity, the shipping methodology — much like shipping on Earth — should not matter, and Varda aims to make the experience that seamless for its customers. But in the meantime, the company says it will fly as much as possible and (like everyone else) do what it can to secure slots on launching rockets after Falcon 9 retires.

"The Space Gal" is blasting off onto her next adventure to promote STEM education with out-of-this-world content.

Science communicator and citizen astronaut Emily Calandrelli, better known to millions of social media followers as "The Space Gal," is bringing her real-world spaceflight experience to the Marvel universe. Calandrelli is lending her voice to an upcoming episode of Disney Jr.'s animated series, "Marvel's Iron Man and his Awesome Friends."

She is stepping into the role of a character called Astronaut Amy in the episode "The Iron Friends in Space," offering another opportunity for Calandrelli to share her enthusiasm for space with younger audiences.

Calandrelli is an engineer, author and television host whose career has focused on making complex scientific concepts engaging and accessible. Growing from her online presence as @TheSpaceGal, Calandrelli has produced numerous educational videos, books and television appearances, including a role on the Netflix "Bill Nye the Science Guy" revival series, "Bill Nye Saves the World."

In a preview clip provided exclusively to Space.com by Disney, Calandrelli's character is welcomed by Tony Stark, Riri Williams, Amadeus Cho and Vision as they explore a moon-themed museum display. The exhibit features a holographic model of the moon and other space-themed artifacts, providing a backdrop for Astronaut Amy to share information about space and lunar exploration.

The show follows younger versions of Stark and others from Marvel's familiar superhero roster, as they navigate conflicts that are scaled down from the franchise's world-ending blockbuster emergencies to more age-appropriate problem-solving and teamwork-building storylines.

Calandrelli's cameo puts her alongside characters already rich in their storylines with backgrounds in science and technology, like Stark and Williams, known by their alter egos Iron Man and Ironheart, both of whose superhero identities revolve around the mastery of sophisticated technology and engineering. And while Astronaut Amy and her super co-stars live in Marvel's fictional universe, Calandrelli's inclusion in the episode creates the opportunity to introduce some real-life scientific concepts.

Her appearance also comes as Disney prepares to expand the animated series to include a larger ensemble. Beginning next summer, the show will evolve into "Marvel's Avengers: Mightiest Friends", and bring additional characters into the fold, including Captain America, Hulk, Black Panther, Black Widow and Thor, according to Disney. For Calandrelli, the role represents another extension of a career dedicated to making space exploration relatable and exciting for the next generation.

In November 2024, Calandrelli became the 100th woman to reach space when she launched aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on the company's NS-28 suborbital mission. The flight carried her above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and gave her several minutes of weightlessness before the capsule and its crew returned to Earth.

Calandrelli isn't the first real-life astronaut to lend her voice to the Marvel universe. Former NASA astronaut and the first Black woman in space Mae Jemison guest-starred in Disney's "Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" in March 2023. Jemison voiced a fictional app called Skipster, created by the show's young superhero and scientific prodigy, Lunella Lafayette. Another space traveler, citizen astronaut Kellie Gerardi, also just announced over the weekend (Oct. 12) her cast credit in the upcoming movie "Hexed", from Disney's Animation Studios.

Viewers can catch the upcoming episode of "Marvel's Iron Man and his Awesome Friends," titled, "The Iron Friends in Space," during its Disney Jr. premiere on Oct. 14 or streaming on Disney+ beginning Oct. 28.

In a milestone achievement, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has broken the record for most miles driven on a world beyond Earth.

On Oct. 11, Perseverance hit 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) traveled on Mars, breaking the record previously held by NASA's Opportunity rover which went 28.06 miles (45.16 km). It took Oppy 14 years to cover all that ground; Perseverance, by contrast, has been on Mars for just 5.5 years.

The new record is far from the end of Perseverance's journey, however; the mission team thinks the rover could eventually more than double the distance it's already traveled.

"Our original design was only planned to last for [about] 20 kilometers of driving," Mark Maimone, a rover driver at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.

"We've more than doubled that already … and we're looking really good to go for up to 100 kilometers total," added Maimone, who works as a designated principal in autonomous planetary rover navigation on Perseverance and helped to develop the autonomous driving systems on NASA's previous Mars rovers.

"So we could double what we've done so far," he said. "And we have great expectations that [Perseverance] can continue its mission of exploring and collecting really useful and beneficial samples that will tell us so much more about the history of Mars."

Indeed, Perseverance remains in great shape, mission team members stressed.

"We are very fortunate that all of Perseverance's original capabilities are more or less intact, especially for the science instruments," JPL's Vivian Sun, the mission's deputy project scientist, told Space.com.

Perseverance landed on the floor of Mars' 28-mile-wide (46 km) Jezero Crater in February 2021. It was far from the first robot to traverse the planet's surface; the Perseverance team built on years of experience with the Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

Through the triumphs and missteps of these previous craft, NASA learned how to better explore another planet with a rover operated from millions of miles away. Perseverance saw massive improvements made to everything from its specialty wheels to its autonomous driving system and onboard tools and instruments.

This "could not have been done without the previous missions that we've sent to Mars," Sun said.

"Five years later [after landing], we're definitely a very well oiled machine," she added. "There's a lot of technical advancements on Perseverance that are the result of many people, many engineers, working on this new technology year after year for decades now."

And, according to both Sun and Maimone, this teamwork is the real secret behind Perseverance's endurance and success.

"The magic sauce for our operations team is how cohesively we work together," Sun said. The engineers, rover drivers and science team all work together and keep each other's work in mind as they make decisions on everything from driving speed to science targets, she added.

"I'm just super appreciative of all the people that have and still work on the mission. They're really what makes the mission special," Sun said.

What's next for Perseverance

As the team mentioned, Perseverance is nowhere near done on Mars. The rover could keep driving for many more miles on the Red Planet, and the scientists and engineers at NASA have big plans and high hopes for its future.

"We are currently planning to continue down south on the crater rim," Sun said. "There's a whole diversity of different rocks along this crater rim going south that we want to investigate and figure out how it indicates conditions from early Mars."

Jezero is a giant crater created by an impact from an asteroid or comet billions of years ago. Perseverance's work has shown that Jezero hosted a lake for long stretches billions of years ago. Scientists are therefore eager to continue exploring the site, searching for clues about what the planet looked like in the ancient past, and if it could have possibly hosted life.

"There are huge chunks of pre-Jezero crust that were embedded in the stratigraphy or got thrown up by the impact, and they're now incorporated onto the crater rim," Sun said. "These are our chance to probe like really old rocks that don't really exist in any other form on the surface anymore."

As part of Perseverance's next steps south on the crater rim, the team is heading toward an area called "Rainbow Falls."

Sun said that the Rainbow Falls area is thought to have kaolinite, a clay mineral that forms when water interacts with rock. By studying these types of minerals, mission scientists might be able to get a better idea of the conditions on Mars all of those billions of years ago, when water filled Jezero Crater.

"Whenever we are looking at clay minerals, I think the question of habitability and the search for potential biosignatures is always on the table," Sun said. "So that is very much the case when we get to Rainbow Falls, or even when we see kaolinite."

NASA astronaut Anil Menon captured a gorgeous view of the northern lights dancing over the night side of Earth from the International Space Station on Oct. 10 using an iPhone camera.

What is it?

Menon's photo reveals spectacular pink, purple and red auroras glowing in Earth's upper atmosphere above a sparse dappling of city lights, subtly blurred by the motion of the orbital spacecraft over the course of the exposure.

Bright stars glimmer between the solar panels and outer hulls of the ISS and visiting spacecraft, painted purple by the auroral display. "Flying through is rare and amazing," Menon wrote in a separate aurora video he posted to X on Oct. 10. "You can see the lights on the outside of [the] station reflecting back like Christmas LEDs. It's definitely more immersive."

Why is it amazing?

Menon captured the auroras during a period of heightened geomagnetic activity, after several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) struck Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms ranging from minor (G1) to strong (G3) over the weekend.

During geomagnetic storms, more charged particles are accelerated along Earth's magnetic field lines toward the polar regions, where they collide with gases in the upper atmosphere; they excite them, causing them to release energy as light and producing spectacular auroral displays.

The blue-purple colors seen in Menon's image are largely produced by nitrogen at altitudes of around 60-120 miles (100-200 kilometers) , while the red hue comes from oxygen atoms higher up, typically above 125 miles (200 kilometers).

The photo is particularly impressive because it was captured on an iPhone camera, as opposed to the more traditional Nikon cameras that astronauts sometimes use to capture Earth during their time aboard the ISS.

Smartphone astrophotography has become increasingly popular over recent years, with some models now featuring bespoke modes for capturing the night sky. iPhones were even used by the astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission to document their historic flyby of the moon earlier this year!

Interested in capturing your own images of the night sky using your mobile phone? Then be sure to check out our guide to photographing stars, the moon and the Milky Way with nothing but your smartphone camera.

This year, 2026, marks the 40th anniversary of the most recent appearance of Halley's Comet, the most famous comet in the solar system.

Roughly every 76 years, Halley punctuates history like an exclamation mark in the night sky. As writer Guy Ottewell has said, it is the "wildest of the tame comets."

It is a tame comet because it can be anticipated. It is wild because it is still fresh and bright; the brightest of all the recurring comets. It is the only one that periodically becomes conspicuous to the naked eye.

Halley through history

Before 1986, Halley had been seen and recorded on 29 occasions. In A.D. 66, observers described it as a sword in the skies above Jerusalem. In 1066, its image was woven into the strip of linen now known as the Bayeux Tapestry, where an agitated crowd of Saxons points toward a fiery comet we know to be Halley. In 1301, the Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone witnessed the comet and was so impressed that, a few years later, he depicted a comet as the star that led the Magi to Bethlehem in one of his magnificent frescoes in Padua's Scrovegni Chapel.

More recently, Halley passed unusually close to Earth in 1910. As the 1986 return approached, people who remembered that earlier appearance likely told their children and grandchildren about being awakened before dawn and taken outside to see a huge, ghostly, gleaming object in the sky.

Halley's earlier appearances suggested that each return to the inner solar system might produce a magnificent display. Little wonder, then, that the public expected great things in 1986.

The great disappointment of 1986

Halley's 1986 return therefore became two very different stories: a frustrating spectacle for much of the public and an unprecedented scientific opportunity for astronomers.

But for many who saw it — or tried to — in 1986, Halley is remembered as a tremendous disappointment. Heavily promoted as the most anticipated celestial event of the second half of the 20th century, the comet proved to be an underwhelming sight that belied promises of a spectacle never to be seen again.

In all fairness, Halley's subpar performance was not unexpected. During the mid-1970's, comet experts had warned that the comet would likely disappoint much of the general public. Despite that, the comet's impending arrival was accompanied by a frenzy of T-shirts, commemorative comet medals, bumper stickers, and specially marketed telescopes. Halley logos could be found on warm-up jackets, cocktail glasses, cereal boxes, and just about everything in sight. Caught up in the grip of Halley-mania, the mainstream media emphasized that the comet would be a "once-in-a-lifetime spectacle."

One of the main problems for many trying to see the comet that year was light pollution; the total outdoor illumination in the United States had increased tremendously since Halley's previous visit in 1910. Indeed, in 1986, many of the largest cities were bathed in permanent twilight, with only the brightest stars and planets visible from near city centers and with astronomically unacceptable conditions up to 50 miles (80 km) away.

On the evening of Jan. 11, in New York City, thousands gathered at four city parks to get a view of Halley's Comet. Mayor Ed Koch and Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern arranged to have the lights turned off at four public parks, where telescopes were set up. The comet itself was not overly impressive, but many were still happy just to get a glimpse of it. As Stern put it: "Those who came for the comet saw the comet — the cynics didn't — but it was there."

When Halley passed through perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Feb. 9, it lay on the far side of the sun as viewed from Earth and was hidden in the solar glare. During much of March, it brightened only to third magnitude and displayed a tail about a dozen degrees long, merely one-tenth the extent of its 1910 splendor. At the same time, it moved southward through the stars of Sagittarius, Scorpius, and Centaurus. Because those constellations appear low above the southern horizon, the comet was difficult to see from Canada, Europe, and the northern United States.

The 1986 apparition was, in fact, described as the comet's worst in 2,000 years. And as one would expect, the public wasn't impressed. Having read that he'd need binoculars and a star map just to find the comet, taxi driver David A. Gittelman penned a New York Times opinion piece entitled "Who Cares About Halley's Comet Anyway?" In it he wrote:

"I was devastated. How could such an injustice be allowed to prevail? All my life I'd been waiting — all my life. What happened to the cosmic leviathan of my childhood dreams?"

What happened was that at its closest approach to Earth on April 10, Halley was nearly three times farther away than at its minimum distance in 1910. And it had arrived at this point a full two months after perihelion (instead of two weeks as in 1910) — long after its brightest phase had passed. Even those living or traveling to the Southern Hemisphere (as I did), where the comet was well placed, didn't witness a true showstopper. To make matters worse, Halley's tail suddenly ebbed at the beginning of April, leaving behind a small, condensed, nebulous mass with a stubby, fan-shaped appendage.

The leviathan turned out to be a mere tadpole!

A scientific gold mine

But while Halley disappointed the public, it proved to be an astronomical gold mine for astronomers. Within three weeks in March 1986, an international armada of spacecraft studied the comet: Japan launched Sakigake and Suisei; the Soviet Union sent VEGA 1 and VEGA 2; NASA contributed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE); and the European Space Agency, then a consortium of 11 countries, launched Giotto.

VEGA 1 and 2 and Giotto plunged deep into Halley's coma — the fuzzy, glowing cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus when it travels close to the sun — and revealed it to be an active, sputtering mass that responds violently to heating by the sun. Jets of dust were expelled from the nucleus with explosive intensity. And we discovered that the nucleus is encrusted in a dark shroud of its own debris and is as black as coal or velvet. Each VEGA spacecraft came to within about 5,300 miles (8,500 km) of Halley.

Giotto passed within just 375 miles (600 km) of the nucleus. More than 2,000 returned images showed that Halley's nucleus was larger than expected and shaped like a peanut or potato, measuring 9 miles (14 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide. The nucleus spins on its longest axis every 7.4 days, while the entire body appears to wobble in half that time. The images also revealed three "active regions," areas where volatile gases and dust escape when sunlight heats the surface. As the comet rotates, fresh ice enters the sunlight and sublimates; the escaping gas then drags entrained dust particles away from the nucleus.

VEGA 1 and 2 and Giotto plunged deep into Halley's coma — the fuzzy, glowing cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus when it travels close to the sun — and revealed it to be an active, sputtering mass that responds violently to heating by the sun. Jets of dust were expelled from the nucleus with explosive intensity. And we discovered that the nucleus is encrusted in a dark shroud of its own debris and is as black as coal or velvet. Each VEGA spacecraft came to within about 5,300 miles (8,500 km) of Halley.

Giotto passed within just 375 miles (600 km) of the nucleus. More than 2,000 returned images showed that Halley's nucleus was larger than expected and shaped like a peanut or potato, measuring 9 miles (14 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide. The nucleus spins on its longest axis every 7.4 days, while the entire body appears to wobble in half that time. The images also revealed three "active regions," areas where volatile gases and dust escape when sunlight heats the surface. As the comet rotates, fresh ice enters the sunlight and sublimates; the escaping gas then drags entrained dust particles away from the nucleus.

So, from this tiny, jet-black, dust-encrusted nucleus came all the ingredients necessary to form the bright comet head and tail that branded it as a historically magnificent and awe-inspiring spectacle.

The spacecraft encounters transformed a disappointing naked-eye apparition into a landmark scientific campaign. Yet Halley's story did not end when the probes passed through its coma.

Surprises beyond 1986

Long after 1986, a receding Halley's Comet showed that it could still provide some surprises. On Feb. 12, 1991, between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus at 1.329 billion miles (2.138 billion km) from the sun, Halley was photographed from the European Southern Observatory in Chile by two Belgian astronomers. They had expected to find the comet appearing as nothing more than a faint speck of light. Instead, it appeared as a monstrous nebula 300 times brighter than expected; a massive outburst.

The cause of the dramatic flare-up remains a mystery. An unknown body may have collided with the comet. Another possibility is that the nucleus released a large amount of latent internal energy, although such a release would be unlikely so far from the sun. Highly energetic particles in the solar wind may also have reached the comet in sufficient numbers to heat its surface.

The road to 2061

On Dec. 8, 2023, Halley's Comet reached aphelion; the farthest point in its orbit from the sun.

Halley is expected to return in the summer of 2061, in circumstances that will largely mirror those of 1986 — but with one crucial difference. This time the comet will be fully visible on the same side of the sun as Earth and should appear at least 10 times brighter. In the morning sky, it will reach its northernmost position on July 24. It will then move rapidly southward as it enters the evening sky, gradually favoring more southerly locations. Even so, viewers at mid-northern latitudes should see an eye-catching object low in the west-northwest sky in early August.

And we don't have to wait until 2061 to experience Halley.

Like all comets, Halley's is a cosmic litterbug and, as such, it leaves behind in its wake a trail of — for lack of a better term — garbage, composed of tiny bits and crumbs of space debris that can produce beautiful incandescent trails upon impacting our atmosphere. Because they emanate from the constellation Orion, we call them the Orionid meteors, which will reach their peak on Oct. 21.

In a way, I guess you can call them "rock stars," but eventually, they fall down to Earth.

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, The Old Farmer's Almanac and other publications.

Hydrogen may be the most common element in the cosmos, but scientists could use it to do something unique: uncover the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

This new line of dark energy investigation comes from the fact that researchers have determined that the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) project can detect the faint radio glow of hydrogen from the universe's distant past.

Not only does this represent a faster and much less expensive way to investigate dark energy, but it is a major milestone for CHIME. The instrument was specifically devised to investigate dark energy and its pervasive influence.

"This is a completely new technique for probing the cosmos, delivered by an instrument that was conceived and built by Canadians," CHIME principal investigator Mark Halpern of the University of British Columbia said in a statement. "It's a bold new step in the global cosmology program and a Canadian success story."

Why is dark energy so problematic?

Dark energy is the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. It is so problematic for scientists because it started acting on the fabric of space only after the expansion triggered by the Big Bang had halted.

That's akin to pushing a child on a swing, watching it stop, and then seeing the swing start up again without a push. And, not only that, but the swing starts oscillating faster and faster. Consider scientists akin to very worried parents, who would really like to know where this ghostly push came from and how it is going to proceed.

Just as, if the push on the swing continues, the child could end up in the bushes, or in orbit, the strengthening of dark energy could result in the cold death of the cosmos, or even a "Big Rip" scenario that sees space shredded. Alternatively, if it weakens and allows gravity to reassert dominance, then the universe could collapse back in on itself, resulting in a "Big Crunch" ending that sees the cosmos compressed back into a singularity, as it was at the beginning of time.

Dark energy is now the dominant element of the universe, accounting for 68% of the universe's matter-energy budget. It's little wonder that scientists are very keen to know what this mysterious force is.

So how can hydrogen help the investigation of dark energy?

"Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and the raw material from which stars form," team member Arnab Chakraborty of the University of Toronto said. "Its faint radio emission acts like a cosmic tracer, revealing how matter is distributed across space."

Previously, CHIME could map the distribution of hydrogen in the early universe but only by cross-correlating its observations with galaxy survey data from other telescopes, operations that cost millions of dollars and can only focus on regions of the universe dense enough to form stars. CHIME has now shown it can map the radio glow of hydrogen all on its own.

Indeed, the team has already begun making steps in this direction using just a tiny fraction of existing CHIME data. Using 94 nights of observations from 2019, they detected a hydrogen signal from when the universe was just 5 billion years old.

"Our data indicate that roughly 2% of the hydrogen in the universe was in neutral atomic form at this time, broadly consistent with other measurements," team member Shabbir Shaikh of Arizona State University said. "By measuring how that hydrogen is distributed and clustered, CHIME gives us a new way to test our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve."

CHIME has now collected seven years of data, and using this, the team is hoping to probe the distribution of hydrogen back to 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

The team's research was published across two papers in The Astrophysical Journal.

SpaceX just broke an uncharacteristically long Starlink launch drought.

The company sent 27 of its Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) today (Oct. 12), launching them atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:28 p.m. EDT (5:28 p.m. local time; 0028 GMT on Oct. 13)

It was the first Starlink mission for a Falcon 9 since Sept. 19, which was another 27-satellite liftoff from Vandenberg. For some perspective on this recent gap: Between Aug. 19 and Sept. 6, a span of 19 days, SpaceX launched seven Starlink missions with Falcon 9s.

SpaceX did loft a batch of Starlinks after that, but it wasn't aboard a Falcon 9. The company's Starship megarocket carried 26 next-gen Starlink V3 craft on its 14th test flight, which took place on Sept. 28.

Starship reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, and it deployed the Starlinks successfully as well. This will happen many more times going forward, if all goes to plan: The Starlink V3 constellation will eventually consist of about 100,000 satellites, all of which will fly on Starship, Elon Musk has said.

Indeed, SpaceX plans to sunset the Falcon 9 and its cousin, the Falcon Heavy, in the next few years, shifting their duties over to the fully reusable, far more powerful Starship, which remains in the test-flight phase.

That shift will be a big one for the spaceflight community, for the Falcon 9 is the workhorse rocket of its generation. In 2025, for example, it flew 165 times — roughly the same number as the rest of the world's orbital launchers combined. Nearly three-quarters of those Falcon 9 launches were Starlink missions.

Things have slowed down a bit in 2026. Today's flight was the 112th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 82nd in service of the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,100 active satellites.

All went according to plan on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 20th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1088.

The rocket's expendable upper stage, meanwhile, delivered the 27 spacecraft to LEO, deploying them there 62 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX announced via X.

SpaceX launched its latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13).

A Falcon 9 rocket launched a robotic Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT).

The launch kicks off the CRS-35 mission, so named because it will be the 35th that SpaceX flies under a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

If all goes according to plan, Dragon will reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Oct. 15), docking autonomously to the space-facing port of its Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can watch the arrival here at Space.com as well; coverage will start at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

CRS-35 will deliver 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of supplies to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs), which will boost the orbiting lab's energy budget.

There's also quite a bit of scientific gear heading up on the flight.

Dragon "will deliver hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity to help restore vision on Earth and 3D heart tissue models to advance large‑scale drug testing on future missions," NASA officials wrote in a CRS-35 launch preview on Oct. 7.

"The spacecraft will carry materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis," they added.

Dragon will stay attached to the ISS for about a month, then head back down to Earth with scientific experiments and other hardware. It will splash down safely under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

SpaceX's Dragon is the only currently operational freighter that can carry cargo in the downward direction. The other three — Russia's Progress, Japan's HTV-X and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL — are all expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after their time at the ISS is done.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:59 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13 with news of a successful launch.

Using the NASA X-ray spacecraft Swift combined with radio observations, astronomers have observed a supermassive black hole burping radio jets 300 days after a heavy cosmic meal. The team was also able to roughly estimate the mass of this feeding cosmic titan, which sits at the heart of the Perseus Cluster, a massive collection of thousands of galaxies.

The black hole sits at the center of the galaxy NGC 1275, located around 225 light-years away, and is the brightest galaxy of the Perseus Cluster. The supermassive black hole first flared in X-rays, which indicated an increase in the rate at which it was accreting matter. Actively feeding supermassive black holes sit in regions called active galactic nuclei (AGNs), with their immense gravity heating surrounding matter, causing them to glow brightly. These emissions are boosted by material channeled to the poles of the central black hole, from where it is blasted out as powerful twin jets that shine across the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly in radio waves.

The observation of the following radio jet from the AGN at the heart of NGC 1275 via flaring in radio waves is crucial for understanding the relationship between the disk of matter that surrounds and feeds the black hole, called an accretion disk, and the jets it launches. This so-called disk-jet coupling is key to developing a better picture of how black holes influence star formation in the galaxies in which they sit, and thus the growth of those galaxies.

Making these observations is no mean feat. The ideal spacecraft for observing X-ray emissions is Chandra, but it doesn't observe NGC 1275 frequently enough to observe its long-term behaviour. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory may lack the power of Chandra, but having launched in 2004, it has collected a vast amount of data regarding NGC 1275 and its central supermassive black hole.

"It is fairly difficult to see the inner region of this AGN because NGC 1275 is at the center of the massive Perseus cluster of galaxies, which adds additional light to our observations," team leader Sarah Ketchum of the University of Michigan told Space.com. "We developed a model that allowed us to remove the cluster emission from archival Swift data, and in doing so, we were able to see the changes in the X-ray flux from gas accreting onto the black hole in NGC 1275, from 2007 to 2025."

Ketchum added that the capabilities of Swift were key to this investigation of NGC 1275, which is the ideal laboratory for the study of disk-jet coupling.

"There have been studies on other galaxies with AGN that show evidence of coupling between gas accretion traced in X-ray light and gas ejection in jets, traced in radio light. But NGC 1275 reveals the impact of black hole jets on large spatial scales better than any other system," the University of Michigan researcher continued.

This black hole didn't eat a star

Ketchum and colleagues saw the strongest ever X-ray flare from NGC 1275 in Feb. 2023. Lasting less than 60 days and consisting of two 5-day blasts, this episode saw a doubling of the X-ray brightness of the AGN at the heart of NGC 1275.

The flaring was so extreme that the team had to rule out a tidal disruption event (TDE) as the cause. These occur when an unfortunate star's orbit brings it too close to the immense gravitational influence of a supermassive black hole. This influence generates intense tidal forces that simultaneously squash and squeeze the star, "speghettifying" it and allowing the black hole to snack on some plasma pasta.

"We were able to rule out TDEs as a cause," Ketchum said. "Thus, the flaring was likely caused by a spike in the rate at which matter accreted onto the black hole."

Using Swift data, the team was able to infer the radius over which the AGN emits radiation. Because the size of a black hole is directly correlated with its mass, this meant that the researchers were able to constrain the mass of the black hole at the heart of NGC 1275. They determined that this supermassive black hole has a mass somewhere between 100 million times the mass of the sun and 1 billion solar masses.

The team then compared their data to known radio data to better understand the relationship between the X-ray emission and the radio jets that disrupt gas in NGC 1275.

Ketchum added that she and her colleagues found tentative evidence of around a 300-day delay between the X-ray flaring and the radio wave emission. This indicates the time it takes plasma to travel from the base of the jet to a knot or shock created when it hits surrounding gas or dust.

"This should be tested further in the future. Our X-ray data only sparsely sample the changes in NGC 1275," Ketchum said. "This makes it difficult to determine an exact relationship between the X-ray and radio radiation for large portions of our light curve, so we would need more X-ray data to further study this connection."

The researcher added that if the X-ray flares are produced close to the black hole, an echo of these flares should be seen coming from the accretion disk.

"An emission line from neutral iron is seen in data from NGC 1275, and this may be the echo. However, we likely need many observations with XMM-Newton and XRISM ( X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) to really establish that connection," Ketchum concluded.

The team's research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, with a pre-peer-review version available on the repository site arXiv.

NASA is asking for ideas to stop static electricity from zapping astronauts or critical hardware during moon missions.

The agency opened a "Lunar Grounding Challenge" to avoid situations where an astronaut on the moon could become "a walking, high voltage capacitor." Submissions for the $150,000 competition are due Jan. 15 and you can see the requirements here.

NASA is hoping to put astronaut boots at the lunar south pole in 2028 during the Artemis 4 or 5 missions, on the first landing mission since NASA's Apollo 17 in 1972. But simulations suggest that both "tribocharging" (electric-charge transfer between two objects) and plasma charging (from ambient gas in the region) could build up electric charge on spacesuits. "This problem is severely compounded when entering lunar shadows and permanently shadowed regions," the agency wrote, referring to deeply cratered areas where the sun does not touch the lunar surface.

The concern is that astronauts' spacesuits could become electrically charged, as there would be an excess of electrons (negatively charged particles) compared with ions (positively charged) in these areas.

"The risk occurs when an astronaut returns to the spacecraft," the agency added. The lander would have a slight positive charge, producing an issue once the "highly negatively-charged astronaut approaches the vehicle."

NASA has asked industry partners for ideas that can help an astronaut avoid "becoming a walking, high voltage capacitor", including issues such as an electrical arc that could damage spacesuits, spark fires in the oxygen atmosphere of a spacecraft, or create electrical shocks. (A Mars simulation in 2018 was reportedly derailed due to a crew experiencing electrical issues, so this problem is not unprecedented.)

The challenge aims to create designs that would safely discharge the astronaut and their spacesuit before an astronaut touches the lander. Among the technical requirements, NASA is looking for something small (in terms of mass, volume and power) that would be able to operate even in the extreme temperature swings of the lunar surface. The technology must also be able to help as many as four extra-vehicular activities (moonwalks) that take place over as long as 10 days.

"In addition, the suspended lunar dust and heavy dust buildup on a suit in these environments significantly increases arcing lengths, allowing sparks to jump across larger gaps than they would in a clean vacuum. Therefore, the solution must aim to avoid a sudden arc that may come into contact with the outer pressure garment — suit — or the lander," NASA wrote in the challenge description.

The challenge will include multiple phases, including a concept design, concept refinement after chatting with reviewers, and then a final selection. NASA did not release a target date in its press release for when the tech would be available for astronauts, but the agency is planning on a long-term moon base for astronaut missions that would be largely ready to go in the 2030s if schedules hold.

They don't produce anything like the torrent of "shooting stars" associated with August's Perseids or December's Geminids, but the Taurid meteor showers have something else going for them — fireballs.

The Taurids are famous for occasionally producing exceptionally bright, slow-moving meteors that can streak dramatically across the night sky from September to December. As a bonus, they're visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. That's because they appear to emanate from the constellation Taurus, which sits close to the ecliptic, the apparent path the sun takes across the sky as Earth orbits around it.

The Taurids are actually two closely related showers — the Southern Taurids and Northern Taurids — whose activity overlaps in late October and November. That's why they're known informally by skywatchers as the "Halloween fireballs." The broad overlapping peaks make the Taurids less about watching on one particular night and more about keeping an eye on the night sky for several weeks. Both have their radiant points — the place in the night sky where their "shooting stars" appear to come from — close to the famous Pleiades (M45) open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus.

There's another tempting reason to watch the Taurids in 2026 — moonlight will cause little interference around the main peaks.

When are the Southern Taurids?

The Southern Taurids are already underway. According to the American Meteor Society, they're active from Sept. 20 through Nov. 20, with two distinct components. The annual component peaks around Oct. 14, while a component particularly associated with fireballs peaks overnight on Nov. 4-5. That's the night to circle if you're hoping to see one of the "Halloween Fireballs."

However, don't expect a conventional meteor storm. The Southern Taurids have an average zenithal hourly rate of about five meteors per hour. ZHR describes how many meteors an observer could theoretically see under ideal conditions with the shower's radiant directly overhead. In practice, observers see fewer, so this is not a chance to gather friends for a special show, as with the Perseids.

What the Southern Taurids lack in quantity, however, they can make up for in quality. Their meteors strike Earth's atmosphere at about 17 miles (27 kilometers) per second. That's relatively slow for a meteor, helping make some Taurids conspicuous as they travel across the sky. You don't see a Taurid meteor; you watch it.

If clouds allow, conditions should be favorable around Nov. 4-5. The moon will be absent most of the night, rising a couple of hours before dawn as a 17%-illuminated waning crescent — too dim to affect visibility of meteors.

When are the Northern Taurids?

The Northern Taurids begin later, becoming active on Oct. 20 and continuing through Dec. 10, according to the American Meteor Society. They're expected to peak overnight on Nov. 11-12.

Once again, rates are low — around five meteors per hour under ideal conditions — but fireballs are possible. Northern Taurid meteors enter the atmosphere at around 18 miles (29 km) per second, similarly as slow as their southern counterparts.

Observing conditions at the peak should be excellent. The moon will be a slender 5%-illuminated waxing crescent and will be practically absent from the night sky overnight on Nov. 11-12, leaving the night dark.

The distinction between the two Taurid showers isn't particularly important if you're simply outside hoping to see a fireball. In late October and early November, both streams are active at the same time, potentially producing around 10 Taurids per hour under clear, moon-free conditions.

Why are Taurids called the 'Halloween Fireballs'?

The nickname comes partly from timing. Their maxima are also broad rather than sharp. According to EarthSky, the Taurids tend to "ramble along" over the period, becoming particularly noticeable when the two branches overlap from late October into early November — Halloween.

It's also a reference to their tendency to produce fireballs, exceptionally bright meteors caused when larger pieces of space debris plunge into Earth's atmosphere.

Some years are considerably better for Taurid fireballs than others, and it's impossible to tell for sure in advance. EarthSky notes that enhanced displays occurred in 2008, 2015 and 2022, when Earth encountered concentrations of larger debris within the stream. However, don't expect a repeat in 2026 — the next predicted Taurid fireball swarm isn't expected until 2032.

That doesn't mean there won't be fireballs this year, only that an unusually high number isn't predicted.

What causes the Taurid meteor showers?

Both Taurid meteor showers are linked to Comet 2P/Encke, a three-mile-wide (4.8-kilometer) comet that circles the sun every 3.25 years — the shortest known cometary orbit, according to NASA. However, the Taurids belong to a much larger complex of dust, rocks, comets and asteroids, possibly created when a much bigger object fragmented thousands of years ago. Each fall, Earth crosses different parts of this sprawling debris stream, producing the overlapping Northern and Southern Taurids and, occasionally, the larger fragments that create spectacular fireballs.

How to see the Taurid meteor showers

Both showers appear to originate from Taurus, a constellation that rises during the evening and climbs higher into the sky as the night progresses. Around midnight, Taurus is well placed for many observers.

However, there's no need to find Taurus. Meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, and staring directly at the radiant can actually mean seeing shorter meteor trails. The best advice is to treat the period as a great time for naked-eye stargazing, with the usual rules applying — find somewhere away from bright lights with as wide a view of the sky as possible, and give your eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Binoculars and telescopes will restrict your field of view and make meteor watching impossible.

Above all, be patient. The Taurids are a slow burn in every sense — low rates, slow-moving meteors and weeks of activity. But if one of those meteors happens to be a brilliant fireball, it could easily be one of the most memorable "shooting stars" you see all year.

On Oct. 12, 1964, the Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1, a 24-hour crewed mission that achieved several "firsts" for human spaceflight. This was the first time that a spacecraft carried more than one person into orbit, with three cosmonauts packed inside the spacecraft.

Only two cosmonauts were originally supposed to fly on this mission, but Soviet politicians pressured the Russian space program to add one more. This left no room for spacesuits on board, so this also became the first spaceflight without spacesuits.

Two of the crewmembers, an engineer and a doctor, became the first civilians to go to space.

Why it mattered

Voskhod 1 served as yet another first for the Soviet Union during a space race kicked off by the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and followed up by the first human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. And while the United States did follow up with its one human spaceflights, until Oct. 12, 1964, every mission had one person on board.

That changed with Voskhod 1, which crammed three man into a spacecraft not much larger than the Soviet Union's one-person Vostok spacecraft. At the time, NASA was develoing the two-person Gemini spacecraft, which prompted the Soviet Union's then leader to push for an edge.

"Soviet leader [Nikita] Khrushchev contacted Korolev and ordered him to convert the Vostok spacecraft into a vehicle capable of carrying not two, but three cosmonauts," according to space historian Asif Siddiqi, referring to Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program.

In order to fit a three people inside, the Voskhod 1 cosmonauts - commander Vladimir Komarov and his crew Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov - did not wear spacesuits traditionally used for launch and landing, adding substantial risk to the flight. They also stayed inside their spacecraft when it landed, unlike Vostok crews like Gagarin, who parachuted out of them after reentry.

The Voskhod 1 mission lasted just over 24 hours, during which its crew performed experimented with the behavior of liquids and gases in microgravity and photographed the Earth.

NASA's first multi-crew mission, Gemini 3, would launch about six month later on March 23, 1965.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

A neon blue pool swirls amongst what look like clouds, all surrounded by a bright red stretch of land. This might look like the surface of an alien planet, but it's actually a salt flat right here on Earth, seen from space.

What is it?

Etosha National Park in northern Namibia hosts the largest salt pan, or piece of land covered with salt and other minerals, in the country.

This image of the Etosha Pan was captured on April 5 of this year by Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, which consists of two identical satellites in the same orbit.

The Sentinel-2 pair observe and capture imagery of our planet in different wavelengths using a high-resolution multispectral imager that can see 13 different spectral bands, or ranges of wavelengths.

By looking at our planet from space, and observing it through different wavelengths and colors, we can better understand Earth's topography and how it changes over time. With this image, researchers can better understand this landmark in Namibia, a nation in southwestern Africa.

Why is it incredible?

While this image is strikingly beautiful, the Etosha Pan doesn't exactly look like this in real life. If you were standing close to the pan in the national park, it would look bright white.

While this is a real image, false color has been added, which allows scientists to separate different types of vegetation and topography.

With the false color, the vegetation surrounding the salt pan appears in shades of red, while the salt pan itself looks like a mix of bright, light and dark blues with cloudy sediment floating around.

The varied vegetation captured in this false-color image includes grassland, savannas and mopane trees, which appear bright red. These trees are not only a dominant type of vegetation in areas of this park, they also provide essential shelter and habitats for local wildlife, including elephants, giraffe and leopards.

"Tomb Raider" celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. While many remember the iconic T-Rex or locking Winston the Butler in the freezer, many forget about the UFO in 1998’s "Tomb Raider III"; a mysterious alien craft that worked a lot like Doctor Who’s TARDIS.

Coming off the back of the hugely successful "Tomb Raider 2", developer Core Design had big plans for the third entry, including kayaking, those iconic London levels, and, of course, a level featuring a UFO in Area 51. Although it looked small on the outside, the UFO featured multiple floors for players to explore as they searched for a vital artifact, all as enemies swarmed in.

Now, I'm something of a Tomb Raider historian, and my upcoming book — "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000" (available from October 30) — goes into detail about the making of "Tomb Raider III", "Tomb Raider IV", and other games in the series during those three years. While writing the book, I spoke to level designer Richard Morton about how the physics-defying UFO was made and how shows like "The X-Files" inspired him and the team.

The Lone Gunwoman

When you start "Tomb Raider III", you find Lara in India, stumbling across one of four artifacts. After completing India, you can choose between London, South Pacific, and Nevada to collect the other artifacts before reaching the final section in Antarctica.

Richard Morton was one of the designers for "Tomb Raider III", who took on South Pacific and some of Nevada, a location that Neal Boyd had already begun work on before he moved to "Project Eden". Eventually, Lara would find herself in Area 51, with the final part of the level taking place in a UFO that houses the artifact she seeks.

“Area 51 was a bit of a team effort,” reveals Morton. “The part where the rocket launches, Neal did a lot of that stuff. So much of that level is his work, as well as some of the other routes. Andy Sandham helped in finishing off that level, too. And then the bit with the UFO, that was mine.”

Of course, a level called Area 51 needed aliens. In the late 1990s, UFOs were everywhere, ranging from TV shows like The X-Files to countless documentaries on whether aliens were real.

“We knew Area 51 had to have aliens in it in some form. And we did put some down on operating tables – we were all influenced by films and shows like 'The X-Files' and 'Independence Day', which were around at the time of TR3.”

You’d run past the UFO at certain points in between toggling switches, collecting keys, and even launching a rocket. Eventually, you’d unlock a door, letting you in to reveal an impossibly large interior. But all wasn’t as it seemed, and the journey to get here was fraught with challenges.

“I was working quite late one evening, and it wasn't a UFO to start with. I was working on the level and suddenly wondered what would happen if I had three rooms next to each other, with the room in the middle that was only the width of the portal,” explains Morton. “Then I’d link that to a separate room that was only visible inside the portal. I then somehow managed to build this impossible room that was surrounded by eight rooms – the only way I could get it to work. And it did, but it worked horizontally – it was just like Valve's 'Portal', but nine years before.”

AI programmer Tom Scutt, who had joined the team to improve the artificial intelligence for the enemies, worked with Morton to see how a portal could work in the level.

“Tom loved it, but I think he started doing some tests around it – this was just a portal in a room to see if it could be used. Soon after, he explained to me that enemies wouldn't work with it without being heavily reworked, because of how the navigation worked with the enemies,” Morton explains. “So if Lara went through a portal to 'another world', for example, the enemies wouldn't know; they'd just stay in the same room. So all in all, they basically said that they loved it, but you can't do it - and yet I kept trying.”

The truth is in there

With Area 51 taking shape and the portal idea becoming viable, Morton realized that the two could become one, resulting in the UFO. “The next night, I decided to build a UFO, which we'd already built within the level in this rough shape in one of the hangars at the end of the level.”

That night, Morton cracked it, meaning the inside of the UFO could now be far bigger. “I built a ladder going up from the entrance, which went straight up through the tiny UFO model, which was only three by three blocks, with a one-block hole going up into it. So I remade the same trick from the night before, only vertically, and it worked!”

Still, despite getting the trick to work, more had to be done to ensure no bugs would emerge during this final section of the level.

“Once you got inside the UFO, I think we had to do a tiny bit of fiddling around, just to make the enemies warp inside the UFO. But they'd only try to attack you when you were in the UFO. I think we triggered them once you got in there and de-triggered them once you came out, just to stop them from firing at you when you weren't in there, just to keep that illusion of this TARDIS UFO going.”

Programmer Martin Gibbins, who had previously warned that the UFO would break everything, was won over by it. “Despite the UFO being Richard's idea, that was a testament to Gavin Rummery's ridiculous portal system. It had a single-block doorway into what was effectively a room. That was the clip window for the rest of the world, so you could do whatever you'd like inside of it. He got it working, and I thought it was great.”

For its time, it was an amazing feat on PlayStation and PC. With this being the third mainline "Tomb Raider" game, some players felt that the series was getting stale. But it was moments like the UFO and discovering it was far bigger than many initially thought that stuck with players, and still does to this day.

Unfortunately, another moment like the UFO would not happen in subsequent games, with the pressure of making the Thanksgiving deadline looming over the team. But Morton reveals that the team did speak about what could have alternatively happened at the end of the level.

"I think we talked about having a portal room that took you to another area that could have been either another location on Earth or another location across the galaxy. But obviously, we just didn't have time to do anything like that. It would have been awesome, though.”

However, after Morton spent two evenings trying to get the UFO to work and some on the team worried that it would break the game, it became a big highlight of "Tomb Raider III".

“When I showed the team the UFO, they were basically trembling, thinking, 'What have you done now!?' And we found out that it did work, and they ended up loving it. Looking back, I couldn't believe that I'd pulled it off, to be honest. I couldn't believe that the engine didn't just crash the game every time the camera looked into that portal. It didn't crash, and I thought, ‘Wow, that's awesome,’ at the time.”

The impossible geometry of the "Tomb Raider III" UFO is indeed an impressive spectacle, even almost 30 years later. If you’re interested in seeing how the TARDIS/UFO works, you can play "Tomb Raider III" via the Remastered collection, available on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 1/2, iOS, Android, and PC via Steam.

If you want to know more about "Tomb Raider 3" and its enigmatic UFO, "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000" is available from October 30 via Pen and Sword, Amazon, and other retailers.

Fire erupted in the morning skies over Siberia on June 30, 1908, as an atmospheric explosion occurred that remains unmatched by any similar event in modern history.

That day, at approximately 7:15 a.m. local time, observers in Siberia's remote Tunguska region became witnesses to the entry of a brilliant fireball into Earth's atmosphere, trailing smoke across the dawn sky and culminating in a flash brighter than the sun itself. Within seconds, the explosion and resulting shock waves that followed reportedly knocked some members of the nearby Indigenous Evenki population off their feet, and caused damage to dwellings and livestock, while seismic instruments hundreds of miles away logged tremors caused by the blast.

The blast produced enough energy to flatten a significant stretch of the Siberian wilderness, marking an event that still serves as a cautionary tale — and a major point of reference — for modern planetary defense efforts. Yet some questions remain about exactly what happened, and what the implications are for future potential Tunguska-scale events. For many years after the events of that day, the cause of the blast — known today as the Tunguska event — remained unknown. With time, a likely culprit emerged: scientists now believe a small asteroid, estimated to have been just 130 feet (40 meters) in diameter, exploded after entering Earth's atmosphere.

What do we know?

Unraveling the Tunguska Event mystery

Remarkably, scientists wouldn't get a firsthand look at the destruction caused by the Tunguska blast for almost two decades, due primarily to the extreme remoteness of the blast location. Further complicating scientific investigations were the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the ensuing civil war.

One of the earliest attempts to reach the blast site was initiated in 1921 by Soviet geologist Leonid Kulik, who failed in his first effort, but did eventually make his way to Tunguska six years later. Upon arriving, the devastation caused by the event was unmistakable even after nearly two decades.

Curiously, at the blast site's presumed epicenter, a small area of unaffected trees remained standing, albeit stripped of some of their bark and branches. The surrounding countryside, by comparison, was littered with large numbers of trees that were toppled as the shock waves produced by the exploding asteroid high above radiated downward.

In the decades that followed, additional assessment of the site that included expeditions and aerial surveys, primarily during the 1950s and 1960s, revealed another curious feature: a distinctive hourglass- or butterfly-shaped destruction zone spanning well over 800 square miles (2,070 square kilometers), with millions of trees estimated to have been flattened. Yet most curious of all had been what investigators did not find; despite a blast zone of this size, there was no evidence of an impact crater at Tunguska.

An airburst over Siberia

What the evidence seemed to suggest was that an explosion had occurred not on the surface following a massive impact, but instead high in Earth's atmosphere — probably as much as several miles above the Earth — as tremendous aerodynamic stresses caused the object to fragment and release its energy before reaching the ground.

A longstanding debate about the Tunguska object has centered on whether it was more likely an asteroid or a comet, although today, most evidence appears to favor an asteroid. Among the clues supporting an asteroid origin are mineral and chemical signatures identified in material collected from the region that researchers have argued are consistent with a stony or carbonaceous asteroid. However, identifying physical remnants definitively associated with the Tunguska object has remained challenging.

What remains unknown?

A warning from the sky?

While the Tunguska event remains an enigma in some ways, it also offers modern researchers an opportunity to study one of the rare recent examples in Earth's geological history of a large-scale cosmic airburst.

Deeper in Earth's past — around 66 million years ago — a six-mile-wide (10 km) asteroid struck what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The impact created the 120-mile-wide (190 km) Chicxulub crater in a cataclysmic event that drove mass extinctions across the planet, eliminating nearly three-quarters of the species that thrived on Earth until that time.

Of course, even objects orders of magnitude smaller than the object that created the Chicxulub crater can pose a danger to Earth. Although the object that struck Earth 66 million years ago is believed to have been as much as 200 times wider and millions of times more massive than the suspected asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908, estimates indicate that a Tunguska-scale event would be capable of killing millions if it occurred today over a city the size of New York.

Such estimates aren't based entirely on theory, either. In February 2013, planetary scientists were given a dramatic opportunity to gauge the effects of such an event when a previously undetected 60-foot-wide (20 meters) asteroid exploded after entering Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia.

The resulting blast, which released energy equivalent to an estimated 500 kilotons of TNT, was captured on cameras throughout the region as it damaged buildings and caused injuries to more than 1,000 people, mostly due to flying glass from windows that were shattered by the blast wave.

A wake-up call for planetary defense

Because of events like Chelyabinsk and Tunguska, planetary scientists have worked to expand initiatives that detect and monitor potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could become a concern in the decades ahead.

Still, despite such efforts having been in effect at the time, the Chelyabinsk event represented an example of a potentially dangerous NEO that effectively managed to sneak up on us. Fortunately, despite the damage that was caused, things could have been far worse. But will we be so lucky next time?

To help mitigate such concerns, in 2016 NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to help align its efforts with those of its international partners and develop more advanced methods of identifying and tracking any NEOs that could pose an impact threat.

Then in 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) demonstrated the use of a spacecraft as a kinetic impactor, which was intentionally sent on a collision course with Dimorphos, the small moon of the asteroid Didymos, which altered Dimorphos' orbital period around its companion by approximately 33 minutes. Such technology could one day prove to be vital if another potential Tunguska-type object were found to be on a collision course with Earth.

The mystery continues

Fact, fiction, and planning for the future

Given the questions that remain about Tunguska, as well as the misrepresentations and persistent myths surrounding it, several scientists have also worked in recent years to combat misinformation about the 1908 event.

In a paper published in March 2026 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, authors Mark Boslough and colleagues noted that future planning for evacuation plans and other mitigation efforts "depend critically on our ability to model these events, which depends on our understanding of the governing physics, which in turn is validated by sparse data on real events such as Tunguska."

"If people do not have confidence in the models on which evacuation plans are based, they could lose their lives," the study's authors warned.

More than a century after it occurred, June 30 is now recognized as International Asteroid Day, commemorating not only the blast's anniversary, but also the need for awareness of the dangerous potential future similar events could present.

Tunguska therefore remains a source of fascination for scientists, as well as an opportunity to better understand — and to prepare for — any potential future threats posed by similar objects, should one eventually be found on a collision course with Earth.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has moved a step closer to launching its second-ever interplanetary mission — an ambitious, eight-year exploration of seven asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that will culminate with a landing on the mysteriously red asteroid 269 Justitia.

The mission team unveiled a half-scale model of the homegrown probe that will make that landing during an Oct. 1 press conference in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. The autonomous craft will ride attached to the main spacecraft MBR Explorer, named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the UAE's prime minister.

The flight-ready lander is being kept pristine in a vacuum chamber in the capital before being transported to Colorado by Etihad Airways, officials said, where it will be integrated with the main spacecraft, which was developed by the UAE Space Agency.

If all goes to plan, the mission will lift off from Japan in March 2028, kicking off the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA). The project is an ambitious follow-up to the UAE Space Agency's Hope Mars orbiter, which has been studying the Red Planet since 2021.

"It's a proud moment for us here at the UAE," said Faisal al-Bannai, the secretary general of the Advanced Technology Research Council in Abu Dhabi.

'We don't know what we're going to find'

EMA will conduct high-speed flybys of six asteroids before reaching and orbiting 269 Justitia. It will travel a total of about 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers), which is equivalent to circling Earth roughly 125,000 times, said Najwa Aaraj, the CEO of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, which designed, built and tested the mission's lander.

Along the way, the MBR Explorer will utilize gravity assists from Venus and then Earth to swing deeper into space, zipping past its first three asteroid targets: 10253 Westerwald, 623 Chimaera and 13294 Rockox. A subsequent gravity assist from Mars will fling the spacecraft even farther out, guiding it past three more space rocks: 88055 Ghaf, 23871 Ousha and 59980 Moza.

By 2036, the spacecraft is scheduled to rendezvous with its final and most intriguing target, 269 Justitia. A roughly 30-mile-wide (50 km) object in the middle of the asteroid belt, 269 Justitia is unusual for its remarkably crimson hue.

Its distinct color more closely resembles icy objects in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune than its immediate main-belt neighbors. This unique trait has led planetary scientists to hypothesize that the asteroid formed in the frigid outer solar system and migrated inward early in the solar system's history. If true, visiting 269 Justitia would offer a rare, close-up look at pristine material from the distant outer solar system via a much shorter journey.

Scientists are particularly excited that the asteroid may still hold water-related minerals and organic compounds preserved from its origins. Studying its surface could therefore offer clues to how water and organic material were distributed as planets began to form, Elias Tsoutsanis, a chief researcher at TII's propulsion and space research center, said during the press briefing.

"We don't know what we're going to find — that's exploration," Tsoutsanis told reporters. "We're really excited."

According to the mission plan, the MBR Explorer will spend roughly seven months studying 269 Justitia from orbit. Beginning at an altitude of 155 miles (250 km), the spacecraft will gradually lower its path before releasing the lander. The smaller probe will then head toward the asteroid's surface, a descent that should take two to three hours depending on 269 Justitia's precise gravity, which remains unknown.

Although TII describes the mission ending with a landing on the surface of 269 Justitia, the engineering details suggest a more violent endgame. Cruising toward the asteroid's surface at 15 to 27 meters per second (34 to 60 mph) with no meaningful way to slow down, the probe will function less like a traditional lander and more like a planned impactor.

"We don't expect that the probe will survive the touchdown," said Mariam Alhammadi, a researcher in TII leading the mission's electric propulsion.

To ensure its two onboard cameras capture essential imagery during the descent, the probe will rely on an attitude-control system to counteract any post-separation spin, Alhammadi said. Should the probe unexpectedly survive the hard landing, she added, its battery is built to last 20 to 50 minutes, providing a narrow but crucial window for it to beam close-ups of the asteroid's surface back to Earth.

The high-velocity impact is also expected to dig a small crater on 269 Justitia, possibly exposing pristine subsurface material. Because this material cannot be imaged from orbit, the team expects the probe's final images to be among the most valuable of the entire mission.

Zero margin for error

Back on Earth, the team faces an unforgiving timeline. To execute the planned flybys, the mission must launch during a narrow three-week window that opens in early March 2028.

"God forbid we miss that — we basically don't have a mission," Mohsen al-Awadhi, the mission director at the UAE Space Agency, told reporters at the press conference. The orbital mechanics are so rigid that another comparable opportunity will not arise for at least 100 years, prompting al-Awadhi to add that he is devoting no time and energy to a backup plan.

Meeting the launch window is just the first hurdle, however. Once deployed in deep space, the lander must operate with absolute autonomy, receiving no commands from Earth or the main MBR Explorer spacecraft, the team says.

"In these eight years, I have no control to call it back — so nothing can go wrong," said Aaraj.

The team is confident that rigorous engineering and testing have produced a probe that can essentially "think for itself." Equipped with AI, it is designed to decide on its own when to capture images and how to filter and rank the most valuable data. Rather than waiting until it reaches its destination, the lander will take images throughout its eight-year cruise and send the best ones back to Earth roughly every six months, according to a TII statement.

Officials declined to disclose the mission's overall cost or say whether it has stayed on budget. The United States' ongoing war in Iran has sparked missile and drone attacks across the UAE, but the mission team has persevered: WIRED reported that they pressed on even as missiles were intercepted overhead.

Looking ahead

Beyond the immediate scientific return, officials said a central pillar of this mission is accelerating the UAE's sovereign deep-space capabilities and fostering its domestic space economy.

The UAE Space Agency, established in 2014, has steadily expanded its portfolio from satellite launches to a Martian orbiter and sending two astronauts to the International Space Station. The EMA probe represents a developmental leap, designed and built in just under two years by a team of roughly 50 local engineers and scientists, many of whom began their careers as entry-level technicians on the Hope Mars mission.

"I don't want to call them my kids — there's a lot of them — but that's how attached I feel to them," al-Awadhi said during the briefing.

The UAE aims to position itself among the world's 10 largest space economies by 2031, targeting a massive expansion of a sector currently valued at about $12 billion. According to al-Bannai, the EMA project is designed to be one of many programs to come. By the time the lander impacts 269 Justitia in 2036, the technology matured during this journey will already be driving the next generation of Emirati spacecraft, he said.

"That's the journey we're on today."

On. Oct. 11, 1968, Apollo 7 launched into space with NASA astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. This was the first mission of the Apollo program that carried a crew into space.

Apollo 7 rebooted the Apollo program after a fire killed three astronauts during a launch rehearsal 20 months earlier.

NASA needed to prove that their Apollo spacecraft worked with this mission, which was really more of a test flight. Though the spacecraft seemed to work alright, the crew got a little snippy during their 11 days in space. First they suffered from motion sickness after launch, then Schirra came down with a cold, and the crew was constantly arguing with mission control and each other. None of the Apollo 7 astronauts went back to space after that.

Why it mattered

Had Apollo 7 not succeeded, the chances of NASA being able to fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" would be called into question — not just because the clock was ticking down, but because of increasing political pressure to shut down the expensive moon program.

In the wake of the January 1967 Apollo 1 fire, NASA and North American Aviation, the prime contractor for the Apollo command module, needed to overhaul the spacecraft to make it safe for crews to fly in space. Apollo 7 provided a "shakedown cruise" for the vehicle, to confirm the fixes worked and that the command module was space worthy.

"In its day, the Apollo command module was the most complex machine ever built by man to be operated by man," said Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7 pilot, on the 40th anniversary of the flight in 2008. "We launched on the longest and most ambitious engineering test flight in history, testing the spacecraft systems, verifying the operating procedures, checking out the worldwide tracking network, and that's not to mention testing our crew."

Apollo 7 was deemed by NASA to a 101% success, setting up the first lunar landing in July 1969.

"All of us in the flights that followed were dependent on the Apollo 7 crew doing their job," said Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander. "So thanks Walt and Wally and Donn."

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

We’ve had a lot of good Alien video games in recent years, but nothing has quite matched the highs and authenticity of 2014’s Alien: Isolation. It took a decade of players clamouring for a sequel, but in late 2024, our prayers were answered when developer Creative Assembly dropped a trailer announcing Alien: Isolation 2.

Now, we’re slowly learning about what developer Creative Assembly has in store for us. Scary teasers and comments from creative director Al Hope suggest we're looking at a bigger, more ambitious survival horror game beyond an obvious visual glow-up. Our hands-on preview at Gamescom 2026 also confirmed the protagonist isn’t Amanda Ripley, which instantly raises a number of questions.

Ahead of Alien: Isolation 2’s arrival, there are plenty of Alien movies and games to go through – plus Alien: Earth’s stellar first season. Now's also a great time to play through the original Alien: Isolation again, to prepare yourself for the horrors that await us with the sequel.

Now, enough yacking. It's time to get on the express elevator to hell and find out everything that we know about Alien: Isolation 2 so far.

When is Alien: Isolation 2 coming out?

Alien: Isolation 2 doesn't have a confirmed release window yet.

Despite the impressive in-game teaser and gameplay demos, Sega and Creative Assembly still haven’t talked about a potential release window. Though many outlets are running with a 2027 target as possible, the truth is the powers that be aren’t ready to commit yet.

When we know more, you'll know more.

What platforms will Alien: Isolation 2 be on?

Alien: Isolation 2 is launching on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Though it’s unclear if the game will release before next-gen consoles arrive, the current plan is to target current-gen machines and, of course, PC through Steam.

Given the high-fidelity visuals, a Nintendo Switch 2 version might come as a shock, but looking at the excellent third-party ports the hybrid handheld has received so far, we’re confident the developers can deliver a thrilling experience on it as well.

Alien: Isolation 2 trailers

After the aforementioned teasers, Sega and Creative Assembly finally unveiled Alien: Isolation 2 with the first-ever in-game footage in summer 2026. Watch its ‘Last Chance’ reveal trailer below:

When does Alien: Isolation 2 take place in the timeline?

Alien: Isolation 2 is confirmed to happen a few months after the events of the first game. Amanda Ripley’s battle against a Xenomorph infestation aboard the Sevastopol Station took place roughly 15 years after the events of the original 1979 movie, which places both games closer to Alien: Romulus in the canon timeline.

This time around, however, there are two big differences: Amanda Ripley isn’t the protagonist anymore, and, instead of a space station, we’ll have to survive on a rainy colony planet.

Deeper plot details are a secret for now, but we know the planet’s name is LV-921. There, a Weyland-Yutani employee named Blake and her colleagues come across a crashed part of the doomed Sevastopol station, which was destroyed by Ripley in an attempt to exterminate the aliens at the end of the first game.

The prologue demo we played at Gamescom didn’t offer much more context, but Blake is an administrative employee who’s just arrived at the colony and wants to prove she fits her new role. As you can imagine, that quickly gets her in trouble. A Xenomorph had crash-landed on the planet already, so maybe it’s up to her to finish the job that the previous Alien: Isolation protagonist started...

What type of game is Alien: Isolation 2?

Like its predecessor, Alien: Isolation 2 is a single-player, first-person survival horror game.

The gameplay loop of the original is preserved. This means you'll have limited access to weaponry and survival tools, and you'll face sneaky (and relentless) Xenomorphs that dynamically adapt to player progress and movement through each level. You’re not meant to kill the aliens, but rather to avoid and escape them.

Through patience, stealth, and smart use of supplies for crafting, survival is achievable, but this isn’t a bug hunt with the Colonial Marines. To quote Ash in the original movie, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.”

Does Alien: Isolation 2 have a multiplayer mode?

Alien: Isolation 2 is a single-player survival horror game like the original. At the time of writing, no plans for a co-op or multiplayer mode of any kind have been shared.

At this point, it’s unclear what the whole Alien: Isolation 2 package will look like — and we wouldn’t rule out an extra, mission-based Survivor Mode like the original’s — but it seems Creative Assembly isn’t chasing co-op trends with the sequel in any way. This is a cinematic, high-intensity solo adventure.

Is there a public Alien: Isolation 2 demo?

Though attendees had access to the second Alien: Isolation 2 demo at Gamescom, no wider public demo has been released.

This could change in the future and as the game nears release, but without a launch window in sight, don’t hold your breath. It’ll be a while before most players can get their hands on the long-awaited sci-fi survival horror sequel.

Behold! Amateur astrophotographer ing. Cornelis van Zuilen has created a stunning cosmic mosaic of all 110 galaxies, star clusters and nebulas of the Messier catalog — a leviathan effort that took hundreds of hours and many nights of sleeping in his car to complete.

"One of the first Messier objects I photographed was Messier 45 (the Pleiades) back in 2024, when I had just purchased my cooled deep-sky camera and was beginning my deep-sky astrophotography journey," van Zuilen told Space.com in an email. "About a year and a half ago, I decided to capture the entire catalogue."

Van Zuilen spent 352 hours and 13 minutes imaging the menagerie of deep-sky objects using an Askar 103APO telescope and a William Optics Redcat 51 MK2.5, before artfully editing each subject using photoshop and the astronomy software PixInsight.

The ancient light collected by the telescopes was captured with a range of ZWO astronomy cameras and filters.

Van Zuilen observed many of the objects directly from his balcony from the town of Heiloo in the Netherlands, while others required van Zuilen to take his telescopes further afield to avoid capturing treetops and farm buildings in his field of view.

"Doing this from the Netherlands was quite a challenge," explained van Zuilen. "I often had to travel to a semi-dark field nearby to get a clear view of the horizon, which meant many nights of sleeping in my car. But to be honest, I actually really enjoyed that part, it felt like camping."

What is the Messier catalog?

The Messier catalog was first compiled by 18th-century astronomer Charles Messier, who sought to create a list of deep-sky objects that could be mistaken for comets as they glowed in the night sky, according to NASA.

Messier's catalog has been revised several times since its creation and includes some of the most famous deep-sky objects that can be spotted from the Northern Hemisphere, including the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Pleiades open star cluster (M45) and the Orion Nebula (M42).

Each of the objects can be spotted with a modest backyard telescope under dark sky conditions, which has made the Messier catalog a popular sightseeing checklist for amateur astronomers looking to explore the wonders beyond our solar system.

"As you might notice, some images are larger than others, and there's a reason for that too," continued van Zuilen. "Those are my favorite images! And most of them have a personal story behind how they came to be, which makes the collage a bit more personal and meaningful to me."

Want to start out on your own astrophotography journey? Then be sure to read our beginner's guide to capturing the night sky, along with our selection of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

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.

For a show with no aliens or faster-than-light travel, "Red Dwarf" has crammed an awful lot of sci-fi concepts into its 13 seasons.

Frequently as smart as "Star Trek" — albeit on a much smaller budget — Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's BBC sitcom always punched above its weight when it came to big genre ideas. In fact, many of its stories were truly ahead of their time, built around concepts that have since turned up in hit American shows (including the recent "Strange New Worlds" season four finale) and even Christopher Nolan movies.

Below we've picked out 10 sci-fi storylines and premises (and one honorable mention) where Dave Lister, Arnold Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat got there first…

1. Thoughts made flesh

Episode: "Confidence and Paranoia", "Red Dwarf I" (1988)

In "Red Dwarf": Lister goes down with a bout of space pneumonia, which has the unlikely side-effect of making his fever dreams a reality. In a twist that would give Sigmund Freud a field day, his confidence and paranoia manifest as actual humans — the former played by ex-"The Late Late Show" host Craig Ferguson.

In "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine": With a plot that feels more like a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" outing, "DS9" season one episode "If Wishes Were Horses" sees the crew's imaginations literally coming to life. The station is soon invaded by out-of-time baseball stars, fairytale villains, and unseasonal snow, all created by aliens eager to understand the concept of imagination.

2. Total immersion virtual reality games

Episode: "Better than Life", "Red Dwarf II" (1988)

In "Red Dwarf": The crew immerses themselves in a total immersion reality game named "Better than Life". Using some headgear that looks nothing at all like a bicycle helmet, they enter a virtual world indistinguishable from reality — though, of course, Rimmer doesn't deal with happiness well, and manages to ruin it for everyone. (Similar virtual reality tech later appeared in "Red Dwarf VI" episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse".)

In "Ready Player One": Yes, the holodeck turned up in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" a year before — and the "Recreation Room" appeared in "The Animated Series" a year before that — but they're simulations you walk into. The OASIS in "Ready Player One", however, is undeniably a descendant of the "Better than Life" tech, an all-encompassing virtuality experience built to transport you away from the drudgery of everyday life.

3. Life in reverse

Episode: "Backwards", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": Kryten and Rimmer crash-land on a version of Earth where time runs backwards for everyone but them. While they wait for Lister and the Cat to rescue them, they make a living as a comedy duo called "The Sensational Reverse Brothers", while also trying to avoid finding out what happens when you go to the toilet…

In "Tenet" (2020): Temporal terrorists use prototype technology to "invert entropy", allowing them to travel through time in reverse. Director Christopher Nolan uses the premise to stage spectacular sequences where cars reverse down freeways at high speed, cause and effect goes topsy-turvy, and fights are just, well, weird.

As a result, it's incredibly difficult to understand what the hell is going on — the "Red Dwarf" version is shorter, easier to follow, and an awful lot funnier.

4. Take a picture

Episode: "Timeslides", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": In the ship's darkroom (for the benefit of anyone under 35, that's where pre-digital photos were developed), a weird turn of events causes pictures to come to life. The crew can subsequently step inside images and interact with people and objects in the snaps — as long as they don't step outside the frame of the original photo. This results in a snowball fight, some wedding crashing, and Lister stealing Hitler's bag.

In "Black Mirror": "Timeslides" gets a predictably dark (but moving) twist in the seventh season of Charlie Brooker's dystopian anthology series. In "Eulogy", Paul Giamatti plays the lonely Philip, invited to assist with a memorial for an ex-girlfriend who's just passed away. Using a tech company's tech to explore existing photos — his last connection to his former love — he revisits painful memories and thoughts of what might have been.

5. The odd couple

Episode: "Marooned", "Red Dwarf III" (1989)

In "Red Dwarf": Starbug crash-lands on a remote ice planet, trapping Lister and Rimmer alone on a strange and hostile world. With their survival in the balance, there's nothing for the two frenemies to do but talk. A lot.

In "Star Trek: Enterprise": "Shuttlepod One" is the quintessential American bottle episode, a popular TV device in which the action is predominantly confined to a single set. In a plotline remarkably reminiscent of "Marooned", Trip Tucker and Malcolm Reed find themselves contemplating the end after the apparent destruction of the Enterprise. There's not much for the two crewmates to do but talk. A lot.

6. Seeing what they want you to see

Episode: "Camille", "Red Dwarf IV" (1991)

In "Red Dwarf": On a mission to save a doomed spaceship, the crew rescue a female mechanoid named Camille. Or so they think… she's actually a pleasure GELF (Genetically Engineered LifeForm) who can assume the form of anyone's ideal partner. Hence, Lister sees a Liverpudlian woman, Rimmer encounters a fussy hologram, and the narcissistic Cat gets to date, well, himself.

In "Babylon 5": The mysterious Vorlons, one of "Babylon 5"'s oldest races, spend most of the series hiding away in "encounter suits" that hide their true form. But when Ambassador Kosh eventually reveals himself while rescuing Captain Sheridan from a potentially fatal fall, he projects a more angelic form, with everyone on the space station seeing a face appropriate to their own species.

Because the Vorlons have spent thousands of years tampering with the DNA of younger races, we've all been pre-programmed to see them as beatific beings.

7. A white hole

Episode: "White Hole", "Red Dwarf IV" (1991)

In "Red Dwarf": "So, what is it?" "Red Dwarf" didn't invent the white hole — the concept is based on actual theoretical astrophysics — but the sitcom certainly had a big part to play in bringing the less famous twin of the black hole into public consciousness. In the show, the crew encounters a white hole spewing time and space into the universe, and the only way to close it is for Lister to play space pool, sinking a planet into the interdimensional fissure via an over-elaborate trick shot.

In "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds": With all the spatial anomalies that pop up on the final frontier, it's remarkable that it took until the Strange New Worlds season four finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise", for a white hole to show up.

The "Trek" version may be surprisingly close to current theory, which suggests that the white hole is essentially the flip side of a black hole — while nothing can escape from a black hole, nothing can enter a white hole.

That said, it's unlikely that a real-life white hole/black hole dyad would allow Uhura to communicate with a future version of herself. Or that it would be the birthing site for a giant space baby with no concept of past, present, or future.

8. Manipulating the odds

Episode: "Quarantine", "Red Dwarf V" (1992)

In "Red Dwarf": The crew visits a virus research centre where they discover a selection of "positive" viruses — rather than making you ill, their effects are generally good for your wellbeing. Examples include inspiration, charisma, sexual magnetism and — most notably — luck.

In Marvel comics: Domino made her Marvel debut just before this "Red Dwarf" episode, but we're going to put this down to a case of convergent evolution. The X-Force and "Deadpool" mainstay is well known for her ability to manipulate the laws of chance — just like the probabilistic microbe, her powers turn luck into a tangible property.

9. Hard light

Episode: "Legion", "Red Dwarf VI" (1993)

In "Red Dwarf": Holographic crew member Rimmer is cursed to live his life unable to touch anything, until gestalt entity Legion upgrades his "light bee" — the hovering device that creates his image — to project "hard light". He subsequently becomes, to all intents and purposes, indestructible, while remaining entirely mobile.

In "Star Trek: Voyager": "The Next Generation" was giving light physical form long before "Legion", but what happened on the holodeck tended to stay on the holodeck. Then the Emergency Medical Hologram became a series regular in "Voyager", and needed some way to set foot outside sickbay — his handy "mobile holo-emitter" is essentially an arm-mounted light bee.

"Starfleet Academy"'s photonic lifeform SAM (Series Acclimation Mil) also feels like a descendant of the holographic starship crew in "Red Dwarf V"'s "Holoship".

10. Quantum entanglement

Episode: "Entangled", "Red Dwarf X" (2012)

In "Red Dwarf": An experiment involving a "quantum rod" from a previous adventure causes Kryten and the Cat to become entangled on a quantum level. In other words, it's an excuse for Robert Llewellyn and Danny John-Jules to perform a masterclass in both physical theatre and spooky action, as they move entirely in sync with each other.

In "The Marvels": It's fair to say it's not quite how Albert Einstein theorized it, but quantum entanglement is also used to justify Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan being tied together in the 2023 MCU movie. The results are slightly different — they keep swapping places every time they use their powers — but it's a similarly loose riff on real-life physics.

Honorable mention: It happened last night

"Thanks for the Memory", "Red Dwarf II"

In "Red Dwarf": When the Boys from the Dwarf hold an epic party to mark the anniversary of Rimmer's death, they get so drunk that four days have passed by the time they wake up. With no memory of the intervening time — why is Lister's leg broken? Who completed that jigsaw puzzle — they try to piece together what happened.

In "The Hangover" (2009): Okay, it's not science fiction, but the hit comedy film is built on exactly the same premise — a bunch of guys get so wasted in Vegas that they end up on a mission to work out how they ended up with one missing tooth, a lost baby, and a tiger in their hotel bathroom.

Recent "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" shore leave episode "Human Best Friend" also recycled that party/amnesia formula.

On Episode 231 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik take a dive deep into their favorite space si-fi across the ages.

From the earliest works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to the best of contemporary space science fiction, Rod and Tariq also challenge you with some of the most obscure titles they know.

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

• The Integral Trees
• The Smoke Ring
• Lucifer's Hammer: A Novel
• Star Trek Classics: The Mirror Universe Saga
• Rising Stars Compendium
• Farmer in the Sky
• From the Earth to the Moon (Illustrated 1874 Edition): 100th Anniversary Collection
• Between Planets
• The Expanse Series Collection 9 Books Set
• The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1
• Ancillary Justice
• Firestar: An Epic of Science Fiction for the Twenty-First Century
• The Martian
• Rusty's Space Ship
• We All Died at Breakaway Station
• Edison's Conquest of Mars: A Classic Mars Invasion Science Fiction Adventure and Early Interplanetary War Story
• The Martian Chronicles
• Fury (Golden Age Masterworks)
• Farewell to The Master: The Day the Earth Stood Still
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• A Talent For War (An Alex Benedict Novel Book 1)
• War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
• The Chimerium Gambit: The Radiation Angels
• The Great Planet Robbery
• Earth Strike: A Gritty Military Space Opera in the Vein of Battlestar Galactica

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.

On Oct. 10, 1967, the international Outer Space Treaty was ratified. This treaty established a set of rules regulating how different countries can explore and use outer space.

Specifically, it says "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind."

The treaty dictates that no one can claim territory in outer space and that other celestial bodies must be used "exclusively for peaceful purposes." More than 100 countries have ratified the treaty today.

Why it mattered

Considered the "cornerstone" for modern space law, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (formally, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) has provided more than a theoretical framework for future activities, but has been put to use and enforced for modern spaceflight activities.

The treaty's primary focus is on the peaceful use of space.

"First, it contains an undertaking not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction. Second, it limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for establishing military bases, installation, or fortifications; testing weapons of any kind; or conducting military maneuvers," reads a summary prepared by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond that, the treaty addresses the ownership of spacecraft and satellites, whether they are in space, on the surface of another celestial body or on Earth; lays the foundation for restrictions on off-Earth property rights; and calls for parties to the treaty to provide aide when needed to astronauts, whether they are in space or encounter problems during their landings.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

Ancient Egyptian temples will inevitably dominate the story of the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027. Luxor, home to Karnak, the Valley of the Kings and some of the most famous monuments of the ancient world, will experience more than six minutes of totality and will attract eclipse chasers from around the world. Southern Spain, particularly the coast around Tarifa and Málaga, is also expected to be busy.

But the path of totality is vast. It will stretch 9,462 miles (15,227 km) across Earth and reach about 160 miles (260 km) wide. After crossing southern Spain, the moon’s shadow will race east across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt before crossing the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and continuing across Somalia and into the Indian Ocean.

Along the way are mountain towns, desert oases, Mediterranean islands and historic cities where eclipse chasers can experience anything from a few minutes to more than six minutes of totality. Here are 10 less obvious places than Luxor, Egypt, to consider for the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2, 2027. All times, totality durations and historical cloud cover data come from Time and Date.

1. Vejer de la Frontera, Spain

Thousands will watch the eclipse from Spanish beaches, but inland are some of Andalucía’s gems. Vejer de la Frontera is one of its classic pueblos blancos — “white towns” — a maze of whitewashed houses and narrow streets occupying a hilltop a few miles inland from the Costa de la Luz. Elevated viewpoints across the surrounding countryside could make this an intriguing alternative to watching from the crowded coastline.

2. Medina-Sidonia, Spain

Perched high above the Cádiz countryside, Medina-Sidonia offers something the eclipse beaches cannot: elevation. One of Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements, its historic center contains whitewashed streets, churches and the remains of a hilltop castle, with expansive views toward the surrounding plains. Totality lasts over three and a half minutes.

3. Arcos de la Frontera, Spain

You’ll sacrifice almost all of Spain’s potential totality by heading to another of Spain’s classic pueblos blancos, but what a setting. The old town of Arcos de la Frontera occupies a dramatic limestone ridge above the Guadalete River, its buildings seemingly piled along the cliff edge. Arcos sits very close to the northern limit of the path, which some eclipse chasers seek out specifically for a longer display of Baily’s beads. For an eclipse chaser who values that, scenery over duration, or relative quiet, this geographical knife-edge could be appealing.

4. Asilah, Morocco

Asilah offers an enticing combination of long totality and Atlantic scenery. The compact coastal town is known for its whitewashed medina, brightly painted murals and imposing Portuguese-era ramparts overlooking the ocean. It’s just south of the centerline of the path of totality, so it gets close to the best eclipse durations available in Morocco. Its walls, towers, beach and ocean could all provide enticing foregrounds for eclipse photography.

5. Chefchaouen Kasbah, Morocco

Surely one of the most photogenic surprises anywhere on the eclipse track, Chefchaouen is Morocco’s famous “Blue City,” its old medina filled with buildings painted in shades of blue beneath the rugged Rif Mountains. It also gets a substantial eclipse of roughly four and a quarter minutes, with the sun about 39 degrees high. An elevated viewpoint that captures the medina, the mountains, and the eclipsed sun could produce an extraordinary photograph.

6. Al Hoceïma, Morocco

For a wilder Moroccan eclipse, look east along the Mediterranean to Al Hoceïma. The city sits amid the rugged Rif Mountains, where cliffs and steep hills descend toward beaches and intensely blue Mediterranean water. With its beach resorts, you'll also find plenty of accommodation. It gets a long totality and the dramatic coastal landscape is attractive, though historical cloud cover is less favorable.

7. Oran, Algeria

Algeria’s second-largest city could be one of the more practical ways to experience the eclipse in the country. Oran overlooks the Mediterranean and is backed by hills crowned by the Fort of Santa Cruz, offering different kinds of eclipse experiences. More importantly, it’s on the centerline and gets more than five minutes of totality.

8. Houmt Souk, Tunisia

Djerba — the largest island in North Africa — offers an appealing alternative to the archaeological sites and desert landscapes elsewhere in Tunisia. Known as the “Island of Dreams” for its 300 days of annual sunshine, its main town, Houmt Souk, is known for whitewashed architecture, markets and a historic fortress. The surrounding island brings palm trees, beaches and Mediterranean horizons.

9. Bahariya Oasis, Egypt

For maximum totality without Luxor's expected crowds, Bahariya Oasis deserves serious attention. Centered on the town of Bawiti, this remote depression in Egypt’s Western Desert is surrounded by barren hills, date palms, hot springs and sweeping desert landscapes. It also lies remarkably close to the eclipse centreline, delivering 6 minutes 19 seconds of totality beneath almost dependably clear August skies. Nearby desert viewpoints could provide enormous horizons — although the eclipsed sun will be 79 degrees high.

10. Ta’if region, Saudi Arabia

Most attention in Saudi Arabia will inevitably focus on Jeddah and Mecca, but the Ta’if region offers something completely different. Sitting around 5,580 feet (1,700 meters) above sea level in the mountains east of Mecca, it is known for its cooler highland climate, dramatic escarpments and surrounding peaks. Duration varies substantially across the area because Ta’if lies toward the edge of the eclipse path, so eclipse chasers will need to choose their precise observing location carefully.

SpaceX just sent another batch of satellites to orbit for the U.S. military.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 10) at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT; 12:39 a.m. local time), hauling 21 "data transport" satellites to orbit for the U.S. Space Force's Space Development Agency (SDA).

That was five days later than originally planned. SpaceX tried to launch the mission on Monday (Oct. 5), but the Falcon 9 aborted that attempt in the countdown's final minute, for reasons that the company has not disclosed.

Today's launch helps build out the SDA's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which SpaceX describes as "a mesh network of optically connected satellites in low Earth orbit [LEO] that enable global military tactical communications and missile warning, indication and tracking capabilities."

The liftoff was the fourth of nine that SpaceX will conduct to help assemble the architecture's Tranche 1 — the "initial warfighting capability tranche," according to the SDA.

Tranche 1 will eventually consist of 154 operational satellites in LEO — 126 data-transport spacecraft and 28 missile-tracking vehicles. There will also be four missile-defense test satellites, which will sport a "higher fidelity" infrared sensor than their tracking counterparts, SDA officials wrote. (Missile-tracking satellites generally hunt for the heat signatures these weapons produce during flight).

Eighty-four of the 126 data-transport satellites have now launched to date, all of them on Falcon 9s, which lifted off from Vandenberg in September 2025, October 2025, July of this year and today.

And, as its name suggests, Tranche 1 will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan.

"SDA leverages spiral development to deploy and proliferate new capability into a new generation of the PWSA every two years, called a 'tranche,' to continually increase capability used by the warfighter," SDA officials wrote in a Tranche 1 fact sheet.

Everything seemed to go well on today's launch. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Vandenberg for a landing a little over seven minutes after liftoff. It was the sixth mission for this particular booster, which is designated 1103. Its most recent flight was the July Tranche 1 mission for the SDA.

SpaceX ended its webcast shortly after booster touchdown, at the request of the SDA, so we did not get to see satellite deployment. But that's the norm for national security launches.

The satellites were successfully deployed in their target orbit, according to an Oct. 10 announcement by their builder, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman. The 21 spacecraft "will provide secure, resilient, low-latency communications and data transport in low Earth orbit," helping to connect warfighters with missile-tracking satellites, the company wrote.

Today's mission was the 111th Falcon 9 flight of the year. The vast majority of these — more than 70% — have helped build out SpaceX's Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 satellites.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. ET on Oct. 10 with news of successful satellite deployment.