NASA will hold a two-day aerospace exposition this November, and it may draw a surprising number of "Simpsons" fans.

The event, which NASA announced today (Aug. 14), will be held Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Florida's Space Coast. It's called "Max Power," which is also a famous Homer Simpson pseudonym.

In the 13th episode of the show's 10th season, which first aired in February 1999, Homer legally changed his name to Max Power. He wanted to disassociate himself from a bumbling character on the (fictional) TV show "Police Cops" who shared his given moniker.

Homer made the switch to Max Power — which he said he got off a hair dryer — without consulting his family, a move that did not go over well.

"Wait a minute!" his dad protested. "The family name is my legacy to you. I got it from my father, and he got it from his father, and he traded a mule for it. And that mule went on to save spring break."

Homer's wife Marge was also displeased.

"But I fell in love with Homer Simpson," she said. "I don't want to snuggle with Max Power."

"Nobody snuggles with Max Power," Homer — or rather Max — responded. "You strap yourself in and feel the Gs!"

NASA's Max Power expo is about feeling the Gs as well, at least in part.

"The two-day event will feature immersive experiences for all ages to enjoy, including air shows, skydiving stunts, technology demonstrations, spaceflight hardware, military aircraft and behind‑the‑scenes access to America's spaceport," agency officials wrote in a description of the expo. "Attend talks led by NASA experts and meet astronauts from some of agency’s most famous missions!"

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, an accomplished pilot as well as a private astronaut, said that he plans to participate in the expo's air show. And, if you're unable to attend this November, you'll likely have other chances down the road.

"Certainly, the idea is that this event, Max Power, becomes the first of many," Isaacman said during a press conference today.

Empty space is not as empty as it looks.

That is the takeaway of a new study examining signals from a dead star, offering what researchers say is the strongest evidence yet that extreme magnetic fields can alter the properties of a vacuum, causing seemingly empty space to act like a prism and changing how light travels through it

The findings, led by Rachael Stewart, a graduate student in physics at the George Washington University, confirm a prediction of a strange effect first proposed 90 years ago.

"The information we obtained from looking at this distant star core also gives us clues about the nature of the fabric of reality as we know it, and I find that to be incredible," Stewart said in a statement.

The idea dates to 1936, when the German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his student Hans Euler proposed that space is never truly void. Instead, they argued, it is a simmering sea of "virtual particles" — electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons — that flicker in and out of existence, briefly interacting with their surroundings before vanishing.

This subatomic froth is a consequence of quantum mechanics, and it remains invisible under ordinary conditions. But the theory predicts that an extremely strong magnetic field, such as one around a magnetar, can change how light moves, causing the light's waves to become more strongly aligned in a particular direction in an effect known as "vacuum birefringence."

"Detecting vacuum birefringence requires a magnetic field that is over 100 million times stronger than any we've ever made on Earth," study co-author Marcus Lower, an astrophysicist at the Swinburne University in Australia, said in another statement. "Thankfully, nature has provided us with magnetars, which are the perfect cosmic laboratories to go looking for this effect."

Magnetars are dense, city-size remnants left behind after massive stars explode, hosting the most powerful magnetic fields known in the universe. They are among the rare celestial objects capable of generating fields strong enough to reveal vacuum birefringence, offering scientists an extreme environment to test physics under conditions impossible to replicate on Earth.

"We're not just studying astronomical objects anymore; we're using them to test the laws of nature," study co-author Michela Negro, an astrophysicist at the Louisiana State University, said in a statement.

Astronomers have caught glimpses of this elusive phenomenon before, but not conclusively. In 2017, researchers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile observed polarization hints around a faint neutron star called RX J1856.5-3754, located about 400 light-years from Earth. However, those optical measurements remained open to interpretation, partly due to the challenges of isolating the optical signal.

At the time, scientists noted that definitive proof would require space-based X-ray observatories, specifically NASA's then-forthcoming Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Launched in 2021, IXPE carries three identical telescopes designed to measure the polarization of high-energy X-rays.

"It's only in the last six or so years that we've actually had a telescope capable of detecting this effect around magnetars," Lower told Michael West Media, an independent news website in Australia.

In March and April 2025, the researchers pointed IXPE at 1E 1547-5408, a magnetar that spins once every two seconds and is unusual among its kind for steadily emitting radio waves. The team supplemented that data with observations from an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station, as well as Australia's Murriyang radio telescope and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.

According to the study, two findings pointed to vacuum birefringence at work.

First, the X-rays picked up by IXPE were nearly three times more polarized than in similar sources, far higher than standard models of a neutron star's surface emission could explain on their own. Second, the polarization pointed the same way as the star's magnetic field, matching the pattern already observed in its radio waves. The researchers concluded that this combination leaves vacuum birefringence as the only explanation that fits the data.

"It's a bit of a relief because it means that our theories still work and there's nothing broken with physics," Lower told the Michael West Media news site.

For Fernando Camilo, chief scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory and a co-author of the new paper, the discovery brings a long journey full circle. Camilo has been studying 1E 1547-5408 since 2007, when he first detected its radio waves using the Murriyang dish, revealing its two-second rotation rate.

"At the time 1E 1547 was only the second magnetar in the Milky Way known to emit radio waves, and we were confident that regular monitoring would unveil interesting behaviour," Camilo said in the statement. "However we could never have imagined that 20 years later it would contribute to investigating a fundamental, and particularly quirky, prediction of quantum mechanics."

The team hopes to confirm the finding with data from future missions, including a proposed orbital mission called GoSOX (short for Globe Orbiting Soft X-ray Polarimeter), alongside improved computer simulations to distinguish the vacuum birefringence signal from other processes around magnetars.

"With these future data on hand and our updated simulations, we may finally be able to complete the quest started by Heisenberg nearly 90 years ago," Lower said in the Swinburne University statement.

This research is described in a paper published Aug. 5 in the journal Nature.

'For All Mankind' was pretty good, wasn't it? Sadly, the show's run has finished now, and while we've got spin-off 'Star City' picking up the mantle, it's still going to be a while before we get any more space politics drama on our screens. Luckily, we can find it on our tabletops instead, with these fantastic space board games.

If you haven't seen it, For All Mankind is the story of an alternate history in which the space race between the U.S. and Russia never fizzled out. Instead, it becomes a multigenerational competition that drives everything from electric vehicle adoption to gender equality.

If, like millions of other Apple TV subscribers, you've been rapt watching 'For All Mankind' and want to bring some of that hot diplomacy and betrayal to your own kitchen table, you're in luck. Several space-based board games let you get a taste of the space race intrigue without having to connive your way to the top of an actual space agency.

Social deduction games have exploded in recent years with good reason. Some of the best tabletop games include some level of politicking, as well as the deal-making, deception, and favor trading that entails. Making social and technological advances often comes at the cost of high levels of international brinkmanship and some very gray ethics.

So, are you ready to kick off the space race once again? Here are 7 space board games that capture the high drama of the era, but without all the devastating foreign policy implications of the real thing.

1. Twilight Struggle

Developer: Ananda Gupta, Trevor Devries | Release Date: 2005 | Players: 2 | Recommended Age: 13+

Twilight Struggle is a perfect distillation of the tension and national anxiety embodied by the Cold War. It follows the conflict between the U.S. and Russia across five decades, and its space race track mirrors For All Mankind's geopolitical stakes.

Every satellite you managed to hurl into the atmosphere or astronaut you successfully guide into space represents both a technical and a propaganda victory. It’s like watching Margo Madison and Sergei Nikulov battle with dice in place of launch vehicles.

Buy "Twilight Struggle" at GMT Games

2. Twilight Imperium

Developer: Corey Konieczka (Fantasy Flight Games) | Release Date: 2017 | Players: 3-6 (up to 8 with expansions) | Recommended Age: 14+

Considered by many to be the gold standard in space politicking, Twilight Imperium drops you into a vast galaxy after the fall of the ancient Lazax empire.

Players take on the role of interstellar empires competing to conquer the capital planet at the center of a huge galaxy. They achieve this by building space docks and warships, trading goods, and clashing in cosmic combat.

The true brilliance of TI lies in its asymmetry, with each of the 17 factions having a variety of advantages and quirks that differentiate it from the others, and the way it drives players to negotiate with — and backstab — each other on the galactic stage.

Laws and elections can quickly shift the balance of power in the game, and the rules can be subverted or twisted to your advantage through the deft deployment of crushing bureaucracy. It's a long game and not one for beginners, but there really is nothing quite like a session of Twilight Imperium.

Buy "Twilight Imperium" at Asmodee

3. High Frontier (4th Edition)

Developer: Phil Eklund (Sierra Madre Games) | Release Date: 2019 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 14+

Designed by real-world aerospace engineer and rocket scientist Phil Eklund, High Frontier puts you at the helm of a space agency or private aerospace company and tasks you with building a self-sustaining space economy.

It channels For All Mankind’s scientific obsession and is a great showcase for the intersection of personal and national ambition and feasibility. Every decision feels freighted with international importance, and players are forced to grapple with mechanics like realistically modeled orbital mechanics and unforgiving resource scarcity.

Beware, though; High Frontier is one of the most complex board games ever developed, but can also be one of the most rewarding for committed players.

Buy "High Frontier" at Ion Game Design.

4. SpaceCorp: 2025–2300 AD

Developer: Phil Eklund (Sierra Madre Games) | Release Date: 2018 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 14+

SpaceCorp takes us far beyond the imagined future of For All Mankind's world of governmental space agency programs, and into a timeline where vast, powerful corporations have transformed cosmic exploration and exploitation into big business.

Players begin in low Earth orbit and steadily expand their way into the depths of space, trying to find the balance between risk and profit. Like any good far future dystopia, SpaceCorp positions massive corporations as the true governing entities of the future, swapping in private investors for diplomats and corporate boards for politicians.

It's the natural evolution of the creeping commercialization that For All Mankind's later seasons begin to gesture towards. Real life is making similar gestures, if we're honest, and I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

Buy "SpaceCorp: 2025–2300 AD" at Amazon.

5. Terraforming Mars

Developer: Jacob Fryxelius (FryxGames) | Release Date: 2016 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 12+

Terraforming Mars takes the terrestrial-based space race so vividly portrayed in For All Mankind and ships it to the Martian surface.

Players compete to build massive engines of profit and production to transform Mars into a livable habitat, all in the glorious name of cutthroat capitalism.

It perfectly embodies the dream-versus-profit conflict so adeptly portrayed in For All Mankind, while also reflecting the later seasons' focus on the red planet as a new stage for human rivalry and ethical reckoning, clothed in the reassuring euphemism of progress.

6. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Developer: Touko Tahkokallio (Lautapelit.fi) | Release Date: 2020 | Players: 2-6 | Recommended Age: 14+

A personal favorite, Eclipse is a 4X* game that blends elements of exploration with research and direct (fairly deterministic) combat.

Players ruthlessly compete for victory points derived from controlling systems, building specific structures, discovering artifacts, and researching scientific innovations. It's a beautiful interpretation of one of our world's oldest refrains, the often impossible balance of diplomacy and domination.

A full game of Eclipse ends up reflecting on human nature in some of the same ways the show does, illustrating how often our best intentions are undermined by our desire for personal advancement (or total victory).

*4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate.

Buy "Eclipse: 2nd Dawn for the Galaxy" at Zatu Games.

Cards Against Humanity isn't done with its scorched-Earth campaign against SpaceX and Elon Musk.

The Chicago-based company behind the popular fill-in-the-blank adult card game is inviting the public to join its design committee to erect an "Elon Musk is a Sad Little B----- with No Friends" monument on a stretch of land it owns near SpaceX's Starbase manufacturing and test facility in South Texas.

Cards Against Humanity (CAH) brought a $15 million lawsuit against SpaceX in 2024 for illegally dumping construction materials and other equipment on land owned by CAH. SpaceX decided to settle with the company in 2025 and removed its "gravel, tractors, and space garbage" from the property prior to the area's annexation for the city of Starbase's incorporation, according to CAH. But the company, and its apparent distaste for "racist billionaires," as it has labeled Musk, as well as President Trump, is still pushing back.

Trump's role in the ordeal informs why CAH owns the Texas property in the first place. The company launched the "Cards Against Humanity Saves America" campaign during Trump's first term in 2017, which included an effort to throw a roadblock in the U.S. government's ability to complete construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The campaign attracted 150,000 contributors who paid $15 each, enabling CAH to purchase the land and retain the services of an eminent domain law firm "to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall."

SpaceX had already purchased much of the surrounding land by then and officially broke ground at what would become Starbase in 2014. Starbase is the center of development and operations for SpaceX's Starship rocket — a fully reusable launch vehicle that will clock in as the world's largest, most powerful rocket in history once it's operational.

Major construction at Starbase began in earnest in 2018, with the first Starship prototype vehicle tests beginning in 2019. When CAH filed its lawsuit against SpaceX in 2024, SpaceX had already managed to launch four full-stack Starship test flights and begun construction of a second Starbase launch pad. That's around when the facility's general expansion began to encroach on CAH's property, according to a complaint the company filed in Texas' Cameron County 404th District Court.

Starbase's location at the very southern tip of Texas provides a safe and remote area for testing giant rockets. But SpaceX's increased activity there has triggered a large influx of employees in search of housing in and around the unincorporated Boca Chica area, which had been sparsely populated. SpaceX eventually began constructing clusters of homes for its employees around its facilities, and, in an effort to obtain some control over local governance for things like zoning and permitting, workers and residents voted to incorporate Starbase as its own city in May 2025.

That CAH's plot of land was annexed as part of Starbase's official incorporation has apparently not sat well with the people behind the popular card game, and they are once again engaging the public to try to get Musk's attention. In a Threads post on Aug. 13, the company asked, "Who wants to f---- with Elon Musk?"

"Now, our parcel has been annexed into a 'town' called 'Starbase' — a corporate hellscape littered with broken rockets and ugly mansions for Musk's executives," the post says. In typically colorful CAH fashion, it adds, "But hope is not lost! We still have our rights as proud Texas landowners: We can build something on our land. Something that will annoy Elon Musk. A grand monument to make him wonder, for a brief moment, 'Wait, am I a sad little b---- with no friends?'"

The announcement calls for the formation of a design committee for the aforementioned monument, which CAH describes as "a movement of like-minded people working together … to force a moment of introspection" for Musk, available for anyone to join for $10 at "ElonHasNoFriends.com". The post also advertises that 10% of profits from sales of its new game expansion decks will go toward funding the monument as well.

CAH isn't alone in criticizing Musk and SpaceX's Starbase activities. Musk's public persona has grown exponentially with SpaceX's successes over the past decade or so and his 2022 purchase of the social media platform Twitter, which he renamed X. Musk has also drawn criticism for his comments and actions during the 2024 election, which he may have helped swing via the donation of nearly $300 million to Trump and other Republican candidates. As early as 2022, a group of anonymous SpaceX employees posted an open letter to executives on an internal company forum saying, "Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment."

Others, however, praise Musk for the inarguable contribution of reusable rockets that SpaceX introduced with the Falcon 9, and his aspiration to make humanity a multi-planetary species. He was also named Time Magazine's person of the year in 2021, and SpaceX has become an indispensable asset to NASA and U.S. spaceflight. The company's Crew Dragon capsule is currently the only American-launched spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the International Space Station, and NASA has contracted SpaceX to design a lunar lander version of Starship to deliver astronauts to the surface of the moon on Artemis IV in 2028.

SpaceX's activities at Starbase have received scrutiny as well. When the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted its environmental assessment of Starbase to approve Starship launches from the site in 2021, more than 18,000 comments were submitted by members of the public, delaying the report's publication for nearly half a year as each one was reviewed. When the FAA did publish its assessment, SpaceX was cleared for Starship launches out of Starbase, pending nearly 80 actions needed to ensure its reduced environmental impact on the area, which SpaceX soon addressed.

To date, SpaceX has launched 13 Starship test flights with varying degrees of success. Some have resulted in the awesome return and catch of the rocket's Super Heavy booster using the "Mechazilla" chopstick arms on the Starbase launch tower, others featured Starship debris raining down within view of populated areas like The Bahamas, and at least a couple launches ended with a combination of both those outcomes.

The very public display of exploding rockets from SpaceX over the last several years has raised more than a few eyebrows of people wondering about the repercussions of where that potential aerospace carnage might come crashing down. But those results are also indicative of SpaceX's iterative "test like you fly" philosophy for vehicle development.

Musk sees Starship as humanity's ticket to extending our species' footprint to the moon, Mars and beyond, and is often quoted saying, about Starship and other subject matter, that "we live on the most interesting timeline." If Starship lives up to Musk and SpaceX's promises, it stands to create another monumental, industry-changing impact on spaceflight history, with the potential to launch our civilization into the cosmos. And, if it has to lift off within sight of a monument calling SpaceX's CEO "a sad little b---- with no friends," that would be pretty interesting indeed.

An 8,800-pound (4,000 kilograms) Falcon 9 rocket stage hit the moon last Wednesday (Aug. 5), stirring lunar regolith in a massive plume of dust observable all the way from Earth.

The rocket joined some 3,000 manmade objects scattered on the surface of our planet's companion. Some experts think it's about time we start treating the pristine lunar environment with a bit more respect.

Around 200 tons of Earth stuff have been either deliberately left on or crashed into the moon since the beginning of the space age. Some of this material has a prominent place in history books: The descent modules from all six Apollo landing missions, Soviet Lunakhod rovers from the 1970s and China's 2010s Yutu 1 and 2 robots still sit where they had been left or ran out of power.

But there is also a lot of stuff on the moon that wasn't really meant to end up there. Astronomer and space historian Jonathan McDowell says that many rocket stages and other objects left in orbit between Earth and the moon since the first lunar missions in the 1960s may have ended up on the gray dirt. Four years before the Falcon 9 upper stage crashed near Einstein Crater, for example, part of a Chinese Long March 3C rocket slammed into the moon's far side. And experts think such incidents could become increasingly common in the coming years, as exploration of the moon intensifies.

"We're in a transitional moment," McDowell told Space.com. "From the era when there was rare lunar exploration mostly by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, we've seen over the past decade other nations landing on the moon and the beginning of commercial missions. But governance has not kept up with this. We don't have an international set of agreements on how to operate near the moon, how to coordinate activities near the moon, and we're really going to need it because, not only is the amount of activity at the moon increasing, but the number of different players is greatly increasing, too."

Human activities on the moon are governed by the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, Marieta Valdivia Lefort, a policy officer at the Royal Astronomical Society in the U.K., told Space.com. Article IX of that treaty binds countries to "conduct the exploration of outer space in a way that avoids harmful contamination," she said. But what exactly constitutes such contamination is unclear, she added.

"There are international legal frameworks that apply to activities on the moon and include obligations concerning harmful contamination, but there is no dedicated international 'waste law' or comprehensive 'rubbish-management' system for it," Lefort wrote in an email. "The Outer Space Treaty does not define when contamination becomes 'harmful.' It does not set numerical waste limits, create approved disposal sites or require every object on the moon to be removed."

The moon is big. Its surface area, around 14.7 million square miles (38 million square kilometers) rivals that of Asia, Earth's largest continent, which covers 17 million square miles (44 million square km). But the moon's low gravity — around 17% that of Earth — means the dust that an impact stirs up travels a long way and takes a long time to settle, McDowell said.

"It's not just a local event," he said. "It's an equivalent to a continental-level event. In the future, when you have permanent human bases and scientific experiments on the moon, you don't want rocket stages smashing into the moon on a regular basis, creating big plumes of dust that could contaminate instruments or disturb gravitational wave detectors."

Moreover, the artificial material introduced and the craters that arise when heavy rocket stages smash into the lunar surface are altering the lunar environment, potentially erasing yet unexplored scientific material.

"The moon is naturally struck by meteoroids, and those impacts form part of the geological record that scientists are trying to understand," Lefort wrote. "The main concern is the alteration of the moon's physical and chemical environment, particularly where repeated disturbances could damage or obscure valuable scientific evidence."

Gregory Radisic, a space law expert at Australia's Bond University, told Space.com that the Falcon 9 crash was timely, as it can stir debate about responsible behavior in space before the moon gets too busy.

"It's not by good planning that this didn't hit something important," he said. "It's by pure luck that we're only having a conversation about theoretical problems down the line and that this did not destroy a million-dollar experiment or an important site of scientific study."

He added that spaceflight companies may start paying attention to the risks only after human lives are lost or expensive infrastructure suffers, resulting in tangible fines and consequences.

"When there is a loss of life or a loss of investment, the industry will start to care," Radisic said. "As long as things are losing aesthetic or scientific value, the industry is not likely going to care."

The Falcon 9 rocket stage that hit the moon was left in a high-altitude orbit around Earth in January 2025, after it propelled Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience landers to the moon.

McDowell explained that, as the rocket stage was left relatively close to the moon, it got repeatedly influenced by lunar gravity, eventually spiralling into its surface.

"If you leave [an object] in an orbit that's in this middle region that is far enough that the moon's gravity is affecting it but not far enough out to go into orbit around the sun, then that orbit is very hard to predict," McDowell said. "The orbital uncertainties multiply over many passes and, eventually, if you get unlucky, the moon tugs it into an orbit where it's going to hit either the moon or Earth in a completely unpredictable way."

McDowell said that, since the January 2025 launch, SpaceX has been pushing its moon-mission rockets farther out into orbit around the sun.

"I hope that we're going to see a new norm evolve, and that what we have seen now is not how you dispose of your rocket stages in the future," he said. 


Amid the major uptick in national defense space contracts since the Trump Administration announced plans to assemble a "Golden Dome" missile-defense system in orbit, Rocket Lab has landed another deal to contribute to the cause.

The California-based company was awarded a $397 million Space Force contract to design, manufacture and launch a fleet of "Flatellites" to augment existing infrastructure's ability to track airborne threats in real time. The project is funded under the Space Force's Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI) program, and is one of several national security contracts that Rocket Lab has scored over the last two years.

"We are proud to contribute to the deployment of a resilient space-based sensing layer that will enhance the Joint Force’s ability to operate in contested airspace," said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck in an Aug. 4 statement.

The Flatellites deal is the company's single largest national defense contract so far this year. Since the beginning of 2026, Rocket Lab has now announced four major U.S. government-funded defense contracts worth a combined $943 million: $190 million from the Department of Defense for 20 HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) test launches, a $90 million Space Force contract for two satellites in geostationary orbit and another Space Force deal for $266 million to launch up to 18 missile-defense missions from Alaska.

Rocket Lab also recently unveiled GHOST design, a new deployable shipping container-based system capable of supporting Electron and HASTE launches for responsive national-security missions from mobile or temporary locations. And, during a recent earnings call, Beck voiced the company's intent to carry out the aforementioned Alaskan launches using GHOST (short for "Global Hypersonic & Orbital Spaceport Technology"), saying, "We've mastered the art of building launch sites. Now we're making them deployable worldwide."

The flat design of Rocket Lab's Flatellites will increase the number of spacecraft that can be delivered per launch and has been optimized for orbital constellations, according to Rocket Lab's statement. The satellites will be equipped with low latency, high bandwidth communication systems and sensors for tracking adversarial air-based threats.

They will launch in stacks aboard Rocket Lab's upcoming Neutron rocket, similar to the payload bay configuration used for Starlink satellites on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Neutron is Rocket Lab's next-generation launch vehicle designed to compete with Falcon 9 lift capabilities and partial reusability, and is currently expected to debut sometime near the end of this year or in early 2027.

Can Venus cast a shadow? With Aug. 12's total solar eclipse — where the moon's dark silhouette is everything — now behind us, it's a good time to test another kind of celestial shadow.

Astronomical folklore has it that the second rock from the sun, Venus, is, after the sun and moon, the third object able to cast a shadow when it's near peak brightness, albeit extremely faint, according to EarthSky.

Is it true? Not in a city, where skylights glow and porch lights blaze, where shadows are mostly thrown by passing cars that appear to become the brightest object in the solar system briefly. Venus does cast a shadow, but the sky must be very dark, transparent and free of any light — apparently.

Timing is everything. Having reached dichotomy — its half-lit phase — on Aug. 12, Venus is currently 49%-lit and waning as it moves closer to Earth, increasing in angular size as it becomes a slim crescent. Cue a surge in brightness, thanks to its reflective clouds and its closeness. Shouldn't it be brightest when it's "full?" No, because it's an inferior planet — i.e., it orbits closer to the sun — so it's fully lit only when it's on the other side of the sun from Earth, when its disk appears at its smallest.

What’s happening and when to look

Venus is beautifully placed this week because it reaches greatest eastern elongation, its widest apparent separation from the sun in the evening sky. Look low in the west after sunset — Venus will be the bright white "star" that appears before the fainter stars even have a chance.

On Aug. 14-15, it sits about 46 degrees from the sun and shines at a magnitude of -4.3 to -4.4, bright enough to dominate twilight but not quite at its most impressive stage of the apparition. The real test comes around Sept. 18, when Venus reaches its greatest brilliancy at magnitude -4.6. Sadly, by then it's going to be rather low in the sky from mid-northern latitudes, making observation from the U.K. difficult, but possible from most of the U.S.

How and when I’m watching it

According to Sky & Telescope, to catch a faint but well-defined shadow of Venus — a point source of light — you'll need to be somewhere free from artificial lighting and wait until twilight is over. Face Venus and place a white surface (a white card or sheet works well) also facing Venus. You'll also need to position something in front of the card to cast a shadow. Although it is possible to see the faint shadow of Venus, photographing the card is the best way to capture it, using a technique similar to that for any night sky photograph — a high ISO, a wide aperture and a long exposure of up to 30 seconds. It may be wise to test the location, find the best line of sight, and work out where the card needs to go while Venus is still high enough above the western horizon.

If you're not in a good location to catch the shadow of Venus, instead try to see and photograph the light from Venus reflecting on water. Any pond, lake or ocean you can get between you and Venus ought to catch its shine in a long exposure image. That identical technique — high ISO, a wide aperture and a long exposure — will also apply, but this time you can actually aim your camera at Venus!

Stargazer’s Corner: August 14-20, 2026

This is an excellent week for darkness and faint objects. With new moon on Aug. 12, this week is all about a crescent moon. On Aug. 15 you may catch a 12%-lit waxing crescent close to Venus, but more likely you'll see it on Aug, 16, when it will be 19%-lit. The latter occasion is one to aim for — a beautiful sight. On both occasions, look for "earthshine" on the darkened limb of the moon — sunlight reflected by Earth, and something else you can try to capture with a long exposure. The waxing crescent moon will be low in the western evening sky, but early in the week it sets early enough to leave most of the night usable for stargazing and deep-sky astronomy.

The buzz around the Perseid meteor shower, like the solar eclipse, will by now have completely dissipated, but they're still active after their Aug. 12-13 peak, though rates will be lower. With the moon mostly out of the way, it is still worth spending time outside after midnight in the hope of finding "shooting stars." However, the main attraction during dark nights in August is the Milky Way, which streams through the Summer Triangle to Scorpius and Sagittarius. Every time I see the Summer Triangle stars high in the night sky, I tell myself that the Milky Way is right there — and hidden from us by light pollution. It's a reminder to get to a dark-sky site as much as possible when the moon is down (the period between last-quarter moon and new moon is the best week of any month).

Constellation of the week: Scorpius

Scorpius is one of the most distinctive constellations visible from mid-northern latitudes, though it never climbs very high. Its bright red star Antares marks the heart of the scorpion, with a curving tail extending downward toward the horizon. You can see Antares above Venus as it gets dark — a bright, dominating star that's a waymarker of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

Even in brighter skies, its shape is recognizable, forming a hooked pattern that stands out from the surrounding stars. Because it sits low in the south, it's best observed earlier in the evening before it begins to set. It's one of the few constellations that genuinely resembles its name — and it's where to see the Milky Way meet the horizon.

The heart of the Milky Way may be more hospitable to water than astronomers thought.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers detected water and cosmic dust around an aging star only 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

The new study suggests that water and dust can form and survive surprisingly close to a supermassive black hole, where intense radiation and other harsh conditions might otherwise be expected to destroy them. The team used Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to study IRS 3, an aging star located in the crowded environment surrounding Sgr A*, which has a mass of about 4 million suns, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).

"Galactic centres are among the most extreme environments, so understanding whether stars can continue enriching their surroundings there is an important question," Florian Peißker, lead author of the study from the University of Cologne in Germany, said in the statement. "With Webb, we can directly observe how stars behave under these conditions and see that dust production remains remarkably resilient."

IRS 3 — one of the brightest mid-infrared sources in the galactic center — is an asymptotic giant branch star, meaning it has reached a late stage of stellar evolution in which it sheds large amounts of gas and dust through powerful stellar winds. Such dying stars act as cosmic recycling centers, returning material to space that can eventually become incorporated into future generations of stars and planets.

But IRS 3 lives in a particularly unforgiving neighborhood. The center of the Milky Way is densely packed with stars and exposed to intense radiation, raising questions about whether molecules and newly produced dust can persist there.

However, Webb's observations suggest they can. By combining observations of IRS 3's spectrum with simulations of how its light travels through different models of the surrounding material, researchers reconstructed the structure of the star's envelope. They found a layered, shell-like distribution of silicate dust extending roughly 10,000 astronomical units from the star (one astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between Earth and the sun). Temperatures within the envelope fall from about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) near the star to around minus 280 F (minus 173 C) in its outer regions. Webb's observations also revealed clear evidence of water within the envelope — the first such detection for IRS 3.

"The detection of water is especially exciting because it shows that molecular material can survive in an environment dominated by intense radiation," Macarena Garcia Marin, co-author of the study and an ESA astronomer, said in the statement.

While the observations don't reveal how much water is present, the detection shows that water can survive in the harsh environment near the galactic center. Water and dust are important ingredients in the chemistry that accompanies star and planet formation, meaning material shed by aging stars such as IRS 3 could eventually contribute to future generations of stars and planets.

Finding water and dust near Sgr A* therefore suggests that aging stars can continue enriching their surroundings even in the harsh conditions near a supermassive black hole. The findings could help astronomers better understand how material is recycled in the centers of galaxies and the role evolved stars play in supplying those regions with fresh dust and molecules.

Their findings were published Aug. 11 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

On Aug. 14, 1992, a space rock entered the atmosphere over Mbale, Uganda and exploded into hundreds of pieces!

Debris from this meteorite shower was strewn over an area of about 2 by 4 miles (3.2 to 6.4 kilometers), and the biggest piece weighed more than 60 pounds (27 kilograms)! Scientists estimated that the original space rocket weighed more than 2,000 pounds (900 kg). A young boy was hit in the head with a small meteorite fragment, but thankfully no one was seriously injured or killed by any of the falling space rocks.

In October 2012, a fragment of the Mbale meteorite was put up for sale by Heritage Auctions in New York City.

Why it mattered

The Mbale meteorite provided scientists with a glimpse of how space rocks of this size can impact communities where they happen to land, and allowed researchers a look at large fragments found by recovery expeditions for radionuclide studies within just 12 days of falling to Earth.

NASA classified Mbale as a type L5/6 ordinary chondrite, and calculated that its breakup in Earth's atmosphere occurred between about 15.5 miles (25 km) and 6 miles (10 km) in altitude. By October 1993, 863 fragments of the meteorite had been recovered, with an overall estimate of 330 pounds (150 kg) of material surviving the atmospheric plunge to reach Earth's surface.

This week's total solar eclipse captured the world's attention, and millions of skywatchers looked up (with the correct protective eyewear, hopefully) to experience the moon blocking out our star's light. And, as you can see in this image, even the International Space Station (ISS) itself got in on the fun.

What is it?

On Aug. 12, 2026, the moon completely blocked out the sun's light for millions of lucky skywatchers witnessing a total solar eclipse.

But the moon isn't the only thing orbiting Earth. Tons of satellites and probes do too, and that includes the ISS. This created a truly remarkable moment for some skywatchers. With the right equipment, it was possible to see the silhouette of the ISS in front of the sun.

This composite image shows eight different frames of the ISS silhouetted on the sun's face as the moon takes a "bite" out of our star to create a partial eclipse.

Why is it incredible?

Solar eclipses like this week's total solar eclipse really bring people together. It creates opportunities for humans to come together and gather for a common goal.

And while the ISS is featured in this image, we may also want to consider the astronauts aboard. In other words, people on Earth weren't the only ones who got to participate in the marvel.

The Expedition 75 astronauts on the ISS (NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Anil Menon, and Jack Hathaway; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina) caught the show too as they orbited our planet. There they were, in between Earth and the moon, as our planet's neighbor blocked out our star.

NASA has formally invited India to participate in its effort to build a permanent base near the moon's south pole, adding a new dimension to the deep-space cooperation between the two countries.

The invitation was extended last week at the Indian space agency ISRO's headquarters in Bengaluru during the ninth meeting of the U.S.-India Civil Space Joint Working Group. The CSJWG was established in 2005 as a mechanism for bilateral space cooperation and for addressing challenges and pursuing mutual spaceflight goals.

"Building on our successful collaboration in science, NASA reaffirmed its interest in @ISRO joining Moon Base. We're going back to the moon to stay — and we're bringing our partners with us," NASA officials said via X on Tuesday (Aug. 11).

Beyond the lunar base invitation, "the two sides also agreed to advance discussions for cooperation on open scientific data sharing under the Accords," reads a Tuesday statement by the U.S. Embassy in India.

"The Accords" are the Artemis Accords, the U.S.-led diplomatic framework outlining principles for safe and responsible exploration of the moon and beyond. India signed on as the 27th signatory in 2023, joining a coalition that has now grown to 70 nations.

Official statements have provided few details on what India's participation in the Moon Base program would entail in practice. The meeting, however, brought together senior space officials from both countries, including V. Narayanan, the chairman of ISRO and secretary of India's Department of Space, and Sergio Gor, the U.S. Ambassador to India, who addressed the opening session, according to the statement.

The meeting was co-chaired by M. Sankaran, director of ISRO's U.R. Rao Satellite Centre, on the Indian side, and two people on the U.S. side — Wesley Brooks, assistant secretary of state for the U.S. Department of State's Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and Kathleen Karika, NASA associate administrator for International and Interagency Relations, the statement reads.

Over the coming decade, via its Artemis program, NASA plans to build out a sprawling, city-like base near the moon's south pole, a region of particular interest thanks to permanently shadowed craters there that are thought to contain substantial deposits of water ice.

Details of the planned architecture shared by NASA in May envision hilltop habitats to take advantage of sunlight and nuclear power systems located farther away to mitigate radiation risks. The space agency also plans to use small, hopping robots starting in 2028 to scout the south polar region ahead of moon base construction.

This effort to gather information and secure access to the surface is the first of three planned phases. Phase 2, from 2029-2032, is intended to establish the base's initial operating capability. Phase 3, from 2032 onward, aims to achieve a semi-permanent crew presence on the lunar surface, NASA said during the May update.

To prioritize infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the moon's surface, increase launch cadence and keep pace with China's lunar ambitions, NASA earlier this year paused development of its long-planned Gateway space station.

For India, the invitation to join NASA's Moon Base program comes as the country pursues its own ambitious lunar exploration and human spaceflight roadmap. Its plans for the 2040s include developing a moon base, establishing a space station in lunar orbit and sending Indian astronauts to the moon, with the broader goal of building long-term human presence beyond Earth.

The moon dust has settled after a 4.5-ton SpaceX rocket body slammed into terrain near Einstein Crater on Aug. 5.

That impact site was imaged by South Korea's moon-orbiting Danuri spacecraft, as well as by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Reportedly, a Chinese commercial space debris monitoring satellite tracked and recorded the 5,400-mph (8,690-kph) moon punch, too.

Wandering through space for over a year, the leftover Falcon 9 upper stage had sent Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost-1 lander on its way to the moon back on Jan. 15, 2025. Also sent moonward on that flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2's Resilience, a robotic lunar lander developed by the Japanese company ispace. While the moon has reclaimed its serenity, the implications of the uncontrolled collision continue to reverberate.

Close encounter

Interestingly, there was also the prospect of a too-close-for-comfort conjunction of the Falcon 9 upper stage and Danuri.

"We noticed roughly late June that there is an incoming Falcon 9 upper stage toward the moon, and also knew that it would be close to Danuri," Eunhyeuk Kim, a senior researcher at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), told Space.com.

There was a huge uncertainty in the predicted trajectory of the upper stage, Kim said, while the orbit information of South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter was quite accurate. "Therefore, we could not neglect the probability of an incoming and close encounter."

Spacecraft maneuver

However, around mid July, the KARI/Danuri team performed a maneuver of the spacecraft in preparation of a near-total lunar eclipse on Aug. 28, said Kim. That eclipse will see 96% of the moon's visible surface passing through Earth's dark umbral shadow.

Kim said that the orbiter's maneuver brought a slight change in the phase of the spacecraft's orbit, which canceled the probable conjunction between the upper stage and Danuri.

At the time of the Aug. 5 impact, Danuri was flying over the moon's south pole area, far away from the hit zone, said Kim.

High-speed ejecta

Dean Sladen is a quality manager and aerospace engineer in the United Kingdom for Accu Components, a high-precision manufacturing firm.

"As space agencies and private companies build out permanent lunar infrastructure, uncontrolled rocket stages evolve from a minor nuisance into a tangible operational risk," Sladen told Space.com. "A direct hit is the obvious worst-case scenario, but distant impacts also generate ground shocks and high-speed ejecta that can degrade sensitive equipment over time."

Sladen noted that lunar impacts have been a constant throughout history, with meteorites and comets bombarding the surface unhindered by an atmosphere. "Over the past 65 years, artificial objects have added a new dynamic to these events," he added.

Genuine hazard

Even modest hardware impacts permanently alter the lunar landscape, said Sladen. Given the moon's lack of a substantial atmosphere, there is no air resistance to slow debris down. An impact therefore hurls high-speed ejecta (fine regolith and rock fragments) across vast distances at bullet-like speeds.

"While this isn't a major threat to isolated missions today, as we establish permanent lunar infrastructure, high-velocity ejecta poses a genuine hazard to surface habitats, solar arrays and working astronauts," Sladen said.

To mitigate this issue, Sladen suggested that the industry will likely need designated impact zones or strictly controlled, targeted de-orbit protocols to ensure that spent hardware lands far from active installations.

"That said, human-made debris is only half the equation," Sladen continued. "Natural meteorites remain an ongoing background threat, and, while massive natural strikes are rare, they hit at significantly higher speeds and carry far more energy," Sladen said. "Controlling our own hardware is simply the part of the risk profile we actually have the power to manage."

Plume detections

In the meantime, while the Falcon 9 impact was tough to see from Earth, several observations from our planet reported the detection of sodium and lithium gas above the crash site.

The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, for example, saw the aftermath of the impact. The ESO reported that a chemical fingerprint of the impact was visible for five to 10 minutes, with an enormous plume of lunar material stirred up due to the hard-hitting hardware.

"I'm happy that ESO recorded some evidence of it through VLT, and Danuri has found the exact impact location," said William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas, Austin who performed some pre-strike computer simulations.

"What we've learned so far is that the plume was too faint to see against the bright lunar surface, and only a large observatory telescope could pick some parts of it out against the dark sky, which is exactly what happened," Jo told Space.com. "The plume must have shot out high," he said, "and I'd like to know how high, or even whether we can replicate the signals."

Targets of opportunity

"Telescopes make the best spaceships," pointed out Elaina Hyde, director of the Allan I Carswell Observatory at York University in Canada. "We are always on the lookout for 'targets of opportunity' like this event."

Hyde organized a livestream event, training the observatory on the collision locale. They were unable to spot the impact, however.

"The lunar collision was not on our regular research program, but when it happened, we put it as a high-priority item to observe if the weather was clear," Hyde said. "Anything that happens quickly like this is often a target of opportunity, because you do not get a long time to plan the observation."

"However, since it was not visible from our location in Toronto, our 'null' or non detection can actually help to limit the estimates on how big the dust plume was and perhaps some of its properties," said Hyde.

Impact response

Also on the moon impact watch were observers using Lowell Observatory equipment in Arizona.

These researchers managed to measure a response from the rocket stage impact, spotting a sizable sodium and lithium gas plume that lasted between five and 10 minutes after impact, reported Carl Schmidt, an assistant research professor at Boston University's Center for Space Physics.

Observers at the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) in Happy Jack, Arizona used a long slit spectrograph to detect the plume. Graduate students from Boston University continue to analyze data gleaned from the moon wallop.

Bright lithium plume

"At LDT, we saw a bright lithium plume from the rocket body and fainter sodium [signature], likely from the surface itself," Patrick Lierle of Boston University told Space.com. "The bright lithium plume extends more than halfway up our field of view." The LDT results are also credited to Emma Lovett, a Boston University graduate student.

William Jo said he's looking forward to the release of observational data about the impact before he and colleagues can refine their lunar ejecta simulation model.

"That data, combined with our simulations, could tell us things like the composition of the lunar material, what orientation the impact hit at, and so on," Jo said.

Small telescopes have really come on leaps and bounds in recent years. There was a time when refractors with apertures smaller than 4 inches were seldom to be recommended, but manufacturers have been pushing the capabilities of smaller apertures ever further, with optical coatings and high quality, mass-produced optics helping to eke out every little bit of capability from these pocket-sized instruments.

While still aperture-limited — a smaller aperture makes less light received, which makes faint objects harder to see and details harder to resolve — a good small telescope can excel at the things it can do. This include showing fabulous views of the whole moon, revealing the phases of Mercury and Venus, showing surface features on Mars when the Red Planet is at a close opposition, tracking the Galilean moons of Jupiter, splitting double stars, showcasing open star clusters and revealing the very brightest deep-sky objects, including the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope is a re-skin of the plain Celestron Travel-scope 70, and is labelled as a lunar telescope. The moon is what it excels at, which is particularly handy in the year that humans went back to the moon for the first time since 1972, drumming up all kinds of excitement about our nearest neighbor.

Its affordable price and simplicity of use further increase its attraction for children. How many young astronomers will find a passion for space after being excited by the Artemis II mission and then seeing the moon for themselves through the eyepiece of this easy-to-use telescope?

Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 review

Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70: Design

• Quick and simple set-up
• Comes with all the accessories to get started
• Lightweight and portable

Inside the box we found the telescope tube, which is just 17 inches (44 centimeters) long, kept within a protective travel bag. Also present were the two eyepieces (10mm and 20mm), a 3x Barlow lens, a moon filter, a star diagonal, a finderscope with crosshairs and a useful moon map poster. There are even free download options for the well-known Starry Night planetarium software and Celestron’s Sky Portal mobile app. All in all, it’s a complete package for anyone wanting to get started in astronomy. The only thing it doesn’t come with is guaranteed clear nights!

Everything is lightweight, so there is no risk of children hurting themselves if they drop anything (though one would advise not dropping the telescope tube!). No tools are required for assembly, which is an additional advantage when aiming a telescope at children. The finderscope is attached by chunky thumb screws, the telescope tube screws onto the pan of the mount, and the tripod legs extend via a series of latches.

The mount is a simple, manual alt-azimuth with a pan handle for easy control. The tripod can extend from 22 to 52 inches (56 to 132cm), and it’s a good height for sitting down while observing or standing up — whichever you prefer. The whole set-up process takes a couple of minutes — perfect for impatient children (and the occasional impatient adult!).

Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70: Performance

• The moon looks superb through both eyepieces
• Ideal for following Jupiter’s moons
• Open star cluster Messier 35 was easily shown

The view of the crescent moon while it was in the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, and near Jupiter, was impressive. First using the 20mm eyepiece at 20x, the whole moon easily fit into the field of view. Though the moon’s phase was two days away from first quarter, through the eyepiece we could easily see the silhouette of the whole moon’s disk thanks to earthshine.

During the time we observed the moon, the day/night terminator cut close to the crater trio of Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina around the edge of Mare Nectaris. Other lunar seas including Mare Crisium, Mare Tranquilitatis (landing site of Apollo 11) and Mare Serenitatis were nicely displayed.

Through the 8mm eyepiece at 40x, the moon filled the field of view. The low-angled sun cast dark shadows below the crater walls, which contrasted nicely with the bright surface. Just beyond the terminator, the peaks of crater walls and highlands caught the sun, islands of daylight on the edge of night. All in all, it was a very pleasing view.

A short hop brought us to Jupiter, the moon’s close neighbor for the night. As expected, we found the sub-3-inch aperture unsuitable for revealing any details in Jupiter’s atmosphere — the gas giant just appeared as a bright disk. Its four Galilean moons could be seen to either side, however. We tried with both the 20mm and the 8mm eyepiece: Jupiter’s moons were evident in both and filled the view in the 8mm, appearing as points of light accompanying Jupiter.

Close by in Gemini was Messier 35, an open star cluster that is technically visible with the naked eye, but only from the darkest sites in a moonless sky. Through a 70mm telescope it should be much easier to see, and it was, appearing as a faint smattering of stars against the night sky.

We could not, however, see NGC 2158 — a neighboring open star cluster that is much fainter at magnitude +8.6. This revealed the limitations of a 70mm telescope as opposed to a 100mm (4-inch) or 127mm (5-inch) aperture.

Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70: Functionality

• Wobbly tripod
• Accessories are a mixed bag

The actual telescope is as smooth as they come. We found the focuser is good enough for the price point, the two supplied eyepieces aren’t at all bad, and the optics were pretty crystal-clear. For more experienced users with larger telescopes, this 70mm telescope would make a fine finderscope. But what massively lets down the Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope is the tripod that comes with it.

We found the tripod to be incredibly flimsy, and this resulted in vibrations that would shake and blur the view through the eyepiece. Every time we used the pan-handle to turn the telescope and mount head, the tripod would wobble, setting up a feedback of vibrations which we would then have to wait to settle down. The same happened whenever we adjusted focus. While budget telescopes typically do come with poor tripods, we definitely recommend investing in a better tripod as soon as you can.

The 3x Barlow lens also felt like overkill to us. For a 70mm aperture we would not recommend pushing the magnification too high: the telescope simply does not have sufficient aperture to capture enough light for such high magnifications, and the view just becomes a blur. Anything above 100x for a 70mm aperture is too much in our view, yet when used with the 10mm eyepiece (which has a power of 40x) the Barlow lens pushed the magnification up to 120x. We think a 2x Barlow lens would have sufficed.

We were indifferent to the moon filter. When screwed into the eyepiece it just dulled the moon and made it look red and drab, similar to how it might appear during a lunar eclipse. Admittedly it might be more useful when looking at a full moon rather than a crescent, when there are no shadows or contrast on the surface, but we found we preferred not to bother with the filter.

Overall, the telescope’s engineering is decent for the price, but replacing most or all of the accessories would not be unwarranted. But given how much it would cost to do so, if you are intending to spend that money then it would be better just to buy a more expensive, larger-aperture and better quality telescope.

Should you buy the Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope?

If the Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope isn't for you

If you are looking for a telescope for astrophotography that is also relatively simple to use and won’t break the bank, consider ZWO’s SeeStar S30 smart telescope.

If you are looking for something that’s still affordable, but with a little more aperture, try Sky-Watcher’s Explorer 130 EQ2 telescope.

If you want a telescope that has the same 70mm aperture but is a little more high-tech, go for Celestron’s StarSense Explorer LT70AZ refractor, which uses Celestron’s StarSense mobile app technology.

If you want a lot more aperture to track down faint deep-sky objects or to clearly see the belts and rings of Jupiter and Saturn, go for Celestron’s StarSense Explorer 8-inch Dobsonian.

User reviews

There were not many customer reviews of the Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope available at the time of writing, but as it is identical in all but aesthetics and a few accessories to the standard Celestron Travel-scope 70, we can use reviews of the latter as a guide.

The consensus on Amazon was that users were mostly delighted by the telescope, valuing how easy it is to set up and use, as well as its portability and appropriateness for children. However, they shared our concerns about the flimsiness of the tripod.

How we tested the Celestron Moon Mission Travel-scope 70 portable telescope

We took advantage of the clear, mild spring weather that the southwest of England enjoyed in the week beginning April 20, observing around 9.30pm. In particular, we took time to study the moon on the evening of April 22, from a south- and southwest-facing garden.

Prolific NASA astronaut Mike Fincke has announced his retirement from the U.S. space agency after 30 years of public service.

NASA announced Fincke's decision on Wednesday (Aug. 12), celebrating his contributions to spaceflight and long career of accomplishments.

“Few people have had the opportunity to shape as many chapters of NASA’s history as Mike Fincke,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that day in a statement. Fincke departs as NASA's fourth-most flown astronaut, racking up a cumulative 549 days in space over four separate spaceflights. During those, he performed nine spacewalks and served twice as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). Most recently, he launched as pilot on SpaceX's Crew-11 mission to the ISS, stepping into the role of commander for ISS Expedition 74 from August 2025 to January 2026.

Before his acceptance into NASA's 16th astronaut class in 1996, Fincke earned two bachelor's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in aeronautics and astronautics as well as Earth science, atmospheric and planetary sciences. Following his time at MIT, he did a summer stint at the Moscow Aviation Institute and later earned master's degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, and in planetary geology from Stanford and the University of Houston-Clear Lake, respectively.

Fincke also served in the U.S. Air Force prior to his career at NASA. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in 1994, then was assigned as a space systems engineer and flight test engineer at Edwards and Eglin Air Force bases in California and Florida, respectively. Those stints were followed by his role as U.S. flight-test liaison for the Japanese-U.S. XF-2 fighter program in Japan.

Following his two years of astronaut-candidate training, Fincke was assigned to NASA's Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch's Crew Test Support Team in Russia. There, he served as ISS CAPCOM (Spacecraft Communicator) and ISS crew procedures team lead until he began official spaceflight training in 1999.

His first rocket launch was aboard the Soyuz TMA-4 mission to the ISS in 2004, where he served as science officer and flight engineer for Expedition 9 and completed four EVAs (extravehicular activities, or spacewalks).

Fincke's second launch brought him back to the ISS in 2008, as a member of Soyuz TMA-13. It was then that Fincke took command of the space station for the first time. As Expedition 18 commander, Fincke added two more EVAs to his career total and oversaw the preparation of ISS facilities to begin supporting an increase from three-person to six-person crews.

Fincke was also aboard for the final launch of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-134 mission in 2011, which returned him to the ISS for a third time. As mission specialist and robotic-arm operator, he supported the installation of the space station's dark-matter-hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument, and performed three additional EVAs that marked the official completion of ISS orbital assembly and were the last-ever spacewalks by a space shuttle crew.

By 2014, Fincke was serving as chief of the Astronaut Office’s Commercial Crew Branch, where he played a key role in the development and testing of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner spacecraft. In January 2019, he was assigned to Boeing’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission as joint operations commander, and he remained on the prime crew until June 2022, when he transitioned to the CFT backup crew.

Fincke's most recent mission, Crew-11, launched to the ISS in August 2025. It was the second time he was appointed commander of the space station, this time for Expedition 74, but his stint, and that of the other Crew-11 astronauts, was cut short due to an unexpected medical issue.

Leading up to what would have been his 10th career EVA, NASA abruptly canceled spacewalk prep by Fincke and fellow NASA astronaut Zena Cardman after a "medical concern" arose that took priority over the planned station maintenance. Though not considered an emergency, the episode was deemed serious enough for NASA to return the Crew-11 astronauts to Earth earlier than expected, and Fincke and his fellow crewmates safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon a week later.

During the mission, NASA did not reveal the afflicted astronaut's name and condition, citing privacy concerns. A little more than a month after Crew-11's return, however, NASA and Fincke revealed that he was the crew member who experienced the medical issue, which he later described as a temporary inability to speak, according to an Associated Press report. Fincke fully recovered from the episode and is now in good health.

“Mike approached every assignment with experience, humility, and an unwavering focus on the mission,” said Scott Tingle, chief of NASA's Astronaut Office, in the agency's announcement. “Whether flying aboard the station, supporting crews from the ground, or helping shape the spacecraft that future crews will rely on, he consistently strengthened our team. His legacy is woven into the way we fly today.”

NASA did not indicate if Fincke plans to continue his involvement with the space industry through the private sector, but did highlight his dedication to support humanity's drive to explore the cosmos.

"I remain deeply committed to the work of exploration," Fincke said in the statement. “NASA gave me the extraordinary privilege of serving alongside remarkable people, flying and helping develop spacecraft, and contributing to the International Space Station from its earliest days through command in orbit … I am excited to carry those lessons forward and help prepare the next generation of engineers, explorers, and leaders."

Supermassive black holes are best known for their immense gravity, pulling in everything that strays too close, even light. But new research suggests these cosmic giants can also hurl enormous amounts of energy outward, driving powerful disturbances that ripple hundreds of thousands of light-years through space.

A study led by Satoshi Yamada of Tohoku University in Japan found that winds generated by an actively feeding supermassive black hole are about 100 times more powerful than astronomers previously estimated.

These outflows, scientists say, inject an amount of energy comparable to several billion supernova explosions, driving turbulence through hot gas across distances of roughly 300,000 light-years —far beyond the boundaries of the host galaxy itself.

"Black holes are largely known for sucking matter in, but they also eject gas in the form of powerful winds," Yamada said in a statement. "These winds were thought to be contained within the galaxy, but our study revealed that the force is immensely more powerful than previously understood."

To measure the extent of those outflows, Yamada and his colleagues observed H1821+643, a bright quasar in the constellation Draco about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy hosting H1821+643 sits at the center of a dense galaxy cluster and harbors an active supermassive black hole estimated to be three to four billion times the mass of the sun.

During a weeklong observation in September 2024, Yamada and his team used XRISM, the X-ray satellite launched by Japan's space agency in 2023, to track the chemical signature of ionized iron atoms in the surrounding hot gas. By examining how the light from these iron ions stretched and broadened, the researchers were able to determine how fast the gas was moving and how turbulent it had become, according to the statement.

The observations revealed that the turbulence is driven by energy released from the quasar, with its effects reaching distances of about 300,000 light-years from the black hole, the study notes.

The result builds on years of observations of H1821+643, which is, in fact, the closest known quasar to Earth located within a galaxy cluster, according to NASA.

One of the more intriguing discoveries came in 2022, when observations of the black hole's spin using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory showed it rotates half as quickly as its smaller peers, which spin close to the speed of light.

"The million-dollar question is, why?" Christopher Reynolds, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the 2022 study, said in a statement at the time.

According to that study, one leading hypothesis is that giants like H1821+643 grew primarily through repeated mergers with other black holes arriving from different directions. Those chaotic collisions may have repeatedly disrupted the black hole's rotation instead of steadily spinning it up through a long-lived accretion disk.

While the exact origin of its sluggish spin remains an open question, the black hole's influence clearly extends far beyond its host galaxy.

"For the first time, we have shown that black holes influence the broader cosmic environment through a shock wave of astonishing power," Yamada said in the statement.

"Black holes are key drivers of gas flows and motion in space, transporting vast amounts of energy to different regions of the cosmos."

This research is also described in a paper published July 28 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Not every canceled NASA program earns a halo after its demise, but one scrapped project is finding new life by contributing its parts to help the space agency achieve its moon base goals faster.

Northrop Grumman is repurposing hardware and technology from the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) space station module for use on a new series of Lunar Infrastructure Demo (LID) missions. HALO was originally designed as the habitation module for NASA's since-cancelled moon-orbiting Gateway space station but found itself on the chopping block when the agency restructured the Artemis program architecture earlier this year.

Rather than scrap the unfinished module outright, Northrop Grumman will adapt HALO's electrical and mechanical components to support the development of technologies for a moon base that can survive the cold, weeks-long night at the lunar south pole while sustaining the long-term habitation of astronauts inside.

Part of NASA's reasoning for canceling Gateway was the need for expedience. As the agency's vision for Artemis and the return of astronauts to the lunar surface has evolved, China's plans to land the first taikonauts on the moon have steadily taken shape. Those ambitions, and the continued progression of China's lunar program, have kicked off a new space race in which the U.S. and NASA are intent on maintaining their first-place position.

In March, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a shakeup to the Artemis program designed to enable a more step-by-step approach toward developing the technologies needed for a next-generation crewed lunar landing, and to achieve that landing on the shortest timeline possible.

That timeline currently puts the first Artemis lunar landing with astronauts on the Artemis IV mission, scheduled for late 2028. Before then, however, NASA is planning nearly two dozen uncrewed missions to the moon to lay the groundwork for the infrastructure needed to precede astronauts' return. And, rather than let HALO rust in a warehouse, Northrop is doubling down on its commitment to the cause.

"To help NASA move faster … HALO’s power, data and mechanical interfaces will enable NASA to move with speed and begin gathering real lunar surface performance data sooner," the company said in a press release on Aug. 4.

Northrop announced 3 LID missions to "reuse HALO-derived technologies to rapidly mature lunar surface power, thermal, autonomy, communications and hosted payload services," which will help NASA gather data to better protect robotics and crews during long-duration stints near the moon's south pole, where the agency plans to establish its Artemis moon base. Neither the company nor NASA gave a target timeline for these missions.

NASA is targeting the south pole specifically because of the abundance of water ice that scientists have detected in that region on the moon. When harnessed appropriately, such ice concentrations can be used for a variety of applications to enable sustainable habitation on the lunar surface — the ultimate goal of the Artemis program — including potable water, radiation shielding and rocket fuel.

NASA believes that overcoming the technological hurdle of "in-situ resource utilization" (ISRU), or the ability to rely on materials locally available to you in order to sustain your survival, is the gold standard of spaceflight that will open the door to humanity's long-term exploration of the cosmos. Manufacturing propellants off Earth, for example, would mean a substantial increase in the distance any particular mission to space can fly, because nearly 95% of a rocket's mass at launch is fuel. So, the ability to refuel in space, circumventing the burden of launching to orbit fully fueled, would give satellites and crewed spacecraft the ability to fly much farther into the solar system than current launch systems allow.

As much as Artemis is, in itself, a program to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, NASA also sees it as the proving ground for technologies that could one day sustain astronaut missions to Mars. There is worry, however, over the national security and economic consequences that could accompany China beating the U.S. to the moon, so speed is top of mind for those tasked with the country's lunar return.

"As America embarks on the next chapter in human space exploration, our Lunar Infrastructure Demos will help turn the moon into a place where astronauts can stay, work and make discoveries that benefit humanity,” said David Schiller, Northrop Grumman's vice president of civil space and sciences, in a statement. “Our ready‑to‑fly, reliable HALO technologies allow NASA to move faster, putting in place robust infrastructure that can endure the lunar night and establish a strong blueprint for a future moon base.”

Eighteen years later, it still gives me a jump scare, even though I know it's coming.

Agent Mulder, hot on the trail of a group of murderers who are harvesting their victims' organs, breaks into a makeshift laboratory in an attempt to save an abducted woman. He finds a gruesome scene of bodies on ice and surgeons, scalpels in hand, preparing to transplant the villain's head onto the abducted woman's body. Mulder turns and  — there it is! The villain's severed head on ice! And it opens its eyes.

It sounds less like a scene out of a science fiction mystery series and one more suited to a horror film. And that's precisely why Chris Carter, creator of "The X-Files", is revisiting the 2008 film "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" in a new R-rated director's cut coming to Hulu on Aug. 14.

Space.com got the chance to speak with Carter about the upcoming director's cut and the inspiration behind revisiting the standalone "X-Files" film nearly two decades after its release.

"I wanted to make the scary movie that I always had intended to make, intended to direct, and this is more in line with that," Carter told Space.com. "It gave me a chance to remember the making of the movie and what I had intended it to be, and how different it was from that original vision."

The director's cut features a new addition to the film's title  — "The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn". Carter said the name at the end (Russian for "Doctor Frankenstein") is a way of alluding to the tone and themes that he intended to focus on in the original film.

"It's a Frankenstein story, and the original inspiration for it was a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, who transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, and I thought that is perfect X-Files territory," Carter said.

Carter's original version of the film was re-edited two times in order for it to be released with the PG-13 rating that 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) insisted upon.

"When we first made the movie, we had a vision, and we tried to bring it to life. And when we took it to the executives at 20th Century Fox, they said, 'This isn't a PG-13 movie. This is torture porn.'

"And so we cut it back to what we thought was a PG-13 movie to placate the executives, and then we gave it to the motion picture censors, and they said this isn't a PG-13 movie."

With many of the horror elements cut or toned down, the 2008 theatrical release ended up focusing quite a bit of time on the relationship between Mulder and Scully  — a fan-favorite part of the series for sure, but not one that Carter intended to be so central to "I Want to Believe."

The film's plot centers on a group of women who go missing. When a disgraced priest begins having supernatural visions of the missing women, agents Mulder and Scully come out of retirement to take on another case full of mysteries and unexplained events. Their investigation finds them uncovering an illegal organ harvesting operation, bizarre life extension experiments conducted by a murderous mad scientist, and unexplained supernatural occurrences and synchronicities: classic "X-Files" fare.

But despite being rooted in the long-running themes of the nine-season series, the film is accessible for first-time "X-Files" viewers or casual fans (or its underrated spin-off).

Rather than diving into the dense, overlapping conspiracies that form the series' core mythology of alien invasion and the government cover-up that keeps it a secret, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn" is what is referred to as a "monster of the week" story. It's a standalone plot that doesn't require a deep knowledge of the series or its mythology to enjoy.

Interestingly, the film breaks with the tradition of director's cuts featuring loads of deleted scenes and footage that never made it past the cutting room floor. It actually features a shorter runtime than the theatrical release.

"And everyone asks me that; why is it with most directors' cuts they're always longer because they throw everything in that got cut out. In this case, I felt it could be streamlined a little," Carter said. "I lightened up a little bit on the Mulder and Scully relationship beats and focused more on the horror movie that we really wanted to make."

In keeping with "X-Files" tradition, the director's cut also leaves many of its core mysteries and supernatural elements unresolved. That central theme, the ongoing search for truth and meaning in a sometimes mysterious and unexplainable universe, reflects Carter's own views.

"I really think of science as a search for God, and there are so many big questions that are unanswered, and we are trying to find the answers to those things," Carter said. "And will those answered questions bring us closer to an idea or a how it how it all began? What came before the Big Bang?"

Perhaps in a case of life imitating art, another key theme of "The X-Files" has made its way into the halls of the White House and Capitol Hill in recent years.

The U.S. government has held several congressional hearings discussing disclosure of alleged UFO secrets. The Trump administration has even released dozens of files, images and videos of alleged UFOs, or UAPs, as they're now known. Conspiracy theories of all kinds, particularly when it comes to aliens, have become mainstream.

Does that mean the truth is really out there? It certainly shows that we, as a nation, want to believe. But whatever the case may be, it is that same wonder, the same drive to question authority and probe the unknown, that drives Chris Carter to explore "The X-Files" after more than three decades.

"In every conspiracy is the kernel of truth, and that's interesting to me as a storyteller," Carter said.

"The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn" debuts on Hulu on Aug. 14, 2026.

The night sky holds endless wonders, but few experiences match the thrill of photographing planets in vivid detail. With even a modest telescope and camera setup, you can capture cloud bands on Jupiter, the majestic rings of Saturn or the polar caps of Mars — images once the preserve of professional observatories. This technique, known as lucky imaging, records short video clips at high frame rates to freeze fleeting moments of steady air, then stacks the sharpest frames into one crisp photo.

No advanced skills are required to start. Whether you own a modest backyard telescope or are shopping for your first planetary camera, this guide provides everything needed to succeed. You will learn a complete workflow that takes you from set-up to finished image, explore why certain planets are easier than others and find answers to practical questions that beginners often ask.

Clear skies, patience and practice are your only limits. Soon you will be creating gallery-worthy shots right from home.

Step-by-step tutorial: Imaging planets with a telescope and camera

Planetary imaging relies on video capture rather than single long exposures. Follow these 12 steps for reliable results with most setups. Planning observations in advance is essential!

4. Locate and center the planet either manually or via GoTo. Use the finder scope or red-dot finder, then switch to a low-power eyepiece to bring the target into view and center it as best you can.

The best planets to target with your telescope and camera

Jupiter ranks as the top choice for beginners – and perhaps even veterans! Its large disk shows colorful cloud bands, the Great Red Spot and orbiting moons even in modest telescopes. The planet’s brightness and size tolerate average seeing well and reward those even with modest equipment.

Saturn follows closely. Its iconic rings and subtle atmospheric banding create dramatic images. While significantly dimmer than Jupiter, modest telescopes easily reveal its brilliant rings, and the belts and zones within the planet’s atmosphere.

Mars delivers excitement during its oppositions every couple of years. At closest approach the planet swells in apparent size, revealing dark surface markings, polar ice caps and occasional dust storms. Again, even small telescopes reveal fascinating detail when the planet is close to opposition.

Venus offers an easy entry point. Extremely bright and straightforward to locate, it displays clear phases like a miniature moon. Cloud features require ultraviolet filters, but the phases alone impress viewers — even binoculars show these phases clearly.

These four planets share key advantages: They appear large and bright enough for small apertures to record good detail on them. Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are the top three – all are fascinating objects to study for observers of all experience levels.

Handling the more challenging solar system targets, however, requires more advanced equipment and experience levels.

Mercury, Uranus and Neptune present greater challenges. Mercury stays glued to the sun’s glare, visible only briefly at dawn or dusk and best at maximum elongation. Its tiny disk demands exceptional seeing and precise daytime locating skills as well as a decent size telescope.

Uranus and Neptune appear as tiny blue-green disks. Their small apparent sizes require at least an 8-inch aperture telescope, longer focal lengths and higher magnification. Larger apertures gather more light, while monochrome cameras with filters help tease out subtle banding.

Upgrading to a 10-inch or larger telescope, a high-sensitivity monochrome camera and a filter wheel unlocks these distant worlds. Start with the easier quartet before investing further.

Frequently asked questions

When is the best time to image the planets?

Aim for nights when the target planet rides high in the sky — ideally near the meridian — to minimize atmospheric turbulence. Planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Mars look largest and brightest around opposition, when Earth lies directly between them and the sun. But good seeing matters more than the calendar: stable air with low turbulence yields sharper frames regardless of season. Check forecasts and look for periods of high pressure with stable weather and calm winds. Planetary imaging works year-round on clear nights, but spring and fall often deliver steadier conditions. Light pollution is also irrelevant to this form of imaging, so it’s something you can easily undertake from urban locations.

What is the most basic setup you need to do this?

A 4- to 6-inch aperture telescope on a motorized mount — such as a Celestron NexStar 6SE or anything similar — provides an ideal starter platform. Pair it with an entry-level planetary camera like the ZWO ASI224MC, plus a 2x Barlow lens and a laptop running free software. Total beginner budget often stays under $800 if you already own the telescope. This kit can capture excellent Jupiter and Saturn images without breaking the bank. Skip expensive cooled cameras or large apertures until you gain experience.

How long does it take to get a good image?

The real key to achieving good image quality is everything you do before pressing the record button: Making sure the telescope is properly cooled down, ensuring it is properly collimated, taking time to focus carefully. All these factors play a huge role. Beyond this, it is largely down to the steadiness of the atmosphere when capturing. The steadier the seeing, the better the result will be!

Summary

We hope that, with a little practice, this gives you the know-how you need to take stunning images of the planets. If you've yet to purchase the necessary equipment, take a look at our guides to the best telescopes and best dedicated astrophotography cameras.

Virgin Galactic's next customers will have to wait a bit longer to get off the ground.

The suborbital space tourism company hasn't been to the final frontier since June 2024. It had been targeting late 2026 for the resumption of commercial service, but that's not going to happen, we learned on Wednesday (Aug. 12).

"We've moved our first commercial spaceflight to this coming February to allow additional time to complete avionics and systems installations," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said on Wednesday, during a call the company held to discuss its financial results for the second quarter of 2026.

"No single issue is driving the schedule push," he added. "Rather, we have experienced modest time-duration extension across hundreds of relatively small but important installation tasks involved in the first build of our new spaceship."

The coming mission won't be Virgin Galactic's first commercial spaceflight overall. That occurred in June 2023 and was performed by the company's VSS Unity space plane, which was retired a year later following its seventh operational, customer-carrying flight.

Rather, Colglazier was referring to the debut of the company's first "Delta class" vehicle, an advanced iteration that's designed to fly much more frequently than Unity ever did — twice per week, if all goes to plan.

Virgin Galactic is currently building two Delta planes, which will be broadly similar to Unity in most ways. They will be piloted vehicles that seat six passengers, for example, and will take off beneath the wings of a carrier plane. That mothercraft will drop the Delta vehicles at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), after which they'll ignite their rocket motors and head to suborbital space.

Their suborbital jaunts will likely last 60 to 90 minutes, and they'll end with a landing at the same runway where they started.

The second Delta spaceship is expected to join the first one at Spaceport America in New Mexico — Virgin Galactic's commercial hub — in March 2027, Colglazier said.

Colglazier also announced that Virgin Galactic's latest "tranche" of passenger bookings was oversubscribed, demonstrating a continuing strong demand from customers despite the flight hiatus. The per-seat price for that tranche was $750,000 — a number that's no longer available.

"We have retired the $750,000 price point, and we plan to open a new tranche of spaceflight expeditions this fall at higher price points," Colglazier said.

He didn't say what the new price would be. But the jump could be considerable, based on recent history: The ticket price before $750,000 was $600,000, and the one before that was $450,000.

Virgin Galactic lost nearly $56 million in Q2 2026, the company announced in Wednesday's earnings call. That was an improvement over Q2 2025, when the company was about $67 million in the red.

But things should change considerably next year, according to the company.

"With our second [Delta] spaceship entering service, we continue to forecast that we will achieve a flight rate of 10 or more spaceflights per month by the end of the second quarter of 2027," Virgin Galactic Chief Financial Officer Doug Ahrens said during Wednesday's call.

"This flight rate is an unprecedented achievement in human spaceflight, and this is made possible with our highly reusable spaceship design," he added. "Given these flight rate expectations, we continue to forecast quarterly positive cash flow within 2027."

The outlook is even rosier over the long haul, Ahrens stressed.

"We expect each new spaceship to cost approximately $60 million to produce," he said. "Given a conservative lifetime estimate of 500 flights per spaceship, with six astronauts per spaceflight, average pricing of $600,000 per spaceflight expedition, and a contribution margin over 80% per spaceflight, each new spaceship has the potential to generate over $1.4 billion of lifetime contribution margin."

Virgin Galactic will be the only game in town once it gets back up and running. Its chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism business, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, recently put its flights on hold to focus on helping NASA return astronauts to the moon.

Blue Origin has never revealed its ticket prices, but Ahrens said they were believed to be in the $1 million to $2 million range.

"I don't think we need to be driving our prices up that quickly," he said. "But there is strong and solid demand, and we do expect each time we release a tranche of tickets, it will be priced higher than the tranche before. And that's appropriate, so I think you'll see us do that for a little bit longer."

The Perseid meteor shower peaked last night in spectacular fashion, dazzling stargazers as countless shooting stars blazed overhead mere hours after a total solar eclipse saw the lunar disk hide the sun over Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Perseid shooting stars appear as Earth enters the debris trail cast off by the icy comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Each year, countless shards of this ancient comet collide with our wandering planet. What follows is truly spectacular.

Most are no larger than a particle of dust, or grain of sand. Yet the incredible velocity at which they strike our atmosphere — 37 miles (59 kilometers) per second on average — sees many carve a fiery path as they disintegrate in Earth's sky, which is easily visible to the naked eye.

Countless photographers were primed and ready to capture this magnificent display as Earth passed through the densest region of Swift-Tuttle debris trail, heralding the appearance of hundreds of shooting stars.

Read on to see a selection of our favorite photos of the 2026 Perseid meteor shower, taken in the beautifully dark nights surrounding the August new moon phase.

Best photos of the 2026 Perseid meteor shower

One of our readers sent in this gorgeous shot. Dimitar Birachoski, from Ohrid, Macedonia caught several Perseid meteors streaking over Galicica National Park on Aug. 12, 2026, using a Nikon Z6iii camera.

"I've got the Pleiades, Andromeda galaxy and Milky Way with the Perseids," Birachoski told Space.com via email.

Photographer Morteza Nikoubazl also caught a Perseid meteor streaking beside the famous Pleaides star cluster as seen from Semnan, Iran.

Meanwhile, a Perseid meteor was spotted as the setting sun illuminated the skies over the Negev Desert in southern Israel, on Aug. 11, 2026.

The Milky Way Galaxy also showed its face during the Perseid meteor shower over the Negev Desert on Aug. 11, 2026.

This long streak left by a Perseid meteor was photographed above Pedernales Falls State Park in Johnson City, Texas on Aug. 12, 2026.

A meteor (left) lit up the night sky during the Perseid meteor shower just hours after a total solar eclipse was seen from San Asensio, Spain on Aug. 12, 2026. 

Farther east, Ismail Aslandag caught a green meteor above Ucayak Church in Kirsehir, Turkiye on Aug. 12, 2026.

This long exposure captures Earth's rotation in the form of circular star trails. A Perseid "shooting star" lit up the swirling scene above Shaoguan in China's Guangdong Province on Aug. 12, 2026.

Farther north, photographer Fan Chengzhu saw a Perseid meteor streaking into the distance over Shitan Village in China's Anhui Province on Aug. 13, 2026.

Earth won't break free of Swift-Tuttle's debris trail until Aug. 24, so there are still plenty of Perseids to be seen brightening the summer sky if you're a little late to the show. Just be prepared for a significantly lower hourly rate compared to the peak.

Want to try your hand at capturing one? Then be sure to read our guide to photographing shooting stars, along with our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: Did you snag a photo of a Perseid and want to share it with Space.com's readers? Then please send your photo(s), comments, name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

On Aug. 13, 2014, a company called DigitalGlobe launched what was then the sharpest-eyed satellite of all time. WorldView-3 is a high-resolution imaging satellite that can resolve features as small as 1 foot (31 centimeters) across.

Its instruments allow it to peer through fog and smoke to see Earth's surface at a level of detail that was unprecedented for a non-governmental spacecraft. WorldView-3 lifted off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and has been orbiting Earth ever since.

Why it mattered

WorldView-3 pushed forward the technology of Earth-observing satellites. With its high resolution and ability to create mosaic images and deliver data in record time, the spacecraft changed the game in terms of studying Earth from space. While technology continued to advance beyond WorldView-3, it was a critical step in the process. For example, its data has helped researchers better track methane emissions coming from offshore oil and gas rigs, which is important as methane is a powerful greenhouse gas which contributes substantially to climate change.

WorldView-3's data is sorted by an algorithm that helps filter, process and color-correct images that might have been affected by atmospheric effects. With all of the imagery and data from satellites like WorldView-3, researchers can better track and understand contributors to climate change like methane plumes, as well as monitor deforestation and agriculture and study the spread and effects of natural disasters like wildfire.

Lastly, in an unexpected but amazing find, in 2015, archaeologists used data from WorldView-3 to discover what is thought to be a lost Viking village in Newfoundland. The near-infrared imagery captured by the satellite helped an international team to spot this village, which was only the second Viking settlement found in North America.

The total solar eclipse of Aug. 12, 2026 was one for the books. And this photo, snapped just as the eclipse was about to enter totality, really captures the drama of the moment.

What is it?

On Aug. 12, 2026, millions of people around the world witnessed a total solar eclipse. This happens when the moon passes in front of the sun, completely blocking it from our perspective here on Earth. (During a partial solar eclipse, only part of the sun's face is blocked by the moon.)

Observers lucky enough to be in the narrow "path of totality" that day got an experience they'll never forget.

Why is it incredible?

The chance to observe a total solar eclipse doesn't come along very often and is truly surreal and magical. While you might logically know that it's a predictable result of orbital dynamics, it's still incredibly strange in the moment to watch the sun disappear behind a black disk.

During totality, you experience a sort of false nighttime in the middle of the day. This can trigger strange responses from wildlife, with animals that are typically nocturnal coming out to see what's going on, confused about why night arrived at what feels like the wrong time.

Space.com skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic traveled to the Scoresby Sund off the coast of Greenland to experience the total solar eclipse from the deck of the MS Spitsbergen on the HX Expeditions eclipse voyage, and she's been taking us all along on her journey.

"I couldn't believe my eyes. I knew exactly what to expect — I’ve written about total solar eclipses countless times and given talks about them — but nothing prepared me for the feeling of actually seeing it," Dobrijevic said about her experience watching the eclipse. "I was completely in awe. As thin clouds drifted in towards the end of totality, they only added to the drama and emotion of an already extraordinary sight."

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "A CASE OF CHIAROSCURO" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

You're on a top-secret mission to recover a lost Federation probe from enemy territory. A close encounter with a Klingon cruiser forces you into hiding on the surface of an alien world, which — thanks, in part, to the local star's radiation making everything appear stylishly monochrome — looks like it's been lifted from a classic 20th-century film noir. You dress up as one of the locals on this occupied world, and quickly learn that you're the spitting image of the leader of the local resistance. What are the chances?

This being "Star Trek", the odds are nowhere near as long as they could — and maybe should — be. In fact, the galaxy is so chock-full of doppelgangers, clones and lookalikes that it's a wonder Una "Number One" Chin-Riley hadn't encountered her double before the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds", "A Case of Chiaroscuro".

This may explain why Dr M'Benga doesn't think anything is particularly amiss. "In a universe as vast as ours, the real mystery is that we don't stumble onto our doppelgangers more often," he claims. "That we have found Una's is a momentary stroke of luck."

That said, the origin stories of Trek's previous escapees from the planet Xerox are usually a little more complex — and outwardly sci-fi — than coincidence. The matter transporters found on every Starfleet vessel, for example, have repeatedly given actors the chance to play two roles at once.

In theory, transporter tech breaks you down into your constituent atoms, beams those particles across space, and reassembles them in the right order at the other end. But, in the event of a glitch, transporter rooms effectively become highly sophisticated 3D printers, creating duplicates indistinguishable from the original beamee.

In the "Original Series" episode "The Enemy Within", James T Kirk is split into two versions of himself, one good, the other evil. In this metaphysical exploration of self, it turns out you can't have one half without the other, forcing Spock and co to reintegrate the two Kirks in order to save their captain.

Will Riker also experiences transporter-induced imposter syndrome in "The Next Generation" episode "Second Chances". He learns that a beaming error on the USS Potemkin created an exact facsimile eight years earlier, and Riker 2.0 has been living alone on the remote Nervala IV ever since. Alas, this alt version (who opts to go by the name of Thomas) doesn't find it easy living in the shadow of the Enterprise-D's highly commended first officer, and eventually quits Starfleet to defect to the Maquis resistance organization.

When Bradward Boimler experiences similar duplication issues in "Lower Decks", it's his double, William, who makes better use of their resources. He ultimately finds himself in the captain's chair of a top-secret Section 31 vessel staffed by doppelgangers from alternative realities, including "Deep Space Nine"'s Dr Bashir, "Enterprise"'s T'Pol, and multiple incarnations of "Voyager"'s perennial ensign, Harry Kim.

"Trek"'s parallel universes are arguably even more conducive to duplication than transporter accidents. Indeed, even the Harry Kim who eventually makes it back from the Delta Quadrant in "Voyager" is an alternative version, transferred from a USS Voyager slightly out of phase with the original. (To be fair, OG Harry had just been sucked into the vacuum of space, so the switcheroo was easy to justify — and good news for actor Garrett Wang.)

But "Star Trek"'s most famous doppelgangers from another dimension hail from the infamous Mirror Universe, where the morally dubious Terran Empire crushes non-Earthers under a bloodthirsty boot — while the Federation traditionally comes in peace, these guys make no secret of their love of shooting to kill. Crews from "Enterprise", "Discovery", the Original Series, "DS9" and "Prodigy" have all come face to face with their evil twins. Few imposters have been quite as easy to spot as Terran Empire Spock, however, whose trademark goatee is something of a giveaway.

Shapeshifters are even trickier customers, seeing as they can — in theory — take the form of anyone they want. Kirk shares facetime with himself when Chameloid Marta impersonates him while messing up their attempt to escape the Rura Penthe penal colony in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country".

"I can't believe I kissed you," says Kirk. "Must have been your lifelong ambition," Kirk replies — sort that one out, Sigmund Freud.

The metamorphing Changelings of the Dominion also prove a particularly tricksy enemy in "Deep Space Nine", thanks to their ability to replicate everyone from Dr Bashir and General Martok to the Federation's in-house shapeshifter, Odo.

And then there's "Trek"'s dalliances with the more traditional sci-fi trope of cloning, the most famous example showing up just in time for "The Next Generation" crew's final mission.

The Big Bad in the 2002 movie "Nemesis" is Shinzon, a Jean-Luc Picard duplicate created by Romulan scientists to infiltrate the Federation. The irony, of course, is that this clone looks nothing like the source material. In fact, the chances of anyone buying that Tom Hardy will one day look like Patrick Stewart are close to zero — Dr M'Benga may believe that we should bump into our doppelgangers more often, but even he wouldn't fall for that one.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

Yesterday (Aug.12), millions of people enjoyed a total solar eclipse as it swept across parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain, while a partial solar eclipse was visible across much of Europe and northwest Africa.

If all that eclipse excitement has you eager for more, the good news is you won't have to wait long, because two remarkable solar eclipses are coming in 2027. First comes a dramatic "ring of fire" annular solar eclipse on Feb 6, followed six months later by the total solar eclipse on Aug. 2 — an event many eclipse chasers are already calling the "eclipse of the century".

First up, a dazzling "ring of fire"

On Feb. 6, 2027, an annular solar eclipse will be visible across parts of Chile, Argentina and the coastal parts of West Africa, while the partial phase of the eclipse where the moon takes a "bite" out of the sun will be visible across South America and West Africa.

An annular solar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly in front of the sun when it is slightly farther away from Earth than during a total solar eclipse. As such, the moon appears a little smaller in the sky and doesn't completely cover the sun, leaving a brilliant ring of sunlight around the moon's silhouette, the "ring of fire".

The "eclipse of the century"

If the "ring of fire" eclipse wasn't enough, 2027 serves up another, even more spectacular eclipse.

On Aug. 2, 2027, the moon's shadow will race across southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, treating skywatchers with one of the longest total solar eclipses of the century. At its greatest point, totality will last an extraordinary 6 minutes and 23 seconds — more than twice as long as many other total solar eclipses.

Combined with favorable August weather across parts of North Africa, it's easy to see why many eclipse enthusiasts are already planning their trips in advance.

If you're thinking about experiencing the Aug. 2, 2027 total solar eclipse for yourself, now is the perfect time to start planning. We've rounded up expert travel tips to help you choose the best viewing location and avoid common pitfalls, as well as 10 unforgettable tours and experiences that will put you right in the heart of one of the greatest celestial events of the century.

Satellites high above Earth may soon have fewer places to hide.

San Francisco-based company Astranis announced today (Aug. 13) that it's developing a line of spacecraft called Perceptor, which will keep an eye on satellite activity in geostationary orbit (GEO).

GEO lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth, an altitude at which orbital speed matches our planet's rotational velocity. It's therefore a popular destination for communications, weather and reconnaissance spacecraft — and, increasingly, an arena for off-Earth spying, as space powers seek to keep tabs on their competitors' activities.

Astranis currently operates five satellites in this distant orbital realm, which "support the U.S. military, bring connectivity to remote areas and provide critical capabilities like GPS," according to the company's website.

It plans to leverage and extend this expertise with Perceptor, helping the U.S. government and other potential customers learn more about what's happening high above our heads. The new line will be based on Astranis' "MicroGEO" satellite platform, so named because it's smaller than typical GEO craft.

"Astranis provides mission-critical infrastructure for strategic higher orbits. What we found is our means to detect and respond to emerging threats to this infrastructure are sorely lacking," John Gedmark, Astranis' CEO and co-founder, said in a statement today.

"There are blind spots that will be used against us if not eliminated," he added. "With Perceptor, we're meeting the increasing demand for security in GEO with our proven on-orbit platform and ability to produce at scale."

Perceptor spacecraft will sport a variety of sensors, which will allow them to take the measure of other satellites and their broader GEO surroundings.

"Multi-angle flybys can assess spacecraft capabilities, help troubleshoot anomalies on friendly spacecraft, and provide additional eyes in a domain where awareness has historically been limited," Astranis' statement reads.

Each Perceptor will also be highly maneuverable, using electric propulsion "to traverse the full GEO arc, repositioning dozens of times over its mission lifetime," company representatives added.

The statement does not provide a target timeline for the first Perceptor missions. But the need for such a capability already exists, as the activities of certain Russian and Chinese satellites show.

In 2020, for example, officials with the U.S. Space Force announced that two Russian spacecraft got within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of an American spy satellite, behavior the branch's then-chief described as "unusual and disturbing."

And, in 2023, experts announced that China's TJS-3 GEO spacecraft had taken close looks at USA 233 and USA 298, both of which are thought to be Space Force spy satellites.

For the generation that grew up in the 1980s, the release of the recent big-budget "Masters of the Universe" movie would undoubtedly have conjured up a sense of déjà-vu.

Picture the scene. The year is 1987. You've got the action figures and the Castle Grayskull playset, you've watched every episode of the cartoon again and again, and you can recite He-Man's opening credits voiceover by heart. He has the power!

Then someone tells you there's a live-action film adaptation coming out.

You persuade your parents to take you to the theater, pick up a great big bucket of popcorn, and get ready to be transported to the familiar surroundings of Eternia. And then…

Well, it's fair to say this is not the "Masters of the Universe" you know and love. Sure, leading man Dolph Lundgren is big, but why does he look and dress nothing like He-Man? Who's that Gwildor guy, and what the hell happened to Orko, BattleCat and Prince Adam? Why do He-Man and Skeletor spend so much of the movie on planet Earth? And when are we going to hear that famous theme tune? (Spoiler: you won't.)

By the power of Grayskull, this was not the film '80s kids expected, or indeed wanted. But disappointing a pre-teen fanbase was the least of "Masters of the Universe"'s worries. Sales of Mattel's previously all-conquering toyline were way past their peak, while the appetite for films trying to capture "Star Wars"' unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy had all but disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, "MOTU" 1987 had been bankrolled by an ambitious but eccentric studio, whose efforts to break into the mainstream had left it in a financial state so perilous that not even the most powerful man in the universe could save it.

"Masters of the Universe" was one of the undoubted pop culture success stories of the 1980s. Although Mattel had made the mistake of turning down the licence to make "Star Wars" toys, the toy giant responded in spectacular style by launching a fantasy behemoth of its own in 1982. He-Man, Skeletor and their Eternian colleagues would soon become household names, largely thanks to the advertising power of an immensely popular cartoon series.

Decades before "Transformers", "The Lego Movie" and "Barbie" made big money at the box office, producer Edward Pressman had seen the potential in taking a toy franchise to the big screen. There had been early interest in "He-Man" from major studios (including Warner Bros), but — largely thanks to delays caused by management changes at Mattel — interest had waned by the time Cannon Films stepped in to foot the bill.

Throughout the '80s, Cannon had become more renowned for the quantity of its output than the quality, as a pair of ambitious Israeli cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, invested in unashamed B-movies like "Enter the Ninja", Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" sequels, and Chuck Norris vehicle "The Delta Force". The studio had around 40 movies in production at the time "Masters of the Universe" got the green light, but was keen to make a move on tentpole blockbuster territory. As well as financing the disastrous "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", Cannon had also paid Sylvester Stallone a record-breaking fee to headline arm-wrestling drama "Over the Top". Both flopped at the box office.

Despite being "a little bit reluctant because it was [based on] a toy line", Stallone's "Rocky IV" co-star Dolph Lundgren signed up to play the mighty He-Man. The Swedish actor looked more like the lead singer of a hair metal band than the sword-wielding hero of the cartoons, though his impressive physique (coupled with He-Man's scanty wardrobe) ensured it was hard to find a convincing stunt double.

Director Gary Goddard also became concerned that his leading man (topping the bill for the first time) wasn't delivering dialogue as he wanted, and subtly chopped some of Lundgren's lines. He reasoned that heroes played by Clint Eastwood are often men of few words, with their sidekicks usually the ones supplying the supplemental information.

There were never any doubts about the man playing He-Man's nemesis, Skeletor, however. Frank Langella had caught Goddard's eye in "Amadeus" on Broadway, and — buried under some impressive make-up — relished the opportunity to ham it up as Eternia's villain-in-chief. But this dark, calculating interpretation was a universe away from the cackling, frequently thwarted bad guy of the cartoon series. It wasn't the only way the film would completely lose track of what had made kids fall in love with the "Masters of the Universe" brand.

Even in 2026, with the help of CG effects and a colossal budget, the new "Masters of the Universe" had to pick and choose which classic Eternians — including Mekaneck, one of the weirdest "Masters of the Universe" characters — made the transfer to the big screen.

Spare a thought, though, for the 1987 fans who had to make do with (on Team He-Man) Man-at-Arms, Teela and the Sorceress; and (on Team Skeletor) Evil-Lyn and Beast Man.

Hovering wizard sidekick Orko was replaced by a new character, Thenurian inventor Gwildor, while Skeletor's rogues' gallery was expanded to the tune of lizard man Saurod, the sword-wielding Blade, and the not-sure-what-he-is Karg. Long-standing favorites like Trap-Jaw, Tri-Klops, and Mer-Man were conspicuous by their absence.

Skeletor was supported by legions of laser-wielding, Stormtrooper-esque soldiers, though — thanks to Mattel's mandate that He-Man couldn't kill anyone — these were robots rather than people. He-Man also tended to favor a laser gun of his own, mostly keeping his famous Sword of Power for show. He didn't even need the sword for a big transformation moment, seeing as alter-ego Prince Adam and his green tiger BFF Cringer were conveniently jettisoned from the story.

The movie's biggest problem, however, was arguably transferring the action to Earth. This didn't contradict franchise mythology (He-Man's mom, Queen Marlena, had long been established as an astronaut from Earth), and the new film has followed suit by bringing Adam to Oklahoma City. But in "Masters of the Universe" 1987, the decision simply made the action feel small — despite the best efforts of legendary "Star Wars" effects veteran Richard Edlund.

Human teens Courteney Cox (the "Friends" star's first movie role) and Robert Duncan McNeill ("Star Trek: Voyager") did their best to grapple with an extended visit from walking, talking action figures, but you'd never know this was a He-Man movie if people didn't keep saying his name.

When Eternia did get a look in, it exposed the film's financial limitations, as over-investment and a series of expensive flops started to catch up with Golan and Globus. Goddard had wanted to shoot exteriors in Iceland to capture a more otherworldly vibe but had to make do with a few days at Vasquez Rocks (a location near Los Angeles that frequently doubled for alien worlds in "Star Trek") towards the end of production.

Money was so tight that, on the final scheduled day of the shoot, the plug was pulled as soon as the clock struck midnight, before Goddard had all the coverage he wanted. The director later admitted that he made a deal to stump up $50,000 of his own money (a sum matched by Cannon) to fund one last day of shooting on He-Man and Skeletor's climactic battle. At least the film would have an ending…

But was it worth it? "Masters of the Universe" made a disappointing $17.3 million at the US box office. It was just the 65th highest-grossing release of 1987, and some way behind infamous stinker "Jaws: The Revenge". It certainly wasn't enough to save Cannon, which had sold off a large chunk of its film library earlier that year in order to stave off bankruptcy. The studio (by then known as Cannon Pictures) would release its final film in 1994.

"The Cannon boys were very charismatic and very ambitious," Lundgren recalled in the documentary "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films".

"They were guys who came to Hollywood to take it over in a quick sort of way, perhaps not playing by all the rules but sometimes that works, and it worked for a while for these guys too. 'Masters' was their big shot, and even though it didn't reach the heights they'd wished for with 'Star Wars' and so forth, I think it's still a decent picture compared to some of the others they made. 'Masters' certainly beats 'Superman IV' in watchability."

"Masters of the Universe" 1987 is available to stream on Prime Video in the US and on Prime Video and ITVX in the UK.

And just like that, it's over.

Total solar eclipses are incredible moments in time, but they are fleeting. As the moon passes directly in front of the sun and its shadow sweeps across Earth's surface, the temperature drops and the light takes on an eerie twilight quality. Birds and other animals go quiet. It's a spectacle unlike any other. And for millions today who were lucky enough to be in the path of totality across Greenland, Iceland and Spain, that's exactly what they experienced.

"I cannot believe what I just witnessed. I knew what to expect  — I've seen thousands of photos but nothing compares to that feeling you get when you watch the sun transform before your very eyes," Space.com skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic said after watching the eclipse from the deck of the MS Spitsbergen on the HX Expeditions eclipse voyage in Scoresby Sund, Greenland on Aug. 12, 2026.

"It looked so big in the sky with the delicate corona streaming out into the abyss. Jupiter, Mercury and Venus even joined in the show. The huge prominence was the icing on the cake," Dobrijevic added.

"This is something I will never forget and I feel privileged to have experienced it in one of the most remarkable environments on Earth and alongside an incredible group of people aboard HX Expedition's MS Spitsbergen."

The 182 mile-wide (293-kilometer) path of totality — the line "drawn" on the face our our planet by the moon's shadow — began near Siberia over the Arctic Ocean and first arced down into eastern Greenland.

From there, the path stretched across western Iceland and then into northern Spain where millions gathered to witness the spectacle.

"It was the most incredible thing I've seen in my entire life," said Space.com skywatching writer Anthony Wood after witnessing the eclipse from Valoria la Buena, Spain alongside a team of citizen scientists from the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast initiative. "It feels like it really shouldn't be happening. It strikes the lizard part of your brain that just tells you that this shouldn't be real."

The path then crossed the Balearic Islands just east of Spain before ending over the Mediterranean Sea as the sun set.

Eclipse-watchers inside the narrow path of the moon's shadow were given a rare naked-eye glimpse of the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona. Witnessing the crown-like shape of the corona stretching away from the dark shadow of the moon is one of the most breathtaking moments of an eclipse. Photographs don't do it justice, as they rarely do.

Outside of the path of totality, skywatchers throughout Europe and Scandinavia were able to catch a glimpse of a partial solar eclipse — in which the moon appears to take a "bite" out of the sun.

Space.com's Harry Bennett captured the partial eclipse from a hilltop in Somerset, England, shooting the scene with a Unistellar Equinox 2 smart telescope equipped with a solar filter.

The partial solar eclipse was also visible for much of the northeastern United States and as far west as Michigan. Much of Canada got to witness the partial eclipse too, and so did Alaska.

What causes a total solar eclipse?

A total solar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly in front of the sun as seen from Earth. When this alignment happens, the moon casts its shadow along a line known as the path of totality. Only within this stripe will you be able to experience full totality.

Another factor to consider is that the moon has an elliptical, or oval-shaped, orbit. This means that it's sometimes closer to Earth than other times. Total solar eclipses only occur when the moon is at just the right distance from Earth, making it appear the same size in the sky as the sun (or even slightly larger). This obscures the blinding light of the sun, allowing viewers to glimpse our star's outer atmosphere, or corona.

When the moon is a bit farther away from Earth, it appears relatively smaller. And when solar eclipses fall on a date when the moon is at this greater distance from our planet, the moon doesn't completely block the sun. This creates what's known as an annular solar eclipse, or a "ring of fire" in the sky.

When is the next total solar eclipse?

The next total solar eclipse will occur on Aug. 2, 2027 and will be visible throughout a 160-mile-wide (258-kilometer) path that crosses southern Spain, northern Morocco, northern Algeria, northern Tunisia, northeast Libya, central Egypt, the northeastern tip of Sudan, southwest Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the northeastern tip of Somalia.

Outside of this path, a partial solar eclipse will be visible to most of Europe, much of the African continent, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, eastern Canada and parts of Maine.

In North America, the next total solar eclipse will take place on March 30, 2033, and will be visible from Alaska. Looking farther out, the U.S. states of Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and areas of Canada will witness a total solar eclipse on Aug. 23, 2044.

Submit your eclipse photos! If you captured a photo of the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send photos, videos, a brief description of your experience, and your name, location and content usage permission release to spacephotos@space.com.

The first breathtaking photos of totality for the total solar eclipse 2026 are pouring in, revealing incredible views of the sun's atmosphere radiating out from behind the moon's colossal silhouette.

Eclipse chasers have spent the past few hours watching in awe, as the moon transformed the sun into an incandescent crescent in the run up to totality, before swallowing it entirely in the skies over Scoresby Sund, Greenland as seen from the deck of the MS Spitsbergen on the HX Expeditions eclipse voyage.

Read on to see spectacular photos of the sun's corona glowing in the false twilight of totality. And be sure to stay with us in the coming hours as the moon's central shadow sweeps over Europe, before ultimately disappearing from view off the north coast of Africa at 2:34 p.m. EDT (1834 GMT).

First photos of totality

The first photos of totality revealed the sun's corona, visible thanks to the moon blocking most of our star's light.

Luckily, weather cooperated for the eclipse chasers on the MS Spitsbergen on the HX Expeditions eclipse voyage in Scoresby Sund, Greenland.

Space.com's own skywatching editor Daisy Dobrijevic was onboard, capturing the first images of totality.

As the moon drifted past the sun, the first glimpses of the sun began to reveal themselves as the path of totality moved onwards towards Spain.

We'll have more coverage on our total solar eclipse live blog throughout the day, including reports from Skywatching Editor Daisy Dobrijevic as she catches the entirety of the eclipse unfolding in the skies over Greenland aboard an HX Expeditions cruise ship.

Skywatching Writer Anthony Wood will also be giving you the live updates from his vantage point in central Spain, where the eclipsed sun will set below the horizon just a few short hours from now.

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

A radiation-shielding vest might one day protect astronauts from dangerous, random outbursts from the sun, a new study finds.

More than 50 years after the final Apollo mission, NASA's Artemis program aims to return humans to the moon. To succeed, this project must protect astronauts from solar radiation, especially the intense and unpredictable radiation from solar storms. Coating an entire spacecraft with a meaningfully thick layer of radiation shielding remains impractical due to weight constraints, but wrapping astronauts in protective garments may potentially be helpful.

In the new study, researchers experimented with the AstroRad vest, which was designed by the Israeli startup StemRad with support from the Israel Space Agency and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. The garment was created to protect astronauts from explosions from the sun known as solar particle events.

"Radiation in space is unavoidable, and a single major solar particle event can make a substantial contribution to an astronaut's lifetime risk of radiation-induced cancer," study co-author Oren Milstein, CEO and co-founder of StemRad, told Space.com. "By significantly reducing that contribution, personal shielding could be particularly important for future lunar and Mars missions."

When it comes to protection against radiation, lead is excellent at blocking hazardous forms of light, such as X-rays and gamma rays. However, lead is much less effective at defending against the kinds of dangerous particles that can hurtle through space. For instance, when fast high-energy electrons known as beta particles strike dense lead atoms, they can trigger a shower of X-rays that are more harmful than the beta particles themselves. And if neutrons strike lead atoms, they can knock loose a spray of neutrons from the atoms' nuclei, worsening the impact from the radiation.

Instead, AstroRad relies on a high-density plastic rich in hydrogen. Among the elements, hydrogen possesses the highest density of electrons per atom, which can help create a dense shield to protect against incoming particles. At the same time, hydrogen atoms normally do not have neutrons, so if neutrons hit them, they cannot generate the kind of dangerous neutron sprays that can happen with lead atoms.

Moreover, the plastic in AstroRad is much lighter than lead. This makes it easier to move around in garments incorporating the plastic, and more practical for space missions in which weight is a major limitation.

The scientists combined thousands of hexagonal rods of the rigid plastic together like scales to create a flexible garment. All in all, each vest weighed about 57 pounds (26 kilograms).

The scientists developed a vest rather than a full-body suit or a helmet because "different organs and tissues have very different sensitivities to radiation, so shielding every part of the body equally is not the most effective approach," study co-author Jordan Houri, lead scientist for space exploration at StemRad, told Space.com. "At the same time, a full-body suit would be much harder to put on and move around in."

The shielding thickness of the AstroRad vest was based on how sensitive to radiation the underlying organs were. This strategy provides about a 30% greater reduction in the dose of radiation a person receives compared with distributing the same amount of shielding uniformly across the body, Houri said.

The researchers tested their vest during NASA's uncrewed Artemis I moon mission in late 2022 using a pair of extraordinarily complex dummies called phantoms. These artificial torsos were constructed of plastics that mimicked the density of human tissue, bone and organs, and each was equipped with more than 5,600 radiation sensors on and in them.

The two phantoms were designed to be adult females, since previous research found that breasts and ovaries are especially susceptible to radiation damage.

"Women are predicted to face a higher risk of radiation-induced cancer," Milstein said. "Targeted shielding could help narrow that difference in risk between male and female astronauts."

Since the phantoms mimicked women, they were given women's names, Zohar and Helga. "Helga was contributed to the experiment by the German Aerospace Center, and Helga is a traditional German name," Milstein said. "Zohar was contributed by the Israel Space Agency, which selected the name through a public outreach campaign. Zohar is a traditional Hebrew name meaning 'radiance,' which we thought was particularly fitting."

Zohar and Helga flew seated in NASA's Orion spacecraft; Zohar was equipped with an AstroRad vest, while Helga was not. Although Orion did not encounter a significant solar outburst during its 26-day mission to lunar orbit and back, the researchers were able to extrapolate how much solar radiation astronauts might experience based on what the phantoms encountered passing through the inner Van Allen belt of radiation surrounding Earth.

When the scientists analyzed past solar particle events, they found the AstroRad vest would have significantly reduced the dose of radiation a person during those outbursts — for instance, by nearly 60% for a solar particle event that happened in August 1972.

"We had originally anticipated something closer to 45%, so when we first saw the result, we thought we needed to go back and find an error," Houri said. "Instead, the detailed analysis showed that AstroRad's approach of providing targeted shielding to the most radiation-sensitive organs and tissues was even more effective than we had projected."

Such a reduction could spare astronauts the equivalent of up to 193 days of deep-space radiation exposure. "The most important implication is that AstroRad could help overcome one of the major health challenges limiting long-duration human exploration beyond Earth," Milstein said.

AstroRad is not something astronauts would wear continuously throughout an entire mission, Houri said. "AstroRad was developed as an emergency countermeasure for solar particle events, so astronauts would only wear it when radiation levels are elevated, typically for periods of hours or days," he explained.

Still, "although it is not something astronauts would need to wear throughout an entire mission, we designed the vest to remain usable for many hours at a time," Milstein said. During tests with the vests on the International Space Station, "several crew members even slept with it on."

The level of radiation protection the AstroRad vest provided was similar to that supplied by the Orion spacecraft's onboard storm shelter, "while allowing the astronaut wearing it to leave the shelter and continue mission-critical tasks," Houri said. "AstroRad can be used on its own or together with a shelter, but one of its main advantages is that an astronaut can remain protected while moving around the cabin and carrying out essential mission operations rather than remaining inside the shelter."

The scientists are now investigating whether it is possible to manufacture radiation shielding in space using onboard materials. For instance, in collaboration with Florida aerospace company Redwire, "we have already demonstrated that it is possible to 3D-print AstroRad components from recycled polyethylene aboard the International Space Station," Milstein said.

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Aug. 12) in the journal Science Advances.

The most distant 'black hole star' yet found, existing in the universe less than 660 million years after the Big Bang, has provided a vital clue as to the origin of the mysterious "little red dots" that populate the James Webb Space Telescope's images of the early universe.

The consensus seems to be that these bizarre objects, which were first discovered in 2022, are growing supermassive black holes entombed within huge clouds of gas that have spectrums similar to cool, red stars, such as red giants. Recently, astronomers have been finding that some of these objects are placed within the center of young galaxies whose light has been traveling for about 12 billion years, give or take a billion, to reach us. Given their distance and faintness, black hole stars' light is difficult to disentangle from the light of a surrounding galaxy, especially when we know there is likely a galaxy there that's too faint for the JWST to resolve.

However, a newly discovered black hole star, unearthed during a JWST program called the Mirage or Miracle (MoM) survey, is acting as a kind of a missing link.

"The Mirage or Miracle survey was designed specifically to target sources considered 'risky,' meaning they could either be amazing discoveries or just interlopers, such as some cold nearby stars that look like distant galaxies," Jorryt Matthee of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and a co-investigator on the MoM survey said in a statement. In particular, the survey focuses on objects that look like they could be very high redshift galaxies (around a redshift of 10 or more, which equates to having existed about at least 13.1 billion years ago).

The black hole star found by the survey has been named MoM-BH*-1 and is the best example yet of a "naked" black hole star, meaning astronomers are fairly certain it exists in space on its own rather than inside a burgeoning galaxy. This means all of its light is generated by accretion onto the black hole at the center of the cloud. Though we cannot see this accretion because of the obscuring gas cloud, this light energizes the surrounding cloud from within, causing it to glow just as energy generated within the sun causes its outer layers to radiate.

"The spectrum we detected is our best evidence of a cloak of gas feeding an early forming black hole," Rohan Naidu of the University of Hawaii, who led the team who discovered MoM-BH*-1 and is co-leader of the MoM survey, said in the statement.

Intriguingly, MoM-BH*-1 lies close in space to a young galaxy at the same redshift, and estimates suggest that it will take another 100 million years for the black hole star to collide and merge with the galaxy. Naidu and Matthee's team modeled what the spectrum of the galaxy would look like after it has merged with MoM-BH*-1, and found that it would look very much like the little red dots already known to exist within galaxies.

"Considering the black hole star as a template for the black hole component of little red dots helps clarify many of the uncertainties about them," said Matthee. "If embedded in similar host galaxies, black hole stars like MoM-BH*-1 might well serve as the central engines of baby quasars."

In this way, MoM-BH*-1 provides strong evidence for the object at the heart of faint galaxies encompassing little red dots as being a black hole star. Recent observations of some little red dots at lower redshifts have shown the cloud of gas around the black hole begin to disintegrate, exposing the black hole and the X-rays produced by the accretion of gas onto it. These black holes appear to be growing fast, and the environments surrounding such active black holes become highly luminous, creating a quasar.

"Astronomers have never lacked imagination: since the discovery of quasars, there has been no dearth of theories to explain how these black holes grew so massive so fast," said Naidu. "Something spectacular must have happened in the early universe. Now with JWST, we can directly observe this era and see for ourselves which scenarios actually occur."

Learning of the birth of supermassive black holes and whether they predate the galaxies that surround them was one of the primary science goals of the JWST before it launched. In this it has been tremendously successful so far. Despite little red dots having only been discovered four years ago, research into them and black hole stars is accelerating, with new findings coming out now almost on a weekly basis.

"These are incredibly exciting times with nearly a thousand papers and preprints on little red dots in the past two to three years," said Matthee. "Far from a mirage, this might well be a cosmic miracle."

The findings were published on Aug. 13 in the journal Nature.

On Aug. 12, 2005, NASA launched its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission lifted off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-401 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now known as the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station) in Florida.

Some of the best cameras ever launched into space are on MRO, and the spacecraft has taken some seriously amazing photos of Mars. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, takes super-sharp photos of the Martian surface and has helped NASA scout the Red Planet for suitable landing sites for rovers like Curiosity. It also serves as a data relay station for other spacecraft on Mars that need to beam data back to Earth.

MRO has also studied water and ice on Mars, and its cameras have revealed some pretty remarkable landscapes.

Why it mattered

Now operational for more than 20 years, MRO serves as one of NASA's oldest spacecraft in operation around the Red Planet. It has become instrumental in the space agency's ability to maintain communication with other probes in orbit around Mars and rovers on the planet's surface.

The probe's HiRISE camera revolutionized scientists' understanding of Mars' diverse surface features, with resolution high enough to picture objects as small as 3 feet (1 meter) wide. Since its arrival in orbit around Mars on March 10, 2006, MRO has snapped more than 100,000 images of the surface below and helped NASA track geologic activity like migrating dunes, impact craters, avalanches, dust storms and seasonal frost changes. And NASA is still finding ways to put the aging satellite's scientific instruments to good use. For example, the agency executed a 120-degree roll program last year designed to strengthen MRO's SHARAD radar signal by 10 times or more, allowing it to probe deeper than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) underground to detect water ice.

MRO's role as a communications relay for probes on and around Mars became even more important earlier this year, when NASA's MAVEN mission ended in June. Today, MRO returns around 80,000 megabits of data per day, according to Astronomy.com, and remains one of NASA's most critical assets in orbit around Mars.

What a view. Astrophotographers in Namibia have captured a bright green comet soaring overhead in a spectacular new photograph.

What is it?

In this incredible new photograph is the comet 220P/McNaught.

Discovered by Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught, the comet orbits our sun once every 5.5 years. Back in June, the comet reached perihelion, or the closest point in its orbit around the sun. Around that time, the comet experienced a large outburst, which brightened it about 8,000 times.

The comet brightened back up this August to about 600 times its normal brightness — and it was during this period when astrophotographers Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger captured it streaking across the night sky over Namibia.

To capture the moment, the pair used a 12-inch Astrograph telescope with a ZWO ASI 6200 MM Pro camera.

Why is it incredible?

It's not every day you see a comet in the night sky. Even if one is overhead, often they're too tricky or too far away to spot without a telescope, and even then it can be a challenge.

It's also incredible that the moment captured in the new image showcases the comet 220P/McNaught with such spectacular clarity and detail. It must have been something truly special to witness.

While spotting a comet like this might not happen every day, we can sometimes see the debris trailing behind a comet as its tail burns up in our atmosphere. These burnt comet bits are actually the "shooting stars" we see in the night sky during a meteor shower.

Right now, the Perseids meteor shower is on its annual parade across the night sky. This meteor shower is made up of debris shed by the comet Swift-Tuttle as it swoops by on its annual trip across the solar system. Under dark skies, skywatchers can see up to 100 shooting stars thanks to Swift-Tuttle.

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most prolific and impressive meteor showers of the year, peaks tonight!

Widely regarded as one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids can produce up to 100 meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions and weather permitting.

This year's display is particularly favorable because the shower peaks on the night of the new moon, leaving skies free from bright moonlight that can wash out fainter meteors.

What time should I look?

The Perseids can produce meteors throughout the night, but the best viewing begins around 11 p.m. local time, with activity increasing after midnight and continuing until the predawn hours. Under dark, clear skies, patient observers could see dozens of meteors every hour with the highest rates expected just before dawn.

Where do they come from?

The annual show occurs as Earth passes through a trail of comet dust and rocky debris left behind by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Every year, our planet plows through this stream of cometary material, causing tiny fragments — many no larger than a grain of sand — to slam into Earth's atmosphere at around 133,000 mph (214,000 km/h).

As these particles compress and heat the air in front of them, they burn up high above Earth's surface, creating the brilliant streaks of light we know as meteors or shooting stars.

How can I see the Perseids?

The Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, but you don't need to look directly at the constellation to enjoy the show. In fact, the longest and brightest meteors appear about 45 degrees away from the radiant, when you're not viewing them head-on.

To give yourself the best chance of seeing as many meteors as possible, head somewhere with dark skies, away from city lights and give your eyes around 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Avoid checking bright phone screens (easier said than done!) and leave the telescope or binoculars at home — meteors are best enjoyed with the naked eye.

The highest number of meteors occurs in the predawn hours because it's when the side of Earth you're situated on has rotated into the stream of comet debris. You can think of it a bit like driving through rain — the windshield catches more raindrops than the rear window because it's facing the direction of travel. Likewise, before dawn, your location on Earth is facing into the stream of comet debris, meaning more meteoroids collide with Earth's atmosphere overhead.

A rare double sky show

Why have one remarkable sky event when you can have two? This year's Perseid peak arrives on the heels of today's total solar eclipse that crosses parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain, making it possible to witness two of the year's most spectacular celestial events within just a few hours of each other.

If you're unable to catch the Perseids tonight, don't worry! While meteor numbers will gradually decline after the peak, the Perseids remain active through Aug. 24, meaning there are still opportunities to catch plenty of shooting stars under clear, dark skies.

If you're looking to snap photos of the meteor shower or the night sky in general, check out our guide on how to photograph meteor showers, as well as our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.

Just over 12 hours after its first liftoff of the day out of Florida's Space Coast, SpaceX has delivered a second batch of Starlink internet satellites to orbit on a rocket lifting off from the company's California launch site.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Aug. 12, at 12:46 p.m. EDT (0346 GMT; 9:46 p.m. local time). The mission, Starlink Group 17-49, carried 24 of the broadband spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO) to join SpaceX's growing constellation of more than 10,000 satellites.

About 8.5 minutes after clearing the tower, the Falcon 9's first stage, Booster 1103 successfully landed on SpaceX's "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship in the Pacific Ocean." It was the fifth flight for this particular booster.

In addition to being its third Starlnk mission, B1103 also launched the NROL-179 and SDA-T1TL-E in support of U.S. national defense.

Following separation from Falcon 9's main booster, the rocket's second stage flew onward to LEO, delivering its 24 Starlink satellites about one hour after liftoff.

Today's liftoff was the 94th Falcon 9 launch of the year, 73 of which have delivered Starlink stacks to the growing constellation — the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

Starlink currently consists of more than 10,900 active satellites, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. But SpaceX has even bigger megaconstellations in mind: The company has filed to operate 100,000 of its bigger, more capable Starlink V3 satellites, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has also stated his intent to launch a million AI data center satellites to Earth orbit as well.

Today (Aug. 12), millions of people across Greenland, Iceland and Spain will witness a total solar eclipse as the moon completely covers the sun, turning day into night, albeit briefly.

It's Europe's first total solar eclipse since 1999, and with a maximum of 2 minutes, 18 seconds of totality, it will be worth the wait … weather permitting!

Even if you're not inside the path of totality, there's still plenty to see. A dramatic partial solar eclipse will be visible across much of Europe, offering millions more the chance to watch the moon take a 'bite' out of the sun. More than 90% of the sun will be covered for major cities such as London, Paris and Dublin.

Where will the eclipse be visible?

Today's eclipse will unfold over roughly 96 minutes as the moon's shadow races across Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Totality begins in Greenland in the late afternoon before reaching Spain in the evening, where skywatchers will witness the rare spectacle of a low-horizon sunset eclipse.

Not sure what you'll see from your location? Check out our where to see the total solar eclipse guide for visibility details.

What time is the eclipse?

The eclipse occurs at different times depending on your location.

Looking for a more detailed breakdown of timings? Our what time is the eclipse guide can help.

Can I watch the eclipse online?

If you can't make it to a location within the path of totality, you can still experience the eclipse from home.

We've rounded up the best ways to watch the eclipse online, including livestreams from the path of totality.

Follow the eclipse with Space.com

Our eclipse live blog will bring you the latest updates throughout the day, including weather reports, photos, videos and observations from across Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

We'll also have reporters in the field. Skywatching Editor Daisy Dobrijevic is on an eclipse expedition to Greenland with HX, while Skywatching Writer Anthony Wood is observing from northern Spain with the DEB initiative and a team of citizen scientists.

Follow along throughout the day here on Space.com and our social channels (Instagram and TikTok) as we bring you firsthand reports from the path of totality and share some of the best eclipse images.

How to observe the eclipse

Never look directly at the sun without proper eye protection.

During the partial phases of the eclipse, you must use solar eclipse glasses or a certified solar filter. Looking at the sun without appropriate protection can cause serious and permanent eye damage.

The only time it is safe to view the eclipse without eye protection is during the brief period of totality, when the moon completely covers the sun. As soon as even a small portion of the sun reappears, eclipse glasses must be worn again.

For more information, check out our guide to observing the sun safely. If you haven't been able to get hold of some solar eclipse glasses, don't fear! We also have a handy guide on how to safely view the eclipse using items from around the home.

Editor's note: If you capture a photo of the solar eclipse and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.

SpaceX is famous for launching, and landing, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and sending astronauts to space aboard its Dragon crew capsule. Recently, however, the company has been transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) outfit — and that journey is now mostly complete.

"Our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September — like, next month — and will significantly exceed all other SpaceX revenue in in the fourth quarter," company founder and CEO Elon Musk said during an address to employees that the company posted on X today (Aug. 11). "So, AI has become an extremely important part of SpaceX's future."

Earlier this year, SpaceX bought xAI, a startup that Musk founded in 2023. xAI created the chatbot Grok and also operates a powerful supercomputer cluster in Tennessee called Colossus.

But that was just the beginning. Musk laid out just how deeply SpaceX is diving into AI during his 29-minute talk, which came a week after SpaceX's first-ever quarterly earnings call as a public company.

"Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX; I'd say five years for sure," Musk said. "And the value of SpaceX will be some astronomical number."

Astronomical is right. According to Musk, the company aims to get 10 gigawatts of AI compute up and running by the end of next year. That's a big jump from its current 1.4 GW, which SpaceX sells to tech companies and AI labs.

"The value per watt is probably going to be 30 to $50, which means if we bring 10 gigawatts of AI online by the end of next year, it will be 300 to $500 billion a year in revenue," he said. "Big numbers."

And those numbers will get even bigger over time, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX just announced plans to build a gigantic complex in Texas called Terafab, a joint operation with Tesla that will manufacture advanced semiconductor chips for a wide range of applications. And the company aims to launch a million of its "Starmind" AI satellites to low Earth orbit in the coming years using its fully reusable Starship megarocket, which is still in development.

Over the longer haul, the company plans to establish factories on the moon that will build these off-Earth data centers. The satellites will be launched into space from the lunar surface via electromagnetic mass drivers — basically, high-powered rail guns.

SpaceX envisions Starmind and its other AI efforts as returning almost unimaginable profits down the road. For example, in paperwork the company filed just before its record-breaking IPO, SpaceX identified an eventual "total addressable market" of $28.5 trillion, nearly $23 trillion of it in the AI field.

For some perspective: The gross domestic product of the entire United States last year was about $30.8 trillion.

"The future is fundamentally AI and robots," Musk said during his address to employees. "Assuming civilization continues to progress, I think that AI will probably — the amount of digital intelligence will probably be more than a trillion times the amount of biological intelligence."

He also said he's not just in this for the money.

"It's important that we have an AI that cares about humanity, that fosters humanity and helps take us to other planets and other star systems," Musk said.

"This is why I think it's essential that SpaceX succeed not just with AI hardware but also with AI software," he added. "I think an AI that is sort of SpaceX's baby will be a very good AI. I think SpaceX is a collection of some of the very best humans on Earth, both in capability and morality and goodness."

He urged SpaceX employees to aid the company's AI efforts in any way that they can, stressing that success could lead to some amazing vacations.

"One of the nice benefits of this also is that anyone at SpaceX who wants to go to the moon or Mars will be able to go in the future," he said. "You have my word."

Editor’s note: The original headline of this story read “in 2027,” which was incorrect, given that SpaceX aims to get 10 GW online by the end of that year. It was corrected at 8:20 p.m. ET on Aug. 11.

Astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created, offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky.

The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys team, contains a staggering 5.6 trillion pixels and combines more than 263,000 telescope exposures collected over more than a decade. The observations span visible and near-infrared wavelengths, providing an enormous portrait of stars, galaxies and other cosmic phenomena across the sky, according to a statement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) NOIRLab. (You can explore the full data here.)

"It's part of the fabric of astronomy research now," David Schlegel, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said in the statement. "When you're working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you're looking at."

The latest 2D cosmic map represents the culmination of 13 years of observations and data processing. The Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally designed to help DESI determine where to point its thousands of robotic optical fibers, essentially creating the 2D foundation for DESI's much larger effort to map the universe in three dimensions.

Installed on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, DESI measures the spectra of galaxies and quasars. By determining their redshifts — how much their light has been stretched as the universe expands — astronomers can calculate their distances and transform a flat view of the sky into a 3D map of the cosmos.

DESI began its main survey in 2021 with the goal of tracing how the universe has expanded over billions of years and, in turn, helping scientists better understand dark energy, the mysterious phenomenon thought to be driving that expansion.

The project has since far surpassed its original targets. By April 2026, DESI had mapped more than 47 million galaxies and quasars, creating the largest high-resolution 3D map of the universe to date. Previous DESI results have also provided intriguing evidence that dark energy may evolve over time rather than remain constant, as predicted by the standard model of cosmology.

DESI isn't the only project finding new ways to map the cosmos. Earlier this year, astronomers with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) created a different kind of 3D map using faint Lyman-alpha emission from hydrogen between galaxies. That effort illuminated previously hidden structures dating to between 9 billion and 11 billion years ago, when the universe was experiencing a peak in star formation.

The new Legacy Imaging Surveys map, meanwhile, will have uses well beyond DESI. Previous versions of the dataset have already been referenced in more than 1,800 scientific papers, while the latest release could help astronomers search for rare objects and phenomena, study galaxy evolution and train artificial intelligence systems to analyze the enormous volumes of data expected from next-generation observatories.

"Explorations of our universe always start with images of the night sky. The DESI Imaging Legacy Surveys are just one step in this venerable human tradition," Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Imaging Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab, said in the statement. "For our team, these data are fundamental to the investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy. But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to marvel at their wonders."

Astronomers have nearly doubled the number of known cosmic X-ray sources, offering the most comprehensive public view yet of the universe's hottest and most energetic objects.

The second major public data release from the German-led eROSITA X-ray telescope contains a catalog of nearly 2 million X-ray-emitting objects, including supermassive black holes, galaxy clusters, stars and other extreme cosmic phenomena. The unprecedented dataset — called DR2 — will help astronomers investigate how black holes grow, galaxies evolve and the universe's largest structures formed, according to a statement from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

"DR2 is the best inventory of the X-ray sky we have to date and opens the door to robust statistical studies of cosmic populations," Miriam E. Ramos-Ceja, Ground Segment Manager of the eROSITA instrument and lead author of the DR2 publication said in the statement.

The new release combines observations collected during eROSITA's first three all-sky scans over 556 days, allowing astronomers to detect increasingly faint X-ray sources that previous surveys missed.

Of the nearly 2 million detections, more than 1.9 million are point-like sources, most of them active supermassive black holes feeding at the centers of distant galaxies or stars within the Milky Way. These black holes offer astronomers a window into how galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time, while the stellar sources help researchers better understand everything from stellar activity to the life cycles of stars.

Another roughly 64,000 sources are extended objects, including massive galaxy clusters, nearby galaxies and the glowing remnants of exploded stars (also known as supernovas). Galaxy clusters are especially valuable because they trace the universe's largest structures, helping scientists investigate the influence of dark matter and dark energy on the evolution of the cosmos.

Unlike visible light, X-rays reveal some of the universe's most energetic environments. Material spiraling toward a black hole can be heated to millions of degrees before crossing the event horizon, while neutron stars, supernova remnants and the enormous reservoirs of hot gas filling galaxy clusters also emit strongly in X-rays.

The size of the catalog gives astronomers a powerful new dataset for studying the high-energy universe. With nearly 2 million sources observed under the same conditions, astronomers can study how supermassive black holes have grown over billions of years, map the distribution of galaxy clusters to better understand the large-scale structure of the universe, and search for rare or unusual objects that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. Large, uniform surveys also make it easier to compare different classes of objects and identify long-term trends that smaller observations cannot reveal.

The release also includes optical and infrared counterparts for many of the X-ray sources, helping astronomers determine whether each object is a nearby star, a distant galaxy, an active supermassive black hole or another type of high-energy phenomenon. In the portion of the catalog where counterparts have been identified, about 88% are distant galaxies hosting actively feeding supermassive black holes, according to the statement.

"X-ray detection is only the first step," Mara Salvato, eROSITA spokesperson and chair of the follow-up working group, said in the statement. "By linking X-ray sources to their counterparts at other wavelengths, we can work out what these objects are, where they sit on the cosmic distance ladder, and build clean, well-defined samples on an unprecedented scale."

Although eROSITA stopped collecting scientific observations in early 2022, the mission completed enough sky scans beforehand to support additional public data releases. Researchers say the next Data Release 3 (DR3) is planned for 2028.

The eROSITA-DE DR2 catalogue is available to view online.

Season 4 of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is off to a roaring start with episodes already airing centered around primeval dinosaurs, a haunted starship, and a hedonistic pleasure planet.

This week's chapter, titled "A Case of Chiaroscuro", airs on Aug. 13 and takes another bold swing, featuring a wartime film noir-style tale with tense galactic politics at its core.

We connected with three of "Strange New Worlds'" brightest stars — Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Lt. Cmdr Una Chin-Riley), and Carol Kane (Commander Pelia) — to hear about this penultimate season's boundary-pushing vision delivered by executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, and learn more about that Muppet episode called “Level-Five Transporter Accident” that's coming later this month on Aug. 20.

"We're all in agreement that season 4 and season 5 are the strongest seasons of the whole series," Romijn tells Space. "I think the producers had more time to prepare for season 4, and every episode felt incredible on the page. Every episode felt like a really fun challenge. We just had a blast.

"The writers think so outside the box, and I can't believe they come up with the things they come up with," continues Romijn. "Every time a writer asks, 'What haven’t you done that you’d like to do?' I can't even think as outside the box as our writers. I leave it up to them."

Mount echoes those sentiments and finds the sci-fi series to be fully engaged.

"It just feels like the bolts were tight," Mount adds. "We've built this incredible machine and we were able to take bigger leaps and have more fun. Even curve balls that came in season 1 and season 2. I grew tired of going to Akiva and Henry and saying, 'Are you sure about this?' And then those ended up being the episodes that really pop. So I stopped asking questions and trusted them. Also, I think the sense of consequence was heightened at the same time."

Even though Carol Kane's ancient Lanthanite character, Pelia, didn't arrive until the second season, even she senses a major shift in the show's momentum.

"I feel like as we went on people were more and more willing to take risks at every level, from the writing to the acting to the cinematography to the directing and the wardrobe," Kane notes. "It was like, what the hell. Let's roll them dice. I feel that was a wonderful freedom."

As fans eagerly anticipate the Muppet episode (they won’t be disappointed!), the trio all admitted that the Pelia puppet with its wild tangle of blonde hair was the one most of the cast wanted to take home with them.

Sadly, none of the actors were allowed to actually keep their Muppets, though if folks saw the price tag on those puppets they’d quickly understand why.

"We were already working on another episode," Mount explains when the surreal time arrived to record their particular puppets' dialogue. "It was really wild going into the recording booth and trying to do an interpretation of someone else’s interpretation of your character."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 is now streaming on Paramount+.

A newly found Mars meteorite is revealing the secrets of a previously hidden time period of Red Planet geological history.

The 1.27-billion-year-old space rock, called Northwest Africa (NWA) 13441, was discovered in Algeria in 2019 — but its age was not confirmed until recently. Now scientists say the meteorite helps answer questions about a huge gap in the Martian geologic record: a span of time between 600 million years ago and 2.4 billion years ago.

This vast timespan has no known examples of meteorites containing igneous (solid magma) shergottites, which are the most abundant type of Martian meteorites, chunks of the Red Planet that were blasted away by impacts, ejected into space and eventually fell to Earth. The only meteorites known from this time range, roughly 1.3 billion to 1.4 billion years ago, are rarer types known as chassignites and nahklites. As such, the newly analyzed meteorite is opening new insights already about this time period.

"The characteristics of this meteorite were entirely surprising," stated Boston College Earth and environmental sciences professor Ethan Baxter, co-author of a study published Aug. 1 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. "No other Martian meteorite like this has an age of 1.27 billion years old."

NWA 13441 was surprising to researchers in two ways. The first was its composition — while it is a shergottite, the space rock also contains isotopes (element types) of a rare-Earth metal called neodymium. Neodymium is usually found in chrondrites — another kind of meteorite made up of unmelted rocks — and chondrites were common in the solar system when it was formed 4.56 billion years ago.

This blended composition of shergottite and chrondrite suggests deeper parts of Mars have remained relatively untouched since the planet was formed, Baxter stated. That finding aligns with what scientists already know about Mars, which likely formed only five million years after the solar system was formed. (Mars also has no plate tectonics, making it different from Earth and which allows the earliest bits of it to remain undisturbed by the types of geologic processes that take place on our planet.)

Peering deeper at the chondrites added a second surprise: the composition of the isotopes, or element types, are helping establish "new boundaries on the processes that happened in the very early solar system as Mars formed," the authors stated. The paper's abstract added this information suggests the meteorite may have come from a "previously unsampled" reservoir on the Red Planet lying between "enriched and depleted shergottite sources."

Scientists hope that more analysis of this meteorite will reveal "magmatic and volcanic activity on Mars," Seal said in the same statement. Next up will be looking at the meteorite's isotopes to figure out its connection to other meteorites formed early in Martian history.

SpaceX sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites skyward today (Aug. 11).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 11:58 a.m. EDT (1558 GMT), carrying 29 of the broadband spacecraft toward low Earth orbit (LEO).

About 8.5 minutes later, the rocket's first stage made a pinpoint landing in the Atlantic Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 18th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1085.

Though more than half its liftoffs have been Starlink flights, B1085 also has some astronaut missions under its belt. The booster lofted SpaceX's Crew-9 flight to the International Space Station in September 2024, and it launched the Fram2 mission around Earth's poles six months later.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 29 Starlink satellites to LEO today. They'll be deployed there 64 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.

Today's liftoff was the 93rd Falcon 9 launch of the year already. Seventy-two of those missions have been devoted to building out Starlink, the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

Starlink currently consists of more than 10,900 active satellites, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. But SpaceX has even bigger megaconstellations in mind: Eventually, the company wants to operate 100,000 of its bigger, more capable Starlink V3 satellites, and Elon Musk has stated an ambition to launch a million AI data center satellites to Earth orbit as well.

A total solar eclipse isn't just a spectacular sight to witness for those lucky enough to lie in the path of totality (or travel to it, as many dedicated skywatchers do). It also gives scientists a rare chance to study the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, during the day.

As such, NASA plans to take full advantage of the opportunity for the upcoming total solar eclipse happening on Aug 12.

The space agency's WB-57 high-altitude research jet will chase the moon's shadow across the globe, which will extend the agency's ability to capture data from the eclipse. The NASA-supported Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project will also coordinate teams to release balloons that will help us know how our atmosphere changes when an eclipse turns the sky dark during the day.

"From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the sun's corona in a way we can't from anywhere else in the solar system," Kelly Korreck, eclipse program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in an official announcement.

"The sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence," she continued.

Inside the research jet's nose cone, four cameras will capture images of the corona's structures, outflows, and changes. This data may help scientists gain a better understanding of how materials within the corona relate to solar winds.

"The sun is always changing," Amir Caspi, principal investigator for the study at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in the announcement. "Every eclipse is different. So we could see things we didn't see before. And we learn from each eclipse how to better observe the next one."

Angela Des Jardins at Montana State University will lead the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, with the help of students from universities in the U.S., Iceland and Spain.

By releasing balloons in anticipation of the eclipse, scientists will be able to look at the ozone levels in the atmosphere during the eclipse and study how the eclipse impacts the "boundary layer" of the Earth, which shifts due to temperature and moisture in the air.

Both the research jet and balloons were used to collect data during the total solar eclipse in April 2024. These new projects will use what NASA learned last time to sharpen up the methods, and hopefully provide new insights into the relationships between the sun, moon, and Earth.

Rainer Zitelmann has doctorates in history and sociology. He has authored and edited 32 books that have been translated into 35 languages. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Without property rights in space, one of the most important economic incentives for the commercial development — and ultimately the settlement — of celestial bodies is missing. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits states from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies or land on them. The underlying idea reflected the dominant thinking of the time: space belongs to all mankind.

The question of whether private individuals or companies may acquire property rights remains unresolved. The treaty says nothing explicitly about private ownership, largely because in the 1960s hardly anyone imagined that, just a few decades later, entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos would possess the financial resources and technological expertise to accomplish what was then thought possible only for governments.

The absence of property rights is one important reason why humanity has made less progress in the exploration and development of space than many expected. Once the United States had won the race to the moon, the incentive for the next stage of space exploration largely disappeared.

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine that whoever reaches an asteroid with a spacecraft and begins mining it acquires the right to claim ownership of that asteroid and list it on the stock market as a real estate investment trust (REIT). Or imagine that whoever reaches Mars and begins constructing a settlement — whether with robots or eventually with human settlers — gains the right to declare the surrounding land as private property. Such rights would create extraordinarily powerful economic incentives. Today, by contrast, the legal position of private actors is, at best, uncertain. A genuine race to reach these celestial bodies would begin, and investors would emerge to finance these ambitious ventures.

There are good reasons to believe, however, that this process will begin even without a clear legal framework. History suggests that this is not the exception but the rule. Consider the settlement of the American West. In his classic book "The Mystery of Capital," the renowned economist Hernando de Soto described the process as follows:

"America was filling up with immigrants, who settled boundaries, ploughed fields, built homes, transferred land and established credit long before governments conferred on them any right to engage in these acts. Those were the days of the pioneers and the 'Wild West.' One of the reasons it was so wild was that those pioneers, most of them nothing but squatters, insisted that their labor, not formal paper titles or arbitrary boundary lines, gave land value and established ownership. They believed that if they occupied the land and improved it with houses and farms, it was theirs."

Contrary to a common misconception, property rights did not initially emerge through formal acts of government imposed from above. They evolved spontaneously from below. As de Soto explains: "To be legitimate, a right does not necessarily have to be defined by formal law. That a group of people strongly supports a particular convention is enough for it to be upheld as a right and defended against formal law." Only later, during America's early history, did governments formally legalize what settlers had already established in practice.

Capitalism, unlike socialism, develops as a spontaneous order from below. We have seen this pattern repeated in more recent history, particularly in former communist countries such as China and Vietnam.

Long before the official ban on private farming was lifted in 1982, peasants across China spontaneously reintroduced private ownership in defiance of socialist doctrine. The results were remarkable. Agricultural production rose rapidly, and recurring food shortages came to an end. By 1983, almost all agriculture in China had been decollectivized.

The story was similar in Vietnam. Following the market-oriented reforms launched in 1986, poverty declined from nearly 80% to just 3%. Yet many of these reforms merely legalized developments that had already taken place at the grassroots level. Agricultural collectives and even state-owned enterprises increasingly ignored official regulations. They abandoned collective production and entered into unauthorized contracts ("Khoán chui") between collectives and families or between state farms and private traders. This became known as "Phá rào," or "fence breaking."

Some scholars argue that these spontaneous grassroots developments — not decisions by the Communist Party — were the true driving force behind Vietnam's reforms. As Vietnamese researcher Vu Le Thao Chi explains, "It is closer to the truth of the matter that the state served more as an agent of adjustments and, in this, sanctioned the manner of the ordinary farmers' efforts to survive the unpredictably winding path." Economist Tran Thi Anh-Dao and other scholars likewise argue that Vietnam's reform process began "with evidence-based practices at the microeconomic (local) level that were then applied at the macroeconomic (national) level."

In my recently published book "New Space Capitalism," where I discuss the legal issues in detail, I answer the question "Who should have the right to acquire property in space?" as follows: Those who have the financial resources and are willing to take the risks necessary to get there, develop the land, and put it to productive use.

If SpaceX succeeds in reaching Mars and begins building permanent settlements on the Red Planet, then ownership of land should initially belong to SpaceX. Not the entire planet, of course, but a practical area — for example, roughly the size of Singapore. Since the surface area of Mars is approximately 200,000 times larger than Singapore, SpaceX would initially own only about 0.0005% of the planet. That would be sufficient to establish multiple settlements while leaving more than enough room for future competitors.

SpaceX could finance its transportation and development costs by placing this Martian land into a real estate investment trust (REIT) and listing it on the stock exchange. The market would determine its value.

The same principle could apply to asteroids. At least in the case of smaller celestial bodies, ownership could be granted to those capable of mining valuable resources such as water or platinum. The most practical solution would likely be to place the entire asteroid into a publicly traded REIT. Investors would finance the mining operations, while shareholders would ultimately receive dividends generated by resource extraction. Even before the first dollar of revenue was earned or the first dividend paid, a functioning market for these shares could emerge.

This is, of course, only a thought experiment. But it shows one way in which property in space could come into existence, creating the foundation for humanity to unlock the vast economic potential of space.

On Aug. 11, 1960, part of the Discoverer 13 satellite became the first human-made object to be recovered from Earth's orbit.

The United States Department of Defense launched the mission as part of the C.I.A.'s Corona spy satellite program. They wanted to see if they could return a satellite's instrument package to Earth safely and gently enough to retrieve the object intact.

The reentry capsule was a big, bowl-shaped hunk of metal that weighed about 120 pounds and contained only an American flag. After deploying a heat shield and parachute, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. A Navy helicopter pulled it out of the water and airlifted it to a ship, which brought it back to Pearl Harbor.

Why it mattered

This first paved the way for modern spaceflight. We might take it for granted today as we see rocket stages return to Earth and land with the grace of a rehearsed dance and astronauts go back and forth to the International Space Station. At this point, all variety of capsules and spacecraft have not only gone out into space, but returned. But if we travel back to 1960, this was a groundbreaking feat.

Discoverer 13 was a reconnaissance satellite (or what we might call a spy satellite) built by General Electric that launched with no cameras or film on board (subsequent satellites in the series, starting with Discoverer 14, had cameras). Instead, it carried diagnostic instruments and flew 17 times around our planet before reentering our atmosphere, deploying a small parachute and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean where it was retrieved by the U.S. Navy.

This momentous milestone proved that it was possible for something to hurtle back through our atmosphere from space, survive the journey and be recovered. With subsequent satellites and missions, cameras and film would allow us further insight into the process, and today we can not only return objects from space with confidence, but we can return humans home to Earth from space. The return journey sends whatever object (or whoever's on board) through our atmosphere at searing speeds and even more searing temperatures. For a spacecraft (or even moreso, spacecraft with humans inside) to get a return right, it has to be built perfectly and the return maneuver has to be executed exactly. Today, this historic milestone might just seem like a satellite falling back into the ocean, but it represents a massive step forward that has allowed us to explore beyond what we once thought was possible.

With a glorious mane of glowing purple gas and dust, the Lion Nebula sparkles on the cosmic savanna in this new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

What is it?

This new image highlights the stunning beauty of the Lion Nebula (formally named NGC 2392), which earned its nickname thanks to its vaguely lion-head-shaped "face" and surrounding, fuzzy "mane".

At the center of this lion's face lies its nose, a bright purple spot. This spot is actually the remnant of a dying star that's radiating energy outward and powering the cosmic structure. This oxygen-rich remnant is a white dwarf, or the hot core of a dying star. As a star like this dies, it becomes unstable and sheds its outer layers, blasting gas and dust outward to create a planetary nebula.

The white dwarf got left behind after the nose in the center of the "lion's" face expelled energy and created a big bubble of ionized gas around itself. Over time, the lion's face will continue to expand. Astronomers estimate that in about 10,000 years, the lion might dissipate entirely.

Why is it incredible?

This isn't the first time we've seen the Lion Nebula. Back in 2000, for instance, the Hubble Space Telescope took a close look at the nebula.

However, the JWST snapped this image of the nebula using two of its state-of-the-art instruments: the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument). And the new view gives us a very detailed look at the nebula.

With these new instruments, we can see details we never saw in the Hubble's view of the Lion Nebula — like certain dust and gas features. Overall, this view gives us a much more accurate view of what the nebula actually looks like, and what cosmic structures hold it up.

Concentrations of dangerous pollutants from rocket launches and satellite reentries in Earth's upper atmosphere might reach treacherous tipping points if constellations of hundreds of thousands of orbiting data centers get deployed in the next decade, experts say.

There's no question that Earth has an AI data center problem. By 2030, AI data centers may be responsible for up to 17% of electricity consumption in the U.S., according to a forecast by the Electric Power Research Institute. New fossil fuel power plants are being built to feed the growing demand for electricity, and aging ones are kept online despite decarbonization plans. On top of that, huge amounts of water are taken from already strained reservoirs to cool the computers.

Companies such as SpaceX, Amazon and Blue Origin say they have a solution: moving the power-hungry data crunching infrastructure into space, where solar power is easy to produce, and heat can be radiated out into the frigid vacuum. Combined, those companies have filed applications to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch more than a million orbiting data centers in the next 10 years. Most of those will belong to SpaceX, if all goes to plan; Elon Musk has said the company wants to operate a million-satellite AI constellation all by itself.

The plans are making atmospheric scientists tear their hair out. If all these projects come to fruition, the number of satellites being launched to space and reentering the atmosphere will increase 100 times compared to today's numbers.

Moreover, the data center satellites will be much larger than the spacecraft orbiting Earth today. This large mass will translate into higher quantities of polluting propellant needed to loft these systems off Earth and a much larger amount of metals vaporizing in Earth's atmosphere during reentry. Neither is good news for our planet's air.

Pristine upper atmosphere

"Launches and the reentries are really the only things that humans do that deposit material directly into the upper atmosphere," Aaron Boley, an astronomy professor and space sustainability researcher at the University of British Columbia, told Space.com. "And the way things mix in the upper atmosphere means that the launch and reentry emissions are by far more impactful."

Most rockets emit black carbon, which could worsen global warming. Satellite bodies are mostly made of aluminum, which likely turns into aluminum oxide when burned in the presence of oxygen. Aluminum oxide is known for its ability to trigger ozone depletion, a hazardous process that was successfully thwarted by the Montreal Protocol of 1987.

Currently, scientists don't have a precise understanding of the chemical reactions that occur between the pollutants and the atmospheric gases at high altitudes. They also don't understand the tipping points, which may mean the difference between minor and major impacts on the climate. What is worse, pollutants in the upper atmosphere remain much longer than those emitted by cars and factory chimneys close to the ground.

"Close to the ground, we have rain and wind that removes pollution from the atmosphere within weeks," Eloise Marais, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at University College London, told Space.com. "If we put it into the higher layers of the atmosphere, we rely on very slow atmospheric processes to bring this pollution back down."

Too many launches

Black carbon from rockets, for example, can stay in the atmosphere for three years, scientists think, meaning its concentrations could dangerously rise in the near future.

SpaceX's Starship megarocket is likely to play a key role in the deployment of data center constellations. Unlike SpaceX's current workhorse launcher Falcon 9, which burns a form of the aviation fuel kerosene, Starship combusts the much cleaner combination of methane and liquid oxygen. But Marais cautions that Starship's size and the much more frequent launches that will be needed to deploy the vast constellations would result in an overall increase in the pollution injected into the upper atmosphere.

"Starship is a bigger rocket burning more propellant," Marais said. "So, in terms of each rocket launch, the difference almost offsets. It has potential per launch to produce quite similar amounts of black carbon."

Andrew Wilson, a space sustainability researcher at Glasgow Caledonia University in the U.K., told Space.com that every single Starship launch produces around 76,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's about as much as 17,727 gasoline-powered passenger cars emit in a year.

And up to 77,000 Starship launches — some 15,300 per year — might be needed, according to estimates by Ars Technica, to deploy SpaceX's planned million-data-center constellation. That's a lot of rocket pollution added into the atmosphere. For comparison, there were just 324 orbital rocket liftoffs globally in 2025, according to Space News.

The space junk rain

Then there is the toxic ash from reentering satellites. Today, nearly 19,000 operational and defunct satellites orbit Earth, according to the European Space Agency. Currently, the most numerous type of satellite in Earth orbit is SpaceX's Starlink V2 Mini, each of which weighs about 1,760 pounds (800 kilograms). But SpaceX's orbital data centers are likely to be much more massive. Featuring solar arrays 246 feet (75 m) wide, every data center satellite might weigh up to 7.5 metric tonnes, according to available estimates.

Industry insiders expect that SpaceX and other providers would want to replace their AI satellites every five years with newer technology, as they do with existing communications satellites. As a result, tens or even hundreds of tons of metal may be reentering the atmosphere every year in the future, exceeding the amount of natural space rock that hits the planet.

The materials that satellites are made of are not naturally present in Earth's atmosphere, which means the consequences of such reentries can be unpredictable.

"Only 10 years ago, the reentries were not really a concern, because there were much more natural meteorites entering the atmosphere per year," Wilson said. "But if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of satellites in space at any one time, you are essentially going to create a rain of man-made materials, electronic equipment and metals that otherwise wouldn't be coming into the atmosphere."

He added that the situation is akin to ongoing climate change, which shows no signs of slowing down as humanity has so far failed to reduce carbon emissions.

"This is the most objects we've ever had in space, and we're continuing to propose more and more and more and more and more," Wilson said. "And there seems, in my opinion, to be very little consideration for the environment."

Not enough funding is currently flowing into research to answer the unknowns, Marais added.

"We need way more observations and way more time to be able to look into that," she said.

Boley concurred: "We absolutely have to understand, and we have to understand that before we actually launch a million satellites. Not that we launch them and wait [to see] what happens."

The plans of the satellite companies are stirring protests also among astronomers, who fear that the light pollution the constellations create will impact astronomical observations. A recent study by the European Southern Observatory concluded that, if all currently planned satellite constellation projects were to be built, astronomical research from the surface of Earth would no longer be possible.

A spectacular total solar eclipse will coincide with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12-13. But will you be able to spot shooting stars in the false twilight of totality?

Perseids appear as Earth plows through the stream of debris shed by comet Swift-Tuttle. Up to 100 shooting stars may be seen each hour around its peak under ideal dark skies, as particles from the ancient comet collide with our atmosphere at speeds of 133,200 mph (214,365 km/h) to etch a fiery path through the summer night sky.

It's an unmissable highlight of the skywatching calendar, supercharged in 2026 by the spectacle of a total solar eclipse, which will plunge millions across Greenland, Iceland and Spain into the darkness of an eerie twilight, as the moon crosses the face of the sun.

Is it possible to see shooting stars during totality?

Yes. The most brilliant Perseid shooting stars can shine bright enough to be spotted in the brief twilight of totality. But it's all a question of timing.

"It would have to be a fireball that passed through the darkest portion of the sky," Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society told Space.com in an email. "The Perseids usually produce about one fireball per three hours at night. That's asking a lot for one of these bright meteors to appear during a 2-3 minute window. If anyone does see one, they had better go play the lottery asap!"

NASA Meteoroid Environments Office head Bill Cooke added his own word of caution, noting that the relatively bright sky during totality will likely hide all but the most brilliant Perseids from sight.

"Only Perseid fireballs will be visible," Cooke told Space.com in an email. "Given the brightness and duration of the eclipse, you might see one if you're extremely, extremely lucky. [The] most likely scenario is that you will see no meteors whatsoever."

The odds are definitely stacked against you. But you never know. A piece of comet Swift-Tuttle could've broken away at just the right time, at just the right point in its orbit to meet a fiery end in Earth's atmosphere, just as the sun slips from view. As for our advice? Keep your eyes locked firmly on the eclipse as it unfolds in the skies above you. There'll be plenty of time for hunting Perseids later.

Want to capture gorgeous photos of the Aug. 12 cosmic doubleheader? Then be sure to read our expert guides to imaging a total solar eclipse, along with tips on photographing fast-moving meteors. You can also stay up to date with all the latest news and reports for the field with our total solar eclipse live blog!

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.

The Aug. 12 total solar eclipse is just one day away! Here's how you can watch the entire show live online from the comfort of your home

Millions of people across Spain, Iceland and Greenland will see the moon completely hide the sun during the climactic phase of totality on Aug. 12. Countless more skywatchers across Europe will witness a deep partial solar eclipse, as the moon's curved silhouette covers a swathe of the sun's surface, while failing to cover it entirely.

Thankfully, we live in modern times. So there's no need for you to miss out on the solar spectacle if you find yourself outside of the path of totality, or if clouds conspire to ruin your view. Here's where to watch every phase of the 2026 total solar eclipse live online.

NASA

NASA will be hosting its own livestream of the event starting at 1:15 p.m. EDT on Aug. 12, featuring live views of totality from cameras spread throughout the path of the eclipse. The visuals will be accompanied by information on the science of the incredible event and details on how the agency is working to learn more about our sun.

The NASA coverage will be hosted here on Space.com, but can also be streamed through YouTube, Twitch, NASA+, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon Prime.

Time and Date

Time and Date's YouTube livestream kicks off at 12 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) on Aug. 12, bringing live views of the eclipse from Leon in northwestern Spain and the island of Mallorca, along with live commentary from journalist Anne Buckle and astrophysicist Graham Jones.

The European Space Agency

An official European Space Agency (ESA) livestream will begin at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) on Aug. 12. The stream will feature expert commentary on the science of the eclipse along with live views from telescopes at the Observatorio Astrofisco de Javalambre, which is located close to the Spanish city of Teruel directly in the path of totality.

Royal Observatory Greenwich

London's historic Royal Observatory Greenwich will host two simultaneous YouTube streams featuring live views of the partial solar eclipse starting at 1:15 p.m EDT (1815 GMT) on Aug. 12. The first livestream will be presented by Royal Observatory astronomer Greg Brown, who will discuss the science of the sun while providing expert commentary on the eclipse, while the second will offer a silent livestream, featuring visuals of the eclipse with no accompanying audio.

The Virtual Telescope Project

The Virtual Telescope Project livestream begins at 1:20 p.m. EDT (1720 GMT) on Aug. 12, bringing real-time views from the organization's robotic telescopes in Manciano, Italy, where a partial eclipse will be visible and from the path of totality in Spain. The Virtual Telescope Project will host a separate livestream a few hours later featuring views of the Perseid meteor shower peak, which occurs overnight on Aug. 12-13.

Be sure to check out our live blog for all of the latest news on the Aug. 12 total solar eclipse. We'll also have reports from Skywatching Writer Anthony Wood as he watches the eclipse unfold low in the horizon in central Spain, and also from Skywatching Editor Daisy Dobrijevic as she witnesses the spectacle during a voyage with HX Expeditions to Greenland!

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

Rocket Lab plans to start launching even more frequently and flexibly, thanks to a new portable spaceport system called "GHOST."

GHOST — short for "Global Hypersonic & Orbital Spaceport Technology" — turns the company's "Electron and HASTE rockets into a launch-anywhere, launch-anytime capability for multi-launch flight campaigns and critical national security missions," Rocket Lab representatives said in a statement today (Aug. 10).

"Packaged entirely within standard shipping containers, GHOST deploys complete rockets, launch infrastructure, ground support and range control systems anywhere in the world," they added.

Electron is Rocket Lab's workhorse orbital rocket, giving small satellites dedicated rides to the final frontier. The expendable 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) launcher debuted with a test flight in 2017 and has 83 missions under its belt to date.

As its full name suggests, HASTE ("Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron") is a suborbital version of Electron that customers use to test various technologies in the hypersonic flight environment. HASTE first flew in June 2023 and has flown nine times to date, most recently in June of this year.

Rocket Lab currently flies from two different launch sites — one on the North Island of company founder and CEO Peter Beck's native New Zealand and one at Wallops Island in Virginia. But the company recently announced plans to fly out of Alaska's Pacific Spaceport Complex as well, and GHOST will expand its launch footprint even further.

"Electron and HASTE revolutionized small orbital launch and hypersonic testing. Now we're making it easier to deploy them wherever they're needed most, whether that's for missile defense testing or sovereign orbital launch capability," Beck said this afternoon during Rocket Lab's second-quarter 2026 earnings call.

"We've mastered the art of building launch sites," he added. "Now we're making them deployable worldwide."

Rocket Lab intends to deploy its two planned pads at the Pacific Spaceport Complex using GHOST, Beck said during the call. The company was inspired to develop the portable spaceport system, he added, to meet the needs of a HASTE customer, who expressed a desire for Rocket Lab to be "a little bit more mobile than we are."

Rocket Lab currently flies out of two pads at its New Zealand site and one at Wallops, though it has built a second pad at the Virginia facility to accommodate launches of its coming Neutron rocket.

Neutron will be bigger and more powerful than Electron, and partially reusable as well; its first stage is designed to come back to Earth for recovery and reflight, like SpaceX's Falcon 9.

Rocket Lab originally wanted to fly Neutron for the first time in 2024, but the new launcher has yet to leave the ground. Such delays aren't uncommon in the case of new rockets, and the company is making considerable progress with Neutron, according to Beck.

"Every part of the vehicle has now seen significant testing," he said during today's call. "As with any complex development program, we've had to tweak a few things along the way, but we're moving now into final checkout and assembly of all of our flight hardware before integrating them at the pad."

The company is on target to deliver the first Neutron to that Wallops pad in the fourth quarter of this year, Beck added.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have shed light on a recent chapter in the history of our Milky Way's neighboring galaxy, Andromeda.

Using Hubble Space Telescope observations of Andromeda's stars, a research team showed that the spiral galaxy's rate of making new stars has dramatically slowed down in the last 40 million years. And they've found more evidence that one of Andromeda's own neighbors — a smaller galaxy called M32 — may be to blame.

"We can't explicitly say that we are seeing a decrease in star formation because of M32. But it's right there, and it's definitely the most likely suspect," said Tobin Wainer, a graduate student at the University of Washington and one of the astronomers, in a statement.

Astronomers like Wainer knew from prior research that Andromeda saw a burst of star formation about 2 billion years ago (possibly as a result of a collision with an unknown galaxy). They also knew that star formation had slowed down since then. What they did not know was how quickly that deceleration had been. If they could find out, they could fill in some of the gaps in Andromeda's history.

At 2.5 million light-years' distance, Andromeda is near enough to Earth that Hubble can measure its stars. In the past several years, Hubble has conducted two surveys of Andromeda. While Hubble can only make out stars in Andromeda that are brighter than our sun, these two surveys still gave Wainer and colleagues a compendium of 200 million stars, covering two-thirds of Andromeda's disk.

Wainer and colleagues parceled out this vast space into a grid of squares, 300 light-years to a side. They reconstructed the history of each square by examining the colors of its stars.

A square with many bright blue stars, for example, probably saw a lot of star formation recently, since blue stars tend to be younger. On the other hand, if a square only contains smaller, redder stars, we know those stars are longer-lived and older, and that square probably hasn't seen a lot of newborn stars.

The astronomers mapped out a story of slowing star formation. Around 500 million years ago, on average, Andromeda turned the equivalent of our sun's mass in gas and dust into newborn stars each year. As millions of years passed, that rate declined. About 40 million years ago, it was about one-half the sun's mass each year. Then, it tilted into a dramatic deceleration. Today, it stands at about one-fifth the sun's mass each year.

Curiously, they found that Andromeda's starmaking slowdown is especially pronounced on one particular side of the galaxy, starting about 60 million years ago. Astronomers know this side of Andromeda is closest to another galaxy: M32.

Astronomers have eyed M32 with suspicion for some time now. M32 is only located about 16,000 light-years from Andromeda (Andromeda is formally called M31) and it looks like the rump core of a spiral galaxy that lost its arms. It's possible that this is actually the aftermath of a collision between M32 and its larger neighbor. It's possible, though not confirmed, that Andromeda's slowing bears the fingerprints of this collision.

We may not need to wait long for more answers. Just as Hubble can see Andromeda's stars, so too will the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch in late August. In the coming years, Roman will be able to measure even more of Andromeda than Hubble has.