NASA provided an Artemis update today (June 30), announcing new lunar landing contracts for its Moon Base initiative and a surprise new possible rover mission that could be headed to the moon's south pole.

During the second monthly update that NASA has provided for its moon base plans, the agency named Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines as the providers of four robotic landers that will deliver scientific payloads to the surface of the moon, as NASA tests and expands the technologies needed for a permanent human outpost.

"This is this drawing on the playbook that worked very well for NASA during the 1960s," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during the livestreamed update, explaining the experiential approach to a crewed lunar return. "We didn't just jump right to Apollo 11."

Isaacman also announced the potential repurposing of an engineering development model built to mirror the agency's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars. "There is another," Isaacman said, quoting Yoda's line from "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back."

That test rover is called PROMISE, short for "Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration" (though it was formerly known as Optimism). PROMISE was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, where it has been used as a test platform for fixes or commands that engineers want to try on the ground before permanently sending them to Perseverance and Curiosity. Now, NASA wants to send PROMISE on a mission of its own.

Though sending PROMISE to the moon would leave Perseverance and Curiosity — both of which remain active on Mars — without an Earth-based testbed, Isaacman thinks it would be worth it.

"We've had years now of experience operating the two rovers on the surface of Mars, and we've got this hardware that the taxpayers have invested a lot in," he said. "So the question was posed: 'What if we send it to the moon?'"

With a little refurbishment, PROMISE would help advance NASA's lunar plans, Isaacman added. Like Perseverance and Curiosity, the test rover is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which converts heat from naturally decaying radioactive material into electricity. So it wouldn't require sunlight to operate — a real benefit on the moon, where most locations experience long stretches of darkness. (NASA plans to build its Artemis base near the moon's south pole, which is thought to harbor an abundance of water ice and also has a relatively complex lighting environment.)

The other robots currently in the works to launch on future missions to the moon, including the landers announced during today's update, are all solar powered. Through 2029, NASA hopes to launch up to 20 such missions as part of the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative to support the first phase of the agency's moon base plans, and the landers announced today will be some of the first in that lineup.

Already expected this year was Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander. It's slated to launch on the company's New Glenn rocket, which exploded last month during an engine test. That anomaly has complicated the Blue Moon timeline, though Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp has voiced confidence that New Glenn will launch again this year.

Two lunar deliveries were awarded to Astrobotic's Griffin 1 lander, one of which will fly Astrolab's FLIP rover the surface of the moon in the second half of 2026. Contracts to Firefly and Intuitive Machines call for the use of their Blue Ghost and Nova C landers, respectively, on CLPS missions in the next few years.

Each CLPS lander mission will carry at least three NASA payloads. The Stereo Camera for Lunar Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) array will study lander engine exhaust plume effects on lunar dust, to better predict landing requirements and prevent erosion and dangerous ejecta; a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) will test landers' ability to determine positioning and navigate using lasers and reflectors; and a Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS) will measure radiation in the space around the moon and different areas on its surface.

"We know a lot about the moon, some of the south pole, but nothing like what we need to learn before we send humans there and we actually build a moon base," Carlos Garcia-Golan, NASA's Moon Base program manager, said during today's event. "So putting different assets on the surface, prospecting, understanding the environment and the places where we want to go [is] super critical."

Garcia-Golan is on board with the PROMISE moon plan as well. While it might sound crazy to send a spare Mars rover to the moon, it's the kind of crazy that NASA should be doing, he said. After all, JPL's motto is "Dare mighty things."

"We are in the business of the near impossible, so why not?" Garcia-Golan said.

Rocket Lab will launch a Japanese Earth-observing radar satellite to orbit tonight (June 30), and you can watch the action live.

An Electron rocket carrying the QPS-SAR-13 satellite is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site tonight at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT and 1 p.m. local New Zealand time on July 1).

You can watch the launch live here at Space.com courtesy of Rocket Lab, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff.

Japan-based iQPS is building a constellation of 36 satellites in low Earth orbit that study Earth using high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR). SAR spacecraft can peer through clouds and gather data at night as well as during the day.

Tonight's launch, which Rocket Lab calls "The Grain Goddess Provides," will be the eighth, out of a total of 15, that it will perform to assemble iQPS' constellation.

If all goes according to plan tonight, Electron will deploy the iQPS satellite — which is nicknamed Mikura-I, after a Japanese goddess associated with abundance and prosperity — about 50 minutes after liftoff, into a circular orbit 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth.

"The Grain Goddess Provides" will be Rocket Lab's 92nd mission to date and its 13th of 2026 already. The vast majority of these launches have involved the 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to orbit. A small number have been performed by HASTE , a suborbital version of Electron that helps customers test hypersonic technologies.

Tonight's launch will come just a day after Rocket Lab made a big business move: On Monday (June 29), Rocket Lab announced that it's acquiring the communications company Iridium for $8 billion.

"By combining our launch capability and satellite manufacturing with @IridiumComm’s global satellite communications network and rare spectrum, Rocket Lab becomes a fully integrated, self-launching, tier-1 space power, delivering critical communications capability to millions of users worldwide," Rocket Lab said via X on Monday.

Blue Origin has started rebuilding the launch pad damaged by an explosive accident last month, but the company is working from a very different blueprint this time around.

The company's huge New Glenn rocket exploded on May 28 during a routine engine test at Launch Complex 36A (LC-36A) at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket was destroyed, as were some important pieces of pad infrastructure, including the lightning tower and the transporter-erector, which hauled New Glenn from its integration facility to the pad and raised it vertical upon arrival.

Blue Origin has vowed to bounce back quickly, aiming to fly the 320-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn again by the end of the year. Getting LC-36A rebuilt is a high priority, for the pad is currently New Glenn's only jumping-off point. And Blue Origin has made significant progress on this front the company announced today (June 30).

"Hardware recovery and debris removal operations are complete, and reconstruction of the pad has started," the company's CEO, Dave Limp, said in a statement today.

Reconstruction will not create a facsimile of the original LC-36A, however. Blue Origin is building a new version of the pad, one that lines up with a new concept of operations (ConOps) for New Glenn launches.

"We're moving to a horizontal/vertical hybrid configuration to get us flying again this year at 36A," Limp said via X today. "Let me explain what that means. We mate the stages horizontally in the Integration Facility (IF). Then we bring the integrated vehicle out to the pad, use a crane to perform the vertical breakover, and mate the payload once New Glenn is vertical. This new ConOps has the added benefit of increasing our flight cadence as well."

So the refurbished LC-36A will have a crane rather than a transporter-erector, and payload mating will occur at the pad rather than inside the IF.

According to Limp, Blue Origin had already been planning to employ this "hybrid" ConOps for the super-heavy version of New Glenn that it's developing, called the 9X4. That name references the engine configuration of the coming vehicle: nine of Blue Origin's BE-4s on its first stage and four BE-3Us in its upper stage.

The current version of New Glenn is a 7X2. It can haul about 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit. The 9X4 will be able to carry 77 tons (70 metric tons) to LEO and will also feature a bigger payload fairing — one that's 28.5 feet (8.7 meters) wide rather than 23 feet (7 m).

Blue Origin had already been developing another Cape Canaveral pad, LC-36B, to accommodate 9X4 launches. That pad is being readied for the "hybrid" ConOps as well, according to Limp.

Today's update also let us know that Blue Origin has made some progress in its investigation into the May 28 anomaly, though more work needs to be done.

"The vehicle is highly instrumented with extensive data from multiple camera angles and sensors, giving us confidence in our ability to identify and correct the root cause," Limp wrote. "Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage."

Two NASA astronauts gave a robotic arm a hand up — or rather, a replacement wrist joint — during a successful spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday (June 30).

Chris Williams and Jessica Meir, both flight engineers on the station's Expedition 74 crew, spent seven hours and 20 minutes repairing the Canadarm2 remote manipulator system (RMS) after it was observed drawing current but not moving as expected in late May. The 58-foot-long (18 meters) arm has been in regular use since it was installed on the orbiting outpost in April 2001.

"For over 25 years, the Canadarm2 has been a crucial part of the International Space Station. The arm was key to our orbiting laboratory and continues to be a workhorse that we rely on. Whether it is performing maintenance or replacing equipment, moving and operating payloads, catching cargo vehicles or helping us out during spacewalks, the arm has played and will continue to play an essential role in our work on orbit," Williams said as the spacewalk ended.

"It is also a testament to international cooperation," he added. "Canada, the U.S. and the world have come together to make this program a success. We are honored … that we were able to give the arm a helping hand."

Williams and Meir, each wearing a NASA extravehicular mobility unit (EMU), ventured outside the Quest airlock soon after switching the spacesuits to battery power at 8:20 a.m. EDT (1220 GMT) on Tuesday. They made quick work of transitioning to their work station, where they retrieved a spare wrist joint by using a power tool (pistol grip unit) to unbolt it from an exterior equipment panel.

They then turned their focus to the arm, which was positioned nearby. They removed the old unit and installed the new joint (no. 5), bolting it in place. Williams and Meir brought the faulty joint back into the space station to be returned to Earth for analysis and possible refurbishment.

The astronauts completed their work on the arm by reattaching its latching end effector, or hand, which the arm uses to grapple objects and inchworm across the exterior of the station. Mission Control confirmed that the arm had good power connections after the astronauts' work.

Williams and Meir returned to the Quest airlock and began its depressurization at 3:40 p.m. EDT (1940 GMT), marking an end to the spacewalk.

Tuesday's EVA (extravehicular activity) marked the fourth time in history that spacewalkers have worked to service the Canadarm2. Previously, another wrist joint was replaced and both of the arm's end effectors were swapped out for spares.

"We are thrilled to have repaired the mighty Canadarm2 just in time for Canada Day tomorrow! We hope that all in Canada and everyone around the globe can celebrate this achievement," said Meir.

Expedition 74 flight engineers Jack Hathaway of NASA and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency assisted Williams and Meir by helping them to don and doff their spacesuits and maneuvering Canadarm2 into position for the astronauts' repair work.

This was Williams' second spacewalk and the fifth for Meir. Williams has now logged 14 hours and 22 minutes, including a previous EVA with Meir. Meir has totaled 36 hours and 6 minutes, including the first all-female EVA in 2019.

Tuesday's spacewalk was the 280th in support of International Space Station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades since 1998.

Deep oceans of magma once sloshed about inside the crust of Mars, seismic measurements taken by NASA's InSight mission suggest.

The marsquakes detected by InSight show a boundary 15 miles (24 kilometers) deep between two different types of rock that were formed by enormous pools of magma. The presence of these magma pools could completely change what we thought we knew about the early development of Mars.

Already, scientists say the discovery could change what we know about the history of Mars. "One of the big questions in planetary science is whether Earth is unique," said the University of Oxford's Jon Wade in a statement. "If Mars could develop this kind of complex crust without plate tectonics, then maybe the conditions needed for habitability can emerge on more planets than we realized, including those previously dismissed based on size or their apparent lack of tectonic activity."

Earth is shaped by plate tectonics, the shifting of giant slabs of the planet's crust above our planet's molten mantle in a motion that generates earthquakes and volcanoes, but which also creates new land and regulates atmospheric carbon by drawing it out of the atmosphere and re-releasing it though volcanic eruptions. This constant reprocessing results in a fairly complex crust with multiple layers.

However, no convincing evidence has been found that the Red Planet has ever had plate tectonics. Instead, it is what we call a 'stagnant lid' planet, where the entire crust is one unbroken layer. Beneath this solid lid, all the way down to the mantle 23.6 miles (38 km) below the Martian surface, was considered to be fairly homogenous.

But NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission, which operated on Mars's surface between 2018 and 2022, put this to the test. InSight's seismometer was designed to detect tremors from marsquakes triggered by meteorite impacts or shifts in the planet's interior. These seismic tremors would reverberate through Mars, and InSight could learn about the interior structure of the Red Planet based on how they reached the lander.

Thanks to the way these tremors passed through Mars's interior after traveling at different velocities through different kinds of rock, InSight discovered a boundary between two layers of crust, but its existence has not been explained until now.

Researchers at the University of Oxford tasked themselves with figuring it out. Using geothermal models and statistics, the Oxford team identified the two types of rock that best matched the seismic data. They conclude that above 15 miles (24 km) deep is a thick layer of mafic rock, which is rich in iron, magnesium and silica. Below this depth is denser, crystalline ultramafic rock, which contains iron and magnesium but is depleted in silica and which descends a further 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) to the boundary between the crust and the mantle.

It seems as though the rock has become differentiated – the denser material having settled out below the lighter mafic rock. This could only have happened in huge pools of magma that once resided in giant pockets within Mars's crust. Like oil separating from water, the mafic and ultramafic rock separated over time, in a process called differentiation, before the magma cooled and froze the layers in place.

The pockets of magma could have extended for hundreds and possibly even thousands of kilometers around the planet, each pool linked to the others. Giant volcanic systems on Mars such as Olympus Mons and the Tharsis volcanoes would not have been isolated hotspots, but would have been interconnected beneath the surface.

This is something of a surprise – this kind of 'transcrustal magmatism' has only ever been found on Earth before. It's evidence that even though Mars lacked plate tectonics, it could still have undergone a degree of geochemical evolution and deep, complex geology.

This geology could even have supported a habitable environment by regurgitating carbon back into the atmosphere to maintain a greenhouse effect. Because of its small size and therefore low gravity and lack of magnetic field, Mars's atmosphere is notoriously leaky, and over its history, much of its atmosphere – including large quantities of its precious water – has escaped into space.

Large-scale volcanism, powered by interconnected chambers of magma, could have belched greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere, thickening the Martian atmosphere and maintaining warmer temperatures for longer.

But where did the magma come from? The Oxford team points the finger at upwelling from Mars' deep mantle, and with that magma came waves of heat that partially melted the crust, creating more magma. Both these processes took place on Earth during the Archaean Eon, which spanned between 4 and 2.5 billion years ago. On Earth, these processes contributed to the formation of the continents, although Mars' lack of plate tectonics and continents suggest that these processes were not as developed on the Red Planet.

Even so, some models suggest that mantle upwelling contributed to Mars' north–south dichotomy where the north contains mostly lowlands, which could have facilitated a large ocean, and the south is dominated by highlands.

"We've traditionally assumed that volcanism on Mars was relatively simple compared to that on Earth, but this discovery suggests that the planet could sustain massive, long-lived magmatic systems capable of evolving and reprocessing molten rock throughout the crust," said the study's lead author, Tobermory Mackay-Champion, who was previously at Oxford during the research but is now at the University of Bristol.

Mackay–Champion also highlights how this reprocessing of Mars's crust could have left metal deposits nearer the surface than had been thought.

"Mars may hold significantly more near-surface mineral wealth than previously recognized, boosting its potential for future mining, crewed missions and, eventually, permanent settlements," said Mackay-Champion.

While undoubtedly useful for a future outpost on Mars, this does raise the specter of companies pillaging and exploiting the Red Planet for its resources.

The findings were published on June 26 in Nature Astronomy.

Star Fox 64 is the Nintendo game that refuses to fade away, and we're not complaining, especially when the new Switch 2 remake — simply titled Star Fox — amplifies its replay value and expands the original vision with a bunch of new content.

Roughly a decade ago, Star Fox Zero almost killed the franchise for good. The ill-fated Wii U entry's structure and plot stuck staggeringly close to Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars for us PAL gamers), but no one could definitely answer if it was a remake, reboot, reimagining, or something else entirely.

It being a remake wouldn't have mattered, except that Star Fox 64 3D (for the little brave 3DS) had already done that with strong results. Now in 2026, we're still flying around the same planets with 'Star Fox'.

Considering Fox McCloud's secondary role in the recent Super Mario Galaxy Movie, you'd expect Nintendo to push onward with an all-new game in the enduring science fiction rail shooter series, yet Star Fox seems fated to play the greatest hits again and again. Fortunately, it nails what made Star Fox 64 so enduring and is the most complete take on Team Star Fox's greatest adventure.

The story is the same: The mad scientist Andross is exiled to the unwelcoming planet of Venom by General Pepper for almost destroying Corneria, the fourth planet of the Lylat system.

When suspicious activity is detected on the doomed world a few years later, Team Star Fox goes to investigate and – spoiler alert – James McCloud is killed by Andross following a betrayal from inside the team. Some time passes, and Andross launches an all-out attack against Lylat's forces, so it's time for Team Star Fox (now captained by Fox McCloud, James' son) to set things right.

And yes, his last name is Fox, and he is a Fox. If you're new to the series, there are no humans in this universe, only anthropomorphic animals.

While Star Fox doesn't sacrifice the original's arcade-y nature (you can 'beat it' in under two hours), it makes space for meatier cutscenes which better define the characters and the high stakes of the story.

It's all simple stuff with no real room for twists and turns that never gets in the way of the game's fast pace, but Velan Studios' effort is a commendable reminder that even extremely faithful remakes can add to a classic formula. Shoutout to the new arrangements of memorable musical themes from the original, too; the orchestral refresh simply sounds amazing.

The character redesigns will no doubt be a point of contention. Fox McCloud doesn't look nearly as stylish as in past Star Fox games — or as he does in this year's Mario Galaxy flick — while team members like Slippy Toad (who seems slippery) and Falco Lombardi land right in uncanny valley territory. There's a distinct charm to Star Fox's art direction — and the conversation surrounding the toons proves it — but the presentation no doubt raises the question of how much realism is too much realism for a property as cartoony as this.

The Arwings, enemy ships, and other vehicles look absolutely dashing and move with a smoothness that would've made Nintendo kids in the 1990s levitate, though. Both during missions and in cutscenes, there's speed and weight to the stars of the show, and smaller touches like laser beams briefly illuminating the environments remind us how far graphics have come.

The same could be said about the colorful levels; from Corneria to Solar, there's a vividness to Star Fox's many space locales that sometimes can be even distracting when the screen is filled with foes and incoming attacks.

Star Fox 64's 'pick up and play' nature remains untouched and only lightly upgraded. The control scheme could be more intuitive, but it's not too complex; moving around the screen, executing evasive maneuvers, and shooting down enemies feels snappy. Some of the latter levels weren't as 'tight' as I'd hoped for, but maybe that's just me still adjusting to the unavoidable nuances that come with a full tech rework under the hood.

The highlight, though, may be Switch 2's unique mouse mode, which is put to great use here; playing through the campaign with it plus the cockpit view feels transformative (It was impressive in Metroid Prime 4). Of course, the action runs at 60 frames per second with sharp image resolution in both docked and handheld modes, helping you achieve high scores, no matter which control option you use.

Blasting through the short (but highly replayable) campaign is just the beginning. There are hidden routes to discover, medals to obtain, new challenges to tackle, and the brutal Expert difficulty to clear. Ultimately, Star Fox is all about perfecting high scores and mastering a new iteration of a classic that's been dominated over the decades by the most dedicated pilots. It's Nintendo offering "one last ride" (hopefully) and inviting vets to reexperience the Lylat Wars in new, more demanding ways beyond the first run. On that front, Star Fox is a resounding success.

But it's hard to usher in a future for a dormant series without betting some chips on the casual crowd and newcomers, and I'd say most folks without an already established connection to the series (rail shooters are incredibly niche nowadays) are likely to go through Star Fox's campaign once or twice and then complain about the price tag.

There's actually a lot to Star Fox, but it mostly boils down to replaying the same missions in different ways. It's a retro sensibility that older gamers find captivating, but times have changed, and you have to wonder whether Nintendo should've gunned for an all-new game instead.

The multiplayer offerings shouldn't be ignored, though. Co-op (local or via the wireless GameShare function) lets two players go through the campaign by splitting the Arwing controls into movement and shooting, which is a nice offbeat bit of fun. Online, things get more interesting with a 4v4 competitive mode across three maps with different objectives and plenty of chaos, with NPC starfighters also fighting for control of objectives alongside players.

Matches are fast and intense, with free flight and plenty of power-ups adding to the spectacle and scale of the action. There's not much variety here, but the bones are strong. If they add more maps and modes, it could be something, but as it stands, it feels like one of those obligatory multiplayer modes every game had in the Xbox 360 era

Players willing to pick up the Switch 2 camera can also 'wear' the look of their favorite Star Fox characters VTuber-style while playing online, which is a silly little extra with incredible comedic potential in the right hands. Hardly a game-selling addition, but it's the kind of playful, family-friendly addition we expect from Nintendo.

Star Fox bets big on already established fans and hopes for the best when it comes to onboarding newbies. Will it pay off? Maybe, but 'nostalgia gains' are declining everywhere, and I'm worried that if this doesn't perform, we may be stuck waiting for a new entry that never comes... again.

Star Fox is available now for purchase on Nintendo Switch 2.

A review code for Star Fox was provided by Nintendo.

The universe is ready for its close-up! That's because today marks the day that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory begins it's 10-year mission to shoot the greatest cosmic move ever created.

The decade-long project officially known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is set to revolutionize our view of the universe. That means June 30, 2026 marks the beginning of a new era for astronomy.

"Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made," U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) director Brian Stone said in a statement. "Every night, NSF–Department of Energy (DOE) Rubin Observatory will expand the frontiers of knowledge and strengthen America's global leadership in science and innovation."

The LSST will see Rubin use its 3200-megapixel camera, the largest digital camera ever created, to repeatedly scan the entire sky over the southern hemisphere every few nights. Over the next decade, each point in the sky will be covered 800 times; this will result in an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the cosmos, the scale of which will put any Sci-Fi epic to shame.

And that includes the daring voyage of discovery present in any great Sci-Fi story. Astronomers teaming with Rubin will dive headfirst into the dark universe. That means the dual mysteries of dark energy — the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe — and dark matter — which secretly seems to be holding galaxies together. Both are invisible to us, yet integral to the universe.

"With the launch of the ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is opening a new window on the universe. It is embarking on a mission that will redefine modern cosmology and astrophysics," Darío Gil, Under Secretary for Science at the DOE said in the statement. “With its world-class design and tools, Rubin Observatory will capture the dynamic nature of our cosmos and reveal unimagined insights into our universe's biggest mysteries, from our own solar system to the very structure of the universe.

"By seeking to understand the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we are not just observing the stars; we are striving to grasp the fundamental laws that govern our existence."

The main actors in this LSST production will be a cast of pulsating stars, supernova explosions and fossil records of galaxies. This will not only provide clues as to the nature of dark matter and dark energy, but could also reveal hitherto undiscovered cosmic phenomena.

Rubin will also make an impact on astronomy within the solar system, not just at the vast cosmic distances.

For instance, Rubin is expected to discover millions of new asteroids and comets in our cosmic backyard, becoming the most powerful solar system discovery machine ever created. It is already living up to this potential.

In its first few months of operations, Rubin, which sits atop a mountain in northern Chile, has already discovered 11,000 never-before-seen asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects and 380 icy minor planets and dwarf planets out past the orbit of Neptune, referred to as trans-Neptunian objects.

It is estimated that the final LSST dataset will contain billions of objects, and its results will be available to all scientists and the general public — truly sparking a new age of cosmic discovery.

"It's taken 20 years of hard science, engineering, and more to get to the point where we can call 'action' as we start rolling on this blockbuster movie of the universe," Phil Marshall, Deputy Director of Rubin Operations for SLAC, said. "Millions of alerts in just the last couple of months show that Rubin is up and running as a discovery machine. Now we're putting it all together."

The past 250 years of optical telescopes have seen revolutionary discoveries and technology that the telescope's inventor, a seventeenth century spectacle-maker by the name of Hans Lippershey, maybe wouldn't have believed possible.

When we look back through the annals of telescope history, we find that a significant turning point came, coincidentally, just five years after the United States' Declaration of Independence was christened.

It was back in England, in 1781. William Herschel had just made what was possibly the greatest astronomical discovery the world had seen up to that point: a new planet, Uranus. The fact that Herschel had found a seventh planet from the sun was revolutionary in itself. All the other planets, from Mercury to Saturn, had been known since antiquity, obvious in the night sky to the naked eye.

Uranus, on the other hand, isn't really visible without optical aid, and its discovery illustrated the power of the telescope to dramatically widen our vistas. Moreover, Herschel found the new planet using a 6.2-inch (157-millimeter) reflecting telescope that he had constructed himself. He was looking through it from the back garden of his home in the Somerset city of Bath.

Herschel was a prolific builder of telescopes, polishing and shaping their speculum mirrors. The 6.2-inch telescope was a midget compared to some of his other beasts, including the famous discovery machine that was the 20-foot, or -meter, in focal length telescope with its 18-inch (457-mm) aperture, and the less successful 40-foot (12-meter) telescope.

Herschel proved that telescopes could do serious science. "As a self-taught astronomer, William Herschel transformed the reflecting telescope from what had generally been thought of as a scientific toy into a serious scientific tool," British science historian Robert Smith of the University of Alberta in Canada told Space.com. "At the root of all Herschel's efforts is his telescope building, because he had to build these big telescopes himself."

Refractors and reflectors

Telescopes come in two main forms: the reflector and the refractor.

Reflectors use mirrors to reflect light to a focal point where the eyepiece is located; refractors use lenses to focus light. In the 18th and 19th centuries, British reflectors like Herschel's were the dominant telescope category, as exemplified by those constructed by the likes of Liverpool's William Lassell and Ireland's Third Earl of Rosse, William Parsons. However, across the English Channel in mainland Europe, refractors, which at the time were optically higher quality, were dominant instead.

"You have to distinguish what's going on in Britain with what's going on elsewhere," said Smith.

Lassell built reflectors with apertures of 24 and 48 inches (61 and 122 centimeters). And the great Leviathan of Parsonstown in Ireland is Lord Rosse's own behemoth, still standing today as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the likes of Lassell and Lord Rosse were wealthy, self-taught "grand amateur" scientists, in Europe refracting telescopes were used by academics at universities to make precise measurements of the cosmos, from the orbits of double stars to the distance to stars using parallax.

"On the European continent, refractors were used by professional astronomers whose focus was on precision, whereas for Lassell and Rosse the focus was on collecting more light to see fainter objects," said Smith.

In comes the U.S.

Building large refracting telescopes had its challenges and led to a period referred to as the "Telescope Race," where prestige was equally a motivation alongside science. The "race" was won by the 40-inch (one-meter) refractor at Yerkes Observatory in Chicago in 1897, which cost $500,000 at the time (about $20 million in today's money) and was provided by financier Charles Yerkes who made his money developing Chicago's public transport system, often resorting to bribery in order to win franchises.

Businessmen building telescopes was nothing new, of course: William Lassell made fortunes from brewing, but he also used his own telescopes. What was different now was that men wealthy beyond anyone's dreams saw observatories as vanity projects rather than as scientific instruments to use themselves. The introduction of substantial sums of American money provided by wealthy businessmen was a sea change in both the building of telescopes and the fortunes of astronomy in the U.S.

"I have argued that in the 1880s, America was a bit of an astronomical backwater compared to Europe, but by the 1920s the United States had become the leading nation, certainly in terms of observational astronomy," said Smith.

It wasn't just Yerkes. In California, wealthy landowner James Lick founded the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton after being dissuaded from his original plan to build a giant pyramid as a monument to himself in downtown San Francisco. Percival Lowell, obsessed with his delusions about canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Arizona in 1894. And on Mount Wilson in California, something big was stirring in part thanks to benefactor John Hooker.

Reflectors come of age

Size has always been a driving force, a challenge and a problem for telescope builders. Even today, the Yerkes refractor is still the champion refractor, only rivaled by the one-meter Swedish Solar Telescope on La Palma, but even this is stepped down from 42 inches to 39 inches (107 cm to 99 cm). The issue is twofold: the thicker the lens, the more the incoming light is attenuated and hence the greater the light loss, so you lose any benefits a large lens might provide. Plus, the heavier a lens is, the more it will sag and deform, destroying its ability to focus properly.

This glass ceiling, if you'll pardon the pun, was circumvented by reflecting telescopes following a vital development in the mid-1800s. Herschel and his peers had been using mirrors made from speculum, which is a reflective and slightly toxic (thanks to the small quantities of arsenic added to the copper and tin mix) metal that is prone to tarnishing easily. Herschel had to polish his telescope mirrors frequently to keep them spick and span.

Then in the 1850s scientists Léon Foucault and Carl August von Steinheil figured out a way to add a thin layer of silver to glass, creating mirrors that were much more reflective than speculum, that weighed less and which didn't tarnish. This paved the way for building bigger and better reflectors, fulfilling the promise of the work started by William Herschel.

One key figure in the resurgence of the reflecting telescope around the turn of the 20th century was the astronomical optician George Ritchey, most famous today for being one half of the duo who invented the Ritchey–Chrétien telescope design that is popular with amateur astronomers, particularly planetary imagers, and which is also employed on dozens of professional telescopes including the largest ground-based telescopes currently in operation.

Ritchey had built a 0.6-meter (24-inch) reflector at Yerkes before he was hired by George Ellery Hale, who was the director of Mount Wilson Observatory. On Mount Wilson Ritchey designed a 1.5-meter (60-inch) reflector in 1908 and then what would be the largest telescope in the world at that time, the 2.5-meter (100-inch) Hooker Telescope, made possible thanks to a generous financial gift from John Hooker. The Hooker Telescope saw its first light in 1917.

"If I had to pick one key optician around about 1900, I would pick George Ritchey," said Smith. "Though Ritchey's innovative approach sometimes became too innovative for Hale. Maybe 'firing' is too strong a term, but Ritchey left Mount Wilson because he just didn't get on with Hale."

A revolution in cosmology

Despite the parting of ways, Ritchey's legacy was secure because the Hooker Telescope transformed astronomy and cosmology, thanks to the work of Mount Wilson staff astronomer Edwin Hubble and his colleague and assistant, Milton Humason. Thanks to the sheer resolving power of the Hooker Telescope, Hubble was able to resolve the mysterious spiral nebulae as galaxies in their own right, proving that galaxies other than our Milky Way exist.

He was able to confirm their distance by using the Hooker Telescope to identify individual stars in those galaxies, stars we call Cepheid variables, which have a particular relationship between their period of variation and their peak brightness. The work of Henrietta Swan Leavitt tells us that the longer a Cepheid's period of variability, the brighter they become, and knowing how luminous they should be, Hubble could compare that to how bright they appeared in the night sky through the Hooker Telescope and then deduce how far away they and their galaxies must be. Hubble and Humason later measured the redshifts of these galaxies, finding they are almost all moving away from us and that the cosmos is expanding.

The Hooker Telescope was superseded by the Hale Telescope, named after the Mount Wilson director and which has a 5.1-meter (200-inch) mirror and came into operation on Mount Palomar in 1949. The Hale Telescope remained the largest optical telescope in the world until 1975 and the Soviet Union's six-meter BTA-6 telescope, and this wasn't beaten until 1993 and the construction of the first of the twin 10-meter telescopes of the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. At this size, mirrors have to be composed of multiple individual segments rather than being cast as one solid mirror because gravity would otherwise cause the mirror to deform.

During the second half of the twentieth century, astronomers began to identify the best locations for giant optical telescopes, away from the smog and light pollution of cities whose urban sprawl was growing so great that not even Californian mountaintops could escape them. Today, the best telescopes in the world cluster atop Mauna Kea, on numerous peaks in Chile's Atacama Desert, and in the Canary Islands.

How the Hubble Space Telescope democratized astronomy

For the most exceptional views, you can't beat space itself. In orbit above our obscuring atmosphere, or stationed 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away at the L2 Lagrange point, space telescopes enjoy unprecedentedly clear views of the cosmos. The most recent space telescopes include the James Webb Space Telescope and, launching in September, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but the most famous of all is of course the Hubble Space Telescope.

Launched in 1990, Hubble continues against all the odds to push the frontiers of science.

"Its output is staggering," said Smith. It has made over 1.7 million individual observations in the past 36 years, and 23,000 research papers based on those observations have been published by a total of nearly 29,000 astronomers.

"This is the democratization of astronomy," said Smith, and it completes a transformation in astronomy over 250 years in the making. Back when the United States was being founded, astronomers were generally lone wolves, self-taught and self-motivated like William Herschel. Then, throughout the nineteenth century astronomy increasingly became the purview of wealthy men, and even moving into the twentieth century, astronomical discovery was confined to a small group.

"For example, in the early 20th century, the only people who had access to the Mount Wilson telescopes were the staff at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and if you were not on staff then you just couldn't use the largest telescopes in the world, so as an observational astronomer you would be at a disadvantage," said Smith.

While this began to change in the latter half of the twentieth century, with organizations such as the European Southern Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (now NOIRLab) giving access to telescopes to a wider swathe of people, the Hubble Space Telescope has really spearheaded this democratization.

"People all over the world can use Hubble," said Smith. "It opens up so many possibilities for astronomical research, with thousands of people using it."

From well-heeled enthusiasts to businessmen looking for a legacy, astronomical research has now truly become accessible to people worldwide thanks to the largest telescopes in space and on Earth. Perhaps that is the ultimate achievement of the past 250 years of telescopes.

Over 1,300 deaths have been attributed to a heat wave that swept across Europe and broke temperature records earlier this month.

From its perch in sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, Europe's Sentinel-3 satellite captured data that helps visualize the heat wave and aids researchers in understanding both the causes and effects of the atmospheric phenomena that led to these soaring temperatures.

What is it?

In this image from the European Space Agency (ESA), land surface temperatures are depicted on a scale that depicts hotter temperatures as red and violet. On the date this image was taken, June 23, France recorded its hottest June day ever, according to ESA.

The Sentinel-3 satellite detected surface temperatures as high as 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55 degrees Celsius) in parts of central Spain, western France and northern Africa, while Madrid saw 118 degrees F (48 degrees C), and surface temperatures in Rome reached 111 degrees F (44 degrees C).

Why is it incredible?

Temperatures this high were unprecedented across of much of Europe. Authorities with the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that over 1,300 deaths may be linked to the heat wave. And things may get worse for the continent.

"Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at twice the global average," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X.

By providing real-time temperature data over both water and land using its Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer instrument, the Sentinel-3 satellite is providing unprecedented data about these extreme weather events and how they affect populations.

BOULDER, Colorado — After Earth's moon and Mars, where could humans plant their footprints?

The "Humans to Titan Summit 2026" was held here on June 11 and June 12 to explore the concept of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, as the next human exploration destination, post-Mars.

Researchers looked into how demanding such a trek could be and what would be required to make it, along with next steps to further that ambitious goal.

Normalizing the idea

As a first-of-its-kind gathering of experts, the Humans to Titan Summit 2026 was invigorating, taking seriously the prospect of one day sending humans to Titan, said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, which is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

Hendrix is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan and co-author of "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets" (Pantheon Books, 2016).

"Everyone recognizes that the reality of this is a long way off," Hendrix told Space.com, "but normalizing the idea   — that Titan is actually a very reasonable destination for humans  — is important."

Taking this goal seriously means that "we can have a next destination in our minds, after Mars," she added. "That keeps the momentum going."

Dense atmosphere

The assembly of experts explored an array of Titan topics, from spacesuits and modes of transportation, habitat designs and airlock concepts to light levels and possible encounters with monsoons and floods on the frigid, exotic moon, which has a weather system based on hydrocarbons rather than water.

Additionally, making use of Titan as a hub for launching sample-return missions to other moons within the Saturn system, like Enceladus, was viewed as a big plus.

So too was utilizing the moon's rich bounty of resources — like methane, nitrogen and oxygen — to fuel expansive, far-deeper exploration beyond Titan itself.

"We've got a lot of planning to do," said Hendrix, "but we have time!"

A top priority is figuring out how to either shorten the trip time to Titan or accommodate it and mitigate the negative effects on astronauts, Hendrix said.

"The top reason in my mind that Titan is such a good spot for humans is the dense atmosphere," Hendrix said. That nitrogen-dominated atmosphere provides natural shielding from harmful radiation of many types.

Precursor missions

Appreciation of what human visitors will face on the moon was boosted by the European Space Agency's robotic Huygens probe, which touched down on Titan on Jan. 14, 2005 as part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

Next up for setting down on Titan is NASA's nuclear-powered Dragonfly, now projected to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to the faraway moon.

During its over three-year surface mission, Dragonfly's rotors will carry it for miles across Titan's surface, auto-piloting its way to a variety of areas. The vehicle is designed to snag samples of surface material for analysis inside the rotorcraft by scientific instruments.

Extraordinarily ambitious

Taking part in the two-day gathering was Scot Rafkin, director of the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and a planetary and atmospheric scientist. The summit was held at SwRI's Solar System Science & Exploration Division facilities.

"Everyone recognized that sending humans to Titan is extraordinarily ambitious. But history shows that the greatest achievements in exploration begin when people are willing to pursue goals that seem beyond reach," said Rafkin. Sharing with Space.com his own personal thoughts, he said the summit marked "the beginning of a long-term effort to imagine and ultimately achieve something transformative."

Titan is one of the most compelling worlds in the solar system, Rafkin said; it's a place with rivers, lakes, weather, dunes and complex chemistry unlike anywhere else we know of. Pursuing human exploration of Titan, he said, creates a long-term framework and provides a scientific purpose that transcends the moon and Mars.

'Not a question of physics'

Rafkin said that targeting Titan will also accelerate technologies needed not only for exploring that moon but for voyaging throughout the solar system.

"Human exploration of Titan is not a question of physics," said Rafkin. "It is a question of time, technology, and commitment. We understand most of the major challenges. We know many of the critical science and engineering gaps that remain."

Every advance in propulsion, power systems, manufacturing, robotics, computing, life support and communications, Rafkin said, brings Titan closer while simultaneously enabling exploration throughout the solar system.

Not every solution exists today, Rafkin continued, but the path forward is increasingly clear.

Starting a movement

"Some steps can be taken now, such as sending an orbiter to better characterize the Titan system," said Rafkin. "Other capabilities will require decades or even generations of development. The challenge is immense, but it is achievable."

Rafkin said that the summit was not about planning a mission.

"It was about starting a movement. If space exploration has taught us anything, it is that ambitious goals accelerate innovation in ways we cannot fully predict. The destination is Titan, but the investment is in ourselves," Rafkin concluded.

A second Humans to Titan Summit, said Hendrix, is slated around the launch date in 2028 of the NASA Dragonfly mission.

Update for 5:30 p.m. ET on June 30: During its Moon Base update today (June 30), NASA revealed a handful of new lunar-lander contracts and announced that it's considering launching a spare Mars rover to the moon. Read all about it here.

NASA will provide an update about its moon base plans this afternoon (June 30), and you can watch it live.

Agency chief Jared Isaacman and Carlos García-Galán, the manager for NASA's moon base program, "will discuss the next set of awards for new lunar lander missions and preview upcoming opportunities as the agency works toward building a sustained presence on the moon," NASA officials wrote in a media advisory.

The event will begin today at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency.

The moon base is a core piece of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around Earth's nearest neighbor over the next decade or so.

The Artemis architecture previously called for the assembly of a small space station in lunar orbit called Gateway. In late March, however, Isaacman announced that NASA was pausing its Gateway plans and instead focusing on building a surface outpost.

That base will be constructed near the lunar south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice, a key resource that can be used for life support and also be split into hydrogen and oxygen to provide rocket fuel.

Construction of the base will require a variety of work by robotic lunar rovers and landers. Presumably, today's press conference will shine some more light on that work and reveal which companies will be contracted to do it.

NASA has launched two Artemis missions to date. Artemis 1 sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back in late 2022, and Artemis 2 launched four astronauts around the moon this past April.

NASA is currently gearing up for Artemis 3, a crewed mission that will test docking procedures between Orion and one or two privately developed lunar landers in Earth orbit.

The agency aims to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. If all goes well with that flight, Artemis 4 will land astronauts near the lunar south pole, potentially as early as late 2028.

The first full moon of summer, June's Strawberry Moon, wowed skywatchers worldwide with a spectacular display.

June's full moon was the lowest-hanging full moon of the year for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. That's because a full moon always sits opposite the sun in the sky. During the summer solstice that just passed on June 21, the sun was following its highest path of the year; that means this full moon took the opposite route, skimming low across the southern sky.

It rose in the southeast, remained low above the horizon throughout the night and set in the southwest, delighting photographers around the world. Here are some of the best photos.

Photographer Davide Pischettola captured the Strawberry Moon behind the sailing ship Nave Italia in the Port of Molfetta, Italy, on June 29, 2026.

The June Full moon rises behind the skyline of midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building in New York City in this vibrant image captured by photographer Gary Hershorn.

Hershorn was also in the right place at the right time to capture this well-positioned photograph of the Strawberry Moon atop the Empire State Building.

Even Lady Liberty appeared to embrace the Strawberry Moon in another striking image by Hershorn, with the full moon seemingly cradled in the Statue of Liberty's hand.

Meanwhile, in California, photographer Tayfun Coskun captured the Strawberry Moon emerging above San Francisco Bay in dramatic fashion.

The Strawberry Moon peeked through a thin layer of cloud as it rose above an ornate rooftop in Meishan, China.

The rich orange Strawberry Moon looks particularly striking in this image captured in Qingzhou, China, on June 29, 2026.

Photographer Robert Nemeti captured this dark and moody image of the Strawberry Moon rising above a Reformed Church in Abaújvár, Hungary, from a vantage point just across the border near Kechnec, Slovakia.

A glowing Strawberry Moon rises behind the ancient Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in this remarkable image captured by photographer Ayhan Mehmet.

Photographer Veysel Altun captured the June full moon rising above a dolphin sculpture on the waterfront in Samsun, Turkiye.

A curious feline stole the spotlight as photographer Osmancan Gurdogan captured the Strawberry Moon rising over the skyline of Istanbul, Turkiye.

If you're looking for a telescope or binoculars to observe the moon, our guides for the best binocular deals and the best telescope deals are here to help. Interested in capturing the night sky? Check out our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.

Fancy taking a more in-depth moonlit tour of our rocky companion? Our ultimate guide to observing the moon will help you plan your next skywatching venture, whether it be exploring the lunar seas, mountainous terrain, or the many craters that blanket the landscape. You can also see where astronauts, rovers and landers have ventured with our Apollo landing sites observing guide.

California-based launch company Rocket Lab has inked a landmark $8 billion deal to acquire long-time satellite communications giant Iridium.

Rocket Lab has brought a variety of companies into its space systems architecture in recent years, but none of those previous purchases were as notable as the acquisition announced today (June 29). Rocket Lab and Iridium settled on the purchase at $54 per share, equating to an $8 billion deal for the legacy satellite operator.

"This is a defining moment for the space industry and the start of a new era of strategic, accelerated growth for Rocket Lab and Iridium," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement. The merger folds another area of expertise into Rocket Lab's growing, vertically integrated operations and creates a stream of continued revenue from Iridium's existing subscribers.

Iridium is a Virginia-based communications company that operates a constellation of L-band satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) that provide a global network of voice, Internet of Things, aviation, maritime, defense and emergency communications services to more than 2.5 million customers. It was founded by Motorola, via the company's efforts in the 1980s to establish a handheld global satellite phone network.

Iridium operated one of the first large commercial LEO constellations, but the success didn't last; the company went bankrupt in 1999. Iridium later rebuilt its constellation through the $3 billion Iridium NEXT campaign, launching 75 replacement satellites aboard SpaceX rockets between 2017 and 2019. Soon, that network will be operating under Rocket Lab's supervision.

The newly announced agreement comes as Rocket Lab ramps up its business ventures, as well as its dealings with the U.S. government as a national defense contractor. Within just the last month, Rocket Lab passed a major test in its program to deliver a constellation of advanced missile warning and tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Force (USSF), broke a responsive readiness record by executing a Tactically Responsive Space launch within 16 hours and 42 minutes of receiving notice from USSF's Space Systems Command, and announced its selection by NASA for three different science missions to launch in 2027.

Now that it's bringing Iridium under its umbrella, Rocket Lab is making even bigger plans. Instead of just supporting Iridium's existing network, Rocket Lab is planning its expansion. "We will go far beyond maintaining a legacy; we are going to build upon it to pioneer next-generation space applications and deliver sought-after capabilities to existing and new customers," Beck said. That includes Iridium's next-generation direct-to-device satellite network and the capabilities it will add to Rocket Lab's potential national security contributions.

"By marrying Iridium's deep heritage, trusted infrastructure, and highly-sought-after spectrum with Rocket Lab's extensive and proven launch and manufacturing capabilities, we have the capability to unlock entirely new markets," Beck said.

On the occasion of its 25th anniversary today, it’s worth noting a certain sense of irony that Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" seems oddly prescient into today’s AI-obsessed environment, especially when compared to the master director’s recently released "Disclosure Day," which sadly feels three decades late to the whole governmental cover-up UFO/UAP party.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence's" path to the silver screen is a strange odyssey, one that includes two of the world's greatest filmmakers, a '60s short story about global warming and advanced robots, a child star hot off a horror hit, multiple production starts and stops, and even a crazy sudden death conspiracy theory.

This $75 million futuristic fairy tale was filmed in a dreamy, desaturated preternatural haze that draws audiences into its emotional depths, making "A.I." one of Spielberg’s finest films made during what can be considered his darker, more serious period of moviemaking.

Released by Warner Brothers on June 29, 2001, the mature sci-fi film attracted a diverse audience that was mesmerized by the depiction of a climate-changed world and the advancement of artificial humans called mechas. It tells the story of a couple whose child is stricken with a fatal disease, causing them to purchase David, a new model of android child programmed to love.

When their son recovers, conflict between the human and mecha becomes hazardous, and David is disposed of, where he meets up with a band of stray robots. Attuned to the fairy tale of "Pinocchio" and yearning to become a real boy, David and his A.I. toy bear Teddy embark on a strange road trip to a flooded Manhattan to find the Blue Fairy, who might grant him his wish.

Spielberg naturally brought along his faithful A-list team of Oscar-winning collaborators that included cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn, and composer John Williams for this PG-13 sci-fi adventure whose eventual global box office take was a respectable $236 million.

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Jude Law, Sam Robards, Brendan Gleeson, and William Hurt, "A.I." was a brilliant storm of spectacular visual effects, especially observed in the Flesh Fair set pieces where robots were forced into gladiatorial battles to entertain post-apocalyptic crowds.

Law has a lot of ribald fun with his pleasure model android called Gigolo Joe, who rescues David and brings him into his fold as they travel to meet their 'maker' in a sort of twisted "Wizard of Oz"-like journey. Robin Williams also voices an amusing interactive search engine conceived in the likeness of Albert Einstein and aptly called Dr. Know.

Fresh from his role as Cole Sear, aka the "I see dead people" kid in M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Sixth Sense," Osment gives a shattering performance here as an innocent machine hoping to fulfill its programming and be loved as a real boy. It's been noted that Osment doesn't blink once in the film, and he displays an incredible depth of feeling on screen for such a young actor.

"A.I.'s" narrative also returns to one of the major themes seen in Spielberg’s catalog, that of the dissolving family unit. It’s been well documented and discussed over the years that his parents’ divorce when he was 19 had a devastating effect on Spielberg.

That trauma of fractured families has been well played out in numerous Spielberg movies, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Empire of the Sun," "War of the Worlds," and is even revealed in detail in "The Fabelmans."

Here in "A.I.", the broken home that Haley Joel Osment’s android character, David, experiences feels even more raw. His adoring mother, Monica, sensing David's emotional instability and fearing for her family’s life, drives her robo-child out to the woods and abandons him as he desperately begs her to stop. It’s a tearful, heart-wrenching moment few viewers forget.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence" began life as a 1969 short story by author Brian Aldiss titled "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." It’s a brief read with a twist ending that we won’t spoil here.

Adapting the futuristic tale of a flooded New York City, a Cybertronics engineer, his family, a next-generation synthetic child, and a robotic teddy bear was a passion project of the great Stanley Kubrick. The meticulous filmmaker made several attempts to crack the plot with numerous writers, including Sara Maitland, Ian Watson, and Brian Aldiss himself, but it never quite coalesced into a finished script.

Spielberg was then brought in as a potential director in 1995, and the two cinematic geniuses collaborated for years to map out the story. Upon Kubrick's surprising death in 1999 (some believing foul play for revealing industry secrets), four days following the release of "Eyes Wide Shut," Spielberg agreed to complete the project for his friend and mentor and eventually drafted the finished screenplay.

It's naturally a bit of a cobbled-together effort with so many ideas cooked in, but it all works as a type of existential exploration of the role of artificial beings in future society, our responsibility to our intelligent creations, and their emotional potential.

Trying to stay true to Kubrick’s ideals, Spielberg was intimately involved in the writing, producing, and directing of "A.I.," which represents one of only two films in his entire career where that creative trifecta occurred, the other film project being 2022’s "The Fabelmans."

Coming off of 1998's triumphant "Saving Private Ryan," 2001's "A.I." continued the pattern of Spielberg’s serious segment of his career in a run that included four science fiction movies dropped over a seven-year period. Besides "A.I.," those additional releases were 2002’s "Minority Report," 2005’s "War of the Worlds," and 2008’s "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The master wouldn’t revisit the genre again for ten years until 2018’s "Ready Player One."

Advancements in digital visual effects in the decade of the 2000s benefited from the millions of dollars poured into franchises like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Transformers." "A.I." was one of the first to benefit from that infusion of innovation that kicked off with the first "Star Wars" prequel, 1999's "The Phantom Menace."

Technology not being up to depicting a life-like robot was one of the sticking points for Kubrick, but a combo of practical effects from Stan Winston Studio and CGI did the trick.

Another creative synthesis between Kubrick and Spielberg regarding "A.I.'s" story involves their shared love of Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story, "The Adventures of Pinocchio," with Kubrick's vision of the film as a sort of Pinocchio with robots. Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" contains several references to the Disney animated "Pinocchio" as well.

The fusion of Kubrick's bleak, unflattering view of human nature paired with Spielberg's wondrous warmth and sentimentality makes for a unique cinematic cocktail that keeps "A.I." fresh and relevant.

One controversial element of "A.I." is the ending with the humanoid aliens using the guise of the Blue Fairy to grant David’s wish of one last day with his mother and the recurring motif of his wanting to become a real boy and simply be loved.

It’s a bittersweet finale that’s not without its detractors, but the simple fact that it's still fertile territory for spirited debate points to the movie's lasting importance in Spielberg’s oeuvre, and one that remains even more topical and timely today on "A.I.'s" milestone 25th birthday.

NASA astronauts Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will fix the International Space Station's Canadarm2 during a spacewalk today (June 30), and you can watch the action live.

Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will perform a roughly 6.5-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) today, starting at about 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT).

You can watch here at Space.com courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will begin at 7:00 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

Williams and Meir will replace a 200-pound (90-kilogram) wrist joint, which malfunctioned "during normal Canadarm2 operations on May 27 after the arm drew elevated motor current and did not move as expected," NASA officials wrote in a June 22 spacewalk preview.

The spare joint was already on board the ISS, which has been continuously occupied by rotating astronaut crews since November 2000.

"Repairs to robotics, like Canadarm2, are normal and expected after more than 25 years of continuous operations, as the system was designed with replaceable components and planned maintenance in mind," NASA officials added in the preview.

Canadarm2 is nearly as old as the ISS. The 56-foot-long (17-meter-long), 3,300-pound (1,500-kg) robot arrived at the orbiting lab aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in April 2001.

Today's extravehicular activity (EVA) will be the second for Williams, who will be "spacewalk crewmember 1" and will wear a spacesuit with red stripes. It will be the fifth for Meir, who will be "spacewalk crewmember 2" and will wear a suit with no stripes.

The duo performed an EVA together this past March, spending seven hours prepping the orbiting lab for a new solar array.

Astronauts have performed a total of 279 spacewalks outside the ISS to date.

Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions might look like a direct sequel to Astroneer on the surface, but it's a space exploration game with very different objectives. While its predecessor focuses (it continues to get updates and content packs) on base-building and creative tools, this second title instead takes players on shorter, breezier trips all about discovery and mission-based tasks.

Even in its early access state, Starseeker has the bones to eventually become one of the best cozy sci-fi games around, yet some Astroneer veterans might walk into a successor that isn't what they expected. This isn't Astroneer 2, System Era's Adam Bromell — the studio's creative director, CCO, and co-founder — explained to Space around Starseeker's launch.

Some quotes have been editorialized and lightly trimmed for better flow.

"I've been jonesing for video games that try to foster a sense of community amongst players. I think that when I play with other people, and you share in an accomplishment together, it's really special," explains Bromell. "This goes all the way back to building something with friends inside of Minecraft. When you finally have that moment where you step back, and you go 'Holy shit, look at what we did.' That's a good feeling."

In a way, the original Astroneer already achieved that as a "chill base-building survival experience", yet Bromell and System Era wanted to build an experience with a stronger community element that connected everyone.

"My original inspiration with Astroneer was to pay homage to that feeling Gene Roddenberry gave me with Star Trek when I was a kid. Some hope for the future and also showing what it means to be selfless and lead with generosity, seek justice... I'm still a Trekkie at heart," he explained, showing me part of the Star Trek collection he keeps in his office as he talked.

Bromell's celebratory June 11 post on Medium explored many of the same ideas we discussed during our conversation, such as the game being defined from the get-go as "hopeful science fiction", a suggestion that's attributed to System Era's COO Veronica Peshterianu. A few hours with Starseeker make it very clear that it's a game about helping other players out versus venturing into the unknown solo or with a group of close space pals.

You can still play at your own pace or create a party of people you know, but what you do out there directly affects the global experience through community goals. In fact, a common occurrence is running into entirely different teams during an expedition.

After a short planetside tutorial, Starseeker takes players to the ESS Starseeker. This space station serves as the game's central hub, where players can meet other explorers before taking on missions that task them with recovering lost tech, scanning materials and life forms, or simply exploring more of a newfound planet.

It's a much tighter loop than Astroneer's by design, one that favors short play sessions over huge base-building marathons, and the roadmap shared around the game's early access launch is promising meaty (and free) updates over the coming months.

"Starseeker at early access is the foundation and the bedrock... We're building ourselves a platform for engagement to our community, to show them their accomplishments and to push them out onto these journeys together," Bromell explained. The early access tag will also enable the team to do playful experiments like "morning announcements on the station" or giving squads special rewards based on their performance out there. It sounds like a fluid process as the team "tries to engage with players in that space" based on the feedback it gets.

"Unlike other games in the extraction genre, which we're a piece of, we let you trade directly on the station. You don't have to go in and risk it. We're interested in themes like 'What does a take a penny, leave a penny system in a video game feel like?' Like, how do we even build for that kind of sense of camaraderie?"

Bromell doesn't shy away from comparisons to the booming extraction genre – commonly tied to shooters – but, as expected, losing the loot you find while adventuring isn't as punishing in Starseeker, as no one is actively trying to hurt you. Still, the natural hazards and alien fauna mean there's some real danger to setting foot on uncharted worlds.

A larger narrative — already teased by the game's opening cutscene — is in the works too, though Bromell was coy about revealing details there. When asked about the 'target window' for the culmination of that narrative arc, he confirmed the intention is to wrap it up by the time the game hits 1.0, even if the journey continues after that point. "Between now and 1.0, you'll be introduced to the different antagonists in this game and some of the more extrinsic motivations which the Astroneers have to keep exploring."

Astroneer's cartoony visuals don't make you think "simulation" at first glance, but despite that playful side, there's room for real-world influences and nods to real science. Bromell explained they made sure to put resources in the game that "are real things you can find in the world," even if they don't look the same when it comes to shape and how "they would physically grow and manifest".

He also brought up an example from the early Astroneer days: "When we first launched it, we just picked any color we thought was cool. And then all of a sudden, players were like, 'You're calling it malachite, but it's not the right color.' We're not trying to teach anybody anything with too much depth, but certainly, when we borrow from those things, we need to not alienate completely from the idea of what they are."

Such an approach also applies to the Astroneers themselves; Bromell and the team borrowed from the basic NASA aesthetic with "the whites and the grays" and some more elevated colors. "The core theming and palette of the Astroneers aren't unlike both the NASA and Russian space programs, because those were on my Pinterest board when I was drawing these things back in 2015." He added that System Era's goal always was to make games that are familiar and approachable, but more like "kids playing with toys" rather than "full-on simulations".

In fact, Bromell was quite vocal during our interview about the need for more "silly games" that aren't afraid of players breaking things: "We aren't afraid of our players exploiting the rules that we're putting in front of you... When we did PAX West, the mission we gave everybody was to bring an altimeter as high as you could go. There was one squad that cheesed the shit out of it with some of the tools, and that was my favorite run. That's how we want players to be thinking about this, not on the golden path that we laid them on."

Starseeker has been brewing for roughly seven years, Bromell told me. "The original year and a half was myself and one or two engineers just playing with the physics sandbox." The concept later grew into this focused experience set in the Astroneer universe that had players going on short treks and completing missions together.

"I feel like Astroneer 2 is always there for us to do. We can always do that. What I don't want to do — and thank God I'm not a business person — is not take a creative swing with the momentum that we have as a team that's learning how to make a game," he added. "We're trying to take the idea of the genre, turn it slightly in our direction, borrowing from games like Helldivers [a co-op shooter full of chaos and destruction], and then building our own thing that wraps it in this connective experience."

The conversation could've gone on for hours, I think, as the creative director's heart and mind are in the right place. It's always encouraging to come across developers happy to veer off the main path during an interview, and that sort of defines what Starseeker is as a cooperative online game; the best adventures usually are the ones you stumble upon, not the ones perfectly laid out in front of you.

The game's full vision might take a while to fully blast off, but it's a refreshing one that dares to dream of a better future for space exploration and humanity as a whole. We can always use more of that.

Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions is now available on PC (Steam & Xbox App), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in early access. A PC code for this article was provided by the publisher, Devolver Digital.

Update for June 30: NASA is delaying the launch of the Swift Boost mission until July 1. In a post on its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory blog, the agency said the launch was postponed due to unfavorable weather conditions. The mission is now set to launch no earlier than 5:43 a.m. EDT (0943 GMT) on Wednesday, July 1.

An air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket is scheduled to fly for the very last time early Wednesday morning (July 1), sending a private spacecraft on a rescue mission to save one of NASA's most iconic space telescopes from falling back to Earth.

The Swift Boost mission will send the LINK satellite, built by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies, to grapple NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and tow it to a stable orbit, saving it from impending destruction as its trajectory dips farther into the atmosphere. LINK, aboard Pegasus, will take off from Bucholz Army Airfield at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, secured to Northrop Grumman's L-1011 Stargazer jet.

Liftoff is scheduled for 5:43 a.m. EDT (0943 GMT) on Wednesday, July 1. Pegasus will be released by Stargazer once the aircraft reaches about 39,000 feet (12,000 meters), traveling at Mach 0.82. Five seconds later, the rocket will ignite its engine and ascend to orbit.

Pegasus is a three-stage, solid rocket-propelled launch vehicle that measures 55 feet in length (16.9 meters), capable of delivering up to 1,000 pounds (454 kg) into low-earth orbit (LEO). Following its separation from the Stargazer, the rocket's stages are ignited in sequence to reach its intended altitude in about 10 minutes.

Pegasus debuted in 1990, and has since flown 45 missions. Its aerial deployment and flexibility to take off from different airfields allows the rocket to enter hard-to-reach orbital inclinations that are inaccessible from many major spaceports. That's one of the reasons Pegasus is launching LINK, a robotic servicing satellite that can reach Swift's low 20.6-degree inclination relative to Earth's equator.

Another reason NASA chose the Pegasus rocket for this mission was time, which is running out for Swift. The $500 million Swift Observatory was launched in November 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy events across the universe. And, despite its more than 20 years of operation, Swift is still providing scientific value.

Its orbit, though, has begun to dip dangerously low, where recent solar activity has increased atmospheric drag at higher LEO altitudes and will soon overcome the spacecraft, dragging it to its ultimate demise. Swift, unfortunately, was not designed to be serviced, and wasn't built with the thrusters it needs to raise its own orbit.

Enter LINK.

After its release from Pegasus' payload bay and initial systems checkouts, the Katalyst spacecraft will begin its long course to rendezvous with Swift. Before beginning its final approach, LINK will spend two to three weeks performing observations of Swift to assess optimal grapple points on the observatory.

LINK measures about 4.9 feet (1.5 m) tall, and is equipped with three robotic arms that will be used to capture Swift, which stretches about 12.7 feet (3.9 m). Once a grab-point is chosen and Swift secured, LINK will fire a set of gentle ion thrusters that will slowly raise the pair's orbit over the next several months.

LINK is poised to be the first private spacecraft to attempt to capture an uncrewed U.S. government satellite. NASA selected Katalyst for the task in September 2025, with less than a year to carry out LINK's design, manufacture and testing. Despite its urgency and the relative short notice to get LINK in orbit, the entire Swift rescue mission and launch only cost NASA $30 million.

"While NASA could have allowed Swift to re-enter the atmosphere, the situation presented an opportunity to demonstrate a key capability for the future of space exploration. This daring approach also extends Swift’s scientific lifetime and is more affordable than replacing the observatory’s unique capabilities," NASA states on the Swift Boost mission page.

The goal is to return Swift to its original altitude of about 373 miles (600 km), which will extend the observatory's life expectancy by a number of years, provided its systems continue to operate as designed.

The United States' 250th birthday is right around the corner and what better way to celebrate than by looking for a star whose light began its journey to Earth around the time the Declaration of Independence was signed?

Starlight travels through the near-perfect vacuum of space at a staggering 186,282 miles (299,791 kilometers) per second — or the speed of light. Even at this pace, it can take hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years for starlight to reach its destination, rendering each point of light in the night sky a twinkling time capsule, which represents a snapshot in the life of a star encoded at the moment the radiation left its source.

The blue-white double star system Alpha Virginis — known colloquially as Spica — happens to shine roughly 250 light-years from Earth. In other words, the light we see today left the star's surface 250 years ago, around the time that America's founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

How to find Spica in the night sky

Finding Spica is easy. First, locate the Big Dipper, shining above the northwestern horizon in the hours following sunset in June for viewers in the U.S., with the three stars representing its "handle" pointing up and away from the horizon.

Next, draw an imaginary line following the arc of the handle out into space, until you find the red light of Arcturus, the 4th brightest star in the night sky. Continue the arc beyond Arcturus and the next dazzling bright blue-white star that you spot will be Spica, which twinkles above the southwestern horizon at sunset in early summer.

The single point of light that we call Spica is actually a pair of massive stars that orbit each other once every four days, while shining with the combined light of over 12,000 suns.

Another star at a similar distance from Earth is Bellatrix, which shines at the left shoulder of the celestial hunter depicted in the constellation Orion. This variable star is also located 250 light-years from Earth, but is sadly lost from view in the glare of the sun during the summer months.

Want to get a closer look at the night sky? Then be sure to read our roundup of the best telescopes and binoculars for exploring the post sunset realm, along with our beginner's guide to amateur astronomy.

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.

Every year, millions of people travel to remote, protected "dark-sky parks" in search of experiences that depend on true darkness — photographing the Milky Way's heart arcing overhead, observing nocturnal wildlife in its natural rhythm, or simply standing beneath an ink-black sea of stars unblurred by artificial light.

Scientists have long warned that rising levels of artificial light — increasingly amplified by satellite megaconstellations orbiting our planet — are steadily eroding these nightscapes, disrupting ecosystems, affecting human health and dimming views of stars and distant celestial objects. Darkness itself carries no price tag, however, meaning its loss has largely been absent from the economic calculations that guide development and outdoor lighting decisions. Now, new research attempts to translate that loss visible in monetary terms.

A study combining satellite data with on-the-ground surveys of visitors at several "gold-tier" dark-sky sites found that people were less likely to choose parks with greater artificial skyglow or poorer night-sky conditions, and showed a clear willingness to pay more for darker skies.

On average, visitors would pay about $18 more per trip for marginally darker skies, and roughly $45 more per night for a one-step improvement on the Bortle Dark Sky Scale, a widely used measure of night-sky quality.

"This may seem really small at the per-visitor and per-trip unit estimate," said Jordan Smith, the study's lead author and director of the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism at Utah State University, "but when we scale through park-wide visitation, it becomes very, very significant."

Over a four-month period, the researchers estimated that light pollution reduced the recreational value of flagship dark-sky destinations in the U.S. by between $25 million and nearly $66 million.

The figures, presented at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in California, do not represent lost park revenue, but what economists call "welfare losses" — the decline in visitor satisfaction when environmental quality deteriorates. The concept is akin to paying for a concert expecting excellent sound and instead finding the speakers distorted; the performance still occurs, but it feels worth less than anticipated.

By assigning a dollar value to changes in night-sky quality, the researchers argue, policymakers gain a way to weigh the hidden costs of artificial lighting against the benefits of development and outdoor illumination.

"It's a foundational building block that allows that cost-benefit analysis to subsequently occur," Smith said.

Speaking at a press briefing during the conference, Smith said a central challenge is the gap between measuring light pollution and measuring what it costs in lived experience. Satellites and ground instruments can track where artificial light is spreading and how quickly it is increasing, he said, "but they can't tell us much about what that value is — what is actually lost due to anthropogenic light at night?"

To bridge that gap, Smith and his colleagues focused on the Colorado Plateau, a rugged region spanning Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico that contains one of the world's highest concentrations of "gold-tier" dark-sky sites, a designation that signifies the darkest and clearest night skies on Earth.

Over 82 nights in April, May, September and October, researchers interviewed visitors after dusk at campgrounds, scenic overlooks and parking areas. In total, they surveyed 634 travelers across nine destinations, including Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Natural Bridges National Monument, focusing on visitors whose trips depended specifically on high-quality night skies, the study notes.

By pairing survey responses with satellite measurements of nighttime brightness and local atmospheric conditions — including humidity, moonlight and airborne particles, all of which affect sky visibility — the team found a consistent preference for darker skies and a willingness to pay more for them.

The highest projected welfare losses, the researchers found, were heavily concentrated at premier destinations, led by the Grand Canyon and Zion national parks. Smaller or more remote parks showed comparatively modest total losses, a result driven by fewer visitors rather than an absence of dark-sky value, the study notes.

The researchers suggest that extending this kind of monitoring across a full year and over multiple years could help treat the night sky not only as a scientific and cultural asset, but as a measurable economic asset whose value changes with lighting policy, development and conservation.

As cities expand and artificial light continues to spread, studies like this are reframing a question once largely confined to science as an economic one: what is a star-filled sky worth?

A spacecraft orbiting Mars watched as its "friend," the Perseverance rover, finished its first marathon on the Martian surface. There weren't any medals handed out, and there wasn't any competition, but we're proud either way.

What is it?

On June 14, 2026, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover completed the equivalent of a marathon, having driven 26.2 miles (42.2 kilometers). After landing in the ancient lakebed Jezero Crater in 2021, the rover has been hard at work exploring, sampling, and collecting information to help scientists put the pieces of Mars' history together.

NASA's Opportunity rover also managed to reach a marathon distance on Mars, though it took over 11 years to make it that far. Perseverance managed to make it to this marathon milestone in just 5 years and 4 months, and the rover is still going strong.

But Perseverance isn't making history alone; it has the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) watching from orbit. In this image captured on June 13 by MRO, we can see Perseverance in the home stretch of its marathon, rolling toward that finish line in a region of Jezero Crater called "Arbot."

While the rover is barely a speck from this orbital distance, this additional vantage point allows researchers a different perspective on the robotic explorer. With the speed at which the rover completed this marathon, and how well it continues to explore on Mars, who knows, maybe Perseverance will be the first to manage an ultramarathon on the Red Planet.

Why is it incredible?

While crossing the marathon finish line on Mars is an exciting milestone, Perseverance has done so much more than just travel this impressive distance.

In the past 5 years, and over 26.2 miles, Perseverance has accomplished quite a lot. The rover has captured an incredible wealth of imagery, data, and even samples of Martian material.

Last year, observations made with the rover revealed the most-compelling possible biosignature found yet on the planet. And more recently, the rover found even more evidence of possible past life in a similar location.

NASA is taking the "America 250" birthday celebration to new heights.

The agency has big plans for July 4 — the 250th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence — which involves both aircraft and spacecraft.

"From the earliest days of exploration, to the first steps on the moon and the missions shaping our future, NASA represents the spirit of discovery that defines our nation," the agency wrote on a webpage marking the milestone anniversary.

The party was already underway in April, when the Artemis 2 mission circled the moon. The four Artemis 2 astronauts — three from NASA and one from the Canadian Space Agency — sported "America 250" patches among their gear.

The patch shows NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launching into the black, near a "250" surrounded by stars. Around the edges of the patch are the words "NASA: The rocket's red glare," alluding to the U.S. national anthem.

Another version of the America 250 emblem, prominently featuring the numbers in red and blue, also was mounted on each of the solid rocket boosters of Artemis 2's SLS.

There's a lot more planned in the coming weeks to ramp up to Independence Day and beyond. NASA said it will have a "series of special aircraft flyovers" at the following locations and times:

• July 3-5: The Great American State Fair, Washington, D.C.
• July 4: Salute to America: The Nation's 250th Birthday Fireworks Celebration, Washington, D.C.
• July 23-24: EAA AirVenture, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
• Aug. 23: Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C.
• Oct. 3-4: Pacific Air Show, Huntington Beach, California
• Oct. 31-Nov. 1: Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Houston Air Show

The agency also plans to make a special appearance at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between June 25 and July 10. NASA will host a pavilion featuring Artemis, a model of its planned Moon Base and a crew survival suit for the Orion spacecraft.

Other pavilion exhibits include "authentic spacesuit tools, immersive pop-up visuals, the X-59 experimental aircraft model, interactive tabletop demonstrations, astronaut food, and life-size astronaut cutouts for photos," NASA officials stated.

NASA has also celebrated America 250 by displaying the event logo on the countdown clock at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Artemis 2 launch site, and lighting up the Washington Monument with an SLS rocket projection around New Year's Eve.

Meanwhile, NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is offering a "250 Space Dreams" contest between July 1 and Aug. 2. The Space Coast facility will randomly select visitors to receive an envelope with a certificate and QR code inside.

Prizes will vary, but winners could receive NASA merch, spots on a bus tour, a free ticket to an astronaut chat, or grand prizes for things such as signed astronaut gear or $250 for on-site souvenirs.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted a massive and densely packed galaxy cluster at "cosmic noon." The fact that this cluster is so highly evolved could change theories of cosmic evolution, as it seems to exist before such structures were thought to be possible.

Designated XLSSC 122 and first seen in 2014, the cluster immediately stood out to the team in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data because, being so large and concentrated, it resembled the galactic clusters found much closer to our own galaxy. However, this cluster is seen as it was around 10.4 billion years, just around 3.4 billion years after the Big Bang, a time when such structures were theorized to have only just begun to assemble.

Even more excitingly, XLSSC 122 is acting as a gravitational lens and is aligned with even more distant galaxies, amplifying their light and making them easier to study.

"When we got those first images back from JWST, we said, 'wow, look at this, there's strong lensing coming from this cluster!' XLSSC 122 has now set the record for the most distant galaxy cluster displaying strong lensing, which is a valuable tool for astronomers," team leader Kyle Finner of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement.

What is gravitational lensing and why is it so useful?

Gravitational lensing was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his 1915 theory of gravity, known as general relativity. General relativity says that objects with mass cause the fabric of space and time to warp. Think of this as being akin to placing a bowling ball on a stretched rubber sheet. Gravity arises from this curvature.

The greater the mass of the object, the more extreme the curvature and thus the greater the gravitational influence of that object.

But there is another consequence. Light normally travels in a straight line, but spacetime is the track that it follows. If spacetime is curved, then the path of light is also curved. The closer that light travels to an object of great mass, the more its path swerves.

That means when an object of great mass, in this case XLSSC 122, comes between Earth and a more distant light source, light from that background source arrives at our telescopes at different times based on the path it took around the intermediate object. This amplifies light from the background source and has been used by the JWST team to great effect in the study of ancient galaxies.

When the Hubble Space Telescope previously studied XLSSC 122, it wasn't able to capture images that showed it was a strong gravitational lens; it took the tremendous observing power of the JWST to determine this.

The strong lensing of this early galaxy cluster could also help unravel the mystery of dark matter. Effectively invisible because it doesn't interact with light, dark matter does interact with gravity. Plus, because it outweighs the "ordinary matter" that makes up stars, planets, moons, and gas clouds in galaxies by a ratio of five to one, dark matter makes the largest contribution to the lensing effect of galaxies and galactic clusters like XLSSC 122.

This means that gravitational lensing can be used to study the distribution of otherwise invisible dark matter in galaxy clusters, which is a vital element of galactic evolution, as it is thought that galaxies and galaxy clusters gather along vast filaments of dark matter. The hunt is now on for more lensing clusters like XLSSC 122, and if they are found so early in the universe's history, a major revision of cosmology may be on the cards.

"Strong lensing is a way to measure the dark matter without actually seeing the dark matter. It gives us a sensitive probe of our cosmological models,” said Finner. "It's still early in the JWST era, and if we can start to get data on tens or hundreds of these types of objects at this stage in the universe, then we can really start putting our cosmological models to the test."

The team's results were presented on June 17, 2026, at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The research is available as a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Editor's note: Wow, the Strawberry Moon 2026 certainly served up quite the treat! We've rounded up some of our favorite photos captured by skywatchers worldwide. If you didn't catch it last night, don't worry; it will still appear full for another night or two.

Get ready to see the first full moon of summer as the stunning Strawberry Moon rises tonight (June 29).

The moon officially reaches its full phase at 7:57 p.m. EDT (2357 GMT) on June 29 when it sits opposite the sun in Earth's sky and appears fully illuminated. While that will mark the exact moment of the full moon, our lunar neighbor will appear bright and round for a night or two before and after.

June's full moon will be the lowest-hanging full moon of the year. That's because it occurs close to the summer solstice, when the sun reaches its highest point in the daytime sky. As a full moon always appears opposite the sun, it follows the opposite path across the sky, tracing the year's lowest arc.

Look east shortly after sunset to watch the Strawberry Moon climb into the evening sky among the stars of the constellation Sagittarius.

June's full moon is known as the Strawberry Moon, a name linked to the short strawberry harvesting season traditionally observed by Native American tribes. Other names for June's full moon include the Rose Moon, Hot Moon and Mead Moon, according to Time and Date.

Despite its name, the Strawberry Moon won't appear pink. However, it may take on a golden or orange hue as it rises. This happens because moonlight must pass through a thicker layer of Earth's atmosphere when the moon is low on the horizon, scattering shorter wavelengths of light and allowing warmer colors to dominate.

You may also notice the moon appearing unusually large near the horizon. This is due to a phenomenon known as the moon illusion, a trick of perception that makes the moon seem bigger when viewed alongside distant landscape features.

If you're looking for a telescope or binoculars to observe the night sky, our guides for the best binocular deals and the best telescope deals can help. Our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography can help you get ready to capture the next stunning skywatching event.

Editor's Note: If you snap a photo of the full moon 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 launched 24 more of its Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Sunday (June 28), continuing to expand its broadband internet relay network.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the new batch (Group 17-40) launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Liftoff took place at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT or 9:09 a.m. PDT local time).

The Starlink satellites reached orbit about nine minutes after leaving the ground and were on track to be deployed by the Falcon 9 upper stage about an hour later.

The rocket's first stage (Booster 1088) completed its 17th flight, touching down on the autonomous droneship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean.

The 24 satellites increased the total number of active relays in the Starlink network to more than 10,700, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The Starlink service provides access to the internet to people around the world, as well to in-flight wifi and cell-to-satellite service providers.

Sunday's launch was SpaceX's 75th Falcon 9 mission in 2026.

It's a contested field, but John Williams' majestic "Superman" theme is up there with the best the composer's ever written. Almost five decades on, that stirring orchestral march remains synonymous with Krypton's most famous son, still more than capable of making grown men want to run out of telephone boxes (remember those?) while ripping their shirts open.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Bryan Singer couldn't imagine using any other music when signed up to direct "Superman Returns", which celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend.

"From day one, Bryan said he wouldn't even greenlight the movie if he couldn't use the John Williams music," composer John Ottman told IGN at the time of release. "That's how important it was to Bryan. I had moments of wanting to evolve the theme a little bit and alter it slightly, but Bryan was against any modifications at all, even down to the last flute flourish."

But the filmmaker's devotion to Richard Donner's classic 1978 "Superman: The Movie" (still undoubtedly the best "Superman" movie) stretched way beyond replicating that famous score — a homage James Gunn repeated in his own Man of Steel reboot last year. Because, for better and worse, "Superman Returns" is an unashamed love letter to the film that made us believe a man could fly all those years ago.

"Smallville" may have been flying high on TV, but the early '00s had hardly soared for DC on the big screen. The success of "Blade", "X-Men" (also directed by Singer), and "Spider-Man" had turned Marvel into Hollywood's pre-eminent source of comic-book blockbusters, and the Distinguished Competition was playing catch-up.

They were also licking their wounds following infamous stinkers "Batman & Robin" (1997) and "Catwoman" (2004), and the DC renaissance wouldn't truly begin until Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed "Batman Begins" in 2005.

There had been attempts to bring Supes back to theaters for the first time since 1987's disastrous "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace". Tim Burton, who'd directed the ridiculously successful 1989 "Batman" reboot, was attached to "Superman Lives" in the '90s, while "Das Boot"/"Air Force One" helmer Wolfgang Petersen spent several years developing a standalone "Batman v Superman" movie, working from a screenplay by "Seven" writer Andrew Kevin Walker.

Then Brett Ratner was all set to direct "Superman: Flyby", scripted by a certain JJ Abrams, until he left the project in March 2003, citing difficulties casting the lead role — not to mention his desire to make "Rush Hour 3" — as reasons for his departure. "Charlie's Angels" director McG briefly picked up the cape, but by July 2024, Warner Bros had handed the Fortress of Solitude keys to Singer. Singer subsequently departed the X-Men threequel, which was ultimately directed — after a bizarre game of Hollywood musical chairs — by Ratner, before he made "Rush Hour 3".

Working with "X2" writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, Singer jettisoned those previous treatments to craft an all-new — albeit nostalgic — take on Superman. Conveniently, the trio pretended that the disappointing "Superman III" and "Superman IV" never happened, instead picking up the story five years after the events of "Superman II" — aka the one where Clark and Lois Lane fall in love, Superman renounces his powers, inexplicably gets them back, and makes Lois forget the whole affair.

It turns out that Superman (and, naturally, Clark Kent) has been away ever since, exploring the remains of Krypton in the hope of finding survivors of his race. In the meantime, Lois has moved in with the nephew of "Daily Planet" editor Perry White, had a kid called Jason, and written a Pulitzer Prize-winning article entitled "Why the world doesn't need Superman". She, and planet Earth, have apparently moved on.

The world's greatest criminal mastermind has not, however, so Lex Luthor comes out of retirement to defeat the Man of Steel once and for all. His dastardly scheme involves using Kryptonian tech to build an all-new continent off the coast of Metropolis — even after all these years, he's still obsessed with real estate.

"Superman Returns" is a movie of contradictions. While it's technically a continuation of the Christopher Reeve series, it's also a reboot. So even though, in Superman and Lois's timeline, only five years have passed, the film is set in 2006 rather than 1985. There's also an entirely new cast.

Although established names like Nicolas Cage, Brendan Fraser, Josh Hartnett, and Jude Law had been linked with previous incarnations of Superman, Singer opted to cast an unknown, just as Donner had done with the peerless Reeve. Brandon Routh actually makes a decent Superman — heroic, yet understated and touchingly melancholic — but never gets a chance to do much as Clark Kent.

As Lois, meanwhile, Kate Bosworth certainly didn't deserve the excessive criticism she received at the time, yet is miscast in an underwritten role that lacks the screwball energy of Margot Kidder's performance. But it's Kevin Spacey (who'd won an Oscar for his performance in Singer's "The Usual Suspects) who feels most out of place as an overly vicious Lex Luthor, no match for the timeless, ridiculously charming Gene Hackman version.

Even in the pre-social media world of 2006, "Superman Returns" was attracting negative hype long before it flew into theaters. The darker red of Superman's cape and reduced size of the House of El logo proved particularly controversial, as Singer eschewed the primary colored hues of the Reeve outfit for something more muted and more in keeping with the "realistic" superhero uniforms of the era.

And when it landed, it turned out to be very different from what many fans had wanted. Indeed, anyone expecting all-out action — or the giant robot spiders that would, infamously, have featured in Burton's "Superman Lives" project — was left massively disappointed by this reflective character piece. "Superman Returns" was less a film for kids and teens than adults who'd grown up on the Donner movie. As such, saving the day often takes a backseat to themes of lost love and paths not taken.

"I think that 'Superman Returns' was a bit nostalgic and romantic, and I don't think that was what people were expecting, especially in the summer," Singer told Empire in 2016. "What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were lining up to see 'The Devil Wears Prada', which may have been something I wanted to address."

In the film's big reveal, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) is revealed to be Clark's son, and he throws a piano at a bad guy to prove it. But the more interesting storyline is actually the love triangle between Superman, Lois, and Richard White ("X-Men"'s James Marsden). It would have been so easy to make Richard a bad guy, but here he's thoroughly decent and — while he needs a seaplane to fly — just as heroic as his Spandex-clad love rival. By the end of the film, it's clear that he — not Clark/Superman — is the right man for Lois.

Continuing a long tradition of "Superman" movies with ropey endings, it isn't plain sailing getting to that point. Because Lex had the evil foresight to lace his island with kryptonite, Superman finds himself on the verge of death (requiring a human rescue), yet still finds the strength to fly the entire landmass into orbit — another exertion he recovers from remarkably quickly. It's also worth mentioning that, at one point, Lois and Jason are saved by a fax — how very 2006.

"Superman Returns"' $391 million box office take made it the ninth highest grossing film of the year, coming in behind "The Da Vinci Code", "Casino Royale", "Cars" and — in an intriguing twist of fate — "X-Men: The Last Stand". It was a respectable return, yet not enough for Warner Bros, who opted not to make a sequel.

It remains, however, a memorable experiment in nostalgia, making some brave creative decisions without ever standing on its own two feet. Besides, whatever else anyone says about it, it's still bookended by the greatest superhero theme tune ever written.

"Superman Returns" is available to stream on HBO Max in the US, and Netflix and Prime Video in the UK.

Japan's Hayabusa2 sample-return spacecraft is on target to make one of the closest ever flybys of a near-Earth asteroid in early July, as part of its extended mission campaign.

Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Ryugu four years later. The spacecraft collected samples and delivered them to Earth in 2020, completing its primary objectives. But the hardy spacecraft still has bold plans to deliver new and exciting science data.

The spacecraft has been operating well, despite needing to briefly enter a protective safe mode last year, and now is set to make a flyby of the asteroid Torifune on July 5, Satoshi Tanaka of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a presentation on Hayabusa2 during the 35th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) on June 11.

The flyby will see Hayabusa2 get within 1 to 10 kilometers (0.62 to 6.2 miles) of Torifune, using its instrument suite to study the roughly 450-meter-wide (1,476 feet) asteroid as it whizzes past at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second).

"This is one of the closest asteroid encounters ever attempted by a mission of this class," Tanaka said. "By combining advanced navigation techniques and the engineering capabilities of Hayabusa2, we have made it possible to achieve a flyby at a distance of only about 1 kilometer."

Torifune was first given the designation 2001 CC21 before being named for a deity from Japanese mythology. Tanaka says the asteroid is somewhat similar to Itokawa — the target of Japan's first Hayabusa mission — but little is known for sure about Torifune, adding a level of uncertainty to this extended mission objective.

"It's still a risky operation, because they had not planned for this," Patrick Michel, the principal investigator for the European Space Agency's Hera asteroid mission and part of the Hayabusa2 science team, told Space.com. "The second thing is that we have a high uncertainty on the size of the object," he added, with the dimensions of the asteroid unknown.

The asteroid could, for example, be a contact binary, according to Michel, in which two separate bodies came together at low velocities. Known contact binary small bodies include the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, imaged by NASA's New Horizons, and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, described as a "rubber duck" when visited by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft.

"We're going to discover what it looks like. And each time we have seen a new asteroid, we've been surprised," Michel said. "We're going to discover another beast to put in the zoo of asteroids."

The very high velocity of the flyby means there will be limited time to collect images and other data on the asteroid, but the rapid encounter will also provide a useful test for planetary defense, as well as adding to planetary science.

The flyby, using advanced navigation techniques to guide and control the spacecraft, will be a useful test of a rapid reconnaissance concept that could be used to determine the physical properties of an asteroid. Such reconnaissance could provide vital information before intercepting a threatening asteroid with a kinetic impact, as demonstrated by NASA's DART mission in 2022.

Tanaka said that Hayabusa2 has been busy during its deep space cruise phase, including making observations of the zodiacal light and exoplanets, and the Torifune flyby will, hopefully, not be its final act. The ultimate goal of the Hayabusa2 extended mission is to visit the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031, which would be the smallest asteroid ever visited. The spacecraft could even attempt to land on the miniscule world, which is just 11 meters (36 feet) wide.

Astrophotographer Efrain Morales captured spectacular footage of China's Tiangong space station as its silhouette buzzed Tycho Crater during a lunar transit on May 29, one night before May's Blue Moon.

Morales recorded the outlines of Tiangong's vast solar panels and habitable modules using a 12-inch telescope and astronomy camera as it passed silently across the lunar surface in the skies above Puerto Rico at 11:33 p.m. EDT on May 29 (0333 GMT on May 30).

"It is a challenge in less then a second to capture this event," Morales said in an email to Space.com. "Using a program the ISS Transit Finder helps in giving information to capture the space station. Adjusting the FOV and at times calculating last minute deviations in time and positions in which makes it more challenging."

The orbital outpost appeared to dive directly toward Tycho Crater, whose 53-mile-wide (85 kilometer) impact site and bright ejecta dominate the southern region of the lunar disk on the nights surrounding the full moon phase.

The dark expanses of Mare Nubium (the Sea of Clouds) and Mare Nectaris (the Sea of Nectar) can also be seen scarring the lunar disk to the left and upper right of the footage, respectively, where ancient lava flows hardened to form basaltic plains billions of years ago.

What is the Tiangong space station?

The Tiangong space station, which translates to "Heavenly Palace" from Mandarin, is made up of the core module Tianhe and theMengtian and Wentian laboratory modules, which orbit Earth at an altitude ranging between 217 and 280 miles (340 to 450 km).

Tiangong is currently crewed by the three taikonauts of the Shenzhou 23 mission — commander Zhu Yangzhu, pilot Zhang Zhiyuan and payload specialist Lai Ka-ying — who launched to the orbital station atop a 203-ft (62 m) Long March 2F rocket on May 24.

Want to see the Tiangong space station for yourself? Then be sure to read our guide to tracking and photographing the orbital outpost, along with our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

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

SpaceX launched a big SiriusXM radio satellite to orbit from Florida's Space Coast on Sunday night (June 28).

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the 15,400-pound (7,000 kilograms) SXM-11 spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Sunday at 10:25 p.m. EDT (0225 GMT on June 29).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth for a landing about 8.5 minutes after launch as planned, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas."

According to a SpaceX mission description, it was the 17th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1085.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying SXM-11 to an elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit, where it was deployed on schedule, 34.5 minutes after liftoff.

SXM-11 will now circularize its distant path around our planet and join SiriusXM's satellite-radio fleet, which currently consists of seven spacecraft.

SpaceX has now launched four of those spacecraft to date. The others were SXM-8 in June 2021, SXM-9 in December 2024 and SXM-10 in June 2025, all of which also rode to orbit on Falcon 9 rockets.

SpaceX has launched 76 Falcon 9 missions so far in 2026. The vast majority of those flights — nearly 80% of them — have been dedicated to building out the company's Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:30 a.m. ET on June 28 with news of successful launch, rocket landing and satellite deployment.

Engineers looking for safe water and recycled air for astronauts should look no further than nature, according to one team of researchers.

Oysters and other forms of "biogenerative" life support systems, which use living beings for food, water recycling and air regeneration, are under study at Pennsylvania's Harrisburg University with Monolith Space, a small company featured on the This Week in Space weekly podcast with Space.com's Tariq Malik and author Rod Pyle in March.

The shelled creatures aren't the only ones Harrisburg researchers are looking at: students and researchers are also examining algae, mollusks and even finfish. Hydroponics, or growing plants in water, is another approach. Monolith founder Jacob Scoccimerra, who is based in D.C., said the research is not only crucial for future astronaut living, but also unique among food projects in space. To the best of his knowledge, oysters have not yet flown in space, he told Space.com in an e-mail.

"There are no dedicated facilities on the ISS capable of studying this, currently, that being a dedicated aquarium-like facility with environmental control," he noted. The ISS previously did have an aquatic habitat until 2012, he said, but he described it as small (less than 3 liters or 0.8 gallons) and studying "primarily small finfish."

"Other aquatic organisms have been studied in a variety of non-specialized hardware," he said of space research more generally, but noted there is "no facility that is large enough to host organisms like oysters."

That's where a new prototype is coming in; Harrisburg and Monolith are together creating a closed-loop aquaculture system for marine organisms, which Scoccimerra said is roughly one-third of the way through NASA's technology readiness levels describing readiness for spaceflight.

Specific applications of the research for astronaut missions are still being determined, but the university described the system as an "automated, closed-loop aquaculture system to grow and study marine organisms that may be beneficial candidates for space nutrition and research." That said, the university also notes that oysters "provide natural water filtration", suggesting a possible use during long-duration missions.

Harrisburg's Rachel Fogle (an associate professor) and Glenn Williams (an instructor), provided guidance on the prototype, which uses oyster spat (baby oysters) and then helps the oysters grow into adulthood. The prototype was demonstrated publicly April 8.

"The project has essentially closed since we presented the results on campus," Scoccimerra said. "Since closure, the oyster habitat has been set up at Monolith's office in D.C., where the oysters are continuing to be fed and monitored."

NASA subject matter experts also gave insight on the system design, which will continue to be refined for the agency's payload interface requirements that govern ISS launch requirements, as well as those for newer commercial space stations when they are ready. (This does not guarantee a future space-station launch, but gives the oyster project more potential for that in the future.)

"Our pathway is to launch a smaller experiment first to ISS or similar platform, and then build from there," Scoccimerra said. "It is less a technical feasibility, and more of a need to study them. Historically aquatic biology has not been studied significantly in space compared to microbial, human, and plant biology."

The research is taking place as NASA pushes hard to return astronauts to the surface of the moon as a part of the agency's Artemis program, for a more permanent presence around the end of the decade. In January, the agency also identified "food and nutrition for Mars and sustained lunar" as one of the priority items in its civil space shortfall ranking, which targets areas for tech development.

While oysters in space appear to be a newer research opportunity, Harrisburg states that humans have been eating these creatures for 100,000 years, based on archaeology findings. An example from this era, using shellfish, has been found in South Africa, according to Archaeology Magazine.

The 1970s were truly when science fiction cinema made astronomical leaps into the public's consciousness and catapulted out of the B-movie bin to become a respected entertainment genre.

Aside from a few serious science fiction standouts like "The Andromeda Strain," "Silent Running," "Soylent Green," "Westworld," and "Rollerball," the pre-"Star Wars" era of Hollywood sci-fi was mostly forgettable fare.

But before we all travelled to a galaxy far, far away, experienced close encounters of the third kind, or set down on LV-426, MGM Studios gifted us with "Logan's Run," a lavish futuristic spectacle that offered a colorful peek into a dystopian future. It delivered with provocative themes about the suppression of truth, the inevitability of aging and death, violence as sport, and the complicated nature of freedom.

First released on June 23, 1976 — right before the United States was about to celebrate its big 200th birthday — "Logan's Run" featured an exceptional cast led by Michael York, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov, Roscoe Lee Brown, and British sensation Jenny Agutter, who would later go on to co-star in director John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London." It even placed a spotlight on popular supermodel Farrah Fawcett-Majors as the sexy New You Shop worker, Holly 13.

On the occasion of "Logan's Run's" 50th anniversary this week, let's look back at this forgotten gem that inspired filmmakers and artists to leap into the genre, absorbed in its sanitized vision of the future and the unsettling truth behind the sunny facade of paradise's perfection.

Those of a certain age might recall the first spectacular trailers opening with images of a 23rd-century domed city sparkling with water features and bright white buildings connected by transparent transportation tubes filled with bullet-like people pods.

This beautiful exterior disguises a fragile utopian society with a dark secret that humanity is only too happy to ignore, operating in fake hedonistic tranquility as state-sponsored death events are delivered in amphitheaters to cheering crowds.

York stars as Logan 5, a young buck employed as a Sandman, a sort of futuristic cop whose job is to uphold the law and terminate anyone who attempts to escape from the mandated Carousel ceremony, where citizens reaching the age of 30 are supposedly reincarnated. He and his elite Sandman partner, Francis 7 (Jordan), enjoy blasting away at daring fugitives who reject the forced expiration bit and attempt to flee when their palm-implanted life-clocks turn red.

When the city’s AI overlord forces Logan to infiltrate a secret runner’s sect to find a mythical place called Sanctuary outside of civilization’s domed clusters, he joins forces with Jessica 6 (Agutter) to find the truth behind a symbolic ankh, pursued by a relentless Francis 7.

Adapted from distinguished sci-fi author William F. Nolan’s 1967 novel and directed by British filmmaker Michael Anderson, this big budget treat is a beautiful film to watch, with its vibrant Metrocolor palette shot by legendary cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, Jerry Goldsmith’s penetrating orchestral score accented with synthesizer tones, and thrilling set pieces filmed in actual locations like Houston’s Hyatt Regency Hotel and the Fort Worth Water Gardens in Texas.

"Logan's Run" was a solid summer hit for MGM, pulling in a domestic total of $25 million off a $9 million budget. When the 1977 Academy Awards arrived, the sci-fi blockbuster was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction and won an Oscar for Special Achievement in Visual Effects.

It also holds the distinction of being the first movie presented in Dolby Stereo when matched with 70mm prints. And who can forget the frightening ice cave robot named Box, perfectly portrayed by Roscoe Lee Brown inside a shiny android suit?

For three decades, it’s been rumored that "Logan's Run" would be getting a remake, bouncing around in a series of stalled projects, one that supposedly attracted Ryan Gosling, but at this point, no progress has been made.

A short-lived "Logan's Run" TV series aired in '77, but a "Star Wars" tsunami swept in that year and washed it away.

So, if you're looking for a nostalgic trip back to '70s sci-fi, then why not check out the original "Logan's Run" this weekend to help celebrate its landmark 50th anniversary and revel in all its disco-era dystopian pleasures?

On Episode 216 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with physicist Dr. Daniel Whiteson about other intelligences is beyond our scope.

Whiteson, particle physicist at CERN's Large Hadron Collider and professor at UC Irvine, joins us to explore less conventional thoughts on first contact. We look at the challenges of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences, potential difficulties of communicating via non-terrestrial mathematics and physics, and the possibility that extraterrestrials might actually be terrestrial... but existing as denizens of the dark energy universe. One might be sitting in your lap right now! Join us for the far-ranging discussion.

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

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Space news of the week

• NASA and Boeing still uncertain about when Starliner will return to flight
• Did NASA just find evidence of ancient life on Mars? Perseverance rover spots complex carbon in Red Planet rocks
• NASA is paying $30 million for a 1st-of-its-kind rescue mission to the aging Swift telescope before it falls from space. Is it worth it?
• Space.com App
• Daniel Whiteson
• Daniel & Kelly's Extraordinary Universe

Model Falcon 9!

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

About This Week In Space

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

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

When "SpaceCamp" landed in theaters in June 1986, it should have been the ultimate wish-fulfillment movie, as if "The Goonies" had cashed in their hard-earned pirate treasure in return for a spin in an actual Space Shuttle.

It boasted a bigger budget than "Top Gun", a cast of up-and-coming young stars — including a future Oscar-winner — and a score by Hollywood's most famous composer. Twentieth Century Fox had bet big on a blockbuster hit, but a real-life tragedy four months earlier ensured the film was doomed to be an also-ran at the box office.

The real-life Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was a dream destination for any kid with an interest in science, math, and space exploration — the ultimate trip for tweens and teens with a passion for science and technology.

The brainchild of original Space & Rocket Center director Edward O Buckbee and Apollo rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, the facility opened in 1982. It has since welcomed over a million wannabes through its doors, including Elon Musk, Chelsea Clinton, and several attendees who went on to become actual astronauts.

Patrick Bailey, who wrote the original "SpaceCamp" story, got the idea from his wife, who'd spotted a news story about the camp while working as a researcher on American variety show "That's Incredible!"

He developed the idea alongside Buckbee, and the duo successfully pitched the project to producer Leonard Goldberg, who'd had a major hit with "WarGames" a few years earlier. (It's easy to see why Goldberg saw the potential in SpaceCamp, seeing as WarGames was based on a similar scenario of ordinary kids being thrown into a dangerous and improbable situation.)

NASA also approved the script, and — rather surprisingly — wasn’t put off by the fact that the whole plot revolved around a colossal screw-up on the launchpad.

The film focuses on a quintet of bickering camp attendees as they try out various training simulators, and learn — repeatedly and exhaustingly — the value of teamwork. It's all set to be a standard, barely postcard-worthy week away from home, until a totally implausible sequence of events sees them blasting off into orbit (with a single instructor to look after them) on the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

First, 12-year-old Max persuades management that he should be allowed into Big Kid camp, even though he's too young. Then he befriends a sentient, but worryingly glitchy, robot janitor named Jinx, who wants to make "Star Wars"-obsessed Max's dream of going into space a reality.

Jinx's scheme gets a convenient helping hand when NASA — for the benefit of the plot — allows the kids to sit in an actual shuttle during an actual engine test. That questionable decision gives Jinx all the window he needs to initiate a "thermal curtain failure" in one of the solid rocket boosters, leaving mission control no choice but to blast the kids into space.

Once the initial excitement of weightlessness has worn off, the kids realize the true extent of their predicament. While instructor Andie is a qualified astronaut who'd been patiently waiting for her first mission, it turns out that the unprepared Shuttle wasn't rigged for long-range radio communications. And — shock horror! — there isn't enough oxygen to get them to their re-entry window for landing at Edwards Air Force Base.

Suddenly, these rookie kids are forced into roles real-life astronauts spend years training for, going on spacewalks and landing state-of-the-art spacecraft as if it's as straightforward as playing a video game.

But as ridiculous as the premise is, it's kept grounded by an extremely likable ensemble, one of Hollywood's most impressive examples of pre-fame casting. While Lea Thompson (Kathryn) and Larry B Scott (Rudy) were familiar from "Back to the Future" and "Revenge of the Nerds", respectively, Tate Donovan (Kevin), Kelly Preston (Tish), and — perhaps, most notably — future Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (then known as Leaf) were all playing their first major movie roles.

And even though they broadly correspond to the jock/brain/princess archetypes you'd find in a John Hughes movie, the movie makes an effort to defy expectations of the era. Tish, for example, is — despite her valley girl persona — super-smart and has an eidetic memory.

More experienced heads were provided by Kate Capshaw (fresh off "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom") as astronaut Andie Bergstrom, and Tom Skerritt ("Alien", "Top Gun") as her moonwalking husband, Zach. "Lost" fans should also look out for a young Terry O'Quinn (John Locke) in mission control.

Both the cast and director Harry Winer have spoken of the camaraderie on set, which was probably a good thing given the unexpected length of the production.

"After the first day of filming, we were already 10 days behind schedule," Thompson recalled in a 2012 interview with AV Club. "And it kind of kept on that way. It was supposed to be a three-month shoot, and it ended up taking six. We had t-shirts printed up that said, '"SpaceCamp": It’s Not Just a Movie, It’s a Career'. Oh, actually, instead of 'SpaceCamp', it actually said 'SpaceCramp!'"

The biggest name in the production, however, went unseen, as the legendary John Williams (who's always had a soft spot for kids' films; see also "Home Alone" and "Harry Potter") composed the soundtrack. While he resisted the temptation to add in a few bars from a galaxy far, far away during "SpaceCamp"'s many nods to "Star Wars", the score is unmistakably one of his.

"There's a reason why anyone who's a legend is a legend," Winer said in an interview with AL.com back in 2022.

"John Williams is the most gratifying and rewarding creative collaboration I've had in my entire career. He would analyze a story and consider when there was a need for silence. He understood your creative intentions and found a way in a very poetic medium of music to interpret and enhance your vision. It was literally remarkable."

"SpaceCamp" was all set for a prime summer release slot when disaster struck in January 1986. After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off, killing all seven crewmembers on board, a lighthearted movie about five kids accidentally heading into orbit suddenly seemed rather less appealing.

Many questioned whether it should have been released at all, but Fox decided to press ahead. Winer even wondered if the public might even find the film cathartic, "because after such a tragedy, people would need to cling to the hope the film represented. And needless to say, I was totally wrong," he said later. "They saw it as a source of jeopardy, of disappointment, of tragedy, rather than hope. No one went to see 'SpaceCamp', so then I felt like I had failed miserably."

Not helped by scathing reviews — "Would anyone like this movie?" asked legendary critic Roger Ebert. "Juvenile space nuts, maybe. But they'd be too sophisticated."

Forty years on, it remains a decent, if unspectacular, family movie, but "SpaceCamp" barely made back half of its production budget in theaters. It was the very definition of a Hollywood flop, but it still left its mark.

Interest in the film reportedly doubled attendance at the real-life Space Camp, and there’s anecdotal evidence that the movie encouraged kids to pursue careers in science. In more recent years, there's even been talk of a remake, though its current status is unknown.

"I've had a lot of people come up to me and say that they became physicists or inventors, because of how much they loved [Space Camp] and how much it inspired them," said Thompson. "That was really sweet and something I never really expected."

"SpaceCamp" is currently unavailable to stream and download from any major service (though there is a disappointingly low-res version on YouTube). There is also a Blu-ray release, but it's hard to find and expensive.

Blue Origin is hard at work at its Cape Canaveral launch pad, collecting debris and repairing the damage after an explosive accident last month.

The company's New Glenn rocket exploded during a fueling test last month at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36). The resulting fireball laid waste to the surrounding facility, and erupted in a burst with a glow visible more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. In the aftermath, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp voiced confidence that, despite the setback, the company would bring New Glenn back to the pad for a launch before the end of the year.

He doubled down on that assessment in an X post on Thursday (June 25), which featured a timelapse video of the work done at LC-36 over the past few weeks. "Huge shoutout to the team who have been working 7x24" Limp said. "We have started reconstruction and still plan to fly again this year."

In his post, Limp said that all the debris has now been cleared from LC-36, and that all the wreckage from New Glenn and the surrounding facilities was collected within nine days of the explosion.

The speedy cleanup is a positive step toward Blue Origin's goal of launching New Glenn again by the end of 2026, but it's still an ambitious undertaking. Similar incidents, like the explosion of SpaceX's Falcon 9 at LC-40 in 2016, have taken up to twice as long to recover from. For Blue Origin, though, there's a lot on the line.

NASA has contracted the company's Blue Moon spacecraft as one of the agency's crewed Artemis lunar landers, and Blue Moon has been designed to launch on New Glenn. NASA is targeting late 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, which depends on astronauts aboard an Orion capsule rendezvousing with Blue Moon in low Earth orbit to demonstrate docking maneuvers and spacecraft interoperability ahead of future missions to land astronauts on the lunar surface.

Orion will also dock with SpaceX's Starship during Artemis 3, if all goes to plan. NASA initially selected Starship as the lunar lander for Artemis 4 and 5, but delays in the development of the huge vehicle prompted NASA to reopen its considerations about which lander would fly the landing missions ahead. Should either Starship or Blue Moon not be ready in time to launch for Artemis 3, their builders risk losing out on the chance to return American astronauts to the moon.

NASA is hoping to use drones to speed up organ delivery for transplant patients.

A flight test earlier this month at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia saw a drone pick up a kidney and fly it for the first time beyond "line of sight", or the distance from which a drone is visible by an operator. Keeping a line of sight on a drone is a typical requirement for flight safety, but NASA is developing tools that may allow these machines to fly further away from operators in populated environments more regularly.

The kidney on the June 5 flight test was not viable for organ transplantation, which is why the agency and partner United Network for Organ Sharing were able to use it, according to WTKR. If all goes to plan with future tests conducted with NASA Langley, however, UNOS aims to fly organ-bearing drones as far as 15 miles (24 km), in between hospitals for example, to allow for swift and safe delivery to waiting patients. The drone collaboration was created to "explore faster, more reliable ways to transport donor organs using advanced aviation technologies", according to space agency materials published in April.

Drones may have a better ability than larger aircraft to navigate ground logistics or maneuver in dense or hard-to-reach delivery areas. What's more, drones might be able to do so faster than aircraft, which is crucial: organs can only last so long during transportation.

The test used additional radios on the drones intended to allow pilots to keep an eye on the drones even while out of sight. "What that means, more or less, is we're going to have the pilot in command be about a mile away inside of a control room," Kyle Smalling, an aerospace engineer at NASA Langley, told WAVY.com.

Smalling added that this test met Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements and took place on a NASA Langley flight range known as the City Environment Range Testing for Autonomous Integrated Navigation or CERTAIN, presumably for additional safety.

The flown kidney will eventually be assessed for "factors such as temperature stability and potential tissue damage caused by a lack of blood flow," NASA officials wrote in April about the June 5 flight test.

Beyond that, agency officials said they are hoping to explore "operational feasibility and scalability" for flying drones to patients as a "last-mile service" from a long-distance delivery, sort of in a similar way to how Amazon may be bringing packages to doors after initial shipment by truck.

"This is a chance to apply NASA Langley technology to a real-world problem that can save people's lives who are waiting for transplants," John Koelling, director of Langley's aeronautics research directorate, said in the statement.

"There's nothing more rewarding than seeing your technical work have a positive impact on people's lives."

A bizarre radio galaxy discovered by a citizen scientist has left astronomers puzzled, revealing a never-before-seen "bow-and-arrow" structure that could offer rare insight into how galaxies are reshaped by colossal shock waves as they plunge through galaxy clusters.

Named RAD-BAARG (short for Radio Bow-And-Arrow Radio Galaxy), the object spans nearly 1.8 million light-years across, making it almost 18 times wider than the Milky Way. Its unusual structure was first identified by a citizen scientist participating in the RAD@home Astronomy Collaboratory, which allows volunteers to review telescope data and flag unusual features that might otherwise be missed.

Astronomers say they haven't seen anything like it. "The structure of this source is unlike that of any radio galaxy I have seen in the last 25 years," the University of Mumbai's Ananda Hota said in a statement published by the Royal Astronomical Society. The statement adds that astronomers believe the structure may be "one of the clearest known radio signatures of a giant bow shock generated by a galaxy falling supersonically into a cluster environment."

Following its discovery, researchers studied the object using observations from the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) Two-meter Sky Survey (LoTSS), one of the deepest low-frequency radio surveys ever conducted and particularly well suited to detecting faint, diffuse radio emissions.

Unlike typical radio galaxies, which produce two relatively symmetrical jets of charged particles powered by supermassive black holes, RAD-BAARG has a dramatically lopsided appearance. One jet feeds a wedge-shaped region that curves backward into an enormous arc, while the other twists into an S-shaped structure before fading into a long tail. Together, the features resemble a bow with an arrow drawn across it, according to the statement.

The radio-emitting plasma from RAD-BAARG appears to illuminate an otherwise extremely faint, extended feature. At these low radio frequencies, aged and diffuse electron populations become more visible, allowing astronomers to trace structures that are otherwise invisible at optical or higher radio frequencies, making surveys like LoTSS especially powerful for identifying and confirming such diffuse emission.

Researchers believe the extreme asymmetry may be linked to the galaxy's motion through a dense galaxy cluster. As it falls toward the cluster's center, it likely moves at supersonic speeds through the hot, diffuse gas that fills the space between galaxies. This motion is thought to generate a bow shock that compresses magnetic fields and charged particles, reshaping the radio-emitting plasma into large-scale structures.

The team also found that RAD-BAARG resides in a complex "multi-halo" environment containing several overlapping reservoirs of hot gas, making it an especially valuable system for studying how galaxy clusters influence radio galaxies.

"LOFAR allows us to see this faint, low-surface-brightness emission in remarkable detail," Pratik Dabhade, co-lead author of the study from the National Center for Nuclear Research in Poland, said in the statement.

"With LoTSS DR3 and the future Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), we may find many more systems where radio galaxies reveal otherwise invisible interactions between jets, galaxies, and their environments."

If confirmed, RAD-BAARG could become a key example of how extreme cluster environments reshape radio galaxies, providing new insight into how supermassive black hole jets interact with their surrounding environments.

The findings were published June 22 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

The loudest crash of gravitational waves ever heard has offered us insight into event horizons, the boundaries beyond which nothing can escape the grips of black holes.

The gravitational wave signal GW250114 was picked up in January 2025 by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), Virgo, and KAGRA ( Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector). The signal was created when two black holes with around 32 times the mass of the sun collided and set the very fabric of space rippling.

Now, a team of researchers assessed this signal and found a feature in the gravitational waves represents the collective event horizon of the involved black holes at the very moment of that collision.

"We measured the last sound the black holes made when they crashed. Hidden within that signal is a small component, called direct waves, that had not previously been well understood," research co-leader Neil Lu, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), said in a statement. "Our new analysis allows us to decipher this component and extract unique information from close to the event horizon."

The team's research presents the intriguing possibility that scientists could use gravitational waves to study these mysterious black hole boundaries.

Event horizons and the point of no return

The concept of an event horizon first emerged through solutions to the equations of Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity. These solutions were developed by Karl Schwarzschild while serving with the German army on the Eastern Front in the First World War.

Schwarzschild found a point around a body with mass at which the escape velocity, the speed needed to escape the gravitational grip of that body, exceeds the speed of light. Also known as the Schwarzschild radius, the size of that boundary depends on the mass of the body. So the Schwarzschild radius for the sun would be about 1.86 miles (3 kilometers) from its center of mass; for the Earth, it would be just 0.35 inches (9 millimeters) from our planet's center of mass. That's the case with all planets and stars; the Schwarzschild radius is well within the bodies of those objects.

However, for a black hole, the Schwarzschild radius is far from the center of mass, acting as a light-trapping outer boundary: the event horizon. To escape the gravitational grip of a black hole from this point, matter would have to accelerate to a speed faster than the speed of light, which Einstein's theory of special relativity tells us would require infinite energy. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light; thus, nothing escapes the event horizon.

To understand why that shrouds a black hole in mystery, consider how no signal can travel faster than light. That means the event horizon is a one-way barrier for information. A black hole can swallow it, but the event horizon prevents it from spitting information out. We can never observe the interior of a black hole.

It's little wonder scientists are so keen to study event horizons and what happens there. They don't only want to understand the physics of matter engaged on a one-way trip into the maw of a black hole, but the effect on the very fabric of space itself these cosmic titans have.

The immense gravitational influence of black holes means that, as they spin, they drag the very fabric of space along with them, a phenomenon called "frame-dragging" or the Lense-Thirring effect. This introduces another rule about event horizons — not only does nothing escape this boundary, nothing there sits still either. This research brings scientists one step closer to understanding those rules in greater detail than ever before.

"We studied GW250114, the loudest binary black hole signal observed to date, about three times louder than the first gravitational-wave signal detected a decade ago," team co-leader Ling Sun of OzGrav said. "Our analysis shows that this exceptionally loud signal can be used as a powerful probe of the remnant black hole's horizon, allowing us to measure its two fundamental properties: rotation frequency and surface gravity."

The results could also shed more light on the behavior of gravity in the most extreme environment in the universe, at the very edge of a black hole.

"These measurements mark a first step towards future tests of general relativity with direct waves," Lu said.

The research was published on Wednesday (June 24) in the journal Nature.

At some point next year, when planets and stars momentarily align, we’ll hopefully be getting what’s sure to be the most anticipated sci-fi RPG in recent memory — Wizards of the Coast and Archetype Entertainment's "Exodus", which is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

This far future "Mass Effect"-like saga follows the daring time-traveler Jun Aslan as he and his companions hop about the cosmos searching for ancient artifacts to ward off the destruction of their worlds. This threat comes from an evolved group of transhumans called Celestials, with the whole affair taking place within the Centauri Cluster, 16,000 light-years from an abandoned planet Earth.

As part of Archetype’s ambitious cross-media marketing plan, the dev team enlisted the help of celebrated British sci-fi author Peter Hamilton ("The Salvation Sequence") to fortify the game’s worldbuilding and also pen two companion prequel novels.

The first of these books, "Exodus: The Archimedes Engine," was released on Sept. 17, 2024. Now, the second half of this duology, "Exodus: The Helium Sea," was just published on June 16, 2026, and continues the tale of Finn and his human allies to see if they can outwit the Celestials and finally earn their fellow humans a place of independence and power in the Crown Dominion.

"Because I helped build the 'Exodus' world, they sent me what I always call the skeleton, and I helped put a lot of flesh on it, like the assorted cultures, some of the technologies, and the starships," Hamilton tells Space.

"It was partially my universe to write in, so I knew the limits and constraints, which made it easier because I was part of the structure."

"The Helium Sea" concludes the background saga started in "The Archimedes Engine" and is one story told over the course of two books.

"All the characters that were alive and survived at the end of 'The Archimedes Engine' just carry on into 'The Helium Sea,'” he adds. "You get to find out what’s been hinted at before and what the real motivations are for the rebels and who they are. It was all misdirection; some people we think are on the bad side are not, and you get to see a whole lot of new places and settings as well, and it really expands the universe."

"The last one was set over 40 years because we have a lot of time dilation elements when you travel at relativistic speed," explains Hamilton. "This book is set over ten years, and you have various characters going on different missions, and I had to bring them all together at the same time and same place. That was a lot of plotting."

Hamilton admits that his collaboration with the whole Archetype team on the colossal "Exodus" project has been an enriching affair.

"The joy of it was, which I’ve never had before writing a book, is that I'd send them a description of a world or something, and I’d get my little spaceship back, and it would be this magnificent picture, and of course, being top-flight artists, they've added to my original concept. It was a real growth process, developing this world. We all got on really well, and we just gelled. They were very professional. You could see they had a job to do and they were doing it."

When pushed to choose a favorite destination amid both "Exodus" prequel books, Hamilton immediately picks a world called Kingsnest.

"It's a glass shell, a glass bauble, the size of Jupiter basically, which has been pumped full of atmosphere," he notes.

"The ships they have in it are made out of wood, sort of 18th-century sailing technology, because there are clouds in there and little globular lakes. So much life in there. It would take you more than a lifetime to sail across it and encounter who knows what in the deeps of it. I just love the idea of it. That you can literally have sailing ships in space."

Now enjoy this exclusive chapter excerpt from Peter F. Hamilton's "Exodus: The Helium Sea" (Random House Worlds)

The Jiyoratan family had furnished their tower with stylish opulence. No sign remained visible that the structure was aerolite; every wall was tiled. The aesthetic was clean, with geometric primary colors starting to warp together within soaring arches that highlighted the central atrium, where a lush hanging garden claimed the walls. Internal balconies were illuminated by faint blue lights in constellation displays, half-hidden among the foliage to create an illusion of the external edifice of some tropical villa. Spiral water features ran the full height, bringing a humidity to the scene that Neusch had practically forgotten.

His clothes activated, changing to a light layer of armor around his body and limbs, while the hood slipped over his head and curtained his face in a transparent shield. He’d never envisaged the bio-andy being involved in anything as crude as an actual fight, so he had no idea how much use the protective clothing was going to be against the Guillrameo team. Probably not much. Until now he’d only had a vague plan: get to the sisters and get them out. Quietly. The kind of mission his father would’ve executed superbly, where no one would even know he’d been there until hours after the event.

Well, that’s just taken a deep dive into a sea of shit.

The other Guillrameo operatives were efficiently eliminating the aireels he’d sent after them. Within thirty seconds they’d all been taken out. He didn’t know where the woman was—presumably making her way through the Dibyth tower to the first target. The others would be breaking through the walls any minute now.

The bio-andy picked up voices somewhere inside the atrium. He started running for one of the curving granite stairs that wound up between the atrium balconies. The sisters had their quarters two floors above, along with the rest of the family’s youngsters.

Three people came around the central trio of big fountains, stopped in surprise.

One of them who’d worked with Juliatra-Monoth gave him a startled look. “Halvin-Aneil?”

“Sound the alarm,” he shouted at her. “People have entered your home. They’re going to kill most of you and interrogate the surviving seniors.”

“Huh—”

One of her companions, a man, made a grab for the bio-andy. It pushed back hard, sending him spinning.

“Sorry! They’ll be armed. Get out of here.” Then he was around the fountains and heading for the base of the spiral staircase; people were walking down it. His lnc warned him an intruder alert had been issued within the tower. That’ll annoy the Guillrameo team.

“The Dibyth has been isolated from Husnak’s network,” the CI informed him. “No security forces know what’s going on.”

So, no help’s coming, then. Neusch barged past the couple on the stairs and released a flock of insect drones from his leg pouch. They zoomed up the inside of the atrium, heading for the balcony above, hunting the girls. Andys started to emerge from every doorway. Even without weapons, the slim silver figures would pose a problem.

But that suddenly didn’t matter. The tower network vanished. The andys lost all rigidity, fluttering to the ground like becalmed flags.

“Asteria’s arse.” Neusch drew the bio-andy’s guns—an enhanced-projectile mag carbine and a gamma laser. The bio-andy reached the top of the stairs, and Neusch cursed the way the verdant plants had been allowed to flourish, narrowing the balcony. Tactical display reported a scan locking onto the bio-andy. Neusch relinquished fire control to the bio-andy’s tactical routines. It raised both guns and assumed a crouched pose as it started to sprint along the narrow route.

A projectile hit the side of the balcony half a meter behind it. The bio-andy was flung off its feet, the light armor turning rigid. It landed, crashing into a big night-flowering jasmine bush, rolling with gymnastic precision, firing a burst of gamma rays at the origin of the attack on the floor of the atrium, then sprinted onward.

Neusch split his consciousness. One was with the bio-andy, observing and providing oversight guidance. The parallel Neusch was searching the home’s blueprints, combining with the CI to find an escape route for the sisters.

First realization, as another barrage of projectiles slammed into the balcony behind the bio-andy: this was going to require maximum firepower, because the Guillrameos would unleash nothing less. An X-ray laser slashed across the bio-andy. Its light armor managed to diffuse and deflect most of the energy so that it broiled the balcony’s surrounding vegetation. Leaves and twigs fried, bursting into swirls of ash and embers around him. Neusch was acutely aware of nerve-equivalent impulses reporting the beam penetrating the light armor, searing the bio-andy’s hip and thigh. Muscle damage parameters were incorporated into the body’s physiology routines; it changed its posture slightly to accommodate the now asymmetric strength of its leg muscles.

Three mouse-sized drop-drones flipped out of a leg pouch; they had a similar leg structure to the cutter-drone, but they were combat versions. The trio lunged over the balcony rail in full lemming mode. One released a chaff cascade—hell’s own monsoon manifesting as specks of light, sound, and EM pulses falling through the hanging garden. The other two went dark as they fell, unnoticed among the sensory overload. They hit the floor and did nothing.

A few seconds later, as the chaff attack faded, two of the Guillrameo operatives crept into the atrium, their protective cloaks lensing the light around them: event horizons made from fabric. Their movements created subtle motions in the air that the drop-drones identified.

The bio-andy had just reached the archway leading to the children’s bedrooms when the drop-drones detonated their proton-boosted explosive cores, eradicating the two intruders. A massive blastwave punched the bio-andy through the air, sending it crashing hard into a wall. This time, it took longer to get to its feet and totter forward. One hand slid along the wall for additional balance as it reached the door to the sisters’ bedroom. Which had been locked by the emergency intruder alert.

For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to save you!

Another cutter-drone let go of the bio-andy’s belt where it’d been clinging and hurried over to the door. Its proton incisor deployed, and it climbed up the edge of the door, slicing through the rim as it went.

Neusch sent six more drop-drones flipping away. They sped back down the corridor, taking up positions at three-meter intervals. Neusch saw a couple of the house’s fire-andys roll along the balcony, their extinguisher nozzles deployed over the railings, pumping clouds of viscous yellow retardant foam into the atrium. The part of his consciousness focusing on tactics directed two of the drop-drones into the blobs of foam that fizzed away on the balcony floor. He then dispatched a dozen more insect drones—not confident they’d be any use, but he needed some visuals on the remaining Guillrameo team even if they only lasted a second.

The cutter-drone finished its work. With a swift prayer to the Goddess that a kick would be enough, he raised the bio-andy’s good leg and booted the door. It flew open to a scene of fear and chaos. Five children in their nightclothes were clinging together in defiance, struggling not to scream and cry. He identified Kimiya and Marize, hugging their spawn brothers as they glared fearfully at him.

“It’s okay,” Neusch assured them, raising the bio-andy’s arms. Probably not the best gesture given it was still holding a gun in each hand. “I’m here to stop the attack.” Again, not helpful. His last three cutter-drones raced past the frightened spawn siblings to the wall.

The tactical display told him two weapon-drones were rising up the center of the atrium—hand-sized silver discs, moving fast. They took out his watching insect drones. The tactical display fell back on the drop-drones for information. The first of the weapon-drones came up level with the second floor. It darted forward.

Neusch detonated the two drop-drones on the balcony.

They must have triggered whatever explosives were in the weapon-drone, and the resulting explosion sent him reeling. The children screamed as they were slammed to the ground. The air in the bedroom instantly became a blizzard of trash.

Two drop-drones in the corridor outside survived. They righted themselves and scanned around. The tiles and artwork on the walls were smashed and smoldering, chunks still peeling away from the thankfully stubborn aerolite.

The bio-andy scrambled to its feet, its medical display showing several damaged areas, but it remained capable of locomotion. Neusch knew he only had seconds before the Guillrameo team hit him with something else. Kimiya was closest, sprawled across the floor weeping, debris swirling around her. He snatched her up and held her tight against his chest. She screamed in dread.

“I’m sorry, but it will be okay. You’ll see. I promise.”

She struggled. It was pointless, of course. Even if it’d been a real adult Imperial Celestial gripping her, she wouldn’t have been able to break free—and the bio-andy was considerably stronger.

The three cutter-drones finished slicing the bedroom’s window out of the wall. It fell soundlessly into the night beyond.

“No!” Kimiya wailed as the bio-andy moved toward the gaping hole. “No, no!” Her voice became a wordless shriek. Her spawn siblings cried out as she was carried past them.

“Follow me,” the bio-andy shouted at them. “It’s the only way you’ll live.”

He reached the window and jumped.

From Random House Worlds, "Exodus: The Helium Sea" is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as on Kindle and audiobook form.

About a month has passed since the first launch of SpaceX's "Version 3" Starship rocket, and the spaceflight company has already begun testing on its next such vehicle.

SpaceX recently transported Ship 40, the upper stage in line to launch Starship's upcoming Flight 13 demonstration mission, to the Massey test site at its facilities in Starbase, Texas. Secured at its base, Starship performed a full-duration burn of one of its central Raptor 3 engines that lasted about 15 seconds.

The test, called a static fire, is meant to confirm that the spacecraft's engines are in working order ahead of an actual launch. SpaceX posted a video of the test on X today (June 26). The Ship upper stage is equipped with six Raptor 3 engines — three sea-level engines, and three configured for optimized flight in the vacuum of space. The vehicle uses all six during ascent, but only a single sea-level engine during the final phase of its landing burn.

Starship is SpaceX's super-heavy lift rocket, designed to be completely reusable. Its most recent test flight launched on May 22, completing a mostly successful demonstration of the vehicle's upgraded V3 hardware. At 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall, Starship V3 is the biggest, most powerful iteration of the launch vehicle to date, and is the first to sport SpaceX's new Raptor 3 engines.

Despite a few malfunctions during the V3 debut last month, including failure of the rocket's Super Heavy booster to maneuver its way to a soft ocean splashdown as planned, SpaceX deemed the launch a successful test of the upgraded vehicle's new systems. In addition to the full outfit of Raptor 3s, V3 is equipped with enhanced aerodynamic grid fins, refined thermal protections, an increased fuel capacity and docking nodes to facilitate propellant transfer in space.

That last capability is especially critical for Starship's success. Ship is capable of reaching low Earth orbit (LEO) using its onboard fuel, after Super Heavy lofts the stage through Earth's atmosphere, but once there, it can't fly much farther. (Note: Starship hasn't actually reached orbit yet. All of its launches to date have been suborbital.) To fly beyond LEO, Ship requires refueling from additional Starship launches designed to top off its tanks, a critical function of the giant spacecraft that SpaceX has yet to demonstrate, but that's expected to change this year.

SpaceX has been contracted by NASA to provide Ship as the lander to deliver astronauts to the moon as a part of the agency's Artemis program. To get there, NASA says the spacecraft will require at least 15 refueling flights. The first of those landing missions, Artemis 4, is scheduled for late 2028. Ship is also scheduled to launch as part of Artemis 3, during which astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft will dock with the lander to practice maneuvers with the mated vehicles, but is not expected to require refueling flights for that mission.

The recent static fire with Ship 40 means SpaceX is progressing toward Starship's next full flight campaign, which will feature engine tests with all six of Ship 40's Raptors and all 33 of Super Heavy's. The company hasn't yet released any details about the upcoming Flight 13, but the company will likely attempt to launch the mission before the end of the summer.

China is set to expand its space station from three to six modules in the coming years and add a co-orbiting Hubble-class space observatory, even as the International Space Station approaches the end of its lifetime.

The three-module, T-shaped Tiangong space station was assembled in orbit across 2021 and 2022 and has hosted numerous three-astronaut Shenzhou crews, but China is now set to expand the orbital outpost with new modules, citing growing research demands and more frequent crew and cargo missions. As previously reported by Space.com, the planned expansion will see Tiangong grow into a "double-T" shape, with the addition of the multipurpose module and two new experiment modules, and allow China to extend the scale of operations aboard the station.

"This expansion has always been part of the original plan," Qian Hang, a researcher with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), told Chinese media. State media Xinhua reported that the first phase of the expansion will see the launch of a new 20-ton-class multifunctional module, which will dock with Tiangong's Tianhe core module.

Additional docking ports on the new modules will allow Tiangong to welcome more spacecraft and provide greater operational flexibility when needed. "If the missions get more intensive, we risk 'queuing' for docking ports and lack sufficient emergency buffer space," Qian said.

China is developing new, low-cost cargo options for Tiangong, while its new Mengzhou spacecraft, which could debut later this year, can carry seven astronauts to low Earth orbit. The Shenzhou spacecraft, which is currently used for China's crewed missions, can carry three astronauts to Tiangong.

Before the arrival of a new module, however, the first new addition to Tiangong is expected to be Xuntian, a bus-sized space observatory with a 2-meter (6.6 feet) diameter primary mirror, slightly smaller than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Xuntian is scheduled for launch in 2027 and boasts a field of view around 300 times larger than that of Hubble, meaning it will be able to study and map around 40% of the heavens during its planned 10-year lifetime using its 2.5-billion-pixel camera. Xuntian will share a similar orbit with Tiangong, meaning it will be able to dock with the space station for maintenance, refueling, repairs and potentially upgrades.

China's plans to expand Tiangong are coming at the same time as NASA is planning for the end of life of the much larger International Space Station (ISS). The agency plans to launch the SpaceX-developed U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) in the coming years, and drag the ISS into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean in late 2030 or early 2031.

While the U.S. is mulling a variety of plans for commercial stations that host astronauts in orbit after the ISS is retired, China would have the largest permanent outpost in orbit with Tiangong. According to Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station system, the planned expansion would take Tiangong from a mass of 90 tons to 180 tons.

If you've been looking for a good time to take the leap into the drone world, the 30% discount on this sub-250 g beginner drone might be enough to tempt you.

Before the release of the DJI Neo 2, we ranked the DJI Neo as the best DJI drone for simplicity. Our drone expert, James Abbott, gave it four out of five stars in his hands-on DJI Neo review, noting that not only is it a lot of fun to operate, but it also makes drone flight as simple or as complicated as you would like, thanks to the multiple control options.

Get the DJI Neo drone on sale for one more day at Amazon for $139.

Because the DJI Neo is sub-250g, you don't have to worry about registering it under the current drone regulations. At this price, you can't go wrong, even if you're a seasoned drone pilot looking for a backup or just something that tracks you and your adventures autonomously.

• Check out our Amazon Prime Day hub, where we bring you the best deals of Prime Day 2026, including early Prime Day deals.
• We've also got you covered with reviews and rankings of the best telescopes, binoculars, star projectors, cameras, drones, Lego, streaming and more.

For $140, you get nearly everything you need to get flying: a charger, a screwdriver and spare propellers.

You fly the drone using the DJI Fly app on your mobile phone, but, luckily for beginners (or anxious pilots), you don't worry about losing it. On top of its return-to-home capability, you can instruct it to fly in pre-programmed patterns or even track you autonomously as you go about your business for a fairly generous 18-minute flight time.

You can capture 4K video in 30FPS of your adventures, and a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor will capture snaps of whatever you see from above.

You will see from our best drone guide that DJI is one of the leading names in the drone industry. $139 from Amazon is a really good price considering its capabilities and overall ease of use.

This deal is still live for Amazon Prime Day 2026. Prime Day ends June 26, and we're not sure if this discount will last beyond that. We expect it to increase back to $170, if not to full price.

We have all the best deals on drones, technology, and skywatching gear in our Prime Day hub, which will be regularly updated by our deal-hunting experts through this evening.

Key features: Up to 18 minutes flight time, 4.76 oz / 135 g weight, video capture up to 4K 30FPS / FHD 60FPS, 117.6-degree FOV

Product launched: September 2024

Price history: $139 is the cheapest we have seen this drone for. before deopping to $139, it was on offer. Given that the Neo 2 is out now, when the DJI Neo is gone, it's gone.

Price comparison: Amazon: $139

Reviews consensus: In our DJI Neo review, our expert awarded it four stars, singling out its simplicity as a highlight. Its 4000+ Amazon reviews are even more positive, with purchasers praising its sheer ease of use, value for money and video quality.

TechRadar: ★★★★ | Space: ★★★★ | Toms Guide: ★★★★½

Featured in guides: Best DJI drones

✅ Buy it if: You're new to flying drones and want something that is quick to get to grips with.

❌ Don't buy it if: You want to record hours of video, since it doesn't have a MicroSD slot. For that, consider the DJI Mini 4K.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that processing power doubles every two years whilst almost halving in cost. That should translate to older technology dropping in price and year on year seeing the cheapest prices in the sales, right? The reality is far from simple in the world of skywatching.

For stargazers who have dipped their toes into the world of binoculars and telescopes, prices stack up quickly and even one purchase can wipe out thousands of dollars. Now, there are levels to stargazing equipment, budget models like a Celestron Travel Scope 70 telescope and a pair of Celelestron Cometron 7x50 binoculars will run you between $50-$100 but don't expect the best optical performance. At the complete other end of the scale are premium options like smart telescopes and some image-stabilized binoculars which can run from just under $1,000 all the way to $5,000. There are obviously plenty of in-between models but whichever option you pick, you are still seeing a big chunk of money go out of the bank account when purchasing.

Shopping the sales: Prime Day and Black Friday

Sales events like Prime Day and Black Friday are the usual contenders for getting a good chunk of money off a big purchase. Prices fluctuate throughout the year but I would be inclined to say that the best prices on big purchases have been around Black Friday. Take this Unistellar Odyssey smart telescope, which is 15% off for their Father's Day 2026 sale, it had its last cheapest price on Black Friday 2025.

Does that mean you should wait until then for a guaranteed lowest price? It depends. If you are not in a hurry to get it and are happy to wait, then I would advise you to wait and see if you can get it cheaper. Although waiting for too long just means more time not using the instruments and observing the night sky. You could also fall into the trap of waiting too long and missing out on the best deal available at that time.

Changes to the skywatching industry

Take the Celestron Nexstar 8SE; it's currently $200 off, but this is a frequent reduction for this product. Its last cheapest Amazon price was in October 2025 with $300 off but that is a far sight from its cheapest ever Amazon price of $882. If you had kept waiting after seeing this saving, thinking it might get cheaper, you would have missed out on getting it at over $800 off its current full retail price. Bear in mind, this was in Dec. 2019 and a lot has happened since then. Demand for skywatching optics exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, with people staying at home more and looking for outdoor hobbies. Pair this with rising US-China trade tariffs and general inflation and you have conditions for a huge price increase on these kinds of products. There was also a huge $32 million class action settlement reached in 2025, resulting from a legal battle involving major telescope manufacturers and brands following allegations of price fixing and artificially inflated costs.

Development and deployment of new technology can lead to high prices for the newest and most advanced models but it also makes obsolete or older technology much cheaper. The latest wave of fully smart telescopes are incredibly expensive because they represent the latest skywatching technology; they can automatically find objects (nothing new there) but they can also autofocus and image them straight from a smartphone, so you can get warm and toasty inside with a warm beverage if you so desire.

Their release has also driven down the prices of models with older GoTo technology and Wi-Fi-controlled mounts. For an easy comparison: the Celestron NexStar 8SE (2006) represents the first wave with GoTo technology and computerization, the NexStar Evolution 8 (2014) represents the second wave with Wi-Fi integration and the Celestron Origin Intelligent Obsevatory II (2026) represents the third wave, with full smart capabilities.

Binoculars: The new Frontier

Binocular manufacturers are also working with new technologies but more often than not, the best improvements are made in the quality of optics, resulting in cleaner and brighter images. Image-stabilized (IS) models have been getting releases since the 90s, with the consumer wave of electronic stabilization being kicked off by Canon with the release of their 12x36 IS model in 1997. This and their other IS models have been receiving minor upgrades to their functionality and optics, like the latest version of the Canon 18x50 IS binoculars, which feature super-spectra coatings, higher precision manufacturing and eco-glass optics.

In the years since, we have seen other companies hone this technology, make housing smaller, improve optical elements and develop smoother stabilization mechanisms. The 2025 release of Fujifilm's Fujinon Techno-Stabi 1640 image-stabilized binoculars represent brand beating stabilization and high optical quality, which makes them one of the best pairs of binoculars I have ever used. For the 2026 summer sales events, they are currently at their lowest ever price at Walmart.

The handheld optics world is entering a new wave of advancements with the advent of smart binoculars that can identify stars and animals directly through the eyepieces. The upcoming Unistellar Envision smart binoculars use an augmented reality (AR) overlay to identify night sky objects, locate trails and identify landscape features. Their pre-order price was $999, with their release retail price expected to be $1499, so sometimes it can benefit you to invest early with innovative technologies.

The Final Say

Is it worth buying now and risking the price dropping more in later years or waiting for a lower price, only to find that it never comes? Unless you have serious insider knowledge, it depends on what your personal circumstances and budget are right now. If you are going on holiday to a dark sky spot soon and have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for amazing stargazing or an event like a solar or lunar eclipse, you might be happier to sacrifice more money for that experience. If you are just casually interested in getting something but aren't super intent on needing it right now, then waiting could be better.

If you have a huge budget and need stargazing optics quickly, you may not be bothered by a potential price leeway and would benefit from just getting the instrument at a good price but not its best one. If you are a beginner with a low budget who is just getting into skywatching, it can definitely pay off to wait for the best ever price, at least at a yearly low, so that you can save money which might go towards a more advanced piece of equipment in the future.

There are heaps of streaming services available, and if you're anything like us, you'll have subscriptions to several — Apple TV for Severance, Disney+ for Avatar, Hulu for Solar Opposites, and more. What you need is something where you can access them all in one place, on any device, whether you're home or away.

This is where the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus comes in. If you have a device with an HDMI port, you can plug in this USB-esque device and log in to your favorite streamers with the supplied remote. No separate power source is required (unlike the Roku Ultra).

Sure, the user interface isn't as clean as we'd like, and is quite ad-heavy, but if you can bear with it, it's a small price to pay for such a nifty device that will become your new favorite entertainment-providing travel companion.

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

There are several versions of the Amazon Fire TV Stick, so be sure to choose the one that suits you (especially when there's so little price difference between them at the moment).

The main difference between this model, the 4K Plus, and the 4K Max, currently selling for $34.99, is that the latter offers 'Fire TV Ambient Experience,' which transforms your TV into an Alexa-powered smart display. Display your own photos, widgets like weather, calendars, stick notes and more.

Key features: 4K Ultra HD streaming, Dolby Atmos audio, Alexa Voice Remote, 8GB storage

Product launched: 2026

Price history: The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus usually retails for around $50, but because it's Amazon's own product, it's regularly discounted, especially during events like Prime Day and Black Friday. If you don't have the cash in the bank right now, we're sure the price will dip again during the next big Amazon Sale.

Price comparison: Amazon: $24.99

Reviews consensus: The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus has earned 4.6 out of 5 stars from more than 110,000 reviews on Amazon - seriously impressive. Users praise its ease of use, reliability, picture quality, value for money and speed. The remote control has mixed reviews, with this seemingly retracting from its otherwise glowing reviews. It's worth noting that the remote can be purchased separately if you ever need a replacement. Remember, the Fire TV Stick has voice control too.

✅ Buy it if: You want a portable means of streaming all of your favorite shows from one cable-free device. Take it on vacation to your hotel, buy one for the guest bedroom, or simply keep it plugged into your TV at home.

❌ Don't buy it if: You don't have a device with an HDMI port (e.g., a MacBook Air) and don't want to have to use an adapter.

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

The most beautiful of all the zodiacal constellations is now visible, low toward the south-southeast as darkness falls. This is Scorpius the Scorpion. It really does look like a scorpion, one of the few star patterns that readily suggests the mythical form assigned to it by the ancients. Composed of several fairly bright stars, its body is formed by the upper stars of this star pattern; its tail slants toward the horizon, then curves to the left and upward, a fine stream of stars ending in a close pair of stars marking its stinger.

George Lovi (1939-1993), a well-known astronomy lecturer and author, used to say that it always bothered him that a striking star pattern such as Scorpius was made to represent
"...a lowly, creepy-crawly thing that has few friends."

In his book, The Stars in Our Heaven, author Peter Lum (1911-1983) provides a perspective like Mr. Lovi's:

"The scorpion . . . is an odd-shaped, insignificant creature, but its sting is out of proportion to its size and, although seldom fatal, is extremely painful; hence it is usually disliked, feared and avoided by anyone who has ever come in contact with him."

Just as Orion is the most striking winter stellar pattern, such a distinction can be claimed for Scorpius for the summer season. Interestingly, one legend has Scorpius representing the creature that stung Orion to death. To honor Orion, the Scorpion was placed opposite him in the sky, so that these celestial antagonists will never meet again. Indeed, when Orion disappears below the western horizon during spring evenings, the Scorpion is poking his head up in the southeast. In addition, they were commonly thought of in opposition to each other: Orion was the constellation of life, Scorpius that of death.

And yet, the whole figure of the scorpion is a magnificent sight — sort of a "celestial fishhook" — and is best appreciated now in a dark sky without any interference from bright moonlight. It really looks like a huge scorpion, with its long stinging tail curled over its back. Two closely spaced stars known as Shaula and Lesath mark the Scorpion's stinger. Astronomy popularizer Hans A. Rey (1898-1977) christened these stars the "Cat's Eyes," noting, "You will find the name quite fitting."

Best seen from southern locales

Scorpius is a constellation that can be best appreciated by southerners. Those who live in the far-northern United States, southern Canada or the British Isles will have part or even all of its tail hidden below the southern horizon. Thus, it is well worth seeking out a good, clear horizon to appreciate this majestic figure. As one progresses farther south, the Scorpion slowly climbs the southern sky. Those who live in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, northern Argentina, Uruguay, most of Brazil, northern Chile, and southern Peru see Scorpius high overhead. The Milky Way passes through the lower extremities of the Scorpion. Here, clouds of stars and dark interstellar dust combine in a bewildering array as seen in binoculars and telescopes.

Ruddy contender to Mars

The Scorpion's brightest star is the first magnitude Antares, displaying a reddish hue. Antares appears due south at 10:30 p.m. local daylight time on Independence Day; a month later, you'll find it there two hours earlier as darkness falls. To the ancients, its distinctive red color suggested the planet Mars and the name Antares means literally "The Rival of Ares," Ares being the Greek name for the God of War. There was good reason for this, for unlike the fixed stars, the planets could wander against the starry background, and this ability to move had a magical, god-like quality.

Evidence of this lies in the very names of the planets, which represented ancient deities, and of the five bright planets, the one whose color appeared to come closest to that of blood was called Mars in honor of the god of war. But although often referred to as the "red planet," in the sky, it really appears more yellowish orange, fiery, or pumpkin-hued as opposed to red.

In contrast, Antares is one of the reddest stars in the sky. On those occasions when Mars passes just north of Antares, it is obvious which one is redder. So even when Mars is near opposition and appears to glow many times brighter, Antares still rivals it at least in color.

A star of many names

In the time of Confucius, the Chinese called this star Ta Who, "The Great Fire," at the heart of the Dragon of the East. Another Chinese legend refers to Antares and its two attendants — two fainter stars that flank it — as the Ming T'ang, the "Hall of Light" or the "Emperor's Council Hall." Those two stars are about equally bright — Sigma Scorpii (+2.8) and Tau Scorpii (+2.9). They are sometimes called the Praecordia — "the outworks of the heart," the heart of course being Antares.

The Romans called this mighty star Cor Scorpionis, meaning "heart of the scorpion," a title the French also use — Le Coeur de Scorpion. Some 5,000 years ago, the Persians thought of Antares as one of the four Royal Stars, a guardian of heaven.

Enormous celestial beacon

Antares is a cool, red supergiant star, about 550 light-years away. It is some 76,000 times more luminous and about 680 times the diameter of our sun. It's an irregular variable star, meaning that it expands and contracts in an unpredictable manner, causing its brightness to fluctuate. It has been observed to shine as brightly as magnitude +0.9, while at other times, its brightness has been down to +1.2. It usually ranks as the 15th on the list of the twenty-one brightest stars in the sky.

If our solar system were centered on Antares, the orbit of the Earth would easily fit within this star. Yet, despite these impressive statistics, it should be noted that the overall mass of Antares is only 13 to 16 times that of the sun, so it is not very dense. Its insides might be like a very hot vacuum.

Antares is also relatively cool as stars go, only about 6,100º F (3,400 ºC), compared to 11,000º F (6,000 ºC) for the sun. Its low temperature accounts for its ruddy color. It has a small, very hot companion, bluish white in color, yet has been described as appearing
as ". . . a little spark of glittering emerald" because of its proximity and contrast to ruddy Antares. The pair orbit each other over a span of nearly 900 years, separated by a distance of about 500 times Earth's distance from the sun.

Caught in the claws

Scorpions have two large claws in front, but this one seems to have had its claws clipped; they were cut off to form the constellation of Libra the Scales, one of the constellations of the zodiac and associated with Themis, the Greek goddess of justice, whose attribute was a pair of scales. These stars still both carry Arabic names: Zubeneschamali ("northern claw") and Zubenelgenubi ("southern claw"), to help distinguish them as originally belonging to Scorpius.

Lastly, it must be emphasized to those newcomers to astronomy that the currently accepted name of this constellation is Scorpius, not Scorpio. Principally, astrologers (and some older astronomy books) use the latter for labeling the zodiacal sign of that name.

Just stingin' the nomenclature.

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

A giant asteroid roughly the size of a skyscraper will pass within seven lunar distances of Earth on June 27. Here's how to watch the rare flyby during two livestreams on June 26 and June 27.

How can I watch the flyby online?

The Virtual Telescope Project will host two YouTube livestreams starting at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on June 26 and 27, before and after asteroid 1997 NC1's closest approach to Earth. Each event will feature live views of the asteroid captured by a suite of robotic telescopes in Manciano, Italy, weather permitting.

"While this encounter is absolutely no cause for concern, it will be a very important and interesting opportunity," Virtual Telescope Project founder Gianluca Masi said in a press release sent to Space.com. "An asteroid of this size comes this close roughly once every ten years, becoming bright enough to be easily visible through small telescopes while it crosses the starry sky."

The asteroid designated 152637 1997 NC1 will make its closest approach to Earth at 7:16 a.m. EDT (1116 GMT) on June 27, when it will pass 1,594,339 miles (2,565,839 kilometers) from our planet, whipping by at 19,879 mph (31,992 km/h), according to NASA.

With an estimated diameter of 1,443 feet (440 meters), 1997 NC1's size and potential to pass close to Earth during future orbits have led to it being designated as a potentially hazardous asteroid by NASA. However, it will pose zero risk to our planet, or the moon during this week's flyby.

How can I see 1997 NC1 with my own telescope?

A pair of 10x50 binoculars or a small 4-inch telescope should be enough to reveal the asteroid as a point of light shifting through the stars of the constellation Ophiuchus on the night of the close approach, according to Masi.

1997 NC1 will reach a peak brightness, or magnitude of +10 at 8 p.m. EDT on June 27 (0000 GMT on June 28), marking an ideal time to observe the wandering asteroid. Magnitude is the scale used by astronomers to measure the apparent brightness of an object in the night sky. The lower the number, the brighter the object!

The streams will occur shortly before World Asteroid Day — an annual United Nations-backed event held on June 30 to raise awareness of the threat posed by potential asteroid strikes. The date was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the Tunguska impact of 1908, when an asteroid exploded over Siberia, flattening millions of trees in an 830 square mile (2,148 sq km) area.

If you've ever seen auroras in the night sky, then you are one of the lucky few who has enjoyed a view of one of nature's most colorful and spectacular phenomena. But for the very lucky, very few who've seen auroras from space, the view is on a whole other level!

What is it?

When charged particles streaming constantly from the sun, also known as the solar wind, reach Earth and interact with our atmosphere, it creates what we call auroras. Seeing these spectacular, colorful displays in the sky is on many people's bucket list, as auroras can light up the sky in a rainbow of colors. But this beautiful phenomenon happening in our atmosphere can also be seen from space.

European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, who is currently aboard the International Space Station as part of the εpsilon mission, spotted the aurora australis, or auroras over the Southern Hemisphere. (Lights in the Northern Hemisphere are known as the aurora borealis.)

And the image she captured of the moment really speaks for itself. Neon green swirls look truly otherworldly against a haze of bright purple blanketing Earth, which also seems enveloped in a ruby red glow. The reddish glow of the auroras can even be seen against the outside of the space station in this photograph.

Why is it incredible?

While her photograph speaks for itself, Adenot actually shared her own thoughts on the view via social media. One incredible thing about human spaceflight in the modern world is that, even from an orbiting laboratory, astronauts can share their experiences with the world in real time.

"Day 127, orbit 1968 — That aurora was absolutely spectacular… shimmering and dancing beneath us, stretching as far as the eye could see, and so intense it lit up the Station in shades of green," Adenot said. "We’ve seen several since the beginning of the mission, but this one was on a completely different level — far too bright for my usual aurora camera settings. Moments like these never get old up here; the whole crew suddenly find themselves vying for a good spot at a window!"

A new memo from NASA's Office of Inspector General has revealed how major pieces of Artemis program hardware became costly components of lunar missions that no longer align with the agency's new plans to return astronauts to the moon and have since been canceled.

NASA announced a major shakeup to its Artemis plans earlier this year at its "Ignition Day" event, restructuring its mission goals in order to streamline the return of astronauts to the lunar surface and simplify the architecture needed to get them there. Most notably, the program's first crewed moon landing was shifted from Artemis 3 to Artemis 4, and upgraded variations of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket were abandoned for a single uniform design. The Gateway space station planned for lunar orbit was also canceled in favor of a stronger focus on establishing a base on the moon's surface.

The switch-up left behind a trail of expensive hardware, including SLS's upgraded Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) and the adapter meant to fit it to the SLS rocket, a larger launch tower, and Gateway's Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module. Now, an interim Office of Inspector General (OIG) memo released June 24 offers a striking snapshot of just what NASA is walking away from. It calculates that NASA's final investment into the canceled hardware, which was originally contracted at a combined $2.9 billion, reached $5.9 billion by the time work was ceased, and concludes that, had NASA continued its support, costs and timelines would have continued to grow.

The report outlines rising costs and developmental delays for each of the aforementioned pieces of hardware, and shows how some Artemis systems were years late, billions of dollars over their original estimates and facing major technical problems. NASA is currently targeting 2028 for the program's first lunar landing on Artemis 4. Had the agency not restructured its mission plans, NASA's goal of landing astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade would have very likely been unobtainable.

Under the old Artemis plan, the Boeing-built EUS was intended for bigger, future versions of SLS, and would have increased the rocket's capabilities to send Orion and heavier cargo to the moon by 40%. Boeing is also responsible for developing and assembling the SLS core stage, and was selected to design and manufacture EUS in February 2017. EUS was added to Boeing's existing SLS contract, and folded into the work order to the tune of $962 million, with a delivery date set for March 2021.

In March 2026, after NASA announced its new Artemis plans, Boeing still had not delivered EUS, nor could it specify when it expected to do so and was issued a stop work order. By that time, the EUS allocations in Boeing's contract had risen to nearly $2 billion, with the company estimating that the number would rise to $3.7 billion by the project's completion. According to the OIG report's findings, Boeing wouldn't have been able to deliver the first flight-ready EUS to NASA until the end of 2028 — 7.5 years after its original due date.

Part of the continued EUS delays were a result of NASA's reprioritization of Boeing's efforts in 2018 to expedite completion of the SLS core stage, according to the OIG. The memo also cites the evolving design of Artemis missions, supply chain shortages and development issues that eroded the agency's confidence in Boeing. "NASA noted significant weaknesses related to EUS production efficiency, including unrealistic production schedules and the lack of a clear plan for improvement," the memo states.

Another scrapped component of the now-canceled SLS variants — and, perhaps, one of the most jaw-dropping, given the component's size and apparent simplicity — is the Universal Stage Adapter (USA). Designed by Dynetics, Inc., the USA was a conical section of SLS positioned to connect EUS to Orion and carry additional mission payloads. NASA contracted Dynetics to manufacture the USA for $131 million in 2017, and added another $9 million for the incorporation of the adapter's environmentally-controlled secondary payload deployment capability in 2022. That number had reached $353 million when NASA issued Dynetics' stop work order in February, and would have climbed to $497 million before the USA's completion, which the OIG report estimates would have been delayed to May 2030.

"The USA contract's cost and schedule estimates grew beyond original estimates due to both NASA directed modifications and Dynetics' performance issues," the OIG memo concluded, but notes that NASA's satisfaction with Dynetics steadily declined from "very good" in 2024, to "unsatisfactory" by the end of 2025.

Mobile Launcher 2 (ML-2), the huge tower connecting power and fuel umbilicals to SLS during assembly and prior to liftoff, followed a similar pattern. ML-2 was being constructed to support the taller SLS configurations that would have been incompatible with the current mobile launcher. That contract was awarded to Bechtel National, Inc. in June 2019 for $383 million.

NASA expected delivery in March 2023, but increasing cost evaluations from Bechtel delayed ML-2's completion and ballooned the contract to $1.6 billion by the start of 2026. The company was expected to complete ML-2 by this summer, but the OIG report estimates it would have been closer to December, with another one to two years of validation testing for NASA to ready the tower to support a launch, and costs reaching $2 billion.

The OIG asserts that Bechtel was unprepared for the intricacies of ML-2 design needs, and placed an additional financial burden on NASA during an extended development process. "Bechtel's reluctance to utilize NASA expertise, failure to track risks, challenges with managing the launcher's weight, and lack of a certified earned value management system impacted the contractor's cost, schedule, and performance," the report states.

The HALO module for the defunct Gateway space station was another casualty of NASA's altered Artemis plans, but had already incurred some injuries along the way. After its delivery to the United States from subcontractor Thales Alenia Space, in Turin, Italy in April 2025, Northrop Grumman discovered "widespread corrosion throughout the module," the OIG report says.

NASA's contract for HALO with Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems began as a $187 million sole-source acquisition in 2019, which had increased to $1.8 billion by September 2024. It reached $1.9 billion by the time NASA issued their stop work order in April, but was projected to continue to rise as delivery estimates were pushed to 2031.

Some of the blame for HALO's mismanagement falls on NASA, which the OIG memo says put unrealistic expectations on Northrop's progress. "Driven by the necessity to meet Artemis launch schedules, the Gateway Program worked toward unrealistic schedules throughout the life cycle of HALO," OIG's memo states, and cites a quote from Gateway's own independent Standing Review Board that says, "lack of schedule realism may be driving suboptimal engineering decisions during development."

The OIG report was issued amid an audit of "NASA's management of developed assets for programs and projects terminated prior to launch or operations," it says.

The OIG release included NASA's reply to a draft of the memo, acknowledging the role of shifting mission parameters, resource shortages and issues within each contractor that contributed to rising costs and ongoing delays, but maintained that the restructuring of Artemis was designed specifically to move the agency away from such costly practices.

"These projections rely on past performance under outdated architectural assumptions that do not reflect the Ignition Day principles of discipline, affordability, simplification, and speed," NASA's response says.

On paper, it seems like the math would be clear. A nearly 22-year-old space telescope, well past its prime, is falling out of space after decades of hunting the biggest explosions in the universe. Rest in peace, right?

After all, it would cost NASA $30 million to save the telescope, called the Swift Observatory, which the agency launched in 2004 on a planned two-year mission. Some of us have cars that we've replaced far sooner for much less. And now, higher-than-expected drag on the satellite from Earth's outer atmosphere (caused by solar storms) will pull Swift out of orbit by year's end. So why not accept the inevitable fiery demise of the observatory when it plunges back to Earth?

Swift, it turns out, is still worth it, according to NASA. The observatory has spent over two decades as a sort of orbital sentinel that scans the cosmos for gamma-ray bursts, ready to quickly point itself at the short-lived — but insanely powerful — space explosions at a moment's notice. No other off-Earth observatory, not even the famed Hubble Space Telescope or James Webb Space Telescope, can perform such a feat of astronomy. So NASA is launching a rescue mission on June 30, one led by the company Katalyst Space using its new Link spacecraft.

"We didn't want to set the precedent that anything that comes out of orbit has to be boosted, because it is part of our space ecosystem to have things deorbit frequently," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA's Astrophysics Division director, told reporters during a Swift rescue mission briefing on June 17. "But this was not just any spacecraft; this is an observatory with unique capabilities for astrophysics … It is a swift observatory that can quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night."

A sentinel in the night

NASA originally built and launched Swift in 2004 for $250 million. Since then, the observatory has served as a first responder of sorts to rapidly spot distant gamma-ray bursts that can last mere seconds, yet unleash more power than our sun will in its entire lifetime. Because of its success, Swift's mission has been extended repeatedly.

"The name is not an acronym. It comes from the ability to rapidly and autonomously repoint its narrowfield X-ray and UV [ultraviolet] telescopes almost anywhere on the sky," Swift Principal Investigator Brad Cenko told reporters during the June 17 briefing. (NASA renamed Swift the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in 2018 after the mission's first principal investigator, who died a year earlier.)

"The universe is a very dynamic place. Somewhere in the cosmos, a massive star explodes every second," he added. "And over time, our exceptional operations team, led by Penn State, has found new and innovative ways for the satellite to rapidly respond to these discoveries."

The Hubble Space Telescope can capture sharper photos than Swift, but it takes up to two days to point Hubble at a new target, Cenko said. It takes Swift mere minutes. "It really is NASA's first responder, and by working together in this complementary manner, the NASA astrophysics portfolio can tackle questions that would be impossible for any single facility to answer," Cenko added.

Observations from Swift helped confirm that the heaviest elements in our universe, including precious metals like platinum and gold in your rings and necklaces, were forged by the explosive power associated with gamma-ray bursts (which scientists think are produced by supernovas and neutron-star mergers). In 2022, Swift discovered a gamma-ray burst so bright, scientists nicknamed it the "BOAT," short for Brightest of All Time. At the time,it was the most powerful space explosion ever seen.

But now Swift is falling back to Earth on a trajectory at an increasing rate and will burn up in our atmosphere soon, if nothing is done.

Katalyst to the rescue with Swift Boost

NASA's Swift rescue mission, called Swift Boost, is now scheduled to launch Tuesday (June 30) — about 3 days later than originally planned — on the last-ever Pegasus XL rocket, an air-launched booster built by Northrop Grumman. It will be carried aloft by the last L-1011 Stargazer carrier plane, which Northrop also operates, on a flight out of the U.S. military's Reagan Missile Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific's Marshall Islands.

To rescue Swift, NASA has turned to the untested Arizona-based company Katalyst Space, which the space agency picked to fly the Swift Boost mission just nine months ago, in September 2025. That is a mindbogglingly short time in which to build a brand-new spacecraft, then launch it on a rendezvous mission to a space observatory that was never built to be rendezvoused with, and then push the Swift telescope to a higher orbit — one that will guarantee at least five or more years of science life, if successful.

It's a huge bet, and something that's never been done before. Even Swift's top scientist has butterflies in his stomach.

"Absolutely, no doubt. Been some sleepless nights, a number of them," Cenko told Space.com in an interview last week. "On the other hand, working with this team of folks gives me great confidence."

Cenko and NASA's Swift mission team have worked closely with Katalyst mission managers and engineers on the Swift Boost mission. Katalyst calls its rescue ship Link. It's a small spacecraft about the size of a refrigerator that has three main ion engines, three robotic arms and a suite of sensors and thrusters to attempt to capture the falling Swift observatory. Link has gone from a blank sheet of paper to a finished spacecraft attached to a rocket viaan "unprecendented development timeline," its Katalyst builders said.

"That is something that we were able to do, because every part of this mission has been driven by the exceptional urgency provided by the Swift requirements," said Kieran Wilson, Link's principal investigator at Katalyst. The top requirement: Be ready to launch before Swift falls out of space.

A risky plan

Swift was originally placed in an orbit 375 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth when it launched in 2004. The spacecraft has no engines of its own to maintain its orbit. It's now on a path to fall below 186 miles (300 km) in altitude by October. At that point, Katalyst's Link may not be able to reach Swift in time to save the space telescope.

Testing and computer modeling have been key to try and iron out all the kinks in the mission.

"We've been relying on NASA expertise to ensure that we're not making silly mistakes along the way and maximize our probability of success," Wilson said.

"There's a lot of very simple things that can go wrong, and we're adding a lot of additional complexities to the program, but we've been through an aggressive test campaign over the last few months," he added.

After launch, Link will spend several weeks in orbit conducting a series of tests to ensure it is ready to try and save Swift. If all goes well, it will then rendezvous with Swift, grapple on with its robotic arms, and spend up to three months slowly raising the observatory's orbit.

If Katalyst succeeds in saving Swift, the company will have done something never accomplished in space history: reboosting an ailing space telescope using a spacecraft developed in less than a year to rescue a target that was meant to be left in space on its own forever. Katalyst sees big business in such a service, and already has a U.S. Space Force contract to demonstrate a similar capability for larger spacecraft using its new Nexus vehicle. That mission will launch in 2027.

And if Katalyst doesn't succeed? Then Swift will fall out of space on its own, something the space observatory is already going to do anyway.

Those are stark all-or-nothing stakes, but ones that Cenko can accept. The science team even put Swift in a low-power mode in February, halting all research operations to help slow its drag-induced descent.

"I also remind myself that the alternative here is that we reenter the Earth's atmosphere, so in that sense, you know, the risk here is relatively low," Cenko told me. "Maybe we can't be doing science for a few more months. But trading that against the potential benefit of many years of upsurge? That is a no-brainer."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4 p.m. ET to reflect the new launch date and time for Swift Boost. The mission will now launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (1023 GMT).

Full moons are overrated and, frankly, a pain. They wash out the stars, ruin deep-sky observing, and they all look the same. Technically, all of that is true. Yet every month — and particularly each June — I find myself standing outside at dusk waiting for the full moon to rise like it's an old friend arriving for an annual visit.

The main attraction of June's Strawberry Moon is that it stays so low, as seen from the Northern Hemisphere. It appears at an extreme southeasterly point on the horizon and rises slowly, almost reluctant to leave the horizon. It doesn't climb sharply upward like a winter full moon. Instead, it drifts sideways through the southern sky, hanging low and heavy in warm evening haze. People who never normally notice the moon suddenly stop and stare — the surefire way of telling that a celestial event has crossed the threshold and become simply an event.

Last year's Strawberry Moon rose absurdly low because it was at a major lunar standstill, the peak of an 18.6-year cycle that changes how extreme the moon's rising and setting positions become. It reached its most southerly moonrise point since 2006, and we won't see another stretch quite like that again until the 2040s. I was at an outdoor concert at the time, and spent much of the set looking in the complete opposite direction from the stage. It just looked so odd rising behind my city in a position I had never seen it rise before. It was like being in an alternate reality. Few around me even noticed.

It won't rise quite as far in the southeast this year, but June's low-hanging moon always feels bigger emotionally, even when you know the moon illusion is mostly a trick of human perception.

What's happening and when to look

You don't need to understand lunar cycles and celestial mechanics to appreciate the Strawberry Moon. You just need clear southeastern and then southern sightlines to watch it hug the horizon. However, I'm going to explain it anyway. The moon doesn't repeat the same apparent path through the sky every month. Its orbit is tilted about five degrees relative to the ecliptic — the apparent path of the sun through the sky — and those tilts combine and shift to create a cycle that repeats every 18.6 years.

Moreover, the full moon always sits opposite the sun in the sky. In June, the sun takes its highest and northernmost path of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. That's why it's summer — the sun is higher, so days last longer and there's more sunlight. The Strawberry Moon does the reverse: it follows the lowest and most southerly path possible. It rises late, well south of due east, follows a shallow arc across the sky and sets early, well south of due west, just like the sun in winter.

Southern Hemisphere observers get the opposite experience. June marks the beginning of winter there, so the Strawberry Moon rises much higher in the sky and appears more northerly. While Northern Hemisphere observers experience the famous "low-hanging fruit" effect, southern observers see a higher, more elevated full moon that remains visible for longer into the night.

That reversal is one of my favorite things to explain to beginners because it instantly makes the sky feel global rather than local.

How and when I'm watching it

The best way to experience the Strawberry Moon is to treat it less as an astronomical event and more as a landscape photograph. The moon itself changes surprisingly quickly during its rise. Scouting a location is important for the Strawberry Moon because it rises at its most extreme point. You need a clean southeastern horizon — a beach, an open field, a hilltop or even a long, straight road. Trees and buildings near the horizon matter. You can take a lot of the guesswork out by using Photo Ephemeris to show you exactly where the moon will rise from any location on Earth. That's important because it likely won't rise where you expect it to.

The sweet spot is during dusk, right around local moonrise time on June 29. That's when the moon still shares the sky with fading blue twilight, a far more dramatic sight than when it rises before or long after sunset.

And this is important: the orange color does not last long. People often assume the moon stays amber all night. It doesn't. The color comes largely from Earth's atmosphere scattering shorter wavelengths while the moon sits low on the horizon. As it climbs higher, it quickly returns to its ordinary bright white. You've got maybe 20 or 30 minutes of peak "Strawberry Moon mood" before physics quietly resets everything.

Stargazer's corner: June 26-July 2, 2026

As June draws to a close, the moon grows toward full, reaching its Strawberry Moon phase on Monday, June 29. In the nights leading up to it, moonlight increasingly dominates the evening sky, while after it, it rises a little later. Look low in the south after dark on Saturday, June 27, to see a near-full moon close to Antares in the constellation Scorpius. It will take a very early start, but in the northeast before dawn during the last days of June and into early July, Mars will hang below the Pleiades open cluster (M45), with Uranus nearby.

Constellation of the week: Aquila

Aquila — Latin for eagle — is anchored by Altair, a bright star that sits lower in the southern sky than Vega and Deneb, the other two stars in the famous Summer Triangle asterism now rising in the east after dark. What makes it easy to recognize is the straight line formed by bright Altair and orangey Tarazed.

I always think we should appreciate Altair more — at 17 light-years away, it's one of the closest stars to the sun we can easily see. It's also pretty weird, rotating every 12 hours (the sun takes 27 days) and bulging violently at its equator. Altair will become more prominent as summer progresses, so there's plenty of time to get to know it.

Rocket Lab launched the "Ten Owl of Ten" mission from New Zealand today (June 26), adding to Japanese company Synspective's imaging constellation.

An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex-1 (LC-1) in New Zealand today (June 26) at 1:43 p.m. EDT (1743 GMT; 5:43 a.m. on June 27 local New Zealand time).

As its name suggests, the "Ten Owl of Ten" mission sent up Synspective's 10th synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, which will expand the company's network above Japan to provide imaging data for use in city planning, monitoring infrastructure and responding to natural disasters.

The launch was Rocket Lab's 12th so far in 2026, and the ninth for Electron this year (the other flights were performed by the HASTE rocket, a suborbital variant of Electron). Electron, Rocket Lab's workhorse small-lift launch vehicle, stands 59 feet (18 meters) tall and can launch payloads weighing up to 661 pounds (300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO).

Synspective has booked Electron to launch the entirety of its Strix constellation, with 17 more on the rocket's manifest expected to launch before 2030. The satellites are named after a genus of owls, drawing inspiration from the birds' visual acuity.

Like their namesake, the Strix satellites' SAR antennas allow the spacecraft to collect Earth-observation data in every lighting condition (and also through cloud cover, which the birds can't quite match).

Each Strix satellite weighs about 220 pounds (100 kg), and stretches to 16.4 feet (5 meters) wide with its SAR antenna fully deployed. Each satellite has an on-orbit lifespan of about five years, according to Synspective's website. The spacecraft cruise in LEO between 15 and45 degrees of inclination.

If all goes according to plan, Electron will deliver the "Ten Owl of Ten" Strix to an inclination of 42 degrees, at a LEO altitude of 343 miles (552 kilometers).

Electron's second stage separated about 2 minutes, 40 seconds after liftoff today, with the third or "kick" stage taking over about nine minutes into flight. Payload separation occurred on schedule 45 minutes later, around T+1 hour after liftoff.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:50 p.m. ET on June 26 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 3:35 with news of satellite deployment.

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